Operation Mayhem

by Steve Heaney MC

  Ibrahim’s army were chopping away at vegetation, sharpening punji sticks and driving them into the ground well into the hours of darkness. Eventually, the patrol commanders had to ask the I-man to call off his work gangs, because the lads couldn’t hear properly if the rebels were out there massing to attack.

  By now Dolly’s trenches were done, and the rest were at least usable, so we were in a good place. Confidence was growing that we could mount a blistering defence of the village. We hadn’t asked for any trenches in the HQ position, for our fold in the ground was deep enough to lie flat in and avoid most of the fire, plus we were surrounded by thick vegetation and pretty much hidden from view.

  We passed that night – the fourth of our mission – hunkered down behind our strengthened defences and watching for an attack. Still none came. But the stress of being always on the alert, plus the lack of sleep, fresh food or being able to wash was starting to take its toll.

  The following morning the I-man had his people out as soon as it was light. The clearance out front was now so impressive you could see all the way across from Nathe’s position to the railway embankment, which lay a good three hundred metres to the south of us.

  As we admired the view, I noticed the flash of what had to be lightning to the north of us. A roar of thunder rolled across the village. Thick, boiling clouds piled up on the horizon, and when the storm broke it proved to be a monster. The rain swept in like a sheer wall of water, pounding across us in waves. I’d never seen anything like it. It was so dense I couldn’t see more than ten feet in any direction, and even Ibrahim’s army had ceased work under the onslaught.

  We sat there in the HQ ATAP almost feeling glad of the soaking. The rain was warm, and it was like being under the world’s biggest power shower. I could feel it washing the shit out of my combats, and scouring some of the worst of the grime off my exposed skin. At the same time my SA80 was going rusty before my very eyes, and the 319 radio would see the rain as the perfect excuse to stop working. Thank God for the Thuraya satphone that The White Rabbit had given us.

  For the first time since we had got here the village was eerily deserted and silent, apart from the pounding of the rain. It poured off the main track in muddy orange torrents, and within minutes the village square was flooded. But the storm was over as quickly as it had begun: one hour after the first drops had started to fall it abruptly ended. We were left with the pitter-patter of drops falling from the leaves of the trees, as the sun burst out from behind the clouds and began to dry out the terrain.

  The villagers emerged, and the I-man got his army out putting the finishing touches to the punji fields. As the rainfall evaporated the humidity grew to unbearable levels. It felt as if we were in one massive sauna, and I couldn’t imagine what it was like for those slaving away cutting and driving in the punjis.

  Wag and I wandered down soggily to check on the patrols. We figured the battle trenches had to be flooded, and sure enough Dolly’s had two feet of water standing in the bottom. It was halfway up to the knees of the guys on stag – like Glastonbury Festival in the African jungle. We just had to hope that by tonight the sun would have dried the trenches out enough for them to be good to fight from.

  We headed for Nathe’s position. ‘All right, Nathe? How’s it going? Survived the storm?’

  ‘Wet.’ He pointed to something on the ground nearby. ‘You seen the fucking size of them?’

  I looked where he was indicating, and to his right was the trunk of a massive forest giant, complete with buttress roots around four feet high. All around the base of the tree were these big holes like burrows. Above the nearest two I could see these enormous beasts glued to the tree bark, with their glistening heads poking out and antennae waving spookily.

  I stared at them. ‘What – the fuck – are they?’

  Nathe shrugged. ‘I dunno. Snails?’

  ‘Well, you tell us,’ said Wag. ‘You’re the fucking farmer.’

  ‘Snails,’ Nathe repeated. He pointed at a neighbouring tree. ‘Yeah, and they’re over there look and all.’

  These things were like no snails I had ever seen. Their shells were dark brown, shiny and conical, spiralling up to a point at the back, and each was the size of a baby’s head. We stood there for a good couple of minutes or more, wondering what planet we had landed upon.

  Nathe voiced what had to be the obvious question to him. ‘Reckon you can eat ’em?’

  Wag glanced at him. ‘Yeah,you probably could.’

  I snorted with mirth. ‘Ben would give you a run for your money, though, mate.’

  My chocolate Labrador was infamous for eating everything and anything. He’d once broken into the Pathfinders’ stores and got his teeth into the exercise mats we used to do our fitness. This wasn’t just having a good chew: he’d devoured his third mat by the time someone managed to stop him. No doubt about it, Ben would have given Nathe a bit of competition on the scoffing-giant-African-beasts front.

  The snails – if snails they were – must have been drawn out by the rain. All around us they were munching happily on vegetation and leaves, and they were clearly oblivious to Nathe’s culinary intentions.

  We got back to the HQ ATAP to find Tricky entertaining the I-man. He’d learned not to give Ibrahim anything that wasn’t water-soluble. Each twenty-four-hour ration pack contained three sealed metallic bags – one with a breakfast like sausage and beans, the others containing main meals like meatballs and pasta, Lancashire hotpot, or beef stew and dumplings. In addition there was a tub of cheese spread, a small bar of chocolate, chewing gum, assorted drinks packs (tea, coffee, hot chocolate) and biscuits.

  Sensibly, Tricky had opted to try Ibrahim on the Garibaldi-type fruit biscuits – ones that didn’t require washing down with a litre of water. Just as soon as he spotted Wag and me the I-man jumped to his feet, cramming down the remainder of his Garibaldis.

  ‘Come, come – come see! Finish! Finish!’

  Tricky being the signaller, he was glued to the radio 24/7, so Wag, Grant and me followed the I-man down to the punji fields. Each contained around one hundred stakes honed to a dagger-like point.

  The I-man waved his machete in the direction of the nearest punji field. ‘You like? You like? Good?’

  Under Ibrahim’s instructions the villagers had done pretty much exactly as we’d asked.

  Wag nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yeah, fucking love it.’ He bent low so he could get a good look across, checking for any potential routes through. ‘But that one there – move it there, okay? And put another there, to even out the spread a little. Okay?’

  ‘Okay, I do.’

  ‘Then it’ll be perfect, Ibrahim. Perfect.’

  ‘I do! I Do!’

  ‘Tell you what,’ I observed to Wag, ‘I wouldn’t like to have to cut through that under fire.’

  Wag smiled, evilly. ‘Too right, mate.’

  Ibrahim ordered us to follow him, as he set off towards the southern punji field. He was so proud of his work that he more or less force-marched us down there.

  ‘Woah, Ibrahim, slow down a little, pal,’ Wag remarked, as he struggled with his stumpy legs to keep up.

  ‘No, no – come, come! You see!’

  Punji field number two was pretty much a repeat of field number one. A bit of tweaking here and there, and Wag declared it to be a top job.

  Ibrahim beamed. ‘Is good, yes?’

  ‘Ibrahim, mate, it’s class,’ Wag confirmed. ‘Listen, we’re going to speak to the village chief for you. Maybe for you a very big house now, very big house.’

  Ibrahim’s smile grew even broader. It was about to split his face in two. With that he tottered off into the tree line and was gone, leaving us in the midst of the punjis.

  We made our way back via Nathe’s position, pausing to check on their battle trenches. The blokes had topped them off with camouflage, spreading moss, dry leaves and other vegetation around the lip, rendering them practically invisible. You had to be standing right on top of
one before you realised it was there.

  To the rear of the trenches Nathe was hunched over a big black cooking pot. It was simply massive and it dwarfed the tiny, fold-up hexy stove that was heating whatever it contained. Nathe stirred away, like a wizard at his cauldron. Crouched next to him was one of his trench-digging gang. The boy had a snail gripped between his knees, and was levering out the flesh with a sharpened stick.

  ‘All right?’ Nathe grunted.

  He was 100 per cent focused on the task in hand. The pot was bubbling away, and I could see the individual snails turning over and over as it boiled.

  Nathe glanced at the boy and nodded to the pot. ‘Go on, then, get another in.’

  Beside me Grant’s chin was practically on the floor. ‘Nathe. What. The fuck. Is that?’

  ‘Dinner,’ Nathe replied, matter-of-factly. ‘Mate, food is fuel. You don’t eat, you die.’

  Grant gave a snort of revulsion. ‘Well, I won’t be fucking eating with you, that’s for sure.’

  We were six days in now, and after that many days on British Army ration packs you did get a bit desperate for some ‘fresh’.

  Each day we’d had the village kids come and sit with us, throwing around a few words of English as we doled out the goodies. The relationship between them and us was becoming one of real camaraderie, and Nathe had clearly built up a friendship that was closer than most. The kid from Nathe’s trench-digging crew seemed oblivious to Grant’s obvious revulsion. He was totally focused on hooking out the next snail and adding it to whatever concoction Nathe was brewing up here.

  ‘Tell you what,’ I remarked to Grant and Wag, as we moved onwards. ‘Let’s give it twenty-four hours, and if Nathe’s still alive we’ll try some of the stew.’

  Wag chortled. ‘Aye, sounds good to me.’

  Grant made a T-sign with his hands. ‘Time out, lads. You’re on your own. I’m strictly a boil-in-the-bag man.’

  I figured Nathe’s snail stew was going to prove the real man test here in Lungi Lol. Nathe wasn’t the real wilderness man amongst us – he was just the hungriest. H was the hunter and survivalist par excellence. For sure, H would probably eat the snails raw, but only if he’d caught ’em with his bare hands. H’s mantra was – if it moves, kill it. Once it was dead he could rely on Nathe to eat it, and that’s why Nathe and H were such good mates.

  Dolly and Ginge would force themselves to eat Nathe’s snail hotpot, but only because of peer pressure. As for Taff, all we had to do was tell him they were from the Rhondda Valley. ‘They’re Welsh snails, mate.’ Taff would be right into them. ‘Oh, fuck-aye, bud, they’ll be lovely, then.’

  But there was also a serious side to Nathe’s culinary experiments. Self-reliance is the mantra of the Pathfinders. There is no other way. Practically all of our kit was from non-British Army sources. The Army didn’t provide a usable machete, so each of us had picked one up from a civvie store. We’d put together our own rifle-cleaning kits – crucial when using a temperamental piece of crap like the SA80. Our kits were waterproof, and had triple the capacity of cloth and gun oil – enough to last a long mission isolated in the jungle.

  Likewise, there were no guarantees when our next resupply of rations would be flown in to Lungi Lol. We were running low already, and learning what local flora and fauna were good to eat was a sensible move – even more so if we were forced to go on the run. At that point we’d be living off the land, and Nathe’s snail goulash might be all we could rustle up between us – boil-in-the-bag Grant included.

  We’d spent just under a week in Lungi Lol by now, yet oddly it felt as if we’d been here forever. This mission was turning into one of those incredible, once-in-a-lifetime experiences – a view into a world and a way of life so different from our own as to be almost unrecognisable. As we worked with the villagers on Operation Alamo, and scavenged the local flora and fauna to supplement our rations, the mission was proving utterly unforgettable.

  But nothing was to prove as unforgettable as the dark murder and mayhem that was coming.

  12

  In recognition of how we were now pulling together as one, in a united village defence force – Pathfinders, Mojo and his men, plus Ibrahim’s army – I figured I’d get the blokes to set aside all the chocolate, sweets, biscuits and other goodies they could spare from the ration packs. Presented to the villagers, it would be our way of saying a heartfelt ‘thank you’.

  I called the patrol commanders in. ‘Listen, lads, you need to get your blokes to surrender any scoff – anything you don’t need – and bring it back to me. After what the villagers have done for us we need to repay the favour; so any goodies, hand ’em in.’

  Nathe, Dolly, Ginge and Taff handed over stacks of biscuits, drink kits, boiled sweets and chocolate. I threw it all into a big box – one that had originally held ten of the twenty-four-hour ration packs. When I was done it was brimful with goodies, and Wag and me carried it over to the Kingdom of Mojo.

  I showed him the box. ‘Look, we want to give this out to the villagers, but we don’t want to upset the chief. So what’s the protocol? How do we best go about it?’

  Mojo studied the box for a few seconds. ‘Well, you must give it to the chief, and let him be seen to give it out.’

  We headed over to the chief’s place to do so. Wag and me placed the gift box reverentially at the foot of the wooden steps, as Mojo launched into one of his speeches, pointing at the box and miming eating and drinking. There was a bit of general chat, plus smiles all around, before Mojo turned to us.

  ‘The chief, he says – thank you very much; this is very kind. This will be very good for him.’

  ‘Please tell him thanks for all the work,’ I said. ‘Plus a special thank you for Ibrahim. They’ve done a fantastic job, all of them. The village is strong now, with good defences.’

  Mojo translated what I’d said.

  ‘Please also tell the chief this,’ I added. ‘We need to know if people come to the village and tell him anything about the rebels. Or if he sees people in the village he does not recognise – young men who may be rebels – then he must also tell us.’

  Mojo related all of that, then translated the chief’s response. ‘Yes, he will tell you. They are watching very closely and they will see and warn about any rebels.’

  We left the box lying at the foot of the stairs, suspecting that we’d pulled off some great hearts and minds work here. Sure enough, over the course of the next few hours we spotted villagers wandering around with stuff from the goody box, proving that the chief had been true to his word. And we passed our fifth night in Lungi Lol feeling a tad more secure behind our seriously beefed-up defences.

  It was mid-morning the following day when the I-man rocked up at our position. He pointed at the ground where we’d been sleeping and started gabbling away.

  ‘This here, you?’ He made a load of snoring noises. ‘You that here?’ He made some digging and cutting motions, and repeated the snore noises again.

  None of us had a clue what he was on about, but it had been all good so far with the I-man, so we figured we’d go with it.

  ‘Yeah, Ibrahim, we kind of snore there, mate,’ Wag confirmed, ‘so crack on.’

  With that Ibrahim was gone. He was back a few minutes later carrying an armful of cut branches. Having dumped them on the floor where he’d made the snore noises, he disappeared once more.

  ‘What’s he up to now?’ I asked Wag. ‘What d’you reckon they’re for?’

  Wag shook his head. ‘No idea, mate, not a Scooby Doo.’

  When Ibrahim returned he had a length of rattan – a strong jungle vine – coiled around his shoulder, like a cowboy with a lasso. He’d obviously been to different parts of the jungle cutting the bits and pieces for whatever he had in mind. Question was, what exactly was he building for us now? A garden bench? A gazebo? Toilet maybe? I hoped not, not with Wag’s bowel movements being such as they were.

  A few days back we’d asked Mojo the obvious – where did he
and his guys go to answer the call of nature? Mojo had explained to us where the village shit-pit was situated, which appropriately enough was as near to Wales as you could get in Sierra Leone. It was just to the rear of Taff’s battle trenches, on the edge of the trees that fringed the village.

  ‘Go down to the end of the side track and turn right,’ Mojo had explained. ‘You will know where it is when you get near enough.’

  He was damn right.

  You could smell it from a good fifty metres away. It consisted of a hole in the ground four feet square and about fifteen feet deep, complete with a complimentary swarm of botflies – and it was filling up quickly. All around were these mounds of earth where other latrines had been dug, then filled in and topped over. This was truly shit city.

  The only way to relieve yourself was to grab hold of a post planted for the purpose, and hang your ass out over the stinking hole. The first thing Wag and I did – we’d gone there buddy-buddy fashion, of course – was to test the pole for strength and stability. Wag promptly nicknamed the post ‘the lean-tree’. British ration packs seem designed to make you constipated, which meant an age spent hanging onto the lean-tree. The only way to cut time at the pit was to get some fresh down you – hence the draw of Nathan’s snail curries.

  ‘How the hell d’you keep one hand on your weapon, one hand on the lean-tree, and wipe your ass at the same time?’ Wag demanded.

  It was a good question. I couldn’t think of an answer. I was too busy trying not to laugh at the expression on Wag’s face as he tried to go.

  Ibrahim had dumped his building materials to the right-front of the crater-like depression that made up our HQ. No doubt about it, if Ibrahim was building us our own, private latrine here, it was going to be far too close for comfort.