A Line in the Sand: The Gulf War of 1964 - Part 1 (Timeline 10/27/62)

by James Philip

  “Why pause in the north?” Willie Whitelaw asked, painfully aware that absolute clarity was essential.

  “To regroup, to re-supply mainly by foraging and looting the resources of cities as far north as Erbil and Mosul, and to capture forward air bases for the Red Air Force. Moreover, by investing the north the enemy will almost certainly provoke the Kurdish elements of the Iraqi Army to join battle.”

  “Is there no possibility of containing the invaders in the north of Iraq?”

  “In my opinion, no. None whatsoever. Shia Muslim elements of the Iraqi Army’s high command have attempted to mount a coup in Baghdad, presumably taking advantage of the fact that the mainly Sunni-led armoured forces normally based around the capital – for reasons best known to local commanders – decided to launch an incursion into Iranian territory opposite Basra. While it is likely some of those forces in the south may move on Baghdad in the coming weeks, there is no possibility in my opinion that either the Sunni or the Shia-led formations will fight together against the Russians, or go out of their way to assist the Kurds in the north. The best we can do is to leave the Iraqis to their own devices. If we were so unwise as to attempt to intervene, the warring factions would just turn on us, sir.”

  “That is why the Soviets will drive south to the Shatt-al-Arab down the flood plains of the Tigris and the Euphrates?”

  Michael Carver recognised that the politician had simply been quizzing him to confirm his own analysis of the situation.

  “Yes, sir. The enemy’s objective is not just to conquer Iraq and to seize Abadan Island and its refineries; it is to secure jumping off points for future adventures in the region and to gain access to warm water ports. The Soviets mean to transform the Persian Gulf into a Russian lake and to turn off the ‘oil tap’ to the West. At present, this latter is of critical importance to us because Abadan is our only ‘oil tap’, whereas, the other oil fields of the Gulf are currently of incidental significance to the United States. However, if and when the general world economy recovers from the recent war, as assuredly it will when the rebuilding begins in earnest, the availability, or non-availability of oil will become the critical thing. Whoever controls the oil will hold the rest of us to ransom. I say again, this is not just about Abadan and we would be making a bad mistake if we allowed ourselves to think otherwise.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “The balance of forces?” Prompted Sri Richard Hull. The Chief of the Defence Staff’s question was wholly rhetorical; today’s ‘briefing’ was to ensure that his political masters understood precisely how naked the Emperor was and did not get carried away with ‘any damned fool ideas’.

  “The garrison at Abadan has approximately three thousand effectives, of whom five hundred are from the 1st Australian Brigade. The majority of our people on the ground are lines of communications men. That said, two batteries of Bloodhound long-range surface-to-air missiles are now operational and we have established good radar and command and control systems around the Island. Armour; we have twenty-one Centurions and six Conqueror’s. The latter aren’t as nimble as the Centurions but they are very hard nuts to crack. No. 19 Squadron based at Abadan has a dozen operational Hawker Hunter fighters; and there are also a small number of transport aircraft on the Island. Plans are afoot to base several more Canberra medium bombers and reconnaissance aircraft at Abadan. War stores are being built up on an ad hoc basis. Elsewhere, we are in the process of evacuating our contingent in Basra. Other than at Aden where we have the equivalent of four mechanised infantry battalions, our ground and air forces in the region are spread around in penny packets. The First Sea Lord will be able to speak to the Royal Navy presence in the area with immensely more authority that I, but essentially we are only talking about a couple of destroyers and various support vessels actually available for operations in the Persian Gulf at any one time.”

  Admiral Sir Varyl Begg nodded brusquely.

  “In total,” Carver continued. “We have something like sixty front line warplanes and approximately thirteen thousand service personnel in the region. I understand that the Australian government has offered to send significant reinforcements to the theatre. Obviously, we can fly out infantry and light equipment by air from the United Kingdom and Cyprus in fairly short order, albeit not in large numbers. Likewise, the RAF can reinforce existing units, always assuming airfields and such like are made available. One other thing; when the United States unilaterally pulled out of Saudi Arabia is it my understanding that they left three substantial ‘war stores’ depots in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The war stores left behind included a large number of armoured vehicles, including M-48 tanks and all manner of munitions. Given that the Suez Canal is blocked and that heavy equipment will take at least two months to arrive in theatre from the United Kingdom – a little less from Australasian ports - the existence of those American depots should not be overlooked in any future plans.”

  “If we can’t expect any help from the Iraqis,” William Whitelaw posed, “who can we rely on, General Carver?”

  “Several of the local Iranian commanders welcomed our co-operation in repelling the Iraqi armour that crossed the Arvand River at Basra.” He shrugged. “I should imagine the Saudis are getting nervous at the moment as they look towards Philadelphia. I suspect both Syria and Jordan, for different reasons will attempt to observe states of ‘armed neutrality’ and hope the Red Army leaves them alone. The other military powers in the region are Israel and Egypt. Neither are geographically ‘local’ to the likely main areas of fighting, and Israel’s active involvement in any way, shape or form would alienate all the Arab countries in the region and probably start new wars. As for Egypt, well, that’s the one Arab country with a large, middlingly well organised, if not well led, army and air force. Equipped largely with 1950s Soviet weaponry, admittedly, but still militarily potent and more to the point it has a vested interest in flexing its muscles. However, as for the mechanics of in any way harnessing its military clout, that’s not a question for me. The huge imponderable is what the Americans plan to do.”

  Willie Whitelaw nodded, lost in his thoughts.

  “What indeed?” He mused softly. He looked up. “Item three. What are the options available to us, General Carver?”

  The soldier resisted the temptation to unfurl his maps.

  “Before I deal with that, sir,” he apologised, “I think it would be helpful if I outlined, explicitly, what I think is likely to happen in the next few weeks.”

  “As you wish, General.”

  “Even were we to bomb the enemy in the mountains before he decamps from the Zagros Mountains, I don’t think we can stop the Soviets occupying Northern Iraq. Once the Red Army is encamped in the north and has secured its supply lines, established forward air bases and advanced supply dumps, it will move south defeating any Iraqi Army formations it encounters. Most organised resistance will evaporate after the first battles; thereafter the Red Army’s main enemy will be time and the hostile ground over which it is moving. By the time the invaders reach Basra they will have lost at least half their armour, almost exclusively to mechanical breakdowns and failures. At the stage where the Soviets are in a position to assault Abadan the invading armies will be stretched out over six or seven hundred miles all the way back into the mountains of Azerbaijan. The conquerors of Basra will be exhausted, short of fuel, ammunition, possibly hungry and much of the countryside and many of the cities in their direct line of advance will be in ruins. The Red Air Force will be in much the same state. Tanks and modern aircraft, and any kind of wheeled vehicle ‘hates’ the terrain and the climate of a place like Iraq. By the time the Red Army reaches Abadan it will have been fighting in daytime temperatures of over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, at night the temperature can plummet to below zero, dust and grit and stones will have got into every piece of weaponry and machinery, tank tracks will be breaking and dropping off on every T-54, T-58 and T-62 every few miles, engines will overheat, seize up after an hour
’s running in the daytime heat, and there will have been no clean, potable water for the crews to drink for days or weeks. The average Russian soldier will be dirty, lousy, thirsty and sick, dysentery will be rife in the ranks and the farther south the army moves the less friendly the natives will become. At this time of year the marshes for a hundred miles above Basra and all the way below it to the Persian Gulf are flooded, inundated by the snow melt coming down the Tigris and the Euphrates, no vehicle can go an inch of the road without bogging down and the Marsh Arabs have been resisting invaders for a thousand years. Tank commanders forced to stick their heads out of turrets to stop being roasted alive in the noon day heat will be picked off by snipers using rifles stolen from the corpses of dead British or Turkish soldiers killed in the Great War, stores will constantly be being pilfered. Whereas in northern Iran some Azeris would have viewed the invaders as liberators; in central and southern Iraq the Russians are just the latest unwelcome interlopers to be preyed upon, robbed and confounded.”

  Carver could tell his audience was growing impatient.

  Reality was complicated and he was not about to apologise about it.

  “Be this as it may,” he said, wrapping up his introduction. “It is obvious to me that there is no way that we can stop whatever remains of the great Soviet invasion force which entered Iran approximately a fortnight ago reaching Basra, and,” he hesitated, “taking Abadan by force majeure.”

  Chapter 16

  Thursday 16th April 1964

  The White House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  Peter Christopher sat in a chair behind the Prime Minister’s right shoulder, one of countless advisors and middle-ranking military officers ringing the giant conference table. President Kennedy sat across the gleaming surface of the table, smiling fixedly at Margaret Thatcher.

  The United Kingdom delegation; the Prime Minister, Sir Thomas Harding-Grayson, the Foreign Secretary, Iain Macleod, the UAUK’s Minister of Information, and Lord Franks, the British Ambassador and three aides (Peter included) was hugely outnumbered by the President’s entourage comprising key members of the Administration, the High Command the US Armed Forces, and a host of immaculately suited and uniformed men, and several women.

  “I am sorry, Jack,” Margaret Thatcher declaimed, not bothering to cloak her growing exasperation. “Sending one aircraft carrier to the Indian Ocean at some time later this month or early in May does not in any way amount to meaningfully discharging your obligations under the US-UK Mutual Defence Agreement!”

  Jack Kennedy deflected this barb with what he probably honestly believed was hard-nosed irresistible charm.

  “Margaret,” he explained patiently, “you know how personally committed I am to that treaty. Unfortunately, the fact is that the House of Representatives has thrown it out. Besides, that Treaty does not, and was never intended to cover conflicts falling outside the old NATO sphere...”

  “I recollect that a little over two months ago I was the one who talked you out of a retaliatory nuclear strike against the criminals suspected of sinking the USS Long Beach, crippling the USS Enterprise, attacking Cairo and blocking the Suez Canal at Ismailia. The Mediterranean and the Middle East were certainly inside the relevant sphere of influence at that time!”

  Captain Sir Peter Christopher, VC, flinched. He honestly did not believe he had just heard a British Prime Minister talk to the President of the United States of America like he was a naughty school boy she had just discovered illicitly smoking a cigarette behind the bike shed!

  He was even more astonished when it transpired that the Angry Widow had not so much said what she meant to say, but had only just begun to explain the error of his ways to her host.

  “Margaret, I...”

  “You have said your piece, Jack,” Margaret Thatcher retorted, her tone increasingly hectoring. “It is abundantly clear that you do not understand what is at stake here.”

  Peter Christopher shut his eyes in horror because he knew what was coming next. He had conned Talavera straight down the barrels of the guns of a World War I battlecruiser and a big Soviet cruiser and he had only deliberately shut his eyes once. That had been when he had seen – yes, he had actually seen – a salvo of six hundred and sixty pound rounds fired from the eleven-inch guns of the battlecruiser Yavuz hit the water several hundred yards directly ahead of Talavera; and ricochet off the iron grey Mediterranean seemingly directly at his head. One of those shells had passed only feet above the bridge, torn off the top of the gun director tower and scythed down the destroyer’s towering lattice foremast as if it was a red hot broadsword through butter. That had been the shell which had probably killed his best friend, Miles Weiss...

  “You have given me a lecture about how my government should behave towards the Irish Republic. You have assured me that in the event of the loss of Abadan Island and its refineries that the United States would in some way guarantee oil supplies to the United Kingdom. You have assured me that the Sixth Fleet is merely the precursor to a permanent American land, sea and air presence in the whole of the Mediterranean. You have assured me that steps would be undertaken to undo the damage done by predatory American conglomerates to British interests and companies in Africa, South America and the Far East in the immediate aftermath of the Cuban Missiles War. You have promised me that America plans to be, once again, at some point in the future as yet unspecified, the quote ‘Policeman of the World’. You have also informed me that you view the question of the appointment of an American commander-in-chief of ‘all allied forces in Europe’ as a high priority for your Administration. Last but by no means least you have indicated to me that there is no way that you can sell putting American GIs’ boots on the ground in the Middle East to defend ‘the last jewel in Britain’s former Imperial crown’, namely Abadan.”

  President Kennedy thought, or rather, he hoped, that she had finished.

  Peter Christopher knew that his chief had hardly begun.

  The President opened his mouth to speak...

  “I think we need to understand each other a little better,” Margaret Thatcher declared stridently. Beside her Iain Macleod looked like he wanted to bury his head in his hands. Lord Franks’s face was a rictus mask. Extraordinarily, the Foreign Secretary seemed to be on the verge of dozing off, completely indifferent to what was going on around him. Across the table several of the American participants were staring at the British Prime Minister with their mouths agape in disbelief.

  “The United Kingdom’s policy towards the Irish Republic is none of your damned business, Jack. While Mr Lemass’s government continues to tolerate the transhipment of American weapons to Ulster and to the mainland of the United Kingdom to facilitate indiscriminate murder and mayhem, his government and his people will be subject to appropriate sanctions. For goodness sake,” she exclaimed angrily, “when Castro threatened you,” she snarled, “you obliterated the whole of Cuba!”

  Iain Macleod groaned.

  “Oh, no...”

  Margaret Thatcher paused, scowling at the horrified expressions of her listeners across the other side of the table.

  Peter Christopher thought that was the end of the conference.

  Hopefully, he would get to see Marija one more time before the bombs started falling. It was not fair; he had not laid eyes on her face to face until ten or eleven weeks ago. They had only been married on 7th March. Notwithstanding his selfish personal feelings it never occurred to him that his leader was in the wrong. She was only saying what any moderately informed man or woman in the street in Britain would say, were they to find themselves face to face with the American President who had deluged so much grief and misery on their heads eighteen months ago.

  “Oil supplies,” Margaret Thatcher said contemptuously. “Well, we all know how much our ally’s promises amounted to throughout much of last year, Jack. I also know that tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of my people died last year because of the failure of your Administration to make good on its promises
, no, its obligations to help a NATO ally in need.”

  She drew breath and launched the next stinging rebuke.

  “Yes, the Sixth Fleet is at Malta at this time. Had powerful elements of that fleet been at Malta instead of playing war games when it was supposed to be providing long-range radar cover for the archipelago, some three thousand Maltese civilians and many hundreds of brave British and Commonwealth servicemen would not have died when the Soviet invasion fleet appeared off the coast!” She huffed and puffed like a dragon getting her wind before spewing fresh fire and brimstone. “But for the courage and sacrifice of courageous young men like the officer seated behind me Malta would now be a part of the Soviet Union. No thanks to the Sixth Fleet!”

  Peter Christopher wanted to curl up and become invisible. His face burned impossibly hot, he grimaced feebly as every eye momentarily fell upon him seated faithfully at his mistress’s right shoulder.

  “Implicit in our discussions in Washington DC in January was an understanding that the jackals of Wall Street would be forced to recompense British and Commonwealth shareholders in concerns illegally appropriated by American companies,” Margaret Thatcher protested.

  Oh! No!

  She was actually wagging a finger at the President of the United States of America!

  “There has been no movement on this issue, Jack. This is hardly surprising because the Administration has taken absolutely no action on it since January.” She shook her head sadly. “As for rearming and becoming the ‘Policeman of the World’? Well, that’s a joke. Your proxies in Argentina have just invaded sovereign British territory. The Falkland Islands are not the Malvinas and the people on the islands are not bloody Argentines! They are British citizens!”