The War that Never Was

by Duff Hart-Davis

  At Gara, David and Cyril found Johnny in ‘very lively’ form, and their posting turned out to be a typical mercenary station: three or four Brits living in the most primitive conditions, housed in a cave alive with fleas and scorpions, with minimal cooking facilities – only a primus stove or a small wood fire – and nowhere to wash, no form of entertainment, under intermittent air attack and continuously pestered by the noisy arrival of tribesmen coming to call on the local commander.

  To David Bailey these privations meant nothing. For him the whole campaign turned out to be ‘enormous fun, and a tremendous adventure’, which he enjoyed so much that, after going on leave every six months, he kept returning. He soon got used to the dirt, the boring food, the fleas and scorpions, and was not put off by the frequent bombing and strafing – although he did once find it a strain to sit out an air-raid with a lot of tribesmen perched on boxes of ammunition as the Egyptians targeted the entrance to their cave.

  In particular, he found it an adventure to be led by Jim Johnson, for whom he conceived the highest regard. Even though Jim made only one short tour of the Yemen, the warmth of his personality and the strength of his moral support could be felt 4,000 miles from Sloane Street. David was also very pleased to have £200 a month going into his account in Jersey: the fact that he had £1,200 to spend every time he went home made him popular in London society – he once took Fiona Fraser out to the Saddle Room, Britain’s first discotheque, in the King’s Road, where (she remembered) he ‘threw money about’ and she cautioned him for being so spendthrift.

  He came to love being with the Bedouin and riding their male camels. He quickly mastered the essential art of wiping his own backside with a stone held in his left hand, never offering his left hand to an Arab and never displaying the soles of his feet. He also learnt the ways of the tribesmen, who, if the local prince failed to hand out gold that had arrived from Saudi Arabia, tended to make their displeasure known. One evening a man appeared and said, ‘Tonight we are going to shoot. Do not worry – we will not be shooting at you. Nor will we shoot into the Prince’s cave: just over the top, to make sure he understands that we want to be paid.’

  Among the tribesmen David always felt safe. Once, while he was on his travels with a guide, a Republican patrol came into the village, so his companions covered him with rugs and built a shelter of twigs over him. When the opposition appeared, his friends pointed to the bundle dimly visible on the floor in the corner and said, ‘Don’t go near him. He’s dying.’ ‘They could have made 40,000 MTDs on the spot by handing me over,’ he recalled, ‘but they wouldn’t give me away.’

  Eight thousand feet up in the mountains, the extremes of climate were severe. During the day the sun was usually scorching, but at night the temperature plummeted. In summer, if the mercenaries were on the move, they generally wore some form of Arab dress; but if they were at home on their own station, a pair of shorts was all they needed. In hot weather the tribesmen wore futas and drab-coloured blouses; but in the winter they decked themselves out in a kaleidoscopic variety of garments, as the journalist Scott Gibbons reported:

  The first man . . . wore a Royal Canadian Air Force officer’s jacket, complete with wings and medals. He had bare feet. Another wore a relic of the Gay Twenties – a woman’s thin black evening coat with a tattered fur collar. There were long Edwardian-style coats and double-breasted European businessmen’s jackets. There were waistcoats of every description, plain, embroidered, silver-buttoned. Most of the men went barefoot, but some of them wore suede desert boots, carpet bedroom slippers, tennis plimsolls or plastic beach sandals.16

  David Bailey’s main regret was that the Sam 70 shoulder-held anti-aircraft weapon had not been invented, and the Royalists had no effective defence against the MiGs, Yaks and Ilyushins. ‘If we’d had anything like that, we could have done some damage,’ he recalled. ‘We did fire at them with machine guns: as a Yak pulled out of an attack, we’d emerge from hiding and have a go – but it was incredibly difficult to score a hit.’ An Il-28 was an even more unpleasant proposition, because it had a rear-gunner ensconced in the tail.17

  5

  Digging In

  The main contingent of French mercenaries, together with some Belgians, designated the ‘Groupe Expert Voluntaire’, or GEV, had established itself at Khanjar, in the Jauf, a semi-desert region of gravel, sand and scrub dotted with colossal boulders, between the eastern foot of the central mountain massif and the edge of the great desert, the Rub’ al-Khali – the Empty Quarter. The importance of the area lay in the fact that it controlled the eastern road from Najran and the Saudi frontier in the north to Marib, Hazm and Harib, in the south-east, and it had already been fiercely fought over.

  At Khanjar seventeen French and Belgians had set up a training camp, and their number including an armourer capable of repairing captured Egyptian, Russian and Czech weapons: mortars, machine guns, tommy guns and bazookas. The instructors were living in caves, or tents tucked away among the colossal boulders that rose out of the sand and marked the beginning of the mountains. Across the mouths of the caves the mercenaries had built rock walls to protect themselves from blast – a very necessary precaution, as they were under daily air-attack.

  The training unit was under the command of the redoubtable, self-styled Colonel Bob Denard – a former gendarme, as rough and tough a mercenary as France ever produced1 – whose headquarters and radio station were tucked away in a long cave running back from an entrance protected by sandbags and scarred by the impact of enemy rockets. His main aim was to train tribesmen in the use of heavy weapons – mortars, and particularly 57mm and 75mm recoilless rifles (the Royalists’ best weapons, which were effective against the Egyptian tanks) – but every morning a semi-formal parade was held, with barefoot recruits marching up and down the sand in columns three abreast and going through the rudiments of arms-drill with their ancient rifles. In the opinion of David Smiley, who visited them, the French might have been better employed if attached individually to various Royalist units, as the British mercenaries were.2

  At any one time there were some 450 men around the site, but they were either undisciplined old hands or recruits who came in for a day or two out of curiosity and then left, having learnt nothing. Denard’s reports showed that his unit was having a difficult time, not least because the camp came under persistent air-attack and the trainees kept running away. On the last day of October 1963 an Ilyushin appeared at about nine o’clock and dropped sixteen bombs around the jebel, or mountain; the pilot seemed to be aiming for the nearby cave in which Prince Mohamed bin Hussein, Commander of the Royalist Jauf army, was then living. The raid caused little damage, but it made the tribesmen disinclined to emerge from their hideouts during daylight, and for the next four days no training took place.

  On 3 November the Egyptian Air Force returned. An unidentified twin-engined transport plane flew over, followed by an Ilyushin 28, then two Yaks and again an Ilyushin. No bombs were dropped, but in the afternoon at about 1630 two Yaks made a pass, firing rockets and strafing. Again the Prince’s cave appeared to be their main target. Next morning two MiGs rocketed some abandoned vehicles, and two Yaks scored a direct hit with a rocket on a tent belonging to a merchant. In the evening an Ilyushin came strafing and bombing; two men were wounded and treated on the spot. As dark fell, Denard directed his men to start digging a shelter that would offer better protection than their cave.

  Such airborne harassment, irregular but frequent, made life tough for the mercenaries. During the day they kept having to abandon whatever tasks they were trying to accomplish – repairing weapons or servicing vehicles – and dash for cover, and at night they were constantly awoken by hordes of tribesmen arriving or leaving. They had no set mealtimes, but snatched something to eat whenever they could.

  In the middle of November the camp suffered a major setback, when a bomb hit Mohamed bin Hussein’s main ammunition store. The magazine exploded, killing fifteen men, wounding the Prince in the leg,
arm and shoulder, and detonating a large proportion of the force’s reserve ammunition. The news was quickly relayed to Aden, whence Peter de la Billière sent a cable to London: BLACKLEG PIGEON PUT LARGE DOG ON ROLLO STOP ROLLO BITTEN AND NOW IN AUSTRALIA STOP . . . ALL DUTCH RECENTLY SENT DESTROYED – which, being interpreted, meant ‘Egyptian aircraft dropped large bomb on Mohamed bin Hussein. Hussein injured and now in Saudi. . . . All ammunition recently sent destroyed.’

  The Prince was evacuated to Najran, and convalesced in Jeddah, but later returned to the front. Had he been killed, his death would have dealt the Royalist cause a heavy blow, for he had exceptional powers of leadership and was the most popular of all the royal family among the tribesmen. At twenty-eight, he was the ablest of the Yemeni commanders, and the most flamboyant – given to wearing a turban of yellow cashmere. Born of a part-Persian mother, he had enormous charm and a good sense of humour, and (unusually in a Yemeni) was generally imperturbable. He had also seen a little of the world: he had been to secondary school in Cairo, but then, instead of going to university, as he hoped, had been sent by his uncle, the old Imam, to lead the Yemeni Legation in Germany, where he became the Minister in Bonn. In Smiley’s view, he was by far the most capable, gifted and inspiring of the Yemeni princes. His ready smile ‘created a misleading appearance of indolence,’3 but behind that façade he was ambitious and determined, and had his eye firmly on the possibility of succeeding al-Badr as Imam.

  During the war Hussein had frequently fought in skirmishes with the Egyptians and, in controlling the supply route through the Jauf to the whole of east Yemen, had (in McLean’s view) ‘gained enormous prestige and power and some wealth’. Unlike most of his fellow commanders, he tried to wean his tribesmen off their habit of decapitating prisoners, preferring to keep officers in custody until they could be exchanged, and to send other ranks away without their weapons. For the time being his role was purely that of an effective fighting commander, but his loyalty was to the Prime Minister, Hassan bin Yahya, rather than to al-Badr.

  Mac McSweeney did not share McLean’s enthusiasm: he found Hussein exasperating. Contrary to all the mercenaries’ advice, the Prince began planning a major, setpiece attack on the Egyptians in Sa’ada. ‘I fear that it is far too ambitious,’ Mac told Jim, ‘and if it fails it could result in disaster if the Egyptians react vigorously.’ Mac had continually begged and suggested that Hussein’s forces should launch small harassing raids, but the Prince was deterred by memory of the severe reprisals that had followed such actions in the past, and would not agree. He seemed determined to build an organised army, and had even bought uniforms and badges. ‘I am sure he considers himself the next Imam,’ Mac told Jim, ‘and will have an army to influence the doubters.’

  While Hussein dithered, a momentous event took place in the outside world. In a letter written during October, President Kennedy had told Nasser that he was confident the British were not backing the Royalists in the Yemen; but then, on Wednesday 20th November 1963, Kennedy called Sir Alec Douglas-Home (by now Prime Minister) on the transatlantic scrambler telephone to London and, in the course of a heated conversation, indirectly accused him of being a liar. The CIA, he said, had firm information that the British were officially helping the Royalists, and he demanded that the Prime Minister close the operation down. Douglas-Home, who knew the score perfectly well, parried Kennedy’s accusations by saying that he needed to make enquiries and would call him back in a day or two. He kept his promise, and tried to ring back on 22 November, but on that fateful day Kennedy went to Dallas. News of his assassination reached the Yemen within hours, and the Royalist tribesmen, hearing it on their transistor radios, went wild with joy and excitement, firing prodigious volleys into the air with their ancient rifles – for they had regarded Kennedy, the supporter of Nasser, as an arch-enemy.

  An unsigned intelligence report, which came into Aden on 24 November, gave a clear idea of the Egyptian build-up around Sana’a. By then there were thirty jet aircraft on the northern air-strip, guarded by ten tanks and seven field guns. A thousand Egyptian soldiers were deployed round the radio station, with ten field guns, eight anti-aircraft guns, fifteen heavy machine guns, seven tanks and seventy Republican troops. A 6-foot-high barbed-wire fence had been built round the north, south and east sides of the city, with one entrance only. There was a permanent guard of fifty on the gate, but only five actually on duty at any one time. The anonymous author of the report had obviously done his homework, for he added, ‘The duty gentlemen prove to be fairly easily bribed.’

  Another of Jim Johnson’s recent recruits, Jack Miller, was moving around in Royalist areas, trying to establish a reliable radio network. Grin (David Smiley), who met him at Khanjar, saw that he was irritated by the ‘persistent unreliability’ of the Yemenis – and Miller did become exasperated by continual delays and failures: ‘More or less a wasted day’ . . . ‘Absolutely nothing achieved’ . . . Such phrases stud the admirably vivid diary that he kept during the six months of his tour;4 but, in spite of multiple vexations, his journal gave a lively account of the life that a member of the BFLF could expect to lead when reconnoitring the Egyptian front lines:

  16 Nov 63 Buy goats from Bedouin. Girls do the bargaining . . . Small child drinks milk direct from one goat . . . Arrive Sobrahin. Slit goat’s throat and guzzle. Sobrahin would be a good position.

  17/11. Arrive Agba area. Walk up hillside and overlook isolated hill in desert from East . . . Move south to another hill and look over onto plain. Egyptian camp about 3,000 yards away, right in middle of plain. B vehicle movement. What a target – but lack of action attributed to lack of munitions . . .

  18/11. 1445. Travel 28 km to captured USA tank. Inspect vehicle and corpses of a number of enemy in what must have proved for them a Valley of Death some months ago . . .

  19/11. It is obvious that allies are frustrated by the appalling disorganisation of the Arab Emirs, who have allegedly no idea of the problems of re-supply and even less of time . . .

  This country favours the defender sitting back on a steep hill . . . Knowing that Egyptians tend to falter once they have to leave their MMGs [medium machine guns] and tanks to swarm up a hill, I feel that no efforts should be spared to sting them into attacking chosen Royalist positions and annihilating them.

  24/11. 0945 Get up! Tea party on my bed with Sherif Ahmad and others. Much cash changes hands. Sherif spits accurately onto my track suit at foot of bed. Last night Nasr Ahmad pretended to put snake down the neck of one of the servants, who promptly stripped; I am not sure for whose benefit!

  At the end of December David Walter (now known as Daoud bin Qassim), who had been with Miller at El Qara, got a note from the Prime Minister’s secretary, Ibrahim al-Khibsi, to say that seven unexploded bombs needed dealing with in Sharaha, two days’ walk away, and on 2 January 1964 he set off to sort them out. ‘I was the first white man to ever set foot in this mountain-top city, which obviously dated from days of Arab greatness,’ he noted when he reached his destination, 10,720 feet above sea-level, after a strenuous journey by donkey and on foot. Finding that four of the 150-pound bombs had buried themselves in the surrounding paddy fields of the wadi, he decided to leave them where they had fallen. Three others were lodged in houses, and the locals wanted to drag them out of the buildings with ropes, but, as he remarked, ‘they would certainly have killed themselves doing so’. He therefore proceeded to detonate the three, using 4 pounds of plastic explosive and 3 feet of safety-fuse per bomb:

  The large, impressive stone houses turned out to be not as strong as they appeared. The bangs, however, were most impressive. Total destruction was two houses and a row of small shops. Left for Coomah 1530 hours. I thought that this was best, since my host was the owner of one of the houses.

  He concluded that he had probably saved half a dozen lives – and his conviction was strengthened when he returned to El Qara on the evening of 5 January, to find that there had been a raid the previous day, and two men had been kil
led and two wounded trying to move a bomb that had not gone off.

  Lackadaisical as they might appear, some of the Royalists were doing their best to implement the mercenaries’ instructions. On the night of 20 October 1963 Sheikh Ali Abdullah had tried to mine a convoy of twenty-five Egyptian trucks on their way from Jihannah, but his men were surprised by a foot-patrol coming to clear the road. Although the party was not hit, there was much firing, the mine was lost, and eighteen local sheikhs were put in gaol by the Republicans for implication in the offence.

  Peter de la Billière, in Aden, was enthusiastic about the amount of intelligence that the mercenaries were sending back. ‘Your map is excellent and so is the info,’ he told Johnny:

  I can’t tell you how important that we get as much info as possible even of irrelevant details like place locations and names. This factor could well have very far-reaching effects as the more the official boys get, the more they want and the more they commit themselves.

  It is not clear how much of this intelligence was reaching Whitehall; but the Cabinet, meeting on 2 December 1963 to discuss the Yemen situation, at last came to the conclusion that Nasser could not be trusted, and that there was no realistic hope of him withdrawing his Expeditionary Force. It was agreed that HMG’s policy of non-intervention should be retained; but at the same time it was hoped that the rulers in the Federation might become more amenable if ‘we ceased trying to prevent them from supplying arms to the Royalists’.5