The War that Never Was

by Duff Hart-Davis

On the night of 1–2 July 1963 McLean returned to the Yemen, going in from the north on a journey that took him to the Imam’s headquarters at El Qara and then down the eastern side of the country, through the Jauf to the border of Beihan. At Mabta he was delighted to learn from the local commander that his tribesmen had perfected a novel way of disabling tanks: by stealing up on a stationary vehicle and ramming a mop or a rolled turban up its exhaust pipe, they could ensure that the engine would not start, so that sooner or later the crew would be flushed into the open, making excellent targets for the crack Royalist riflemen.

  On 4 July a new element entered the arena, when the United Nations Yemen Observations Mission arrived in the country, with white vehicles, and its members wearing white armbands. It was charged with the task (according to its own report to the Security Council) of bringing about ‘the disengagement of the two parties’, Saudi Arabia and the UAR. In this it was conspicuously unsuccessful.

  The mission was commanded by the sixty-year-old Swedish Major General Carl von Horn, who had alarmed UN officials with the extravagance of his demands: he would need (he said) not only 1,200 men, jeeps and helicopters, but also two fixed-wing aircraft. Once established in Sana’a, he cruised about the city in a palatial, chauffeur-driven Daimler, given to the late Imam Ahmed by King Saud. In the mornings he enjoyed cantering round the mud walls of the capital on the Imam’s snow-white stallion, always slowing to a walk at the main gate to have a good look ‘at the fresh heads which had been stuck up on spikes in niches, easily reached by milling crowds of vociferous urchins’.9 If the number of heads was the same as on the previous day, he would conclude that ‘local politics were reasonably stable’.

  He spent much of his time flying on observation patrols above what he called the ‘razor-edged mountains’, and was not helped by the attachment to his mission of 122 Yugoslavs – described as a ‘reconnaissance squadron’ – whose every move was controlled by a political commissar receiving instructions through a secret radio in the Yugoslav Embassy. Yet what really prevented von Horn from achieving anything worthwhile was an order from U Thant, the UN Secretary General: under no circumstances was he to make contact with the Royalist authorities, and he was specifically forbidden to speak to David Smiley.

  Thus, from the start, and to the ever-increasing irritation of the British, the UN was firmly on the side of the Republicans. Von Horn’s initial brief was to work for two months, but when no progress had been made in that time, his remit was extended for two months more. No wonder he became distressed ‘by the complete lack of interest by the UN towards any Royalist complaints about the bombing and massacres in Royalist-held territory by the Egyptians’.10 No wonder he concluded that ‘in real terms, the whole story of the mission was one of calculated deceit’.11 No wonder he resigned on 20 August. By the time his mission was officially wound up on 4 September, there were 50,000 Egyptian troops in the Yemen.

  All the UN achieved was to station military observers in Jizan and Najran, with the aim of checking the vehicles and animal convoys that constantly went across the open border into the Yemen, ‘to reduce the possibilities of this trade covering traffic in arms and military supplies’. Even on the border, where a little cluster of white tents stood out in the rocky wilderness, the mission was ineffective, for it did not have enough vehicles or other equipment to patrol the frontier properly. As for the interior, the Royalists claimed that whenever they were visited by a UN patrol, they would get some rather accurate bombing soon afterwards.

  The mission’s report parroted Egyptian claims that the Royalists’ ‘resistance and active hostility constitute a most serious obstacle to the withdrawal of UAR forces’, and it had the nerve to maintain that ‘the activities complained of [by the Royalists], especially bombing, are exclusively for the safeguarding of the security of UAR troops’. How bombing defenceless villagers with poison gas safeguarded the Egyptian garrisons, the report did not explain.

  During July 1963 – in spite of the fact that the UN mission was moving around the country – the Egyptians launched an all-out offensive by land and air; but when they suffered heavy casualties and gained no ground, they pulled back. In August the fighting died away for the time being, and a ceasefire of a kind prevailed. Nasser was baffled by the fact that his huge army, of which he was very proud, could make little impression on the tribesmen, whom he dismissed as shuyat qurood, ‘a bunch of monkeys’. For the time being he reduced his garrison from 32,000 troops to about 28,000, and many of his remaining soldiers withdrew to Sana’a. Yet in beating off the Egyptian attacks, the Royalists had expended much of their ammunition and urgently needed new supplies.

  The French produced several schemes for flying plane-loads into Beihan or some other part of the Protectorate, whence they could be taken over the border by camel-train, and Peter de la Billière joined in the search for a suitably secluded LZ (landing zone). On 19 August, with his habitual optimism, he reported to Jim that he had found one, ‘on a vast open plain of hard gravel . . . It is of course quite safe, and should be a roaring success.’ But he was also irked by the lack of progress to date:

  The French have been a lot of hot air so far and have not produced the goods as yet . . . It is more urgent than ever that Col. David [Stirling] or someone comes out here and we thrash the whole thing out and above all we get some hardware in here ASAP.

  Two days later he wrote again, repeating his criticisms of the French effort and putting forward the local view of things:

  As we see it, the aim of our organisation is to provide the Royalists with sufficient hardware to push the Egyptians out and to get themselves back into power. The French should be dropped, and we should set up our own organisation to deal with the whole supply.

  In fact vital arms and ammunition had started coming in, and Peter’s disparagement of the French was premature. By the end of October there were twenty-five French mercenaries in the Yemen, and four plane-loads of arms and ammunition from the French colony of Djibouti, on the African coast, had arrived in Aden for onward despatch to Beihan and beyond. Also, under the pretence of equipping a revolution in Africa, Jim Johnson, together with the French, had managed to bluff the Bulgarians into selling him a large quantity of weapons, and the problem of delivery was solved with the help of Jack Malloch, proprietor of Rhodesian Air Services, RAS, whose aircraft flew five plane-loads into Aden, the first on 11 August. The deal was organised by a former colleague of Stirling’s, Bruce Mackenzie, the Finance Minister in Kenya and right-hand man of the President, Jomo Kenyatta. RAS’s normal job was to ferry beef out of Rhodesia, but occasionally a plane would drop down under the radar, unload a cargo of weapons and then climb back on to its original flight-path. An assignment on 27 September included thirty bazookas, 150 bazooka rockets, twenty 81mm mortars, 200 boxes of mortar bombs, fifty MG34 machine guns and 15,000 rounds of 7.92mm ammunition. Jim was delighted to have diverted the communist weapons to the Royalist cause.

  Reporting this latest delivery, Peter warned Johnny Cooper to watch out for a man called Abdurrahman Condé, ‘a stinking rogue’ who had just arrived and might ‘quite possibly be working a double game’. The team in Aden were having nothing to do with him, for they felt sure he was reporting to the CIA – and their suspicions may well have been justified, for he was a man of many roles.

  Born in Canada and christened Bruce, Condé spoke Arabic, and looked more like an Arab than a Canadian, being spare and wiry, with a long, thin face. He had served with the US 82nd Airborne Division in the Second World War, and in 1953 had settled in the Yemen, where he set up a business exporting postage stamps to collectors all over the world, now calling himself Abdurrahman. He then secured the job of postal adviser to the Government, becoming a Yemeni subject in 1958; but a year later he was expelled from the country, fleeing to the Lebanon and on to Sharjah, in the Gulf – only to return to the Yemen in 1962 and become the Imam’s adviser on public relations. After the revolution, when the Imam took to his cave, Condé continued to re
present him and carry out commissions in Jeddah. By then he was styling himself Brigadier General Abdurrahman Bruce Alphonso de Bourbon-Condé – a combination weird enough to make any British officer uneasy.

  4

  Beni Johnson

  Tony Boyle did not yet know Jim Johnson, but when on 3 August 1963 the two met in a pub at Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight, they immediately hit it off. Then on 7 September, because the British Government still refused to take any action, and French attempts to import weapons and ammunition had proved a series of fiascos, a ‘British plan of Assistance to Royalist Government in Yemen’ was formulated. Entirely unofficial, in no way sanctioned by any authority, the scheme was sketched out at a private meeting in the Crescent Hotel, Aden, chaired by the Yemeni Foreign Minister, Ahmed al-Shami. Present were David Stirling, Peter de la Billière and Tony Boyle. According to the minutes, the aim was to set up a new organisation, ‘formed on a military basis . . . to assist the legal government of the Yemen in every practical way to remove the invaders from their country’.

  The most important task was ‘to establish and maintain a regular supply of arms and ammunition to the Royalist forces in the field’. If possible, this was to be achieved by parachutage, or, failing that, by overland delivery from Saudi Arabia, the Yemen coast or Beihan. Another main aim was ‘to deny the Hodeidah road to the Egyptians and assist the Royalists in other acts of sabotage which may periodically seem desirable’.

  Under Shami – a kind of non-playing captain – Jim Johnson was designated ‘Force Commander and Treasurer’, with Tony Boyle his staff officer (both to be based in London). Other members of the ‘Strategic Planning Committee’ were David Stirling and Brian Franks,1 with Billy McLean designated ‘Diplomatic and Political Adviser’. In Aden, Peter was to carry out ‘liaison and operation of rat-line’, providing a link between London and the field operators, and with the Sherif of Beihan. He was also to ‘arrange reception and accommodation and onward movement for visitors’. In the Yemen, Johnny Cooper would be in command of the ‘British Field Liaison Force’, his remit being to arrange internal radio communications, receive supply drops and ‘help the Royalists with skilled advice and practical assistance whenever it is requested, and in particular in the denial of the Hodeidah road to the Egyptians’.

  The British operators would be mobile, with one lot based at Gara, in the Khowlan; one with the Imam at El Qara in the north-west; and others at Nihm (close to Sana’a), the Jauf (in the north-east) and Beihan in the south. Their chief functions would be to create a radio network between the various Royalist armies, to advise the Royalist leaders and to help train their fighters.

  Requests for arms and equipment would be forwarded from the Yemen to Aden and on to London, where Boyle’s formidable task would be ‘to arrange to buy the arms and either collect them at a base within aircraft range of the DZ [dropping zone] or get them to a place . . . where the aircraft can collect them’. Plans for delivery were vague: if the cost of chartering aircraft became too great, and it appeared to be cheaper to buy an aircraft, ‘this will be done’.

  To maintain security, all radio and cable messages would be encoded, and cover names were assigned to principal players, places and objects. Some people retained their pseudonyms throughout their involvement in the operation: in letters and reports Jim Johnson was, and remained, Jay; David Smiley was always Grin, Johnny Cooper had already styled himself Abdullah bin Nasser, and Tony Boyle was Tea. But in cables, further obfuscations were used: Jay was known for a while as Elliott or Dundy, and Billy McLean became Whitney, Wagg or Turner. Dozens of simple transpositions camouflaged the names of weapons (marrow for 120mm mortar, knife for rifle, dingbat for rocket) and places (Britain became Jutland, Egypt Coventry and Cairo Waterloo) Furthermore, all these were changed from time to time.

  When radio stations were established in Royalist areas, their call-signs were at first flowers or plants: Gara was Bluebell, Jauf Rose and Nuqub Lilac, while Aden was Crocus and the UK Nettle. Later these were changed to vegetables, and the UK turned into Potato, Aden into Turnip and Gara into Sprout.

  And so Beni Johnson – Family Johnson – came into being. In London the organisation was greatly strengthened by the arrival of Fiona Fraser, the twenty-one-year-old daughter of Lord Lovat and niece of David Stirling, who joined Jim in a basement office in Sloane Street. She was recruited initially by a cousin, David McEwen, who rang her up and said that her Uncle David was looking for someone to work ‘in Aden television’. She protested that she knew nothing whatsoever about Aden or television, but went along to the office nonetheless, and there was Jim, who told her what the job really was. Urged on by Uncle David, who said that it was the patriotic duty of the British to support the Royalists against the ‘ghastly Egyptians’, she agreed to join the firm, which had no name.

  The office at 21 Sloane Street consisted of a single subterranean room, reached through a door and a passage that ran between Bally Shoes (known as ‘Ballyhoo’) and another shop. Up above, Stirling’s film and television company, TIE, provided useful cover. The basement contained nothing except a couple of desks and chairs, and some filing cabinets, and the staff, at first, consisted solely of Jim and Fiona – until Tony Boyle joined them.

  Although generous in the matter of pay for his soldiers, Jim was very careful (not to say mean) over office supplies. He prided himself on never needing to buy paperclips, having rescued a tin of them from the effects of his late Uncle Basil. These were used and reused over the years, and he saw no need to buy more, as incoming mail brought plenty of new ones. It was the same with carbon paper: if Fiona needed some, he would filch a sheet or two from his office in the City, where he said they had far too much. She herself was condemned to use a small portable typewriter, which she described as ‘the bane of my life’.

  Her work was largely administrative, and she ran things with great efficiency, arranging air tickets and visas for men going out to the Yemen via Aden or Saudi Arabia, and encoding and decoding radio messages. But sometimes she was despatched on unusual errands – as when Jim asked her to escort a suitcase full of plastic explosive round to his house in Sloane Avenue, or the occasion on which she took some Soviet detonators, brought back from the Yemen, to MI6, who were always asking for information from the interior. On that trip she travelled in a state of some anxiety, alarmed by her instructions to keep her two little packages well apart.

  The procurement of visas for Saudi Arabia was no simple task, as the functionaries in the consular office always prevaricated and made difficulties when she went round with applications. She found she could get far better service from the establishment’s butler, who, though Polish, was known as James. ‘Leave those with me,’ he would say when she appeared with a sheaf of forms and passports. ‘I’ll get them done for you’ – and so he would. A different kind of hazard attended visits to Shami, who always tried to make Fiona sit down and listen to a recital of his own poems, first in Arabic, then in translation: rhapsodies about the moon, the starlit night, his visitor’s eyes. Shami’s own eyes (Fiona thought) were terribly sad, and she felt that all he really wanted was to go home. She was probably right, for the Foreign Minister was in an awkward position. He owed a deep debt of gratitude to Imam al-Badr, who had twice saved his life when he had offended the old Imam, al-Badr’s father; but he had become unpopular with the Royalists inside the Yemen because he was not fighting with them, and at the same time had aroused the jealousy of fellow countrymen who saw how he had built up his position as an international negotiator. In spite of these pressures, he gave Jim a great deal of help.

  A trip to Arabia evidently lifted Shami’s spirits. ‘He is in high good humour these days, and is a changed man,’ Peter told Tony Boyle after the Foreign Minister had visited Aden:

  Gone the benign old Foreign Minister without a mission; in, a rather ruthless and efficient organiser with a mountain of work and plenty of confidence. He had a continual stream of visitors when I was in his flat, and we had to
do the KM [kini-mini, in SAS terms, any undercover activity] and disappear into the bedroom in a hurry.

  Over the next eighteen months Fiona arranged the departures of numerous mercenaries, and sometimes she was amazed at the lack of experience shown by some of the recruits. One very small man had no idea how to travel from London to Heathrow: he did not even know how to use the Underground, and needed detailed instructions. And yet he could walk down a street and memorise the number-plate of every car he saw. To Fiona, this was ‘an incredible thing to be able to do’, but she saw that it was part of his training. She often felt that recruits were not given enough information about where they were going or what they would be required to do. ‘They had no briefing about the politics of the situation in the Yemen, and most went out in ignorance.’ Later, however, she realised that this deprivation was deliberate – a security measure to minimise the chance of information leaking out.

  From time to time glamorous creatures blew into the office, among them the French mercenary and former Legionnaire Roger Faulques, who enjoyed talking to Fiona because she spoke French, and told wonderful stories of his time in Indochina. He smoked Gauloises continually, getting through sixty a day, until suddenly he stopped and revealed that his habit had been cured by a hypnotist in Paris.

  A more frequent visitor was David Smiley, who always seemed to be on his way into the Yemen or out of it, and Fiona was fascinated by his tight-fistedness. Whenever he flew into Heathrow, she and Tony would have a bet about how long it would be before he asked for his taxi-fare from the airport. ‘He’d haver about, and finally, just before leaving, he’d say: “By the way, I had to take a taxi from Heathrow, and I think the office ought to pay.” Tony and I would catch each other’s eyes, and usually I’d burst out laughing.’2