Soldier C: Secret War in Arabia

by Shaun Clarke

  ‘Hold back those bastards,’ Sergeant Parker interrupted, ‘long enough for air support and for reinforcements to be transported in from Jibjat.’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant,’ Greenaway said. ‘That sums it up nicely. RSM,’ he said, turning to Worthington, ‘get on that radio and do the necessary. Meanwhile, our Eastern Group will dig in here, out of range of the enemy mortars, and, if required, engage the enemy in hand-to-hand fighting. In short, we’ll hold the hill as long as needs be. Any questions, gentlemen?’

  ‘No, boss!’ half a dozen voices sang out in unison.

  ‘Good. Then let’s do it.’

  All along the line, while the adoo mortar explosions came closer and Major Greenaway was driven away to link up with the SAF, the radio operators communicated the CO’s instructions to both action groups. Within minutes, the Western Group was making its withdrawal from the area being devastated by the adoo mortars – though some of the Saladin armoured cars, obviously given separate instructions, broke away from the retreating column and bounced across the rocky flatland to lend support to the Eastern Group.

  ‘An encouraging sight,’ Andrew murmured.

  ‘We should turn those Saladins around,’ Gumboot said, ‘and send them after those fucking firqats. Blow the shit out of them’

  ‘You can’t dig in,’ Lampton said, ‘so I recommend sangars. The adoo will be here in half an hour, so don’t hang around, lads.’

  ‘With you all the way, boss,’ Jock said. ‘No need to say more.’

  They all hurried to build their sangars, tearing the stones from the earth, but Gumboot, who was more scared than he looked, felt obliged to say something.

  ‘Those dumb fucking firqats,’ he said. ‘I could shit on their couscous!’

  Sergeant Parker walked up to him, grabbed him by his webbing, tugged him forward until they were nose to nose, and said, ‘Are you building a fucking sangar or aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, boss, I am!’

  ‘Then build it, Trooper. Just build it!’

  Gumboot worked overtime – more scared of Parker than he was of the adoo – and the others, wanting no more aggravation, worked just as hard. They were encouraged in this not only by Parker’s vehemence, but by the fact that the explosions from the adoo mortars were advancing from the base of the western hill to the SAS positions, even as the adoo troops – no longer impeded by the Western Group, which was now in tactical withdrawal – were advancing across the flatland and would soon be within the firing range of their AK-47 Kalashnikovs, FN rifles and RPD light machine-guns.

  ‘Fuck!’ groaned Gumboot. ‘There’s hundreds of them!’

  ‘The man can count,’ Andrew said.

  They joked to quell the fear that even the hardiest felt when confronted with the possibility of death. Perhaps the jokes worked – at least they bought a breathing space – but when the adoo opened fire that primal fear was erased, leaving nothing but instinct and, as some thought, the lessons of Sickeners One and Two. By these they would now live or die.

  ‘Fire at will!’ Lampton bawled.

  Gumboot and Bill had already set up their mortar and fired the first shell when Lampton shouted. Even before it had exploded in the midst of the advancing adoo, Andrew had opened up with his GPMG, and Ricketts and Lampton were firing their SLRs. Jock, who had the radio and could use it with one hand, was listening for incoming calls and wondering what he could do with his useless hand if the adoo overran them. He studied the bloody bandage around his hand and realized he was hurting.

  ‘Shit!’ Jock said as the first mortar shell fired by Bill exploded among the adoo. ‘This is no fucking joke!’

  Kneeling behind the wall, Ricketts fired his SLR, not knowing if he had hit anyone or not, only aware that he had to keep firing until he was stopped. He saw some of the enemy falling – shot by him or by someone else – and others blown apart in the explosions from the half-dozen SAS mortars in the sangars.

  Almost deafened by a shocking roar, he glanced sideways and saw Andrew in the next sangar, standing upright, legs apart, firing the heavy GPMG from the hip and smiling in a distant, trancelike manner, unconcerned about dying.

  ‘Get down, you stupid bastard!’ Ricketts he screamed.

  Andrew ignored him, being lost in his own world, seeing nothing but the hordes of adoo coming at him, skirting around mortar explosions, jerking epileptically in death, falling down and jumping up again to continue advancing.

  Gumboot was with Bill, hurriedly reloading the mortar, fascinated by the sheer number of adoo coming at him and still unable to accept that the firqats had actually walked. He helped Bill adjust the elevation, then they fired another mortar round. Again, the shell exploded in the middle of the adoo, blowing some of them to hell, but those untouched emerged from the swirling smoke, still advancing determinedly. The pair were now loading and firing the mortar as quickly as possible. But the adoo kept advancing.

  Like the others, Ricketts was convinced that his final hour had come, but he reloaded and fired with the expertise he had been given back in Hereford. Mortar shells were exploding around him, showering him with soil and sand, and gradually the thickening smoke obscured the advancing enemy. They were coming closer, however, firing on the march, making the sand spit viciously around the sangars, and sending bullets ricocheting noisily off the stones. An SAS trooper screamed, jerking backwards and collapsing. A whole sangar took a direct mortar hit and was blown to hell, with its troopers slashed by shrapnel and crushed by stones, their bodies covered in dust.

  Ricketts fired his SLR. He saw the adoo drawing nearer. He thought of Maggie back home – it was just a flash of her lovely face – then he unholstered his Browning handgun and laid it down on the wall. He could hear the excited shouts of the adoo; which meant they were now very close. He saw the first of them emerging from the smoke, so he fired a sustained blast. They spasmed and collapsed. Others took their place. Some were firing Kalashnikovs or FN rifles, but others were waving their kunjias, prepared for hand-to-hand fighting.

  Ricketts felt a bolt of fear. It shot through him, passing on. When it had gone, he experienced a great peace and heightened awareness. He fired his SLR until it was empty, then dropped it and picked up the Browning and climbed to his feet. The men around him were throwing grenades, which exploded and were followed by screaming. Jock was firing his Browning handgun with his good hand and Sergeant Lampton, standing beside him, was ducking to avoid the gleaming blade of a swinging kunjias.

  Ricketts took aim with his Browning, holding it two-handed. He waited until he saw the whites of the adoo’s eyes above his shemagh, then he fired a double-tap and swung towards another man even before his first victim had fallen.

  Before he reached his thirteenth shot, the ground around him roared and erupted, picking him up and slamming him back down into a whirlpool of light and pain. He passed out and regained consciousness, choking, spitting sand, then rolled painfully onto his back and looked directly above him.

  An adoo with a shemagh across his mouth was standing above Ricketts, legs apart, holding a kunjias on high, about to split Ricketts in two with it.

  Ricketts turned his head aside, not wanting to face the knife, and saw Gumboot rolling out of a subsiding cloud of dust as Bill ran forward, firing his Browning at the adoo standing over Ricketts. The Arab screamed and staggered back, dropping his kunjias. The long blade fell dangerously close to Ricketts’s head as the Arab fell and the ground erupted under Bill.

  Ricketts saw Bill picked up, flipped over and slammed down, screaming in an indescribable manner, with his lower half missing. Ricketts had to look away, but then he saw one of Bill’s legs, severed at the hip and pumping blood from the mangled, scorched stump. Ricketts looked back and saw Bill’s staring, dazed eyes. His arms and upper half were shaking in a spasm as the blood poured out of his legless torso to drain him completely.

  As Bill died, his gaze freezing, Gumboot climbed to his feet. He withdrew his Fairburn-Sykes knife from his belt and launc
hed himself at the adoo running at him with his raised kunjias. They collided and were lost in the general mêlée as the roaring of the Strikemasters and Skyvans came down from the sky.

  Ricketts was in great pain, and passed out again. He recovered a few minutes later, brought back to painful consciousness by the fire in his left leg. Gritting his teeth to stop his groaning, he saw the men still fighting around him, most of them locked in mortal hand-to-hand combat, most screaming or shouting. Looking beyond them, through the dense, swirling smoke, he saw the Strikemasters diving on the high ground of the western hill with their guns roaring relentlessly. Even as they did so, one of the Skyvans came into view, flying low across the flat plain, its crew rolling out a series of Burmail bombs which exploded in the midst of the adoo still advancing, engulfing them in a vast wall of yellow flames.

  Ricketts groaned again and tried to crawl out of his sangar, the walls of which had been badly damaged and scorched by a mortar blast. Even as he saw the reinforcements arriving in Bedfords, Land Rovers and Saladin armoured cars, all firing on the move, he was seized by another spasm of pain and passed out again. He drifted down a tunnel of darkness that took him to Maggie’s face. There he found solace.

  Chapter 18

  Ricketts recovered consciousness in Sergeant Whistler’s Skyvan, which was flying the wounded and a lot of the dead back to RAF Salalah. The dead, mostly adoo, had been placed in body bags and just heaped on the aircraft floor, one on top of the other, then lashed down with web straps. Already, only halfway back to Salalah, the combined weight of the bodies was squeezing out body fluids and blood, creating what would soon become a foul smell.

  When Ricketts had recovered enough to discuss the grisly scene around him, he was informed by Whistler that each time the Skyvans arrived at RAF Salalah, where the bodies were removed, the cargo compartment had to be hosed down by an RAF fire-engine. The SAF dead, he said, would be taken away for military burial. The adoo dead would be put on public display in the main square of Salalah as a demonstration to the locals that the Sultan’s Armed Forces were winning the war.

  Transferred from the Skyvan to the hospital in RAF Salalah, Ricketts learnt that his leg had been impregnated with many pieces of shrapnel, but that no lasting damage had been done. His mobility would be unimpaired once the wounds had healed. He also learnt that the adoo counter-attack in the Wadi Dharbat had been defeated with the arrival of the air support and reinforcements from Jibjat.

  While resting up in hospital, waiting to be flown back to Hereford, he was visited by Sergeant Lampton and Gumboot, who informed him that Jock and Andrew had already been flown home, the former to have his wounded hand attended to, the latter to receive treatment for a minor wound in his left arm, received in hand-to-hand fighting with an adoo wielding a kunjias.

  ‘Andrew won the fight,’ Gumboot said, ‘and he didn’t stop crowing about it until he was flown back to Hereford.’

  Ricketts was flown back on 3 October, just as the most dangerous phase of the operation in Oman was beginning. By that time B Squadron and G Squadron 22 SAS, the Firqat Khalid bin Waalid, and one company of the SAF had advanced some fifteen miles into communist-held territory and built three defensive positions on the sun-scorched Jebel Khaftawt. This became known as the Leopard Line. From there, the SAF moved out to dominate the surrounding area with an intensive ‘aggressive-patrol’ programme designed to clear the remaining adoo out of their lime caves and sangars in the wadis.

  For ten days the SAS fought a running battle around the high plain, with SAF Skyvan tactical transporters, flown by British pilots, flying in supplies and ammunition, and SAS teams guiding Omani Strikemasters in strafing attacks on the adoo positions.

  Again, the firqats threatened to stop fighting. This time they were insisting that their donkeys and camels be taken off the Jebel and transported to market. When this was done, with SAF jet fighters acting as escorts for the livestock, the firqats returned to the fray.

  Eventually Operation Jaguar established the Sultan’s Armed Forces on the Jebel Dhofar, which was seen as a significant defeat for the adoo. This success was crowned when the adoo, determined to rectify their great loss, launched and lost the legendary battle for Mirbat, which took place approximately nine months after Operation Jaguar, in July 1972.

  Ricketts, Jock and Andrew had recovered from their wounds and were told about Mirbat when they were having drinks with Sergeant Lampton and Gumboot in the Paludrine Club at the SAS base in Hereford.

  On 18 July a group of adoo deliberately allowed themselves to be seen by SAF forces in order to lure away the 60 firqats supporting the nine-man BATT team in Mirbat. This left only 30 Askars holding the Wali Fort and 25 gendarmes in the Dhofar Gendarmerie fort, located 900 yards north of the northern perimeter.

  With the firqats gone, 250 of the adoo’s best warriors marched on Mirbat, armed with Kalashnikov AK-47s, light, heavy and medium machine-guns, two 75mm recoilless anti-tank rifles, an 84mm Carl Gustav rocket launcher, and mortars of various calibres, up to 82mm. Arriving at Mirbat, the adoo broke up into numerous combat groups and encircled the town. At 0530, the adoo attacked the DG fort, killing four of the gendarmes, but losing the element of surprise.

  Once the fire fight had commenced, the guerrillas in the hills rained mortar bombs on the DG fort, the BATT house, and the town itself. On the roof of the BATT house, SAS corporals Peter Wignall and Roger Chapman were firing the settlement’s only GPMG and an 0.5in Browning heavy machine-gun. With them on the roof was their 23-year-old commander, Captain Mike Kealy. Below them, in a pit at the base of the building, Lance-Corporal Harris was operating an 81mm mortar. In the gun-pit next to the DG fort, the enormous Fijian, Corporal Labalaba, was firing the 25-pounder with the aid of an Omani gunner, Walid Khamis. A second Fijian, Trooper Savesaki, was manning the gun-pit’s short-range radio.

  With the adoo swarming in on the town and settlement from all sides, Captain Kealy drafted an urgent request for reinforcements to provisional HQ at Salalah. As he was doing so, the adoo were firing on the DG fort and the settlement with Soviet RPG-7 rockets and their Carl Gustav 84mm rocket launcher. At approximately 0700 hours, Savesaki informed Captain Kealy by short-range radio that Labalaba had been badly wounded in the chin. Hearing this, Kealy called immediately for a helicopter to attempt a casevac.

  While Lance-Corporal Chapman bravely ran from the BATT house, through the shell-torn town, to mark a helicopter landing zone near the beach for the casevac, Captain Kealy and a medical orderly, Trooper Tobin, crossed 400 yards of open ground, under enemy fire, to attend to the wounded Fijian. They found the Omani gunner, Walid Khamis, lying on his back, seriously wounded. Labalaba, though wearing a shell dressing on his face to staunch the flow of blood from his terrible chin wound, was still loading and firing the big gun, unaided. Savesaki, though bleeding from serious head and shoulder wounds, was propped up against the wall of the bunker and continuing to fire his rifle at the approaching adoo. One dead gendarme was lying in the gun-pit; another was on the parapet of the DG fort, sprawled across his machine-gun.

  While the medical orderly attended to the wounded, Kealy sent a short-range radio message back to the BATT house, telling them to call for an air strike.

  Shortly after, Labalaba was shot dead and Tobin had his jaw shot away. The latter was then also wounded badly in the back and hand by an adoo fragmentation grenade.

  Meanwhile, on the beach, Chapman had thrown a green smoke grenade to mark the landing zone for the casevac helicopter. However, as the chopper approached the LZ, the adoo, now strongly reinforced and more heavily armed, fired on it from dead ground near the DG fort. Chapman therefore threw a red smoke grenade, warning off the helicopter. He dived for cover as the chopper flew away, its cabin peppered with machine-gun bullets, but luckily not damaged otherwise.

  By now, the adoo were only thirty yards from the gun-pit and adjoining ammunition bunker, hammering both positions, as well as the DG fort, with their rocket launcher, a hail of
hand-grenades and a fusillade of small-arms fire.

  The wounded Savesaki continued firing back, as did Captain Kealy, who was lightly grazed on the head by a bullet.

  Just as the first of the adoo were about to overrun the gun-pit, two SAF Strikemasters, guided in by Kealy, now on the radio in the ammunition bunker, flew over the settlement, just above ground level, to attack the guerrillas with 7.62mm machine-guns and 500lb bombs. Kealy was alternating his target guidance for the Strikemasters with instructions to his mortar team in the BATT house, 400 yards away.

  In the BATT house’s mortar pit, Lance-Corporal Harris found that the adoo were so close that he could not elevate the barrel high enough. He solved the problem by lifting the heavy steel tripod off the ground, pulling the burning-hot barrel against his chest, gripping the rest of the weapon between his legs and dropping the bombs down the barrel by hand. As Harris was doing this, Corporal Bob Bradshaw, in the BATT house, was directing the second wave of Strikemasters by radio.

  The aircraft hammered the adoo machine-guns overlooking the town, then made several attacks on the guerrillas on the dead ground near the fort on the northern perimeter. One of the Strikemasters was damaged by machine-gun fire and had to return to Salalah.

  At 0915, when Captain Kealy was giving water to the wounded and re-dressing their injuries, G Squadron 22 SAS flew by chopper, almost at sea level, from Salalah to the Mirbat beach, landing during the second Strikemaster attack on the hundreds of adoo massed around the northern perimeter.

  Eighteen men from G Squadron marched inland in two groups to wipe out a position held by five guerrillas. A second group of SAS men, advancing south from the beach and operating in three-man teams, engaged in successful fire fights with three adoo positions.

  Other guerrillas surrendered to SAS troopers guarding the helicopter LZ by the beach. By 1030, the wounded, including the Omani gunner, Walid Khamis, the Fijian trooper Savesaki, and the unfortunate medical orderly, Trooper Tobin, were casevacked by helicopter, though Tobin later died of his terrible wounds.