Soldier I

by Kennedy, Michael

  The mighty twenty-five-pounder now stood silent. Without Tak to feed the beast, the situation was desperate. The gun pit was in real danger of being overrun. Laba looked around in despair. Tak was propped against the sangar wall, his shirt soaked in blood, somehow, with a supreme effort, summoning up the strength to take well-aimed shots with his SLR at the figures near the wire. We've got to have more firepower, thought Laba. His eyes darted anxiously from left to right. He knew what he was looking for.

  There it is, there's the firepower we need, he thought triumphantly. He began to crawl through the piles of spent shell-cases towards a 60mm mortar leaning upright against the sandbagged wall of the gun pit. The sweat ran down his face, stinging the wound on his chin. The noise of Tak's SLR made him flinch momentarily and then he was moving again, oblivious to the hot brass cases burning his hands and lower arms. A Titan figure, seemingly immortal, he was now dangerously beyond the cover of the twenty-five-pounder's bullet-riddled armour shield. He stood up and reached out for the mortar. Bullets whistled all around him. He seemed driven by a superhuman energy, possessed by a singleminded duty to fight his fight, to stand by his comrades. Above the din of the battle he could just make out Tak's voice shouting in Fijian, 'Get your head down, get your head down!'

  Laba didn't hear the bullet that killed him. His only sensation must have been an intense burning pain on his neck, as though someone had stabbed a red-hot needle through his jugular. And then he was falling through darkness, lost forever. The mighty Fijian warrior had breathed his last. Tak was on his own.

  'I don't like it. It's gone too quiet. Something's happened over at the fort. If the gun position goes we've got big problems. I need a volunteer, someone to watch my back. I must find out what the situation is over there.' Mike Kealy's terse request cut through the tense atmosphere in the radio room. Gone were the boyish features of the young, inexperienced troop officer. His face now had a grim, grey-edged, hard-bitten look about it that none of us had seen before. We were standing before him in a half-circle, Bob in the centre, me to the right, and Tommy, his stocky frame resting casually on the SLR propped up by his side, to the left. I had just finished keying out the 316 radio to Um al Gwarif requesting an airstrike and a casevac chopper, and I now joined the other two in agreeing that we should all share the risk. This was the ultimate Chinese parliament. We argued our case vehemently, but Mike's mind was made up. He would only take one man, the Batt House medic, Tommy, who could give medical assistance to any casualties we had taken at the gun pit. Mike reasoned that Bob would be required to take over command of the Batt House and control the air strike, and I was needed to give covering fire on the .50-calibre and also to man the radio set.

  Disappointment and feelings of guilt swept over me as I removed my belt kit. Why had I not been chosen to go with Mike? Was I not good enough, not experienced enough? I desperately wanted to get over to Laba and Tak. In a short space of time I had grown to like the two Fijians enormously. I felt a bond with them as if they were my own brothers. I admired their great courage, their fortitude and stamina, their laconic understatement in the face of real danger.

  I swept aside the negative thoughts worming through my brain and considered the worsening situation. I looked down at the luminous face of my watch: it was just 0700 hours. A short time ago we had heard high-velocity gunfire passing over our heads from the south of Mirbat town. That could mean only one thing – a co-ordinated attack from the north and the south. We were surrounded. It was shit or bust now. Once more, I sat down at the radio table and repeated the request for Startrek on the 316. The jets were really going to be at a premium now, if only the wretched monsoon mists and low cloud would lift.

  Unexpectedly, we gained a temporary respite when a strange lull descended on the battlefield. The Adoo troops had faltered and fallen back into the shallow wadis that interlaced the plain leading up to the fort. The heavy concentration of automatic fire they had earlier employed had emptied their magazines, and in the excitement and desperation of the assault, some had forgotten to carry out their magazine changes. Others had not had time to reload from the bandoliers of ammunition they carried across their chests. The firing had become spasmodic; only the mortars kept up their relentless bombardment. More ominously, though, there was a lack of return fire from the twenty-five-pounder and the DG fort. Bob and I tried to raise them on the walkie-talkie several times, but it remained silent. Maybe they had discarded the walkie-talkie in the heat of the moment. Maybe their set had been blasted apart by a bullet. Maybe Tak and Laba were taking advantage of the temporary lull to replenish their ammunition from unopened ammunition boxes. Or perhaps the silence was more sinister.

  'And don't forget to change into your desert boots.' Bob's parting words to Mike as he left the radio room for the roof interrupted my increasingly busy train of thought. I looked across the room at the two figures preparing themselves for the mercy dash to the fort. Mike had retrieved his dusty desert boots from under his camp bed against the far wall, and was kneeling down and pulling very tightly on the laces. Tommy stood patiently watching Mike, steeling himself. He had a calm, totally committed look on his face. All his doubts, his fears, his private thoughts had retreated far within. Between his index finger and thumb he held the cocking handle of his SLR. He eased the breechblock back slightly to confirm that he had chambered a round. He fingered his belt kit and the patrol medical pack slung across his back.

  Just then a long burst of machine-gun fire from the GPMG on the roof above us shook the room violently, adding renewed urgency to the situation. 'OK Tommy, it's time to go,' said Mike quietly. They were through the door and gone without another word.

  Racing back up to the .50-calibre Browning, I noticed Roger disappearing down the steps to the front door. He must be going to the beach to retrieve the casevac chopper, I thought, as I flipped the safetycatch on the machine gun to 'fire'. My mind settled on the task in hand. It was my job to give covering fire. The palms of my hands began to sweat. For the next few minutes the lives of two of my comrades rested on my shoulders. I prayed I would be switched-on enough to carry the burden. I watched intently as Mike and Tommy began edging their way past the mortar pit. Once around it, they sprinted for a shallow wadi about ninety metres on the right. The wadi ran roughly in the direction of the fort and would afford some cover from the machine guns outside the perimeter wire. Bullets were still zipping by. They came in flurries, but the fire lacked intensity and direction. So far, the Adoo had not noticed Mike and Tommy. I held my fire. I did not want to draw attention to the two running figures. I felt the belt of incendiary resting easily in my left hand. I feathered the cold metal of the trigger with the index finger of my right hand. I watched nervously as the two figures worked their way towards the fort, moving in short rushes, ten or fifteen metres at a time, pepperpotting forward, one man running, one man covering. So far so good. Their luck was holding. My grip on the ammunition belt became tighter.

  They had gone about halfway to the gun pit when the whole battlefield erupted. The Adoo had spotted them. Where minutes before the firing had been spasmodic and half-hearted, there was now a delirium of noise: the crack of rifles, the rattle of machine guns, the crump of detonating mortar bombs. A heavy machine gun barked over to the east of the fort, the taut lines of tracer zipping across the path of the two moving figures. Like a dragon belching fire, the gun spat hot tracer closer and closer to its prey.

  I had to act quickly and decisively. There wasn't a moment to lose. I lined up the sights of the .50-calibre on the tongues of flame sparking from the flash-eliminator of the Adoo machine gun. My breathing got quicker – short, sharp and controlled. The skin on my forehead tightened. The pressure of concentration felt like a thumb-press on my third eye. I took careful aim and squeezed the trigger. The gun jerked and ejaculated its seeds of destruction, and I watched with professional satisfaction as the Adoo machine gun disappeared under a stream of red tracer and exploding incendiary rounds. My body relaxed
with relief. There would be no more trouble from that quarter.

  The inferno of fire raged on. The two figures were surging outwards in short rushes across the bullet-swept plain. The closer they got to the gun pit, the faster they ran. Onwards, onwards, stop, cover, rush. The bullets hissed and spat around them; the breath rasped in their windpipes and burned their lungs. They ran faster than they had ever run in their whole lives, their limbs pumping like pistons in full-throttle combustion engines. Then Tommy was up the slope to the fort and vaulting the sandbagged wall into the sangar, with Mike hot on his heels.

  A quick look at the chaos in the gun pit told Mike that there was more advantage to be gained by making for the ammunition bunker a few feet to the right. As he jumped down into the bunker bottom, he felt something soft and fleshy under his desert boots. He glanced down. To his horror he realised he was standing on the mangled body of a DG soldier, his foot squelching in the bloody peach-pulp of guts where the stomach used to be. He shrank back in disgust as if he had just turned back the sheets on a lover's bed and found a rotting corpse crawling with maggots. A movement caught his eye. Squinting through the dust and smoke that hung in the air dirtying the lenses of his glasses, he discovered he had company. Wideeyed, trembling and half paralysed by fear, a DG soldier cowered in the far corner of the bunker like a snared rabbit. The Omani was shaking in every limb. 'Pull yourself together and move the body,' snapped Mike as he stared across the gun pit, already assessing the situation.

  The battle reached a crescendo, the air thick with splinters of steel and lead. A hurricane of fire whirled and roared across the Mirbat plain. Flash followed flash followed flash, as bright as the flares from an arc welder's torch. Before one explosion of light had travelled down the optic nerve and burned itself on to the brain, another followed in instant succession, creating a stroboscopic display of agonizing intensity. Tak, totally resigned, his face misshapen with pain, was still propped against the sangar wall, his SLR still hurling hot lead. A short, stocky guerrilla straddled the perimeter wire, his snarling mouth hollering and gesturing towards the fort. The silver whistle around his neck made an excellent aiming marker. Tak's rifle kicked. With a scream of pain, the man slumped across the wire, lifeless like an old rag, still holding his AK-47 in the grip of death.

  The twenty-five-pounder, though silent, was still under concentrated fire. The hail of bullets sparked and ricocheted off the barrel and armoured shield as if the gun had just been cast in a foundry and was being smoothed off by heavy-duty abrasion wheels. Tommy was crouched attending to the body of Laba. He straightened slightly and half turned towards the medical pack. It was his last, fatal movement. If the medical pack had been an inch nearer, or if it had been lying to his right instead of his left, or if he'd checked Laba's wounds for a split second longer, his head would not have crossed the path of the murderous Kalashnikov round spinning its way faster than the speed of sound. A casual stoop saved de Gaulle from the assassin's bullet. Tommy was not so lucky. His time had come. He tumbled forward, scattering the spent shell-cases, and then lay motionless.

  Screams of agony filled the air. The swishing roar of a Carl Gustav rocket arcing over the position deafened Mike and Tak. Then the Adoo broke through the wire, a ragged line of desperate, yelling figures, their faces distorted with hate. They dashed in ones and twos, all notion of formation now cast aside, towards the cover of the north wall of the fort and the dead ground to the rear. Tak's rifle kicked twice in quick succession. A figure fell twitching to the ground. Like crabs on a beach scrambling for a dead fish, the Adoo worked their way round the fort walls, hungry for possession of the big gun. No words were exchanged between Mike and Tak. Each man knew instinctively what he had to do. On either side of the fort, Kalashnikovs disgorged death. And still the Adoo kept coming. The most courageous among them were now only six or seven metres away at the two front corners of the fort wall. Mike and Tak were looking death in the face.

  * * *

  Halfway to Salalah, and Lofty Wiseman, sensing a big battle in the air, was driving like a man possessed. He careered the Land Rover over the rough desert track pitted with potholes. The men in the rear cursed in full technicolour with every crash and jolt. Clutching in one hand the twisting steering wheel like a Wild West rancher gripping the saddle on an unbroken horse, Lofty bent down and felt between his feet for the three cardboard boxes that were sliding around the floor in rhythm with the madly lurching vehicle. With his head level with the dashboard, he alternated his gaze rapidly between the road and the boxes as his fingers pulled back the tape that secured the contents. He flipped open the lid on the first box and his hand dived in like a mechanical grab in a fairground booth. Straightening up, he passed the first handful of morphine syrettes over his shoulder as though he were giving Smarties to impatient kids. 'Here you are, lads, grab these syrettes.' Another handful found their way into the back of the vehicle. 'Inject the morphine straight into the upper thigh – instant nirvana.' The patrol in the back scrambled for the syrettes and stuffed them into every available empty pouch they could find.

  * * *

  Mike and Tak picked off the swarming Adoo as fast as they could double-tap. A fusillade of LMG fire ripped into the ground just in front of the ammunition bunker. A round cracked so close to Mike's skull he could feel the vibration of the bullet as it sped over him. Then came the green pineapple. It sailed gracefully through the air and landed smoking on the parapet of the bunker. As Mike ducked down in the confined space, the grenade exploded. An agonizing ringing drummed in his ears, and the acrid smoke of detonation ripped through his lungs. Miraculously, he was uninjured. He eased himself back upright, trembling slightly. Through the smoke and confusion he could just make out the pathetic figure of a DG soldier. You're no bloody good to me grovelling down there, he thought. He did a quick magazine change and threw the empty magazines at the frightened man. 'Fill those!' he barked, kicking the cringing soldier violently on the soles of his boots. And then he was up and firing again.

  He squeezed the trigger twice, as near simultaneously as is mechanically and humanly possible, and caught the guerrilla at the corner of the fort wall full in the face. Blood, brain and hair exploded in a crazy stain across the whitewashed wall. The guerrilla slumped to the ground, arms spreadeagled by the shock, with the remains of his head sliding down the wall after him. Then came a salvo of grenades. They arced over towards Mike and Tak like clay pigeons; several exploded nearby with a dull crump. More grenades – and then Mike and Tak froze in horror, their minds switched into a slow-motion nightmare. A grenade hit the parapet at the far end of the ammo bunker and, after what seemed like an age, rolled over the edge. Mike could clearly see the black smoke from the six-second safety fuse as it burned its way towards the detonator. He watched, mesmerized, unable to move as the smoke curled upwards. One… two… three. He counted the seconds, each one booming in his head like a chime from Big Ben. Four… five… six. He steeled himself for the impact of the explosion that would do to his body what his bullets had just done to the head of the guerrilla by the fort wall. Seven… eight… nine. He prised open his rigid eyelids. The smoke fizzled out. Ten… eleven… twelve…

  Mike stared in disbelief at the matt green object that should have been the last thing he saw on this earth. It was a misfire, a damp squib. He thanked God in the briefest manner possible and searched the immediate area for the next target, more determined than ever to defeat the Adoo now that he had survived the hand grenade. Cursing aloud, he took a bead on the camouflaged figure at the corner of the fort, squeezed the trigger, saw the figure fall and reached for the two-way radio.

  * * *

  'Laba's dead, Tak and Tommy are very seriously injured.' The sound of Mike Kealy's voice on the walkie-talkie cracked the atmosphere in the command-post sangar like obscenities mouthed in the middle of a hushed church service.

  I was stunned. I couldn't believe it. Laba! Dead! The din of the battle receded like surf on a distant shore, and my eyes s
eemed to go out of focus. The next thing I knew, I was re-experiencing my grandfather's death, the first time I'd lost someone close. A wave of desolation, loneliness and separation had engulfed me then. I had hardly been able to believe that this warm-hearted, laughing, noisy man was now stretched out cold, stiff and lifeless in his grave; the same man whose morning ritual I used to watch with unending awe. He would pour boiling water straight from the kettle into his shaving mug, and then, with a flourish designed to impress me even more, he would plunge his dishevelled shaving brush into the scalding water. After a quick wipe around the stunted remains of a stick of hard shaving soap, he would jut out his jaw, open his mouth and with a half-smile, half-grimace apply the dripping brush to his chin with rapid circular movements. I would always wince at this point, feeling sure that the boiling water must hurt terribly, secretly hoping I wouldn't grow up to be a man for a very long time yet if that was what grown men had to do.

  'Get on the set and call for reinforcements.' Bob turned and looked at me, his face still amazingly calm, his voice quiet and steady. I was back in my first major battle, well and truly bloodied, my initiation into manhood brutally complete.