The War that Never Was

by Duff Hart-Davis

  His constant refusal to take advice, and his ability to waste whole days messing about, lead me to suggest that he should be put under close supervision or relieved. Yet, in view of the childlike belief of the peasants in the godliness of Amirs, it may be that a second-string Amir, however devoid of intelligence, could be used to support Abdullah and the cause by flag-wagging trips round the area . . .

  The majority of the peasants, including soldiery, are very idle, extremely stupid and not unduly patriotic. Their reliance on Allah is almost total. If the enemy remained in Yemen for ten years, they would have to take comfort from knowing that this was no more than his will.

  At the end of three days Grin returned, ‘somewhat disgusted’, to report to the Imam, and decided it was time for some straight talking. He began by saying that he knew it was customary for the ruler’s men to tell him only things that he liked to hear. He, however, proposed to tell the truth, ‘and be brutally frank in so doing’. Did the Imam wish him to proceed? ‘Yes,’ came the answer. ‘Please go on.’

  Grin said that he discerned four fundamental weaknesses in the Royalists’ character: Ignorance, Incompetence, Inefficiency and Indolence. It was not for him (he said) to criticise the Arab way of life, but unless the Imam’s men changed their ways, they would have little hope of winning the war. Time meant absolutely nothing to them, and three words typified their attitude: ba-den (later), bokra (tomorrow) and inshallah (if God wills it).

  He also lectured the Imam on the care of weapons, and reminded him that the tribesmen were not professional soldiers, but peasant farmers carrying rifles. They should be used, he said, as guerrillas, attacking Egyptian lines of communication, mining roads and ambushing convoys, rather than in set-piece assaults against large targets.

  Still more contentious was the subject of the young amirs, or princes, the Imam’s commanders. Although in Grin’s view they were keen and intelligent, and popular among the tribes, far too much of their time was taken up with petty detail, and in particular with the writing of letters. Grin amused the Imam by saying, ‘Wars cannot be won by writing letters’ – and the ruler took all his criticisms ‘in extremely good humour’, often laughing and saying that he quite agreed.

  The Imam was also thinking about his own future, and commissioned Johnny Cooper and David Bailey to furnish a house that he had bought in Jeddah. Reaching under his bed, he brought out a great box full of sovereigns: armed with some of them, the mercenaries went off on leave and bought furniture, cushions, carpets, television sets and pictures, thereby earning themselves useful extra money.

  On 23 April 1964 Nasser paid a surprise visit to Sana’a; he was welcomed by a twenty-one-gun salute as he descended from his aircraft at the new airfield north of the city, and presented with a golden key to the capital. His routine propaganda speeches were countered by a cable addressed to him and ‘the World Press’ by Abdullah bin Hassan:

  I, Emir Abdullah bin Hassan, invite you to negotiate with the free people of Yemen. I am only sixteen kilometres from you, an hour’s drive, and I will give you a safe conduct if you have time to accept this offer, as it would be to your advantage. It is useless to deal with the so-called Republicans, as the free people of the Yemen will not repeat not submit to their orders.

  Down south, in the Protectorate, the British position was steadily deteriorating. On 5 May at a press conference in Aden, Major General J. H. Cubbon (General Officer Commanding, Land Forces, Middle East) announced the death of two SAS soldiers, Captain Robin Edwards and Trooper Nick Warburton, in the Radfan, to the north of the colony. They had been killed five days earlier, in the first stages of an SAS operation against insurgents, when a long-range reconnaissance patrol had been cut off in the open by tribesmen. It had not been possible to retrieve their bodies, and their heads were reported to have been exhibited on stakes in the square at the south-Yemen town of Taiz (occupied by the Egyptians).

  Another patrol did recover the decapitated bodies, which were buried with full military honours, and in due course the tribesmen returned the heads; but there was widespread anger, inside and outside the SAS, that the General had unnecessarily blown the gaffe on a secret operation. The public-relations battle over the future of Aden and the Protectorate was proving every bit as difficult as the military campaign: the United Nations, the Communist Bloc and Third World opinion were all lining up behind the nationalists, and Britain was being cast as a colonial oppressor.

  The despatch of ‘Radforce’, which suppressed the insurgents in Radfan (although at huge cost), was only one of countless exchanges along the Federation’s northern border, where sporadic warfare was the order of the day. One of the Political Officers, John Harding, wrote a vivid account of a visit to Dhala, some seventy miles north of Aden, where his colleague James Nash was running a vigorous counter-terrorist operation. Nash’s house (Harding found) was a fortress, surrounded by a rocketproof stone sangar two yards high and one thick, with another barricade inside it. The walls were pocked with bullet-marks, and bigger holes had been blasted by bazookas. Nash explained that the rough-looking characters hanging about the establishment were members of his bodyguard, whose main task was to carry out raids across the border against the Egyptian-trained opposition based in Qataba.

  One evening, after dinner of pâté, ratatouille and cheese, Nash’s party adjourned to the roof to watch what he called ‘the nightly fireworks display’:

  The British and Federal armies would loose off Bren-Gun tracer, mortars and a particularly noisy anti-armour weapon, on fixed lines of fire in the general direction of Qataba, with James blazing away with his own Bren Gun. The enemy replied in kind. After an hour or so everyone got bored and went to bed.1

  Nash was (and is) a man of many talents: an aggressive combatant, a chartered surveyor, a celebrated cook and an accomplished poet, he later rode the Crusader route to Jerusalem, to raise money for the Knights of St John eye hospital. But in 1964 even he found life in Dhala ‘quite rough’. His house was being shot up three times a week, and in the course of one particularly tiresome night he was attacked by three different groups: the enemy (as usual), ‘a rather badly-commanded company of [Royal] Marines, who ignored instructions’, and his own protection squad:

  I found I had shells from a Saladin (armoured car) going through the side of my house, and, what was worse, through the fort of the gendarmerie, who were supposed to be looking after me. Having had eight of their people wounded, they mutinied, and started firing at me. So that night there were three lots shooting: the baddies, the Brits, and my own guards.2

  While organising what he called his ‘own gang of terrorists’, Nash was struck by a notion for bringing the war in the Yemen to a swift conclusion. It would (he thought) be quite easy to get hold of an old Greek tanker, and have it catch fire and blow up in the narrow channel, only 200 yards wide and 10 miles long, that approaches Hodeidah harbour. Months would pass before the Egyptians could organise lifting gear to take it out; during that time the only route in for fuel for their army would be blocked, and the war would be stopped quite quickly and cheaply, without hurting anybody. Nash suggested the idea to HMG, but unfortunately they did not approve of it.3

  Although he was meant to be acting as a Political Officer, his real role was to disrupt the Egyptians and Republicans on the other side of the frontier – and he did this so effectively that he was three times denounced on Cairo radio. As he considered a mention on that station rather like winning an Olympic medal, he concluded, ‘Obviously we were upsetting them.’ In general he followed the Sherif of Beihan’s policy of ‘two for one’ – that is, blowing up two of the opposition’s houses for every one of his own that was destroyed. On the ground, intermittent counter-punching was thus the order of the day; but at the same time streams of telegrams poured back and forth between the Foreign Office in London and the military and civilian authorities in Aden, endlessly discussing what was or was not permissible in the way of cross-border retaliation by RAF aircraft. At one stage th
e Hunters were allowed to indulge in ‘hot pursuit’ of enemy intruders, but in April 1964 this permission was withdrawn.

  HMG did, however, privily sanction defensive measures along the border. A paper drawn up by the Chiefs of Staff, and discussed at a meeting of the Defence and Overseas Policy Committee on 23 April 1964, recommended a ‘Range of Possible Courses of Action open to us’. Under the heading ‘Retaliatory actions along the border with Yemen’, it proposed ‘Operation Eggshell – Mine laying; Operation Stirrup – Issuing of arms and ammunition to tribesmen in the frontier area; and Operation Bangle, Sabotage and subversion in the frontier area’. All these activities were already well under way, whether or not they had been officially approved. And so were further possible actions listed by the Chiefs of Staff:

  Aid Royalists by allowing them to use wireless stations in Beihan and Nequib [Nuqub].

  Aid Royalists by allowing arms convoys to be received from Saudi Arabia.

  Aid Royalists ourselves with a supply of money.

  Aid Royalists with small arms, ammunition, mines, explosives, heavy machine guns and bazookas.4

  Ironically enough, with the exception of supplying money, which was coming from the Saudis, these activities were exactly what Jim Johnson’s men were carrying out: they were aiding the Royalists in all the ways suggested – and yet, while the Chiefs of Staff called for action, the Foreign Office continued to demand that the mercenaries be suppressed. One letter from Peter de la Billière in Aden reported ‘a big rupsha’ (row) over a signal from London saying that ‘the Foreign Office did not know what the Colonial Office were up to’.

  Definitely not sanctioned was yet another suggestion, for ‘the assassination or other action against key personnel directing subversion against the Federation of South Arabia, especially Egyptian intelligence officers’. This idea was promptly rejected by the Committee, on the grounds that any help given should remain as covert as possible.5

  In the Yemen the Royalists were squandering chances, and precious ammunition, as fecklessly as ever. Grin’s strictures to the Imam on the subject of weapons were backed up by Jack Miller, who noticed that heavy weapons were being sited in positions from which rounds could only be uselessly expended in the general direction of the enemy. In vain he explained to the Royalist gunners that the best answer to random shooting by the enemy was to keep quiet and lie low, unless a worthwhile target presented itself. As an alternative strategy, he recommended more ambushes and aggressive guerrilla attacks, as well as the construction of dummy gun positions to confuse aircraft, and decoy movements whereby the enemy ‘could be skilfully led deeper and deeper into the desolate country north-east of Sa’ada on futile and exhausting forays’.

  Jack was nothing if not practical. When one of the Amirs complained that he had recently been attacked by MiGs whose pilots noticed his white donkey, Miller told him to paint it black and green – and during the next few days he was maddened, again and again, by the half-baked manner in which the war was being conducted. One evening early in May, in the front-line gun positions above the village of Ibn Tawa, south-west of Sa’ada, the Amir announced a bombardment of the enemy before the sun went down:

  1800. We arrive at a 2-pounder gun position (what an achievement to get it up here, largely carried by peasants from El Meschef). Crowd of warriors all squeezed into narrow space. Amir will observe and correct fire from a flank. Range said to be one mile.

  1830. Amir fires starting signal. Engage with APCBC, range 2,000 yards (max) . . . After three unobserved shots someone says, ‘Drop a bit’. Fire one more shot at 1,600 yards. Chatter, much excitement. No word from Amir, who must be too far away to be heard. Am waiting at each moment for retaliation from enemy guns. Sheikh Abdullah of Ibn Tawa dashes in and fires one more shot (probably not aimed).

  Then shell lands on rock behind which everyone is hiding. Gun dragged back behind cover. Second shell very close indeed and party is over.

  Over the next two nights and days, as Jack travelled south with the Amir, he was frequently under fire. Although enemy shells poured over the party’s heads on the march, they were not (he judged) in much danger. But then at 0700 one morning, when they reached a Royalist gun position on a ridge and the Amir decided to have a go with a .50 machine gun, an enemy machine gun promptly replied, and the aim was too good for comfort. Then at 0815 Russian aircraft began to appear: he was watching one approach from the west when bullets suddenly began to spatter the crest under which he was hiding, and another – unseen until the last moment – screamed over from the south.

  Descending slightly into Jarf, the party came into an attractive little clearing, with green grass and water. There they had breakfast, to the accompaniment of further MiG attacks, and Jack concluded that the Amir did whatever came into his head, planning only for a very short time in advance: ‘It is all like a comic opera.’ By midday the Amir was under human assault from his own side, besieged by a bevy of tribesmen all yelling at him and waving warraqas, and at 1420, as they moved out and crossed an open space, they were almost caught by a shell:

  Drag white donkey under cover. They were probably waiting for us to break cover. Abdul Hamid said later he was praying when he heard it coming. Being a man of some consequence he had to consider whether to risk ‘having his head sent far away from his body’ or being thought irreverent if he took cover!

  1500. Two MiGs shoot up position just in front of ridge. Can see pilots as they circle . . . Abdul Hamid gets off his donkey en route and leaves it to follow him. When it fails to do so, he is in a flat spin as it is carrying MTD. Eventually it strolls in much later.

  Thinking over the last two days – what a difference a few Europeans, heavy weapons teams, would make. Not only from the efficiency aspect, but also from the general behaviour one. Few teams putting down an accurate and disciplined curtain of fire on an area, instead of the shouting, disjointed mobs I have seen, would do so much to help these people.

  Intermittent hostilities kept flaring up. On the night of 22 May 1964 there was an attempted coup d’état when the son of Sheikh bin Taji, fuelled by an Egyptian bribe, combined with some of the bodyguard to attack the camp of Prince Hassan (the Prime Minister) at Al-Gharir. The two soldiers who were supposed to capture the Prince warned him, and thus enabled him to escape; but his treasury was looted, all his possessions were stolen and the ammunition depot was blown up. The ringleaders of the coup were caught, and the tribesmen cut off the Sheikh of Al-Gharir’s ears.

  There was no doubt that the Royalist Yemenis detested the Egyptians, as did many of the Republicans, for bringing such destruction on their country. Yet some of the mercenaries felt almost sorry for Nasser’s soldiers, fighting for a cause they did not understand. Many of the men came from the low-lying Nile delta, and the sheer physical effort of moving around at high altitudes was in itself debilitating. ‘They had expected to be fighting in desert, not mountains,’ wrote the author Victoria Clark (who was herself born in the Yemen):

  A chronic lack of maps meant that, like the Turks before them, they were forced to rely on untrustworthy locals. Without suitable kit, Yemen’s climate, which could veer between 130 degrees Fahrenheit on the coast to 18 degrees Fahrenheit in the mountains, was a horrible handicap.6

  Stuck in tented camps in the valleys among forbidding mountain ranges, vulnerable to mines in the dust roads, they were scared stiff by the threat of ambushes in steep-sided wadis and the sudden, deadly arrival of mortar bombs in the night. It was not them, but their arrogant and duplicitous leader, President Nasser, whom everybody loathed.

  In London, Billy McLean continued to lobby energetically for official action by HMG. Writing to Nigel Fisher, the Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Commonwealth Relations and for the Colonies, he enclosed two letters and an ambitious shopping list7 from Mohamed bin Hussein. ‘I know that you and Duncan [Sandys] have convinced the Government of the need for action,’ Billy wrote, ‘but I feel it my duty to tell you that, unless your political decisions
are translated adequately into suitable action now . . . the whole anti-Nasser position in Arabia may suddenly collapse.’

  Billy also wrote to the Prime Minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, saying that he believed Hussein’s extravagant demand was not ‘a bargaining list’ but a ‘genuine request’, and could not be much reduced ‘without prejudicing the scale of the effort’. Tony Boyle echoed McLean by confiding to Jack Miller that the point had come at which:

  we have to decide whether to drop the whole venture or carry on . . . One must consider whether the whole business of getting the Royalists motivated fast enough is not too big a task for us to tackle – not because of our lack of good will, but because of their apathy and indifference to what is happening five miles away.’

  Although Peter de la Billière had returned to 22 SAS at Hereford, he had by no means lost interest in the doings of the BFLF, and on 3 June he wrote to inform John Woodhouse (his former Commanding Officer) that M16 were now much more closely in touch with the BFLF, and had given it money and considerable moral support. The two air-drops during the last month had impressed not only the Arabs, but also the SIS, ‘who now consider the set-up to be most professional’.

  The Royalist armies might lack cohesion, but they were far from ineffective, and they had inflicted grievous losses on the enemy. Official Egyptian Army figures claimed that between October 1962 and June 1964 the Expeditionary Force had lost 15,194 men killed, including 456 officers and 1,029 NCOs – twenty-four fatalities every day. Maybe four times as many men had been wounded or captured. Bonuses were paid to Egyptian soldiers in the Yemen – £2 to £3 a month for privates, £20 to £30 for officers – but these were hardly enough to compensate for the danger and discomfort of the campaign. The bodies of officers were taken home for burial, but those of other ranks were often left to rot where they fell.