The War that Never Was

by Duff Hart-Davis

  While this row was boiling up in Jeddah, Jim had despatched Franco (Rupert France) to visit Hassan bin Yahya, the Yemeni Prime Minister, who was supposed to be terminally ill, in his cave at Ketaf, in the far north-east of the country. Franco was well set up for the journey, with three soldier escorts and a letter to the Naib (the local commander) at the top of the plateau, asking him to arrange onward transport. The party went by Land Rover as far as Nehouga, the camel-head at the bottom of the jebel, where an extraordinary organisation led by one man, with eight excellent camels and their handlers, spent their whole time lifting stores to the plateau high up the mountain. All the vehicles on the plateau had been raised section by section, and Franco’s party passed a team of twenty-five men carrying up a vehicle chassis.

  At 3.30 a.m. they reached Ketaf, in a long, narrow, fertile wadi, in the middle of which was the Prime Minister’s headquarters, called the Hakooma, or Government. ‘My first impression on meeting the PM was certainly not that of a dying man,’ Franco reported:

  Old-looking, yes, but alert, right on the ball, though very definitely tired. He apparently sleeps little, and works the rest of the time. His office had three commodities only – warraqas, flies & odd pens & ink bottles, medicines etc. I have rarely seen so many flies in a building.

  He immediately started discussing his problems, but I was not quite happy with his English and found it hard going, though I got the main points. We were invited to a jebel lunch about a mile away, and in due style we all walked, surrounded by guards, to the lunch RV.

  On the way the Prime Minister talked incessantly, worrying particularly about the tribes’ inability to retaliate against Egyptian aircraft. He claimed that Ketaf was not a secure place for a radio station, and insisted that Franco should move on to the military base at Khoudom:

  On arrival at Khoudom we were housed temporarily for the night in a cave (ghastly one), but the following day we were given an excellent cave. We are half-way up a small jebel and have had a stitched cover of khaki material put right along the aerial to cut the shimmer which would give us away to aircraft. The guard system is good but noisy. Literally every five minutes whistles blow and sentries must answer or go in chains the following day. We have been allotted one guard-cum-orderly, but have four extra ones posted above and to the side of the cave each night.

  Constant reference by the soldiers asking when we are going to start the war again and drive Nasser out of Sana’a. Contrary to all the views expressed, the PM has been kind and generous to us in all respects. The first impression I get of him is that the locals hold him in a combination of tremendous respect and fear. He is regarded as very hard-working (he sleeps very little) and just, but I don’t see him as a popular figure. He is too withdrawn and ascetic in his ways.

  Radio communication with Bosom and other stations good. Runners sent daily to neighbouring tribes. Local transport consists of six vehicles, including two three-ton lorries, all lifted bodily section by section up the mountainside.

  The PM fully agreed that the British should leave Aden, but found their approach to the matter beyond his comprehension. He told Franco that although Egyptian bombing was not doing serious damage, it was having a bad psychological effect, because the Royalists could not strike back effectively, and this was worrying him considerably: he thought it would be a tragedy if the Egyptians could achieve from the air what they had been unable to do on the ground. The Prime Minister called for anti-aircraft guns, wanting ‘to hit back and if possible down a bird or two’. Franco had to restrain his enthusiasm, and explain that hitting fast planes was very difficult.

  Even though the situation was so volatile, Jim was still reinforcing his team. One new but seasoned operator was Frank Smith, who, having served in the Parachute Regiment and in the Middle East, had been in 21 SAS for ten years, reaching the rank of sergeant major. In civilian life he was a plumber, but when he tried to expand his business in Portsmouth by taking on a dozen men, he overreached himself and the firm went bankrupt. Urgently needing a new job, he turned to the territorial SAS, which was very strong in the town – there was a Portsmouth Squadron – and when John Woodhouse came down recruiting for the Yemen, Frank seized the chance. After an interview in London (he always remembered the big dolphin on the front door of Jim’s house) he was away to Jeddah, and thence by road on a three-day journey across the desert to Najran in a convoy of five new Toyota pickup trucks destined for the French contingent.

  After a short stay at the French training camp, now established in a wadi not far from the town, he went on to Amara, where Mohamed bin Hussein had his headquarters. Frank soon came to like and admire the Prince, but before long he moved on to his operational location, Mustang, the three-man outpost in Wadi Heera’an, which runs from Al Hazm in the east to Koulat Hamama (Pigeons’ Bath), where the road ended, in the west, some 35 miles of the wildest mountain country north of Sana’a.

  Compared with some of the other mercenary outposts, Mustang was paradise, in that a spring coming down the wadi flowed into a chain of oblong pools sculpted by centuries of spates, and in several of the hollows the water was chest-deep, so that bathing and swimming were a delight – the only hazard being the shoals of slim fish that came and nibbled at the hairs on people’s legs. A hand-grenade lobbed into a pool yielded enough for a fry-up, but the fish turned out to be bony and tasteless.

  The team’s base was a cave in the side of the mountain. One bane of life was the presence of malarial mosquitoes, another the threat of flash floods: a tremendous storm, heralded by thunderous roaring and warning rifle shots from higher up the mountain, once almost swamped the camp. Although no rain was falling outside the cave, a raging torrent suddenly exploded past the entrance, flinging rocks with it and forcing the inhabitants to retreat up the sloping floor towards the back of their den. So violent was the flood that their Land Rover, 500 feet lower down the wadi, was swept half a mile downstream.

  A more frequent threat was attack by MiGs: the aircraft came in so low along the valley that they were often level with, or even below, the encampment on the hillside; and although the detachment had two machine guns – one .5 and one .300 – set up in well-built nests, the Royalist tribesmen refused to fire them. When Frank stormed into the local commander, Prince Mochsin, and demanded to know why his men weren’t firing, the answer was, ‘It would make the Egyptians angry.’

  ‘Well,’ Frank answered, ‘they’re bloody angry already’ – and got permission for himself and his colleagues to man the guns instead.

  After a few attacks he noticed that the scream and crash of incoming 2-inch cannon shells preceded the arrival of the aircraft by several seconds. In the safe interval between the two there was just time to nip out of the shelter, man a machine gun and loose off a stream of tracer, mixed one-and-one with ordinary bullets, as the MiG started to pull up, exposing its belly. The Mustang team thought they hit at least one aircraft, and the sight of tracer looping towards the pilots evidently unnerved them, for the frequency of the attacks steadily diminished. One factor in favour of the men on the ground was the age of the ammunition that the planes were firing: it was Russian, dating from 1953, and many of the shells failed to explode.

  The logbook of the Mustang radio was packed with reports of fighting. On 17 September 1966 – a typical day – it recorded:

  1 Four nights ago a force sent by Gassim Monassir attacked Egyptian camp at Suq el Khamis, approx. 30 km from Sana’a on Hodeidah road. 25 Egyptians killed, 30 wounded. Two trucks, two tents destroyed. Encounter lasted four hours.

  2 Two nights ago force sent by GM attacked Egyptians at Al D’Baart near Bahul. 1 x 75mm, 2 x 35 cal Czech MG destroyed. Encounter lasted 4½ hours. 18 Egyptians killed, 20 wounded . . . Cas[ualties] reported as one wounded only.

  Gassim’s initiatives apart, the Royalist war effort was almost at a standstill, because most of the army commanders had gone abroad, some to Jeddah, others to the lush pastures of Beirut. Mohamed bin Hussein, however, had departed
on a serious mission. With the encouragement of King Hussein of Jordan, and in company with Billy McLean, he had flown to Teheran, where he appealed to the Shah for a colossal quantity of arms and ammunition: 50,000 rifles, 100 .5 machine guns, 130 recoilless anti-tank rifles, and much else. The Iranians agreed to train 100 Yemenis in Iran in techniques of sabotage and terrorism, and to send twenty instructors to train Yemenis in their own country; but nearly a year passed before they began to meet Hussein’s ambitious request for weapons.

  His initiative by no means pleased the Saudis or the Yemeni Prime Minister, Prince Hassan, who on 31 October sent out a querulous radio message marked ‘For all Yemeni Princes’:

  1 Feisal angry Mohamed bin Hussein in Teheran without explanation or permission.

  2 My situation bad as I must go El Qara, also remain here await Mohamed bin Hussein.

  3 Ahmed Shami lost face with Saudis.

  4 We may lose much from this.

  In a paper marked ‘UK Eyes Only’ and dated October 1966, Jim gave an assessment of the general situation. He pointed out that the conflict in the Yemen had come to be seen as ‘the tribal arena of a much bigger struggle between the so-called Progressive Socialist Arab block led by Nasser, and the traditional states led by Feisal’. ‘The Americans think they can control Nasser,’ he wrote. ‘This I have the gravest doubts about.’ The greatest danger, in his view, was that the Soviet Union would back Nasser more openly and move to fill any vacuum created by the British withdrawal from the area:

  Therefore I consider it is in the vital interests of Great Britain and the West that every clandestine effort should be continued to obtain the withdrawal of the Egyptian armed forces from the Yemen before we withdraw finally from Aden and the Gulf.

  Jim was certain that Nasser would never win the Yemen war outright: he had failed to do so with an army of 70,000 men and a modern air force, and had nothing further to call on:

  Nasser can never defeat militarily the strong Zeidi tribes in their own mountains. The Egyptian army is bad, and won’t work forward of 1,500 yards of its own supporting armour. It won’t fight at night, and the infantry won’t climb on foot up into the mountains.

  The strongest possibility, he thought, was that the Egyptians would retain their present positions in the south-west – the Sana’a–Hodeidah–Taiz triangle – and simply wait for withdrawal of the British garrison from Aden in 1968. Meanwhile, they would talk and stall endlessly to avoid open war.

  The best course for Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, would be to face up to the fact that Nasser had no intention of leaving the Yemen voluntarily, and to supply the huge amounts of money and arms needed to dislodge him. This would ‘require the enforcing of discipline on the Royal princes and the massive backing of one or two of them’.

  As for the European Advisory Group, which now had a strength of forty, Jim spelt out some possibilities:

  In view of the apparent lack of interest by HMG in the problem, and the stated indifference to our activities by MI6, coupled with the absolute disinterest and lack of use of us at the moment by HRH Sultan, we appear to have three courses open to us:

  1 To withdraw as soon as possible from the Yemen, before disaster overtakes us.

  2 Convert ourselves into a pure intelligence-gathering organisation, due to the lack of other roles.

  3 Hang on in our present role and organisation and hope we will be used sensibly again.

  All common sense points to our adopting the first course. We have tried exceedingly hard over the last 3½ years to force the many parties concerned to do what we consider the right thing in this affair. We have discovered, trained and helped arm tens of thousands of tribesmen in previously unknown areas of the Yemen. We have built a nation-wide radio network and trained dozens of Arab operators, and continue to repair and keep running this service for them. Medical aid, MT maintenance and repair, military and technical advice and help generally has been produced wherever we have been able to do it. All this without [any] official Governmental encouragement whatsoever.

  Far from it, in fact on many occasions we were actively frustrated and discouraged, and as this attitude has never really changed there is every pointer and reason why we should stop. There is no indication that HMG wants us to continue now . . .

  As only one thing is ever certain politically in the Middle East, and that is that the unexpected always happens, I suppose we must hang on, on the chance that things the other side of the hill are even worse, and that although we have no hope of winning, it may be that they will lose first . . .

  We believe:

  Nasser is not going. He will sit it out with the minimum of expenditure of money and military effort till the British leave Aden.

  The Saudis should change their policy to one of full support through the Hamid Ud Din family to the Royalists. This to include massive arms/money deliveries only to those areas still fighting the Egyptian army, and that this be done now.

  That the Yemenis left alone will continue to drift towards disaster, and every effort should be made to pressurise them to unite and elect a leader, and have an overall military plan directed against the main enemy.

  That we should continue with our present organisation and hope to help things as and when we can along the right lines.

  Out in the field, some of the mercenaries were growing anxious about their future. On 2 November 1966 a radio message came into Bosom:

  We require answers to following questions:

  1 New contract November?

  2 If not, reasonable guarantee for present work?

  3 If not known please confirm to that effect, and inform present situation.

  (It should not have been necessary to waste time sending this message).

  Jim lost no time in putting out an answer to all stations:

  Relax. Have never asked you to work for nothing. Contract for operational budget only is for me/Sultan to negotiate. Already hold your pay for two months ahead. Please trust me on your pay always. Jim.

  In England Jim had continued to recruit volunteers with his unique methods. Once, having spotted potential in a young fellow on a train, he followed the man out into the corridor for a private discussion. The stranger was understandably apprehensive, thinking that he was about to be propositioned – and so he was, though not for the kind of activity that had immediately come to mind. ‘We now have a target and a slogan,’ Tony told Franco. ‘“A man a day, and Tourist [Sultan] will pay!” Jay has gone quite mad and is even picking up likely-looking young men in railway trains. He should succeed in reaching the target if he is not arrested first for indecent exposure!’

  One newcomer was Kerry Stone, a wiry fellow in his mid-twenties who had served in the King’s African Rifles in East and Central Africa. Returning to the United Kingdom, he had been able to find only menial jobs, first vulcanising aircraft fuel tanks, then driving a coal lorry and shifting 12 tons a day, for which he earned £8 a week. But he had also joined 21 SAS, and there one day ‘a crafty old Master Gunner called Sandy Birkwood’, who saw that he was in low water, slipped him a piece of paper saying, ‘Kerry – ring this number.’

  He called it and said, ‘May I speak to the manager, please?’ The voice at the other end (it was Tony Boyle’s) said, ‘Come and see us.’ Kerry had a travel warrant for the train from Portsmouth to attend an SAS drill-night in London, but he was so poor that he could only scrape together 3s 6d (about 17p) in cash. Should he spend it on a meal or on cigarettes? Arriving in London on 5 July, he decided on cigarettes, tea and a bun.

  At an address in Earls Court he found Jim and Tony in a starkly furnished basement office. The room, with no carpet or curtains – only a desk and a couple of chairs – struck him as ‘not very prepossessing’; but after an encouraging preliminary talk, Jim asked him to go away, think things over and come back at 2 p.m.

  ‘Well,’ he said this time, ‘what do you reckon?’ Kerry said he would like to join – whereupon Jim turned to Tony and said, ‘Would you give him an advan
ce of pay, please?’ When Tony handed over £150 in £10 notes, Kerry was flabbergasted. Finding the train home packed with rush-hour commuters, he took a first-class seat, and when the conductor came along, jauntily peeled a tenner off his great wad of cash, as though to the manner born.

  He went to the Yemen via Jeddah at the end of July 1966, and over the next fifteen months was based in three different locations. The first was at Sirwah, which lies in a long, sandy wadi about three-quarters of a mile wide, in the Jauf, between the central mountains and the Rub’ al-Khali desert, 60 miles north of the border of Beihan. The village consisted of some twenty small mud houses and a three-storey fort, and it was described by another mercenary as ‘the most horrible place in the Yemen’. The local commander there was Abdul Karim al-Wazir, but as soon as Kerry arrived he disappeared to Beirut, never to be seen again.

  Kerry described his existence as ‘long patches of monotony and boredom, punctuated by moments of excitement whenever Egyptian aircraft attacked’. Normally they came at first light, so if people had to move around, they did so between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. or at night. There was great excitement on 3 October, when an Ilyushin was shot down near Marib.

  Two assassination attempts kept him constantly on his guard. He learnt never to trust any of the tribesmen except his own bodyguard, and when driving always had his automatic, loaded and cocked, concealed beneath a shawl. ‘The trouble was, we had us, them and a third party. A soldier would get a rifle from the Royalists and sell it, then go across, join the Republicans and get another off them. Nobody was in uniform, so you never knew exactly who was who.’ When bullets started flying, Kerry learnt that if they were passing well above him, they were designed to frighten, but if they were cracking around his ears, they were meant to kill.