by Pete Scholey
Two nights later, Bob found himself approaching Ghaday once again. SAS patrols, backed by local troops, were to occupy the high ground around the Adoo village under cover of darkness. At first light, they would bring down mortar bombardments, machine-gun fire and air strikes to wipe out the Adoo stronghold. The patrols moved as silently through the darkness as the loose rock and shale beneath their boots would allow. In front of him, Bob could just make out the figure of his patrol commander, 26-year-old David ‘Ronnie’ Ramsden. The patrols were not marching with full loads of kit, but they were heavily armed. Ronnie had an M79 ‘Thump-gun’ grenade launcher as well as his own rifle and a radio for calling in the air strikes. Bob was armed with a GPMG ‘Jimpy’ machine-gun weighing around 30lb (13.6km) and strung with a 100-round belt. He carried the gun low on his hip, ready for immediate use, although it was intended to be used in the sustained-fire role once the patrol reached its hilltop vantage point. In the Bergen on his back he had another 600 rounds. Behind him were two of the sultan’s soldiers, each armed with rifles and each carrying two 400-round boxes of Jimpy ammo. The last man in the patrol was an SAS trooper carrying his rifle and the Jimpy tripod.
Approaching the Ghaday hill, the patrol had to descend onto level ground for a few hundred yards before they began their climb up the slope. The sky was lightening as dawn began to break over the crest of the hill and the five men advanced through some low bushes. Suddenly a figure appeared in the half-light up ahead. An Adoo had popped up, seemingly out of nowhere, only 5 yards (4.5m) away and fired a salvo of shots at them from his AK-47. Ronnie Ramsden went down. Bob was unsure whether he’d been hit or was taking cover, but he was in no mood for ducking and diving. As the Adoo levelled his Kalashnikov at him, Bob blasted him with a burst from the Jimpy. The Adoo was killed instantly, but Bob was now coming under fire from Adoo further up the hill. He sprayed the muzzle flashes with a welter of fire from the Jimpy and advanced resolutely towards them, blasting away at anything that looked like it might pose a threat. Bob dispatched another two Adoo in a sangar and downed at least another couple before he began to withdraw back down the hill, firing as he went. SAS patrols on adjacent hillsides watched the tracer fire as Bob’s patrol retreated down the hill to find cover, and when they had a clear field of fire they opened up to keep the remaining Adoo occupied.
Having reached the bottom of the slope, it immediately became clear to Bob and another SAS trooper that Ronnie had been left behind. He had almost certainly been hit and Bob wasn’t about to leave him wounded on the hillside. They both made their way back up the slope, dodging sporadic gunfire, to try to find him. Unfortunately, Ramsden had been killed outright. They carried his body back down the hill. Air strikes were then called in to clear the Adoo from their positions on Ghaday hill.
Bob’s swift, valiant action had resulted in the deaths of five of the enemy, including their commander and their quartermaster, with five more later reported wounded. He had also bought time for the rest of his patrol to withdraw. He was nominated for a bravery award, the citation reading:
Throughout this action Trooper Podesta displayed a complete disregard for his own safety and a devotion to duty of the highest order. His coolness, skill at arms and personal courage were a very fine example and inspiration and there is no doubt that his conduct when surprised and under fire was largely instrumental in inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy and regaining the initiative.
The award that was put forward was the MM, but the one that was finally approved by the Ministry of Defence was an MID, which was ‘very strongly recommended’ by the commander-in-chief of UK Land Forces.
Bob served a total of seven tours in Oman, participating in a number of vital missions, including Operation Simba in 1973. Simba was a defensive line comprised of a number of isolated outposts along the border with Yemen near the town of Sarfait. The purpose of the outposts was to try to restrict the Adoo from crossing over from Yemen, bringing weapons and explosives to supply their fighters already inside Oman. Positions along the Simba Line regularly came under fierce attack from the Adoo.
When information was received that a large stockpile of Adoo weapons had been built up in a series of wadis just inside the Omani border, it was decided to mount a search-and-destroy mission. Once they reached the area of operations near the Simba Line, Bob’s job was to provide cover on the flank with his GPMG as A Squadron advanced towards the target. A ferocious firefight developed when the Adoo realized that their precious weapons cache was under attack and Bob was kept very busy raking the enemy positions to give A Squadron the chance to fight its way forward. The Adoo were eventually driven off, leaving behind a treasure trove of AK-47s, mortars, explosives and ammunition.
Bob spent a great deal of time in Oman over the years, including the Regiment’s last tour there in 1976, but it was back at base in Hereford in 1971 where I first met him, feeding his legendary appetite in the camp cookhouse. We were both living off the camp, but every morning we would go to the cookhouse for breakfast or a brew before starting work. Bob always tried to get there first so that he could bag his favourite seat facing the main entrance and spot any of his mates coming in. He says that he always knew when I’d arrived by the laughter he heard before he even saw me. I liked to give the lads a bit of morning entertainment before we all got down to the serious business of training. Our paths were to cross many times in the years to come, either on operations or in training, one notable occasion being an escape-and-evasion exercise in France.
Bob is a strong character, both mentally and physically, and a dedicated soldier, although, like many others in the Regiment, he appears very laid-back and calm. When he lets his aggression run free, though, best stand well back. On an annual exercise in France, we had to parachute into an area of the Pyrenees mountains on the border with Spain. The ‘enemy’ on that occasion was the very experienced, highly professional soldiers of the French Foreign Legion. Our job was to break out of the area without being captured by them and make our way to an RV. The sickener attached to such exercises is that, unlike in real life, you stand almost no chance at all of evading the hunters, and even if you do, you often still have to go through all of the unpleasantness of the interrogation part of the drill. The main difference between the French exercise and the escape-and-evasion element of SAS Selection was that we were in full kit, not the rags and overcoats issued for running around the English countryside. Bob was further hampered by carrying the heavy and bulky 320 radio set (then being trialled for use by the Regiment), putting him at a real disadvantage if he got into a tussle with any Legionnaires. These guys were not out to kill or maim us, but with regimental honour at stake they had every bit as much to prove as we did and we all knew that they weren’t going to hang back or pull their punches. They were after SAS scalps and they knew that none of us was going to surrender meekly.
On landing, Bob decided to make his way across a railway line in the hope that he could sneak through the enemy cordon. As he crossed the line, he was jumped by four Legionnaires. Boots and fists were flying as they tried to wrestle him to the ground, but they couldn’t hold on to him. He broke away from them, but was soon recaptured. If the Legionnaires thought they were in for an easier ride second time around, however, they were in for a shock. Bob laid into them all over again. This happened three times before he was finally overpowered.
Having been captured, Bob was taken to the interrogation centre where he again showed his determination. Not only did he resist interrogation, giving nothing away, he also managed to escape from his jailors and make it to the RV! The Legionnaires gave him full credit for his performance. They said that capturing him was ‘like trying to hold down a wild bull!’
In addition to his time in Oman, Bob took part in four operational tours in Northern Ireland and two in Belize where A Squadron mounted cross-border patrols to help prevent an invasion by Guatemala. He spent the last few years of his service in a variety of different jobs. In HQ Squadron he ran first the
Boat Store, then the Armoury and was also sent on numerous foreign training trips as an instructor to countries that included Kenya, Indonesia and Nigeria.
Bob also spent some time as a sniper with the anti-terrorist team and had a period away from the Regiment on a TA posting before his 27-year career in the army finally came to an end when he retired in November 1994.
SERGEANT TALAIASI LABALABA AND STAFF SERGEANT SEKONAIA TAKAVESI
The lights and sounds from the open area in the Arab township dominated the night, the air filled with the smell of exotic cooking from the various food stalls and music ringing out as the street performers competed for the attention of the crowds. The buzz of a thousand conversations and the calls of the vendors echoed off the walls of the surrounding buildings, where wooden shacks rubbed shoulders with more substantial, mud-walled, whitewashed structures. All of the buildings in the shanty town were bathed in evening shadows, gently disguising their precarious construction and dilapidated condition that was so obvious in the harsh light of the blazing sun during the day.
In fact, the whole character of the Sheik Othman district of the port of Aden was transformed with the setting of the sun. The heavy aroma of the spices in the cooking pots hung in the still air as here, among the maze of buildings, scarcely a breath of the sea breeze penetrated from the coast. The smell of the food at least helped to disguise the daytime stench from the open sewers that ran down the middle of the streets and the piles of garbage that lay festering on the street corners. The hours of darkness also brought some respite from the scorching heat of the Arabian sun, although the night carried with it dangers of its own. The pool of light from the town square weakened as it stretched towards the side streets, leaving long and sinister shadows that crept into the darkness. A few yards away, on the edge of the shadows, two men sat in a parked saloon car, one of a number of ordinary cars scattered around the area. The men watched the crowd milling around, the stark whiteness of the Arab robes appearing almost ghostly in the oasis of light. The two men were dressed in a similar fashion to the people they were so closely observing, although their homeland was a very different place, many thousands of miles away on the other side of the world.
Suddenly, two white-robed men turned away from the crowd. They glanced at the car and took a couple of urgent steps towards it, immediately attracting the attention of the car’s occupants. As the Arabs advanced, each reached for something inside his robe and the men in the car caught the unmistakable dull glint of gunmetal. In an instant the men in the car threw open the doors – before their feet touched the ground their Browning 9mm pistols were levelled at the Arab gunmen. The pistols barked and, as though a blanket of silence had been thrown over the square, the voices and the music quickly faded. All eyes turned in the direction from which the brief shots had come and there on the ground, in a spreading pool of blood, lay the two Arabs. The other two men scanned the crowd suspiciously, their weapons still at the ready. In a few moments their back-up would be with them, the area would be teeming with uniformed soldiers and the two men, Troopers Talaiasi Labalaba and Sekonaia Takavesi, would report back to SAS HQ at Ballycastle House in the Khormaksar district for debriefing. Two more terrorist gunmen had been eliminated, but neither the conflict in Aden nor the highly dangerous game played by Laba and Tak were yet over.
I have included Laba and Tak together in this book because that is how I so often think of them, despite the fact that they have not shared each other’s company for quarter of a century. I count them both as good friends, going back with Tak as far as my first days with the Regiment. We struck up a friendship when were on the same Selection course together in 1963. Tak, whose parent regiment was the King’s Own Borderers Regiment, gave me some useful orienteering tips that helped me through the course. Laba had an equally friendly, generous nature. In the early 1970s we were in Singapore together, spending a few days recharging our batteries during a break from a jungle survival course in Malaya. When I ran out of money, Laba offered to lend me a few dollars, which I promised to pay back as soon as I could get my hands on some cash. Never was a debt so difficult to repay. No matter how often or how hard I tried to insist on paying him, Laba would never accept the money. As far as he was concerned, he had helped me out when I needed it and that was what friendship was all about.
In Aden, Laba and Tak, together with other Fijians such as Jim Vakatali, posed as Arabs to mix with the locals. Although the big men from Fiji towered above the average Arab, their skin colour allowed them to blend in more easily than most Brits. All could speak a little Arabic, but Jim was an expert and would often translate what he heard for the others. When they talked together in Fijian, far from blowing their cover, many locals simply assumed that they were part of a ship’s crew from a distant part of Africa. Working undercover, however, is never entirely straightforward and in Aden, telling friend from foe was a frustratingly complicated business.
It was in the townships that Laba and Tak proved their mettle. The two Fijians had all the right attributes for working undercover. They were cool-headed, easy-going professionals from a land that has a long tradition of providing first-class soldiers to the British Army. Fiji was a British colony for a century before becoming independent in 1970 and Fijians are welcomed into the British armed forces in exactly the same way that the army recruits Gurkhas from Nepal. The men from the South Pacific islands do not have their own identity within the British Army in the same way that the Gurkha Regiment does. Instead, they are scattered throughout the service, which is why Tak served with the King’s Own Borderers and Laba came to the SAS from the Royal Irish Rangers.
Today there are about 2,000 Fijians serving in the British Army, making them second only to the Gurkhas as the army’s largest foreign contingent. Unlike the Gurkhas, however, who are normally small, lean and wiry, the archetypal Fijian tends to be big and powerful. Being large and carrying some bulk can be a disadvantage to some in the SAS, but over the years Fijians like Laba and Tak have proved more than capable of handling anything that the SAS can throw at them. Their first contact with the modern SAS came during the reformed Regiment’s initial operations in Malaya. Elements of Fiji’s own 1st Fijian Infantry Regiment took part in Operation Hive, an attempt to flush terrorists out of the jungle. The Fijians proved, as they had against the Japanese in World War II, that they were experts in jungle warfare. In Aden, Laba and Tak were about to master a completely different martial art in the backstreets of the port.
The Crater and Sheikh Othman districts were the two most volatile areas and the places where assassins who had infiltrated the country from the north were most likely to take refuge. Sheikh Othman was the area closest to the Radfan Mountains and Crater was an enclosed community that was home to several hundred thousand Arabs. At several points during the conflict it would become a ‘no-go’ area for the security forces. It was in these areas that Laba and Tak’s services were most in demand. Grenade attacks such as the one directed at the high commissioner’s party at Khormaksar became increasingly common, with army foot patrols, Land Rover patrols, vehicle checkpoints, individual British or Europeans, and even parties of British schoolchildren targeted by the terrorists. British Special Branch officers and their informants were singled out for particular attention.
Laba and Tak would wander the streets and alleyways, sometimes lurking in a car, sometimes blending in as best they could on foot. These operations in Aden became known as ‘keeni-meeni’ ops, from a Swahili phrase describing the way that a snake slithers, silent and barely visible, through the grass. British servicemen simply took it to mean ‘snake-in-the-grass’. But Laba and Tak were not there solely to engage in shoot-outs with the bad guys: their job was to gather intelligence about suspected terrorists, find out which cafés, restaurants or houses they visited, who their associates were and where there were likely to be stockpiles of hidden weapons. They could be assigned to make general observations in an area or to watch for specific targets, men who worked for local politicia
ns or activists from the ever more militant trades unions that ruled the docks. They would then report back and a detachment from the regular army would be sent in to act on the information they supplied. Laba and Tak also had to keep their eyes open for a multitude of potential dangers, or signs of an attack.
There were checkpoints dotted around the different districts in Aden where cars and individuals could be searched for illegal weapons. Patrols on the street could also ‘stop and search’ if they had good reason. For the committed terrorist, such checks were at worst an inconvenience and at best a potential target. They quickly learned not to attempt to walk around carrying a gun or grenade. They also soon understood that the British soldiers were not permitted to search women unless they had a female police officer with them and the facility for a female suspect to be searched in private. Naturally, such facilities were seldom available, so the terrorists used women to smuggle weapons in their robes to a pre-arranged drop.
Laba and Tak knew to watch for a woman who might loiter near a pile of garbage on a street corner. As the British administration began to crumble in the colony and the militant districts became more dangerous, domestic services such as refuse collection were among the first to suffer. Garbage piles were all too common. A female ‘courier’ would secrete a handgun or, more often, a grenade in a street-corner garbage pile and walk away, hoping that it looked as though she had just added some trash to the mound. The terrorist would approach the pile of garbage a few moments later, perhaps as an army patrol came into sight, and retrieve what had been left for him. He would then wait for the patrol to pass by. Once the last man had gone, he would throw the grenade before sprinting off up a side alley. Attacks by such ‘Cairo Grenadiers’, as they were known, caused appalling casualties. In the three years from the start of the emergency to the beginning of 1967, 13 British soldiers were killed and more than 320 were injured, such are the effects of flying shrapnel from a hand grenade.
