by Jon E. Lewis
“The ensuing fire fight lasted for about 20 minutes and was conducted at ranges of no more than 20 metres. I remember admiring the coolness of trooper Hans, already the holder of the DCM, firing deliberately and steadily at the muzzle flashes from the nearest bunker, while branches leaves and wood chips thrown up by enemy fire flew all around him.
“Meanwhile, I took stock of a rapidly deteriorating situation. The options were simple: either storm what was largely an unknown but well protected objective, or get the hell out of it and live to fight another day. I decided on the latter course, and I must say it’s a decision I have never regretted.
“By this stage we’d all fired at least 200 rounds apiece, and thrown or fired most of our grenades. At that moment some bright spark fired a 4-mm CS gas cartridge at a bunker and missed. But the resulting cloud of gas, together with white phosphorous smoke, created enough confusion to allow us to break contact, using individual fire and movement, crawling on our bellies and pulling our wounded.
“In spite of the noise and confusion my 2IC, Clive, an ex-Royal Marine, had remembered to make ready a time delay smoke container to mark the camp so that bombers could attack it later from the air. I watched with alarm as the hand on the watch of the timing device fell off as he put the smoke container down behind a tree. With great presence of mind he pulled out a knife, smashed the watch glass with the handle and carefully repositioned the hand. By this time everyone else had withdrawn, and I was rather keen to join them.
“Twenty minutes later we reached a small clearing, and we were all extracted by winch, under cover of fire from helicopter gunships that suppressed the enemy throughout.
“Only one of us needed hospital treatment, and the rest of us needed a beer on our return to base.”
EYEWITNESS: With BATT in Oman
In 1970 the Sultan of Oman was overthrown by his son with a little help from the SAS. The new regime received immediate British assistance against the communist backed Adoo guerillas who were based over the border in Yemen. The SAS and its attached units were known as BATT (British Army Training Team) and was to train the loyal Arab army and the Firquat tribesmen. I was part of a four-man despatch team working as ATLOs (Air Transport Liaison Operators). In fact we flew operational despatch sorties and any underslung equipment sorties.
“One day, Dave, myself and an SAS psyops (psychological operations) trooper were briefed on a sortie for early the following day. We were to fly along the coast until we came to the border, and then fly parallel until we reached a certain grid reference which was a known Adoo area. We were to shower it with leaflets, calling on the enemy to surrender, telling them they would be well treated and, more importantly, that they would be well paid for the brand new AK-47 rifles the Russians had given them. This ‘hearts and minds’ campaign was proving highly successful.
“We took off from Salalha at 06.00 in a battered Britten-Norman Defender which had its machine guns and rocket pods removed to give more room for fuel and the payload – four men and a lot of leaflets in cardboard boxes. We had no weapons other than those we carried with us: two SLRs, an M16 and the pilot’s pistol.
“At 13,000 ft we levelled off. The drone of the engines made talking impossible and we each sat in our own silence. Occasionally through the haze I caught sight of an Arab dhow. Was it a friendly fishing boat or a Communist gun-runner? The only way to find out would be to overfly it at a couple of hundred feet and without our usual machine guns and rockets, this would have been decidedly unhealthy. We droned on.
“We had no parachutes. I had been told by one pilot that if we received a direct hit from a rocket we would be instantly incinerated. We performed a slow turn to the right, and through the window I saw the forbidding peaks of the mountains and the Omani coastline getting closer. Then we were crossing the moonscape wastes of the desert towards the foothills. The ground was covered in huge boulders. Not a good place for a crash-landing.
“ ‘Running in,’ the pilot shouted over the noise of the engine. We got busy on the boxes, splitting bundles of leaflets and preparing them for the drop. One or two that got loose fluttered around in front of the cabin like demented flies. ‘OK start dropping now,’ came the command. We grabbed handfuls of leaflets and threw them out and back into the slipstream ensuring that they were well separated by the time they met the ground. Within two minutes we had emptied the aircraft, and for good measure, we tossed the empty boxes out as well. The pilot turned the plane around and headed for the coast and relative safety.
“We had just sat down and strapped in when Dave, who had been admiring the view, turned and shouted, ‘I think I just saw a smoke trail below us.’ We all looked at each other. The pilot did not need to be told twice: he banked violently to starboard and started a series of banks and turns that we hoped would confuse the missile below us, homing in on the heat of our engine exhausts. Unlike other aircraft in the war zone we carried no heat deflectors, magnesium flares or any other jamming devices. If we were to survive it would mostly be by luck.
“After a few rapid turns my bacon and eggs from breakfast were making a comeback and at that moment if I’d had a chute I would have jumped. My knuckles were white from gripping the seat strap. A look at the others confirmed that they were in the same state. I gulped in cold air from the open door. Suddenly we were levelling off. I looked at the pilot who was going about his business as if nothing had happened.
“What’s going on?” I yelled.
“No sweat!” he shouted.
“What about the SAM?” we all wanted to know.
“Must have been a short-range job; never got anywhere near us.”
“We breathed a sigh of relief. The pilot didn’t intend giving the Adoo another chance and our plane went into a rapid dive, the engine noise changing to a high-pitched whine. By the time we reached the sea we had gone from 13,000 ft to zero ft in about a minute and a half, and we were skimming the warm blue Arabian sea.
“Stripping off all my extra layers of clothing because of the heat, as we were now getting at low altitude, I noticed for the first time lots of large black shapes in the water below. I pointed at them. Our trooper nodded and mouthed the word SHARKS. The water didn’t seem all that inviting any more. The flight back to Salalha was uneventful. On landing we waved farewell to our pilot and drove back to base to make our report.”
THE BATTLE OF MIRBAT
A little before dawn on 19 July 1972 an eight-man SAS BATT detachment stationed in Mirbat, Oman, was attacked by 250 Communist guerrillas or Adoo. It was the beginning of a battle as extraordinary as that fought at Rorke’s Drift or the Imjin River. The Sultanate of Oman – a British ally and strategically important Gulf nation – had been in a state of civil war in its southern province of Dhofar since the early 1960s. Originally Arab nationalists, the insurgent Adoo had become hardline Communists, aided and sponsored by South Yemen. The Adoo were a formidable enemy, well-trained and equipped with Soviet arms. However, their appeal had been weakened by the new Sultan, Qaboos, who had wooed over elements of the insurrectionists with promises of material progress. In order to reassert their influence, the Adoo needed victory against the Sultan’s Armed Forces, the firqat (guerrillas who had changed sides) and the Sultan’s British helpers, the Special Air Service. Hence the attack on Mirbat. Tom Verry gives this account.
The nervousness of the men electrified the chill dank air. Silent, except for the slight chink-chink of a dislodged pebble or the hoarse whisper of a command, they lay in their assault positions, shamags pulled tight against the cold. Some sought relief from the tension by checking and rechecking their Kalisnikov AK-47s, others prayed to Allah, their lips wordlessly mouthing the Koran in the dark. Like soldiers everywhere they wanted the action to begin, the waiting over.
To the left of the Adoo the sky began to lighten. Before them, something over a thousand yards away, they could make out the low, flat roofs of Mirbat and the sea which surrounded it on two sides. Behind them lay the forbidding height of
the Jabal, from which they had descended in the night in fast-moving parties of forty or more. Suddenly there was a single snap of a high velocity rifle, followed by the crackle of a 12.7 mm Shoagin machine-gun. Their presence had been spotted by a picket on the Jabal Ali, a small rise to the north of the town. Realizing that the element of surprise had been lost, Adoo mortarmen began to shower bombs on the town. The riflemen rose up and ran forward, raising their weapons to their shoulders as they did so. It was just before 5.30 a.m. on 19 July 1972.
Inside the town, the shells caused Captain M.J.A. Kealy of B Squadron, 22 SAS, to tumble out of his sleeping bag, seize his SLR and run up to the roof of “BATThouse”, as the training detachment’s building was affectionately known. At 23 “Mike” Kealy had never been in action before; he was desperately worried, as he climbed upwards, about how he would behave under fire. And more, how he would command his seasoned NCOs and troopers who, technically at least, ranked below him.
Reaching the roof, Kealy was astounded by the sheer intensity of the assault. Previously the Adoo had satisfied themselves with desultory mortar and shell attacks, then hastily withdrawn. Now they were on the open ground just outside the perimeter wire which flanked the north and west of Mirbat. Through the half-light Kealy could see that the picket on the Jabal Ali had been overrun, and that a small stone fort held by twenty-five men of the Sultan’s Dhofar Gendarmerie (DG) 700 yards away to the right was bearing the brunt of a pounding assault. Nearer, almost on the water’s edge, was the Wali’s Fort, occupied by pro-Sultan Askari tribesmen from northern Oman who were returning slow but accurate fire from the bolt-action .303 rifles. Shells were landing everywhere inside the town, throwing up plumes of dust. The noise was deafening. An artillery round whistled low overhead to explode behind the house.
Assessing the situation in a manner he found almost a reflex, Kealy ordered the team’s sole mortar to lay down a white phosphorous smoke-screen. Meanwhile, Lance-Corporal Pete Wignall opened up with his .5 Browning, mounted on sandbags on the roof, and Corporal Roger Chapman unleashed a hail of GMPG rounds. Other SAS men calmly picked off the advancing Adoo with FN automatic rifles. Still they came forward, groups advancing under covering fire in textbook manner. Fire and movement. Fire and movement.
By now Kealy was apprehensive. The vigour of the enemy advance suggested that they knew the strength of those within Mirbat, a bare fifty fighting men. Grim-faced, he ordered Wignall to establish communications with base at Um Al Gwarif, and went downstairs to change his flip-flops for desert boots.
He returned within seconds to find the battle hotting up. Increasing daylight had not diminished the Adoo’s assault, only added to it. Explosions pummelled the BATThouse, some of the enemy rounds coming from the foreshore to the south: the town was surrounded. From a corner of the roof, Corporal Bob Bradshaw purposefully identified targets for the SAS mortar and machine-guns.
Behind Bradshaw Trooper Savesaki, a Fijian with the SAS, talked urgently over the radio to a gun-pit in front of the DG Fort manned by an Omani, Walid Khamis, and another Fijian SAS trooper, Corporal Labalada. The gun-pit housed the 25 pounder of Second World War vintage. Labalada, Savesaki informed Kealy, had been hit in the chin. Kealy agreed to Savesaki’s request to go to the aid of his countryman. For an agonizing minute the men on the roof watched Savesaki, a rugby player of renown, snake and sidestep bullets and explosions as he ran to the gun-pit – and disappeared safely over its sangar wall. The 25 pounder began to belch shells at the Adoo, causing deaths and injuries by the score.
Yet the Adoo continued to move inexorably forward. From a position near the wire they opened fire on the DG Fort with RPG-7 rocket-launchers and a Carl Gustav, whose 84 mm rounds began to shred the ancient building. By now the Adoo were breaching the wire. All SAS fire was directed at the perimeter near the Carl Gustav. With the situation worsening, Kealy ordered Trooper “I” to request an airstrike and a casevac chopper from Um al Gwarif. The helicopter was dispatched immediately but the low cloud-cover ruled out an airstrike.
It was now 07.00 hours, and an eerie lull suddenly descended on the battlefield. The Adoo, having loosed off thousands of rounds, needed to bring up more ammunition. The SAS, not wishing to draw fire, responded with silence. Only the steady crump of the Adoo mortars broke the morning quiet.
Kealy took advantage of the temporary abatement of battle to try to raise the gun-pit on the walkie-talkie. There was no response. Worried, Kealy determined to make the dangerous run to the gun-pit, over 400 yards of open ground, himself. An argument broke out, the other SAS men at the BATThouse insisting they take the risk. Kealy refused to let anyone go in his stead, but agreed to take Trooper Tobin, his medical orderly. Cautiously, the two men slipped out of the BATThouse and began a crouched run to the fort. Almost in the same moment, Corporal Chapman left the BATThouse for the beach to guide in the casevac chopper, already making its approach.
For the Adoo, the appearance of the helicopter was a signal for battle to erupt afresh. A ferocious barrage of bullets and shells went up from the Adoo positions, causing Chapman to hurriedly warn off the helicopter with a red grenade.
The unwelcome restart of battle found Kealy and Tobin halfway to the gun-pit. A burst of heavy machine-gun fire zipped between them. The two men threw themselves flat, waited a moment, then began making their way rapidly forwards, one running, the other covering. Back at the BATThouse, the other SAS troopers tried to lay down suppressing fire. Eventually, Tobin reached the pit, a jump getting him over the wall. Kealy, close on his heels, vaulted into the pit’s accompanying ammunition bay. To his disgust he landed on the body of a dead DG soldier. Glancing into the gun-pit, Kealy saw that Khamis, the Omani gunner, was dead, and the two SAS Fijians wounded. Savesaki, hit in the back, was propped against the sangar wall, his SLR somehow still emitting a steady fire. In the centre of the pit Trooper Labalaba, a bloody dressing on his face, was single-handedly loading and firing the 25 pounder. A hail of bullets ricocheted off its armoured shield, sparks flying. Then, as the Fijian reached down for another shell, he pitched forward silently, a bullet ending his life. Tobin sprang to take his place at the 25 pounder, but could only fire off one shell before an AK-47 bullet tore off his jaw, leaving him unconscious on the ground.
Only Kealy and Savesaki were left defending the gun-pit. The Adoo were now six or seven yards away and closing. A snap shot by Kealy felled a guerrilla who had Savesaki in his sights. The trooper, unaware, continued a steady crack-crack of shots at the enemy coming from the left. A torrent of LMG fire churned the ground just in front of the ammunition bay, one round passing so close to Kealy’s head that he could feel the vibration from its spinning metal mass. Then came grenades, one landing on the lip of the bunker, its explosion almost bursting Kealy’s ear-drums. Desperate, he spoke into the radio and told the BATThouse to spray either side of the fort with machine-gun fire and mortars, as close in as they could get. To shorten the range, the SAS mortarman had to hug his charge vertical to his chest as someone else dropped the shells down the barrel.
Putting down the radio, Kealy watched in horror as a grenade hit the edge of the ammunition bunker and rolled down towards him, its black fuse burning. He steeled himself for the pain which was to come . . . but the grenade failed to explode. A damp squib. There was no time to wonder or give thanks. The gun-pit was being hammered by small-arms fire and blows from the Carl Gustav. Through the smoke and flying sand Kealy could see Adoo edging around the Fort wall. Now they were only feet away. Kealy put his rifle over the top and began desperately snapping off bullets.
At the moment when it seemed that Kealy and Savesaki could hold on no longer, when they would surely be overrun, a Strikemaster of the Sultan’s air force miraculously appeared on the scene, its pilot steering the jet under the cloudbase of a mere 150 feet. Then another Strikemaster, cannons blazing, screamed over the battlefield. Seizing the ground-to-air radio in the BATThouse, Corporal Chapman began passing targets to the jets: a 500-kg bomb on the shall
ow wadi near the fort where the Adoo had ammassed for shelter; the Carl Gustav; the 7.62 mm machine-gun near the wire. Shells and rockets poured from the sky. To identify his friendly status to the jets, Kealy broke out a florescent marker panel and went to administer first aid to Savesaki. Although the airstrikes alleviated the situation at the gun-pit, the Adoo continued to ring the town, even setting up a fast counter-thrust from the east. Only land-based re-inforcements would save the battle for sure.
By fortunate coincidence, another SAS squadron was in Dhofar that day, waiting to take over from Kealy’s B Squadron – due to end its tour of duty that very morning of 19 July. So it was that 23 men of G Squadron in SOAF helicopters arrived on the beach at Mirbat at 09.15, deploying themselves in two hit groups and wiping out an Adoo GPMG emplacement and several other enemy positions as they surged forward towards the town. A second wave of G Squadron reinforcements landed, engaging the guerrillas on the seaward side of Mirbat. Another relay of Strikemaster jets hammered Adoo positions on the Jabal Ali, almost obliterating them in a hail of red tracer and 20 mm cannon fire. From the BATThouse Chapman and Bradshaw watched the daredevil Omani pilots with something approaching awe.
Perceptibly, the tide of battle shifted. Adoo began to slink away through the shallow wadis towards their refuge in the mists of the Jabal. Even so, it was 10.30 before the helicopter evacuation of wounded from the LZ commenced. Troopers Savesaki and Tobin and the Omani gunner Khamis were first out. For a while it seemed as though Tobin’s life might have been saved by some emergency first aid, but he died of his wounds shortly after arriving at Salalah Field Hospital.
Tobin and Corporal Labalaba were the sole SAS fatalities incurred during the Regiment’s hardest test. For this loss the SAS took the lives of thirty Adoo and wounded scores more. More than this, they broke the guerrilla’s morale. A proud warrior race, the Adoo of the Dhofar were beaten by warriors better than they. The Adoo never recovered from their defeat at Mirbat and ceased hostilities four years later. In retrospect, the SAS not only won the Battle of Mirbat but the Oman War.
