Soldier C: Secret War in Arabia

by Shaun Clarke

  ‘You imagined it,’ Ricketts said consolingly. ‘You’re a poet – imaginative. It was all in your head. He’s just the quiet type, that’s all.’

  Andrew shook his head from side to side, clearly not convinced. ‘No, man, I didn’t imagine a thing – that was one real mean mother. He’s the kind to use barbed wire as dental floss, and wipe his arse with sandpaper. You say the wrong thing to him, man, and you’ll end up as mince-meat on his plate. Hey, I’m still sweatin’ and shakin’. Let’s go find Sergeant Lampton and get out of here. I need the wide, open spaces.’

  ‘Yes, let’s do that,’ Ricketts said, glancing sideways and grinning at Gumboot. ‘It’s time to start anyway.’

  Walking the short distance to the motor pool, they found Sergeant Lampton waiting in the Land Rover, pressed back in the front passenger seat with his knees bent and his desert boots on the dash board, smoking. He made a show of looking at his wristwatch when they approached him.

  ‘You were nearly late,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry, boss,’ Ricketts replied. ‘Trooper Winston became involved in conversation with a sergeant named Parker.’

  ‘Dead-eye Dick’ Lampton replied.

  ‘Pardon?’

  Lampton slid his feet off the dashboard and sat up straight. ‘Dead-eye Dick. That’s what they call him. He’s probably the best sniper in Oman – and he’s quick with those knives, as well. You mean, he actually spoke to you?’

  ‘Well, not exactly …’ Andrew began.

  ‘It was kind of one-sided,’ Ricketts explained, ‘but Andrew was certainly trying.’

  Ricketts, Gumboot and Lampton all burst out laughing.

  ‘Very funny,’ Andrew said, heaving his great bulk into the back of the Land Rover.

  ‘Very funny!’ Gumboot said. ‘Fucking had me in stitches!’

  ‘I’ll have you in stitches in a minute if you don’t shut your mouth.’

  ‘OK, lads, cool it.’ Lampton flicked his cigarette butt out of the vehicle. ‘We’ll start the day with a morning visit to the BATT house at Rakyut, which is somewhere you haven’t been before. OK, Ricketts, let’s go.’

  ‘Yes, boss.’ Ricketts released the handbrake, slipped into gear, pressed his foot on the accelerator and drove towards the main gate. Just before he reached it, there was an explosion from beyond the perimeter, followed by a billowing cloud of smoke.

  The sirens on the watch-towers started wailing. Ricketts braked to a halt as two RAF guards sprinted out of the sangars on either side of the main gate, intending to close it.

  ‘Leave it open!’ Lampton bawled. ‘We’re going out!’

  As the guards stopped to stare in surprise at Lampton, he turned to Ricketts, slapped his shoulder and shouted, ‘Go, damn it!’ Ricketts put his foot right down and raced out through the gate, turning in the direction of the boiling cloud of smoke, even as the RAF guards closed the gate and sprinted back to their sangars.

  By now the machine-guns in the watch-towers to the front of the camp had started roaring, sending steams of purplish tracers looping over the billowing cloud of black smoke and exploding in the ground further on.

  ‘Bloody adoo!’ Lampton exclaimed, glancing to where earth and sand was spewing up from the impact of the 7.62mm GPMG shells.

  Straight ahead, just beside the dirt track, the Saladin armoured car used for the daily sweep of the terrain was lying on its side, pouring black smoke. A scorched, horribly blistered figure was crawling from the wreckage. Just as Ricketts was accelerating towards him, however, another figure, wearing loose pants, sandals and a shemagh, emerged from behind some rocks, darted up to the crawling figure, and drove a kunjias through the back of his neck. After grabbing the dead man’s wristwatch, pistol and spare ammunition, the Arab hurried back behind the nearby rocks.

  ‘Bastard!’ While Ricketts was still driving, Lampton pulled out his Browning handgun and fired a short burst at the fleeing man. Pieces of stone flew off the rocks in clouds of spewing dust, but the Arab disappeared, untouched. Then a fusillade of fire from behind the rocks made Ricketts swerve off the track and brake to a halt beside the smouldering armoured car, which offered protection.

  It also offered a grisly view of the RAF guards inside, all dead, either slashed to pieces by flying, red-hot metal or burned alive in the flaming vehicle.

  ‘Shit!’ Lampton jumped out of the Land Rover. He was followed by Ricketts, Andrew and Gumboot, who took up positions on either side of the smoking vehicle. Stifling their urge to throw up at the smell of burning flesh, they poured a hail of SLR fire at the mound of rocks, where they assumed the adoo assassin was still hiding.

  No more gunfire came from behind the rocks, but Lampton still made no move. Only when the tracers from the watch-tower started falling farther away, indicating that the adoo were beating a retreat, did he take a chance by racing around the overturned armoured car and heading straight for the mound of rocks.

  Ricketts and the other two gave him covering fire until he reached where he was going. He fired a burst behind the rocks, stepped forward, glanced down, then raised his right hand, waving it to and fro, indicating ‘Cease fire’. The guns on the watch-towers then fell silent.

  Lampton walked back to the blazing armoured car. He glanced with distaste at the dead men inside. The other victim was lying face-down on the ground with the back of his neck pumping blood. Turning the latter on his back, Lampton checked that he was dead, then shook his head.

  ‘Didn’t have a prayer,’ he said. He glanced back at the mound of rocks from which the adoo had been firing. ‘And those bastards,’ he said. ‘The invisible men. They’ve gone already – all of them – clean away.’

  Returning to the Land Rover, he called base on the PRC 319, explaining what had happened and asking them to send out an ambulance and tow truck with crew. Both arrived within minutes, the former to remove the dead bodies, the latter to put out the fire on the overturned armoured car, hoist it the right way up, then transport it back to the wrecker’s yard.

  Lampton and the others followed in the Land Rover, now destined to spend the rest of the morning in camp, submitting a report of the grim event.

  Chapter 7

  Every evening, being covered in a slimy film of dust and sweat, the newcomers trooped off for a cleansing, cooling shower. This was followed by ‘prayers’, a meeting of personnel where the ops captain would read out the day’s news about Dhofar and then a summary of world news. Failure to attend the meeting without good cause led to the standard SAS punishment of a fine. ‘Prayers’ was followed by dinner in the open-sided mess tent. Then the evening was free. It was spent either in the NAAFI tent, running up a tab with Pete, or at the outdoor cinema, where, on alternate nights, they could watch the latest English or American movies, supplied by the Service Kinema Corporation. The men invariably went straight back to the NAAFI tent after the movie, where they would help themselves to more Tiger beer from the fridge and discuss the film with Pete, the movie buff.

  ‘Close to the fucking bone,’ Gumboot said. ‘Humping there in the grass in the winter with overcoats on. No wonder Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford are all up in arms.’

  ‘Well, it was called Carnal Knowledge,’ Andrew reminded him, ‘so what else could they show?’

  ‘I think the idea was to satirize it,’ Pete explained, ‘which Mike Nichols did well.’

  ‘It wasn’t Mike Nichols,’ Bill said, looking a little confused. ‘It was that other guy – what’s-his-name? Jack Nicholson. The one with the leer.’

  ‘Mike Nichols is the director, you stupid prat.’

  ‘Sorry, Pete.’

  ‘That Ann-Margret was gorgeous,’ Ricketts said.

  ‘A good actress, too,’ Pete pointed out.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jock chimed in. ‘You could tell that by the size of her knockers. She should get an award.’

  ‘She did,’ Pete the Buff said. ‘Academy nomination.’

  ‘I saw her in that Viva Las Vegas,’ Gumboot said, ‘with good old h
ound dog, Elvis Presley. Boy, can that guy sing!’

  ‘I saw that film as well,’ Andrew said. ‘Ann-Margret walked away with the picture. Christ, she was sexy!’

  ‘She displayed more of her talents in Carnal Knowledge,’ Tom said, trying to be as witty as Jock. ‘Those enormous, bare boobs!’

  ‘What a bunch of bloody philistines,’ Pete said, puffing his pipe and opening another bottle of Tiger. ‘It’s like talking to Neanderthal men. Where do you guys get off?’

  ‘On Ann-Margret,’ Andrew said.

  Invariably, during the movies, the nearby ‘hedgehogs’, picking up a reading of ground movement on their Battlefield Surveillance (ZB) radar, would let rip with 81mm mortars and 7.62mm GPMGs, webbing the starry night beyond the big outdoor screen with tracer fire. This encouraged incoming green tracer from the defiant adoo. Though the noise and spectacular son et lumière shows were something of a distraction, they did not actually interrupt the films.

  ‘Shut that racket!’ some men bawled.

  ‘Fucking gunners!’ cried out others.

  ‘Those guns went off just as Ann-Margret came,’ Andrew observed. ‘I think that’s symbolic’

  As they had only been on the base five days and nights, and as Indian-language films were shown on alternate nights, the new arrivals only managed to see two English-language movies. The second was Kelly’s Heroes, starring Clint Eastwood.

  ‘Now there’s my man,’ Gumboot said. ‘A real actor, old Clint. He’s supposed to be as good a shot in real life as he is in the movies. Bloody marvellous, he is!’

  ‘Disappointing in that one, though.’ Pete was drunk and thoughtful as he stoked his smouldering pipe. ‘I prefer him in those great spaghetti westerns as the Man from Nowhere.’

  ‘Load of shite, that film was.’ Jock was on his fourth bottle, ‘I mean Kelly’s Heroes. A straight steal from The Dirty Dozen. Did you ever see soldiers behaving that way? Not on your nelly!’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Bill said, smoking a cigarette and sipping his Tiger. ‘We’re supposed to believe that a bunch of World War Two GIs could march into a German-occupied town and rob the bloody bank. What a load of dog’s balls!’

  ‘Not to mention Donald Sutherland,’ Tom added. ‘They’re always casting him as a soldier, yet he walks and talks like the living dead. He didn’t convince me a bit.’

  ‘Right,’ Gumboot said ‘I can’t imagine him doing Sickener One, let alone Sickener Two.’

  ‘I can’t imagine you doing them,’ Andrew said, ‘but you somehow got through.’

  ‘Oh, very funny, Trooper Winston. I can’t imagine how they let you through the course and gave you a badge.’

  ‘It’s ‘cause they thought I was pretty. Also, I’m as tough as nails, as brave as a lion, and one of the best soldiers in the Regiment. What more can I say?’

  ‘Don’t say anything, Andrew. Just let us see what you’re like when we tackle the Jebel. You’ll be pissing in your pants, shitting bricks, so don’t come it with me, mate!’

  Big Andrew grinned at him. ‘Oh, I’m not worried. I know you’ll be right there by my side, my protector and hero. I feel so lucky, Gumboot.’

  Noting that Andrew had mockingly lisped the final sentence, Gumboot shook his head in disgust. ‘What a ponce!’ he said.

  But, for all their joking, few of them had forgotten the one subject they rarely discussed – the forthcoming assault on the Jebel Dhofar. Few of them could forget it because it was always there before them, soaring up to the sky and dominating the landscape no matter in which direction they drove across the Salalah plain. From there, at ground level, the plateau looked enormous, too high to be climbed; it was also strewn with wadis which were, as they knew, filled with hundreds of adoo, most of them crack marksmen and fanatics only too willing to die for their cause. As Major Greenaway had pointed out, the adoo would be a formidable enemy. Also formidable would be the Jebel itself, though they rarely discussed this fact.

  On the sixth morning, the day after the armoured car had been ambushed, they were driven out of the base for a few more days of weapons training in the boiling heat and dust of the Arzat ranges. Regardless of the heat, they were kept at it all day every day, practising on the firing range and learning to clean and reassemble their weapons in the harsh, unwelcoming desert.

  It was hell on the firing range, the heat relentless, the light too bright, and the dust got up their nostrils and filled their mouths, clogging chambers and barrels and jamming the works. The ground did not really belong to human beings, but to poisonous scorpions and centipedes, as well as hideous camel spiders, while the very air they breathed was filled with fat, buzzing flies, whining mosquitoes and stinging hornets, all of which had to be constantly swatted away while the men were trying to take aim and fire.

  ‘This is useless,’ Jock groaned. ‘I can’t even take aim. Every time I try to squint through the sight, I get sand or dust or some other shit in my eye. As for breathing – forget it. You’ll only swallow a fucking hornet. And each time I squeeze the trigger, I get bit by a mosquito, so I jerk and go a mile off the target. I say call it a day.’

  ‘I say keep your trap shut, Trooper,’ their instructor, Sergeant Bannerman, said, ‘and try to put a bullet in that target instead of moaning and groaning. Annoy me and you’ll cop an RTU and find yourself on a plane back to England before you can blink … Hey, you! That’s right, the big black one! What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Pardon, boss?’ Andrew asked. Having just yelped and rolled frantically to the side, he was looking up at Bannerman with wide, shocked eyes.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, Trooper, wriggling and yelping there like a woman getting a good piece?’

  ‘Bloody spider, boss. A great big hairy thing! It had a body the size of my hand and ‘orrible little legs.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘What, boss?’

  ‘It’s a spider – so what? It wasn’t a fucking scorpion or centipede, so what the hell are you worried about? Get back on your belly!’

  ‘But it’s still there, boss! Right in front of where I’m lying. It’s looking me right in the eye and it gives me the shivers.’

  Gumboot sniggered. Bannerman glared at him. ‘You think this is funny. Trooper? A big joke to you, is it? If it’s so bloody funny, why not go over there and pick up that perfectly harmless camel spider and bring it to me?’

  ‘Er …’ Gumboot stuttered.

  ‘Go on,’ Andrew said, suddenly feeling a lot better at getting his own back, ‘let’s see you do it.’

  ‘Who gives the orders around here, Trooper?’

  ‘Pardon, boss?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘I give the orders around here, Trooper, and don’t you forget it. Now roll back on your belly and ignore that bloody spider and put a bullet into the target before I put one in you.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  Luckily, when Andrew did as he was told, the spider was gone. But the incident, as well as providing some mirth, was a reminder of just how antagonistic the desert was, even here on the firing range, and of what they could expect to find when they started climbing the Jebel. It merely made the firing range more hateful and increased their other concerns about what was to come.

  As the adoo were renowned marksmen who could chalk up kills from a great distance while remaining well hidden, the troopers were issued, apart from their customary 30-round M16s, with a range of sniper rifles, including the L42A1 7.62mm Lee Enfield bolt-action and the L1A1 SLR semi-automatic. These, in the furnace of the firing range, they were required to repeatedly disassemble, clean of dust and sand, oil, and reassemble – sometimes blindfolded.

  However, as the likelihood of close contact with the adoo was likely, they were also issued with Heckler & Koch MP5 9mm sub-machine-guns, or SMGs, and practised firing them from the sitting, kneeling and standing positions in single shots, three-round bursts, and on fully automatic, using 30-round magazines at a rate of 800rpm. They were also trained in the MP5K, a shorter vers
ion of the MP5, with a 15-round magazine, and used as a semi-automatic replacement for the pistol; and in the MP5SD, also a short-barrelled model, but including a visual sight with a tell-tale red dot indicating the mean point of impact, or MPI.

  More ominous was the instructors’ insistence that they endlessly practice the various methods of firing their standard-issue Browning 9mm high-power handguns. The fact that this insistence was combined with the sudden appearance of the Heckler & Koch MP5 range of SMGs – which were, in effect, automatic pistols – only made the men realize that the Head Sheds, their senior officers, were anticipating more than ordinarily close contact with the enemy – possibly even hand-to-hand fighting.

  Be that as it may, they were retrained in the Hereford lessons for the Browning: the one-handed, two-handed and alert positions; standing, kneeling and prone; breathing, squeeze, and release-trigger hand pressure; adjusting the aim in the midst of firing. These lessons, too, were carried out in the blazing sun, amid the dust and the flies and other insects.

  The fact that a couple of the men collapsed in the heat during this retraining did nothing to deter their instructors, who pointed out that they would have to endure similar, and possibly worse, conditions during the assault on the Jebel. Indeed, for this very reason, even while the remaining men were boiling in the heat and choking in the dust, they were severely restricted in their use of water, this being their instructors’ way of teaching them to discipline themselves against chronic thirst for long periods of time.

  As they sat ‘resting’ between firing lessons or drills – which in fact meant being tortured further by the heat and dust – they were forced to listen to lectures on ways of combating dehydration, sunstroke, sunburn and, of course, lack of water. Naturally, while listening to such lectures, some of the men started suffering from dehydration, others came close to sunstroke and sunburn, and all of them nearly went mad with the need for a drink.