No Fear

by Steve Devereux

  Hercs are designed to land on makeshift airstrips anywhere in the world and because I was an ex-member of the SAS Air Troop, Baz and his crew were willing to land on my say so. That was good news and very trusting of him. How was he to know that I wasn't bluffing about being ex-SAS? I could have been any old Walter Mitty. Having said that, though, I did give him the strip landing dimensions of a C130 for a quick turnaround, straight off the top of my head when he asked for it, and there weren't too many people who could do that.

  I had no idea of the ground up in the north, as I had not seen a map of it, apart from an old military one I'd acquired via a mate from the map store back in Hereford. That, however, was dated 1955. So I was still waiting for Dik to come up with a half-decent one. He'd assured me they did exist, but it would take a bit of time to track one down.

  Baz the pilot knew the area of Berbera, a port on the east of Somaliland, quite well. He told me that there was an old Russian-built runway there, and once they'd bugged out of the country, the Americans came in and extended it for their Shuttle programme. It was one of a few such runways anywhere in the world, ready for use in the event of an emergency.

  Altogether, through a series of very fortunate incidents, some things had just fallen into place. I was very pleased that now the team equipment was going to be flown in. What if the loadie hadn't been an ex-Royal Marine and a Falklands veteran? And what if the pilot hadn't once flown the SAS on an exchange trip to Canada back in the 1980s? Then I might have been sailing up to Somaliland in a vessel like something out of the movie The African Queen .

  I'd arranged with Baz to call him up once I was in country ready and had secured a suitable landing strip, should the Shuttle runway prove to be covered in bomb craters. I'd also asked Dik to oversee the safe passage of the equipment from his warehouse to the aircraft, and had given Ted a complete equipment manifest of the weight and size of each piece of kit, so he could tick it all off as it was loaded. In addition, we worked out a few secure code words and call-signs for the flight, just in case a few bandits happened to be listening to our voice traffic.

  The little Red Cross Cessna 172 circled the shanty town of Hargeisa, shuddering violently as it banked one more time. Both I (with my personal kit) and a relief doctor (with his) held on for dear life. I wasn't sure what the pilot was up to. It couldn't have been to avoid another aircraft because we were the first and last flight of the day, the only one the locals allowed to land, so the pilot had said in his pre-flight brief. Nor was it a manoeuvre to avoid any heat-seeking missiles because they would have hit us before we saw them, given the speed we were flying. I never did understand pilots. Maybe he just had a sick sense of humour. Africa does this to pilots. It seems to me that as soon as they're away from the rules of the CAA and normality, they take on a more blase Biggies-like attitude to flying.

  At about 200 feet we started to level out. Now for the first time I could see what appalling devastation lay beneath me, a massive bombsite, the like of which I had never seen before. The only way to describe it was like looking at those old Pathé News films of Blitzed London. Then I saw a series of runways with jet fighters parked up, Russian-built MIGs, and masses of people running to meet us.

  We landed and the pilot taxied up as near to the end of the runway as he dared. We were to be met by a couple of the Red Cross doctors who had recently arrived to assist mine victims. Their relief programme had only been going for a few weeks, and it was because of reports they'd sent back to Europe about the horrendous injuries being inflicted on the people of Somaliland, in particular the town of Hargeisa, that the powers that be decided that mine-clearance experts should be brought in ASAP.

  So there I was, about to embark on new ground as an aid/relief worker. It would be the first and the last time I would ever land in this part of Africa without a gun. Of course, I was very apprehensive about this, and now, looking at the vast crowd of locals gathering around the little aircraft, I was beginning to feel slightly naked without a weapon to wrap my hand around. It may sound melodramatic, but I've had a great deal of experience — in Northern Ireland and the Middle East for example — of how crowds could turn on an outsider like myself, even though they knew the outsider was there to help them. I had experienced this more than a few times.

  There was no doubt that this was a war zone; the presence of the Mig fighters told me more about the situation than any intelligence reports I had in Djibouti. I adopted a more noncombatant air to suit the reality of the situation and as the Cessna slowly taxied towards the crowd I put my relief worker's head on and kidded myself that I didn't need a gun to protect me. I tried to imagine how the doctors were feeling. They didn't seem overly concerned, in fact, they appeared well relaxed, and if aware of the possible dangers, they didn't show it. I feigned a similar attitude, but I couldn't help registering all the possible escape routes from any dangerous scenario that might arise as soon as I disembarked from the aircraft.

  The heat struck me, as it always did in this part of the world. It was like sticking your head in an oven for a brief second before I donned my baseball cap and what looked like a pair of designer sunglasses. In fact, these weren't the real McCoy, they only cost me £10, but if I had to give them away to appease some local I could always pass them off as the real thing. I was carrying four extra pairs just for that purpose.

  We had stopped just short of the remains of the only serviceable structure left standing. It was the main terminal building, and the words 'Hargeisa International Airport' were clearly visible complete with bullet and rocket holes.

  I was greeted by the two doctors, then by a local who turned out to be the Customs officer. He asked me for my passport and enquired if I wanted it stamped. This was a first for me, usually you don't get the option.

  'Yes please,' I said. I thought it would be a nice talking-point when I got back to the UK. Who else did I know with their passport stamped 'Somaliland'? The Customs ceremony now taking place around the Cessna was equally strange. Two uniformed guards armed with AK47s gave a cursory glance — and a prod with their rifles — over our luggage and then leant up against the side of the aircraft, totally in a world of their own. They looked drunk. Curiously, they were both sporting a large callus-like growth on one cheek, as though they were sucking a giant gobstopper. I quickly turned away, trying not to stare for fear of causing offence. For all I knew it could well be some sort of cancer local to Somaliland; certainly I hadn't seen anything else like it in my travels. I felt sad for them. Had their deformity brought them together? I was curious to find out.

  Later, I was told that none of the Western aid workers had an entry stamp in their passport. This was because they would frequently find themselves working in one part of Africa one day and the next being flown to another. And, like the world over, some countries will not let you in because your passport's been stamped by their warring neighbour. The north of Somalia, Somaliland, had no wish to be part of Somalia in the south and the south obviously knew this; after all, this was what the recent war had all been about. Getting into either country could be a right pain in the arse if you had the other's stamp in your passport.

  As I was ushered to an open-back Land Rover (the usual mode of transport for this part of the world), I made out the fighters I had seen from the air, plus the masses of small but deadly anti-personnel mines, which were all over the place. It was as if someone had come along with a huge boxful and thrown them everywhere. The airport was covered in them, like confetti at a wedding. They looked like the screw-in tops of vacuum flasks and I knew exactly what they were — Pakistani-made jobs with nine grams of PE (Plastic Explosives) inside, activated by only a few kilograms of pressure. Nine grams of PE is enough to kill, but this nasty strain of mine was designed only to maim whoever stood on it, ripping at the legs and causing untold injuries to the rest of the body. As I've already noted, the design of anti-personnel mines is very clever, the appalling intention being to demoralise the rest of the troops or civilian population
that witness the effects on their fellow men.

  Apparently they weren't placed there by the local militia to keep the locals from ripping bits off the Migs; both the Migs and the mines had stayed there since the the end of hostilities. This is what happened, I was told. One day, shortly before the end of hostilities, pilots loyal to the south took off from Hargeisa, dropped their explosive ordnance on the very town that had hosted them — completely flattening it and its inhabitants — landed back on the airfield, then ran off into the bush and made their way down south. It was thought to be the first air strike in history where pilots from an airforce base-cum-civilian airport had taken off from it, dropped their bombs on the adjacent town and then landed on the same runway. This story came from a local aid worker as we sped off towards my temporary accommodation. I was really glad to learn it so soon after my arrival, it was a nice bit of recent history to get my teeth into and really cheered me up!

  I was to see a lot more of this guy, Mohammed, who was to be my driver and my Mr Fix It. Although he stood well over six feet, there wasn't much of him to look at. He was very black and very skinny with short-cropped hair. His old army uniform was just hanging off his thin shoulders, and a month in a dentist's chair wouldn't have gone amiss. He was born in Hargeisa and vehemently despised the people from the south, especially those pilots. He was employed by aid organisations, one of the lucky people in this country with a job; that was because he spoke very good English. The job gave him a lot of street cred with the townsfolk, which in turn would make my job slightly easier in procuring kit that I had budgeted to buy in the country — essentially, petrol and paraffin.

  My journey took only 20 minutes. Mohammed was a constant talker, pointing out all the sights of the war as we went, the vehicle bouncing as it hit every bump in the track.

  'Hey, sir! Look over there, you see, big killings happened there recently, and, see that there, many mines, many mines. You need to clear them soon , sir. Much danger for the children,' he would say.

  Although I was worried for my own safety, hanging on for dear life so as not to get thrown out of the vehicle and thinking about Mohammed driving over the odd mine, I made a point of looking interested in what he was saying. As I was, of course. I needed to get as much local intelligence on the town as I could and as fast as I could.

  As far as I could see, there were hardly any buildings left standing and certainly none over two storeys high. All had some bomb or blast damage. They looked dangerous and uninhabitable, but were all lived in, while those who were not 'lucky' enough to have bricks and mortar made do with wooden and cardboard shelters on the sides of the road. London's 'cardboard city' had nothing on this place.

  The devastation was almost incomprehensible, like nothing I'd ever seen before. It was like travelling through a bombsite and a scrapyard at the same time. There were vehicle wrecks everywhere and hordes of people scouring around trying to survive. A lot of these people had lost an arm or a leg or both, due to many thousands of mines. Because the town was bombed flat, no luxuries were available. TV stations, newspapers and local radio did not exist. Also, all of its services — water, electricity and so on — had been knocked out, so there was the added hazard of open sewers running all over the place.

  The stench from these open sewers mixed with a hundred fires the locals used to cook on would cut into my nostrils every now and again, causing me to retch and cough up a gobful of bile. As we slowed down or sometimes stopped to avoid hitting pedestrians, with Mohammed constantly on the horn, shouting and screaming at people to get out of the way, I really got the feeling I wasn't going to make my final destination. Indeed, I was beginning to have thoughts on what might be engraved on my tombstone: 'Here lies a man who was killed in a road-traffic accident whilst driving through the world's biggest minefield.' I pleaded with Mohammed to slow down and not crash. I didn't fancy spending one second in the hospital — if one existed — because if there was any disease to catch in the entire world, Hargeisa was the place to catch it.

  There was one other thing which Mohammed kept pointing out to me all along the journey, as a child might: from the main drag from the airport and into the town, there were hundreds of piles of boulders.

  'That's where the dead are buried,' he kept saying.

  So you can imagine, with all these people living off a minimum water supply, no electricity, and with raw sewage running in the streets past dead bodies covered by rocks, in heat sufficient to fry an egg on the roof of the Land Rover, the smell was a bit tangy, to say the least.

  My part place of residence for the next three weeks or so was the only building in Hargeisa with a new roof on it. (I had yet to source my main living accommodation. That would be dictated once I'd decided where I was to secure all the stores and equipment.) It was a single-storey structure surrounded by sturdy seven-foot-high metal security fence, newly constructed from scrap metal littering the town. There was enough space in the drive for three vehicles and, surprisingly, there was a small garden with yellow and purple flowers growing everywhere; a total contrast to what lay just a few feet the other side of the fence. A security guard-cum-gardener sat outside under a makeshift wooden hut.

  Here I was warmly greeted by the two doctors, given a brew and offered something to eat. I declined politely, since my guts had been giving me shit for the past few hours. Instead I opted for a couple of glasses of Dehydralite to get them on the go. Then I was given a quick tour, shown where I was to doss for the time being, and left on my own. The doctors had their hands full and they were keen to get their newly arrived medical stuff up and running, so they left me to my own devices.

  It took me a couple of minutes to tip the contents of my luggage out, to give it a bit of an airing, and then I went in search of Mohammed. I needed to make comms with Dik to see if there was any news of when Alistair was flying in, so I needed Mohammed to give me a quick lesson on the radio. There was very little I could do before he arrived, but the least I could do was familiarise myself with the area. So I asked Mohammed if he wouldn't mind taking me for a tour of the outside world.

  'Mr Sir, I will be much delighted to show you around, we have many great sights here in Hargeisa,' he said.

  'Thanks, but do me one little favour, will you, and try and keep to the speed limit? I mean, let's go slowly this time.'

  'As you wish, Mr Sir, but if I drive fast, then any mines which go off will not hurt us.'

  'I don't think that's strictly true. Who told you that?'

  'It is true. I have seen it with my own eyes. It has happened to me only last month when I was driving over the tracks very fast — I ran over a little mine and all it did was go "pop" and break my back tyre.'

  'Yeah, alright.' I nodded. I wasn't about to argue with him; he might even have been right. If it was an anti-personnel mine he had set off, then maybe; I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

  I grabbed my small bergen, put a camera, some sweets in it and filled my canteen from a large water filter in the kitchen.

  'Come on Mohammed, let's go. And do me a favour; stop calling me Sir. It makes me feel uneasy. Call me Steve, will ya?'

  'No problems, Mr Sir, Mr Steve.'

  For the next three hours he drove me around the vast, hill-less plains which surrounded the town. Everywhere we went the locals would wave and cheer, just as they'd done in Mozambique when we liberated Gurué. However, these people were fundamentally different from those in Mozambique. Yes, their plight was just the same, both having suffered the consequences of a bloody civil war, but the Somalians have a strain of Arab in them. By that I mean that their looks are very different from that of the Africans in the south of this vast continent. Their facial features are less pronounced and most have lighter skin because of their hereditary links with countries in the Middle East, such as Yemen, Oman and Saudi Arabia.

  The scars of war were inescapable. Although we drove at a madman's speed, I still had time to take in many of the 'sights'. Along all the dusty tracks were burnt-out wr
ecks of old Russian-built war stocks. There were numerous T55 and T62 battle tanks, each graphically displaying war scars; wrecks of tracked AFVs (Armoured Fighting Vehicles) mainly BMPs; and lots more of the armoured troop-carrying versions of the wheeled BTR. There were as many military vehicles just in and around Hargeisa as I'd seen during my whole time in Mozambique.

  What really caught my eye was not all these, but another piece of kit which RAF pilots used to call one of their worst nightmares if ever they had to fly over one — the notorious ZSU 234s. These tracked vehicles were about the size of a medium battle tank but without the long barrel sticking out of the front; instead they had four 23mm machine-guns to spit fire at enemy aircraft at a rapid rate of knots. They've always been thought of in the West as an awesome piece of kit, and here I was, seeing them for the first time in all their glory. I'm not some kind of anorak when it comes to military equipment, but like most British soldiers, I've spent many hours in the classroom studying Russian armoured fighting vehicles and aircraft, never expecting to come face to face with any. So it was quite an experience to see these.

  We passed several remains of downed combat aircraft — two Migs and one other burnt beyond recognition — and two troop-carrying helicopters, a Hook and a Hip, both damaged well beyond repair. We couldn't get near them because they were well off the roads. There was also another vehicle that I couldn't really get a good look at, but nonetheless made me turn my head. To most people it must have looked very much like an old burnt-out flatbed truck, but I noticed it was an eight-wheeler carrying some kind of crane gantry on the back. I concluded it was probably a vehicle which could, or did, carry a surface-to-air missile. If that was the case, then there was probably some serious high-explosive ordnance lying around. That was some serious shit if anyone came across one and accidentally let it off.