Operation Mayhem

by Steve Heaney MC

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘Punji fields.’

  Ibrahim looked confused. ‘Poongy field? What is this?’

  ‘We cut bamboo, Ibrahim, maybe five feet in length and this fat.’ I used my forearm to indicate the width we wanted. ‘One end we make a spike – very sharp, Ibrahim.’ I grabbed my rifle to demonstrate the next bit. ‘The blunt end we drive into the ground at a forty-five-degree angle, with the spike facing upwards. We need the spikes set this far apart, and not in lines or regular. Put them so a man cannot run or move through …’

  Ibrahim’s eyes had lit up. ‘I know! I know!’ he interjected. ‘This is “poongy field”?’

  ‘Yeah, punjis. When you’re ready we’ll show you where to place them, okay.’

  Ibrahim nodded happily. ‘I do! I do!’ He was practically dancing from foot to foot with excitement. The idea of the punji fields clearly tickled his fancy. With that he turned and was gone.

  Ibrahim set to work, and Wag and I wandered off on our early morning walkabout. As Pathfinders, we never move in less than a pair no matter where we might be going. Even if paying a visit to the shitters we still had to do so in twos. This is the buddy-buddy system, one that guarantees you’ll never be jumped by the enemy without having a buddy to provide back-up. Hence Wag and me moved as a pair as we went to check in with Dolly’s patrol.

  We got there to find a couple of blokes on stag, one brewing up, and another sleeping.

  ‘See anything last night?’ I asked Dolly.

  ‘Nope. Just all those weird noises all night long.’

  ‘Yeah. We heard them too. Did you see all the civvies coming into the village?’

  ‘Yeah. Sleeping in the square?’

  ‘Yeah. It was chocker.’

  I heard a light rustle of vegetation from behind me and three young lads emerged from the bush. One was a carrying a battered old axe, another a worn machete, the third a shovel with a broken stump for a handle.

  The boys smiled nervously. ‘We dig? We dig?’

  Dolly returned the smile. ‘Yeah, lads, go for it – dig.’

  We watched for a while as the boys got to work. Clearly experts at this digging business, they had the vegetation cleared in an instant above the outline of the first trench. After a few seconds’ work with the shovel they were through the thin, sandy surface and into a thicker, clay-like subsoil. It was criss-crossed with tree roots, and I could now understand the mix of tools the lads had brought with them. While shovel-boy lifted out the soil, axe-boy and machete-boy hacked out the roots.

  We left the lads working away, and as we crossed over the road to check on Nathe’s position we spotted the familiar figure of Ibrahim, surrounded by his army. The work party was out front of Ginge’s patrol now – 33 Charlie – clearing away the bush. Ibrahim was dressed exactly as he had been on day one – he was tall and green, like a willow tree. He was barking orders and leading by example and he’d got his workforce out real early.

  We paused to have words with Nathe. ‘How’re the blokes getting on, mate? Bollocksed?’

  ‘Yeah, mate, getting pretty knackered.’

  ‘Right, make sure when the locals are out doing their stuff you get as much rest as you can. Make like a vampire, mate. Daylight’s the time to catch up on the sleep. Keep two on stag and four off, and get as much kip as you can.’

  We moved on to Ginge and Taff’s positions, and all the time we could hear Ibrahim shouting his instructions, and the dull thud of trees and bushes getting the chop. It was around 1000 hours by the time we were done. Turning back towards the HQ ATAP, we saw a thin line of figures threading through the bush. We were on the alert for a surprise attack – always – so our first thought was: rebel column.

  Then we noticed it was all women. They were making their way back into the village, and they had thick bundles of bamboo balanced on their heads.

  There was a grove of bamboo to the west of Dolly’s position, and that was where they’d chosen to cut the first of the raw materials to make the punjis. More groups of women started to appear from various directions. Two hundred metres to the west of Ginge’s position there was a real boggy area, and it was from there that they seemed to be getting the peachiest lengths of bamboo. It was coming out in pieces as thick as your biceps, and in sections that were as long as your average scaffold pole.

  All morning the work continued: kids digging trenches; women hauling bamboo; and all and sundry clearing the vegetation to the front of our positions. I didn’t figure anyone was getting any work done in Lungi Lol, other than that connected with Operation Alamo. But the most amazing thing of all was this: these people were singing as they worked. This wasn’t some dire dirge either: it was a rhythmic, lilting, soulful chant that sounded almost joyful. And whenever they took a break from the singing, this animated chat and laughter echoed back and forth through the trees.

  We joked amongst ourselves about what we’d nicknamed ‘Ibrahim’s army’, but in truth we were hugely impressed. This was hard, tough physical labour under a beating sun, but the villagers seemed to be driven and almost happy to be doing it. It was seriously impressive. I mean, in what village in Britain would you get young boys, girls and women clearing the bush, digging battle trenches or cutting bamboo punji fields, and all voluntarily? Forget it. They’d be too busy watching the Shopping Channel or gaming on their PlayStations.

  We figured the people of Lungi Lol had to know what would happen if the rebels made it into their village. Everyone knew. In Freetown and neighbouring areas there were these so-called ‘Amp Camps’. They’d been set up by the international aid agencies and charities, and they were peopled by the RUF’s victims – from kids as young as toddlers to ancient grandmothers, and all with hands, arms or legs amputated.

  So it was all hands to the pump here in Lungi Lol, because no one wanted to lose theirs to a drug-crazed rebel’s machete. But that didn’t make it any the less impressive.

  I could hear the giggling of the kids who were digging the battle trenches, as they larked around with the blokes. It was a boiling hot day – the hottest yet in Lungi Lol – but those kids never once complained or flagged. And each time I heard it their laughter sent cold shivers up my spine – for I couldn’t help thinking what would happen to those kids if we failed, and the rebels made it in here.

  I’d had a tough childhood growing up in smoggy Middlesbrough, but compared to these kids it had been a party. School had never really worked out, and by the time I was in my early teens we’d had the police around the house numerous times. I was forever stealing milk floats and selling them as scrap to the gypsies, or climbing derelict buildings and ending up in hospital. I’d broken about every bone in my body and had got a reputation for scrapping.

  There was no military tradition in my family – my dad was an electrician, my mum a barmaid – and we were seriously at loggerheads over my wayward ways. Then at the age of thirteen I happened to see a news report about the Parachute Regiment’s famous stand in the Falkland Islands.

  That changed everything.

  Having seen the PARAs in action I knew what I wanted to be: I was going to win the right to wear that famous maroon beret. I was going to join the PARAs.

  More or less everyone said I stood zero chance of making it. I was stringy and thin, with barely a muscle on me. But my dad stood by me. There was never a lot of money in the Heaney household, though what there was my parents spent on me and my younger brother, Neil. Dad took me to the local charity shop. He got me an old pair of Army boots and a pair of knackered combat trousers, plus he forked out for a brand spanking new bright orange rucksack from Millets. We nicknamed it ‘the Satsuma’.

  I started running for miles on end through the back streets of Middlesbrough. It was like a scene from Rocky, but with me a slim, wiry drink of piss with a giant satsuma strapped to my back. My schoolmates thought I was cracked, but my dad was rock solid. I started running the hills that ring the city. Dad would drive me out there and sit in the car
reading the Mirror, while I tore up and down the slopes.

  People still said that I’d never make it, but my reaction was – sod them. I did get accepted into the Junior PARA, which turned out to be like torture without the water-boarding. Most found it utter purgatory, but I loved it. I thrived on the physical challenges, and it quickly straightened me out. I even got selected for the Junior PARA’s boxing team.

  I’d just turned seventeen and Andy Gow – the guy who raised the 3 PARA flag over Port Stanley – was our CSM. He threatened to kill anyone who didn’t win his bout. I put my opponent down in the third round, so Andy spared my life. I went on to the Parachute Regiment’s P Company: six days of charging through woods and stagnant bogs, of log and stretcher races, the Trainasium (designed to test your fear of heights) and finally The Milling – where you stand face to face with another recruit and have to smash the fuck out of each other.

  I passed P Company as the Champion Recruit, so I guess I did okay. Having joined 3 PARA in 1987 I got my first sight of the lads of the X Platoon. I was mesmerised: this was the mysterious unit I’d heard referred to as the Shadow Force. These were the guys who were always away overseas – whether on training or ops no one seemed to know. They wore their hair longer, showed no marks of unit or rank, and everyone – even the officers – addressed each other as ‘boss’ or ‘mate’. I knew their role was supposedly to HALO behind enemy lines on clandestine taskings, but other than that I knew next to nothing about what they really got up to.

  I was drawn to them like a moth to a candle flame.

  But never once when I’d contemplated joining their number did I ever envisage being on a mission as out-there as this one – twenty-six blokes tasked with saving an African village from total mayhem and carnage … For that’s what this mission had become to us. We’d been sent here to stop the RUF, but over the past few days we’d realised what the reality would be for the people who lived here if we failed.

  The rebels would rape the women who were cutting the bamboo to make the punjis for us. They’d gun down Mojo and his men, or machete them to pieces. They’d murder Ibrahim and most likely the village chief too. They’d chop the hands off the kids who were digging our battle trenches, and doing cartwheels of joy over a packet of British Army boiled sweets. They’d take the survivors and drive them before their forces as human shields, as they advanced on Lungi Airport – to make Op Kill British a bloody reality.

  And right now, for every one of us here failure to stop them was not an option.

  11

  It was late afternoon when Ibrahim turned up at the HQ ATAP once more. He didn’t appear to be particularly tired, sweaty or dirty. In fact he looked full of beans and in the thick of it.

  He approached Wag, whom he seemed to have identified as the guy in charge of the work gangs. ‘Hey boss! Hey boss!’

  Wag grinned a welcome. ‘Ibrahim! Come on – take a load off. Take the weight off, mate. Sit down.’

  Ibrahim folded up those long legs of his and sat cross-legged on the ground.

  Tricky threw a packet of British Army ration biscuits at him. ‘Here! Ibrahim, catch! Get those down you.’

  Ibrahim didn’t seem to want to drop the machete, so he could catch the biscuits more easily. Instead, he tried to catch them with the machete still gripped in his hands, and ended up slicing the packet in two in midair.

  ‘Whoa … Ibrahim, mate, watch it!’ Tricky exclaimed. ‘You’ll have someone’s eye out with that …’

  Ibrahim started to munch on the biscuits, but Tricky hadn’t seen fit to warn him they were ‘hard tack’. Hard tack biscuits taste pretty good, but they’re impossible to eat without water – worse even than cream crackers. They’re so bad we used to play a game: bet you a tenner you can’t eat six hard tacks without taking a drink of water.

  As Ibrahim munched away we started a wager on how many he’d manage before he was desperate for some fluid. There are six in a packet. He got one down him, then two. He was onto his third by the time his chewing got noticeably slower, as the hard tack glued his jaws together, drying up his saliva like a sponge. By now he was incapable of talking, but still he kept eating.

  ‘That’s his fourth,’ Wag commented. ‘Here goes …’

  We’d been watching him for five minutes or so, and finally he’d got to the point where he could barely open his mouth any more. Being on his fourth hard tack – well, for a novice we figured he’d done pretty damn well.

  Tricky waved his water bottle at him. ‘Ibrahim, you want some water? Water?’

  Ibrahim, nodding: ‘Hmmm. Hmmmm.’ He couldn’t speak.

  Tricky threw his water bottle over. Ibrahim didn’t seem to want to let go of the killer biscuit packet, or the machete, so he tried to catch the water bottle in the crook of his arm. He got the water bottle wedged between his knees, and managed to lever it open with his elbows. He tipped it back, raising it to the vertical, and drained it in one.

  Ibrahim threw the empty water bottle back to Tricky, picked up the two remaining biscuits and started eating again.

  ‘He ain’t getting any more bloody water,’ Tricky muttered.

  Unbelievably, we were still on the one-litre ration per man per day, and Ibrahim had just drained Tricky’s dry.

  We were all of us laughing now.

  ‘Fucking hell, Ibrahim, nice one,’ I remarked. ‘So, are you finished? Not so much the biscuits, mate, but the work?’

  In answer Ibrahim brandished his machete, and grabbed the one remaining hard tack biscuit: ‘Yes, finished! Come check! You come check!’

  He led off, Wag and me following after. Ninety per cent of the clearance was done. He still had people out chopping, and as we walked up and down the line of our positions we showed where we needed a bit more done.

  ‘Little bit more here, Ibrahim,’ Wag indicated. ‘Cut a little here, okay.’

  ‘Yes, yes, no problem!’ He clicked his fingers, called some of his people over and they started to slash at the offending patches of vegetation.

  That done he led us over to this massive pile of cut bamboo. ‘This, now? This good?’

  Wag picked up one of the lengths of bamboo. ‘Make this end sharp; very sharp.’

  Ibrahim: ‘Yes, yes, yes! Very sharp!’

  ‘This much,’ Wag measured off a foot, ‘into the ground.’

  Ibrahim: ‘Yes, yes! In the ground!’

  Wag placed it at a forty-five-degree angle, pointing away from the village. ‘Like this, Ibrahim. Not like this.’ He placed it vertical. ‘And not like this.’ He placed it horizontal. He returned it to the forty-five-degree angle. ‘So, it gets the man in here – it pierces his thigh …’

  ‘Yes, yes, I do!’

  ‘Wag, you mark out the one patch,’ I told him, ‘and I’ll do the other.’

  I headed down to where we wanted the southern punji field sited, while Wag dealt with the northern one. We each drew a furrow in the ground indicating the perimeter, marking out an area twenty metres deep by thirty-five metres long.

  Punji fields mapped out, Wag explained exactly how we wanted them positioned. ‘Not in straight line, Ibrahim. Random. Not in straight line.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes. Random. I do!’

  Ibrahim had half his people busy putting the final touches to the cleared fields of fire. The other half were watching us.

  ‘The man, he must run this way and this way,’ Wag indicated, doing a little jinking dance with his feet. ‘Back and forth. Back and forth.’

  ‘Yes, yes. To and fro! I do!’ Ibrahim turned to his people and beckoned them over. ‘Come, come!’

  He was now in the centre of his army, demonstrating with his monster machete how to fashion a punji stick, while talking his workers through how to plant them. It looked as if we’d left the building of the punji fields in very capable hands.

  As we headed back through the trees that fringed the outskirts of the village, Wag and me chatted about the ‘I-man’ – Ibrahim. He had great man-management skills. Singl
e-handedly he was overseeing half a dozen construction projects, with maybe a hundred villagers at work across them. No doubt about it, the I-man was a damn good bloke to have on our side.

  We came up to Nathe’s position, and we could see yet another work party at it – mattocks going up and down as a dozen boys cracked into their battle trenches. They were up to their shoulders in the dirt, six of them in each hole, 33 Alpha’s trenches being a good halfway down.

  We paused to have words. ‘Nathe, how’s it going, mate?’

  Nathe shrugged. ‘Nice to see someone else on the blister end of a shovel for a change.’

  I tried not to laugh. ‘Mate, they’re kids.’

  ‘Yeah, but look at ’em – they’re loving it.’

  Nathe did seem to have a point. As long as he and his men kept feeding them the boiled sweets, his trench gang seemed more than happy to keep shovelling.

  We got back to our position, and the four of us took stock over a brew. We couldn’t help but marvel at what the village chief, plus Ibrahim and the people of Lungi Lol, had got sorted over the last twenty-four hours. It was easy to see how these people were able to build their own houses, dig their own wells and carve out their very lives from the bush. They had nothing else, so they crafted their lives around what nature provided.

  More to the point, they’d dropped everything to help us. The community spirit and cohesion here would put any English village to shame. We’d yet to hear a single gripe or complaint, yet back home we whinge and moan when our bins aren’t emptied on time. The people of Lungi Lol were an example to the rest of us.

  Being here had also given me a real insight into my fellow operators. I’d always known Wag was a man of the people, but here it had truly come to the fore. Somehow, the stumpy Hobbit-man had really charmed the I-man, Mojo and the rest of ’em. I was more fiery and likely to flash than Wag was. If someone stepped out of line I’d be – You fucking what? Wag was far more of a mellow fellow: Come on, lads, screw the nut.

  I guess that’s why we made such a great team. Wag was the persuader, me the enforcer. Plus with Grant, we had a commander who truly got the ethos of our unit. He was the officer with the education and the gravitas, but it was the NCOs and patrol commanders who had the operational experience. Grant knew that. He got it and he was cool with it. The three of us together made a fine team, and that positive attitude was cascading down to the men on the guns.