by Pete Scholey
In the BATT house, Captain Kealy was worried that all firing from the gun pit appeared to have stopped. Had they been overrun? He had to know exactly what was happening at the fort and what had happened to Laba and Tak. To establish that, he had to get to the gun emplacement and needed someone to go with him. He asked for a volunteer. He got six. The one he chose was Tommy Tobin, a trained medic. By some miracle, they both reached the gun emplacement unscathed. Tommy leapt into the gun pit and Captain Kealy took cover in the ammunition bunker. They were shocked by the scene of carnage before them. Walid Khamis lay on his back, bleeding profusely and obviously seriously wounded. Laba was face down on the floor and Tak was still propped up against the sandbags, drenched in blood, squeezing off carefully aimed rounds from his SLR and grimacing with pain each time the rifle kicked back into his body. Tommy checked Laba, confirmed his worst fears, then turned to pick up his medical pack. At that moment he was shot in the face and fell to the floor, mortally wounded.
Tak called to Captain Kealy for more ammunition and the two men began a desperate battle for their lives. An Adoo popped up at the edge of the gun emplacement, ready to shoot Tak, and Kealy blasted him with his SLR. Another appeared from a ditch close to their position and Kealy cut him down, too. Kealy took out Adoo gunmen as they slunk round the walls of the fort and Tak concentrated on those coming from the direction of the perimeter wire. Although the 25pdr was no longer firing, it was clearly still a primary target for the Adoo as rounds clanged into its metalwork like hammer blows. The Adoo were now close enough to sling grenades, which were bouncing and exploding close to the walls of the gun pit. Kealy froze for an instant as a grenade landed inside the bunker right in front of him. Mercifully, it failed to explode. Then, a new and terrifying sound added its fury to the cacophony of the battle. Two BAC Strikemaster jets of the SOAF came screaming in low over the battlefield, strafing the Adoo with cannon fire.
With the cloud base at no more than 150ft (46m), the jets were hugging the contours of the ground as they made their attack run before peeling off into the cloud and coming round again. Captain Kealy was able to relay fire instructions to the jets via the BATT house over the walkie-talkie and the Strikemasters drove the Adoo back into the cover of a deep wadi outside the Mirbat perimeter fence. A 500lb (227kg) bomb then persuaded them that even the wadi was unsafe for them. Kealy knew, however, that the jets could not hang around forever over Mirbat. One limped back to base trailing smoke from numerous Adoo machine-gun hits and the other soon followed, low on fuel and out of ammo. Kealy used the respite provided by the jets to dress the wounds of Walid, Tommy and Tak, and as he was trying to organize transport to take them to the helicopter LZ for evacuation, he could still hear firing. He knew that the Adoo would be back and that he had to move fast. What he didn’t know was that G Squadron had fought its way up through the town and had what remained of the Adoo in full retreat.
The Adoo left behind in Mirbat almost 40 dead and ten wounded who were taken prisoner. It was later learned that there were many other Adoo injured who limped away or were carried off the battlefield only to die from their wounds days later. Altogether, the Adoo probably lost almost half of their elite strike force. It was a bitter blow from which they would never recover and, although the conflict in Oman would continue for almost four more years, history would show that Mirbat was the turning-point that led to the ultimate defeat of the Adoo.
The SAS had lost Laba, and Tommy was to die from his wounds. Tak was seriously wounded, as was Walid. Only one of the DG was killed in the town and another was badly wounded, although almost everyone in both the forts and the BATT house had sustained some kind of minor injury.
Tommy and Walid were loaded onto stretchers for the short trip by Land Rover to the casevac helicopter. Tak refused to lie on a stretcher. He was helped to his feet and walked to the transport under his own steam. The surgeons who operated on him at Salalah declared his injuries the worst chest wounds they had ever seen on anyone who was still alive. Even so, Tak was not to let his injuries end his career with the SAS.
Ironically, Laba had actually left the Regiment long before Mirbat. After leaving Aden, he had returned to the Irish Rangers for a spell of more conventional soldiering, but when the Rangers were stationed in Bahrain in 1969 he ran into some of his old chums. B Squadron stopped off in Bahrain for training prior to deployment in Oman and some of the SAS men were invited to the Irish Rangers’ Warrant Officers and Sergeants’ Mess, where they met up with Laba and his RSM. They persuaded Laba to rejoin the Regiment and, in return, Laba’s heroics with the 25pdr at Mirbat may well have saved the B Squadron BATT unit.
Tak spent some time recovering from his wounds, but his fighting spirit helped him battle his way back to fitness and he eventually returned to duty with B Squadron. He was at Pete Winner’s shoulder when they stormed the Iranian Embassy in 1980 and fought in the Falklands campaign. He also saw action more recently in Iraq, although he had long since left the Regiment by then.
In late 2003, Tak was working for a private security company in Iraq and was driving with another ex-SAS colleague in a two-car convoy through the Safwan area near Basra. As always on desert roads, the car in front was throwing up enough dust to rate a mini sandstorm and Tak had only a limited view of the road in front of them. He could see, however, that they were coming up behind another vehicle, a four-wheel-drive truck, and knew that his friend would want to overtake to avoid driving through the same sort of dust cloud that Tak was currently experiencing.
Sure enough, the car in front of Tak pulled out to overtake, but when Tak attempted to do the same, the truck swerved across the road to stop him. There’s no such thing as random road rage in a place like Iraq, and Tak could see that the occupants of the truck were four armed Arabs. Three times Tak tried to pull out and pass the truck and each time the truck swerved into his path. Tak’s partner had, by this time, realized that something was wrong and was hanging back rather than speeding off down the road. Tak decided to try some off-road tactics and pulled out into the roadside desert scrub to try to outmanoeuvre the truck.
The Arabs leant out of the truck windows and opened fire across Tak’s path, forcing him to brake, whereupon his car became bogged down in soft sand. The gunmen’s truck slithered to a halt and the Arabs, each armed with the inevitable Kalashnikov AK-47, walked towards the front of Tak’s car. Tak sat stock still in his seat as they approached. Then, when they levelled their weapons at his vehicle, he snatched up a machine pistol from the seat beside him and sprayed them through the windscreen. Tak’s partner gave him covering fire as Tak dived from the vehicle and tangled with one of the gunmen, clubbing the Arab to the ground with his weapon. He then made for his partner’s vehicle, but one of the Arabs managed to get off a shot that caught him in the thigh. His partner bundled Tak into the car and they made off at speed, heading for the British Military Hospital in Basra, leaving the four Iraqis behind – one wounded and one presumed dead. Tak’s partner sustained a slight wound to the hand, but Tak’s leg wound was more serious and he was swiftly flown back to a private hospital in the UK for treatment.
Both Laba and Tak have become legends within the Regiment and are hailed as heroes in their homeland of Fiji. They are, without doubt, two of the bravest men I have ever known and I am proud to consider myself as having been their friend.
STAFF SERGEANT PETE WINNER
The constant electrical hum in the background, which softened all other sounds on the submarine, was perforated by the clicking of rifle actions as the team oiled and checked their weapons. Pete sat in the long, white-painted, corridor-like interior of the sub along with around two dozen other SAS as they prepared their kit prior to a final briefing for their departure from the sub. It was June 1982 and the Oberon-class submarine HMS Onyx was playing host to a specially selected SAS team. Somewhere far above them, the Falklands War was raging.
The team’s preparations were as thorough as if they were sitting in their own squadron hangar
back in Hereford, but there could be no denying that they were actually in a sub, 8,000 miles (12,874km) from home at the bottom of the South Atlantic. The roof and walls were arched, giving the impression that they were crammed inside a giant cigar tube, although wiring ducts, piping, valves, lighting and odd pieces of equipment covered almost all of the interior surface area. Even in the crew areas, where there were flat ceiling and wall panels, every inch of space was decked with lockers for stowing kit. Space was at a premium, despite the fact that, at around 295ft (90m) long and over 26ft (7.9m) wide, this vessel was far from being a small boat. Normally it was home to a crew of just over 60 and the submariners had given as much space as they could and every possible assistance to Pete and their other SAS guests. The team was preparing for Operation Mikado, impatiently waiting for the order to go, when the submarine would surface. Then they would move out onto the outer hull of the sub and climb into the small boats sitting on the ‘deck’. The sub would drop away beneath them, leaving them to float free and head for shore. At least, that was the plan. Climbing into the boats laden with kit in the dark, the sub rolling in the waves and both the deck and the Gemini inflatables wet and greasy in the freezing, choppy southern sea, was going to be no picnic. And once they were all embarked in the boats, their problems were only beginning.
Two months previously, a 15-man team had left the destroyer HMS Antrim in five Geminis. They were to set off across Stromness Bay under cover of darkness, heading for Grass Island from where they were to report on enemy movements in and around the port of Leith on South Georgia. The specially silenced outboard motors of the Geminis had been pre-run in a tank to warm them up aboard the Antrim, but despite this, once the boats were in the water three of the motors failed to start. As there was very little wind and only light seas, the run to shore was reckoned to be fairly straightforward and the boats with the dud motors were taken in tow by the two with functioning outboards. Unfortunately, as happens in the Falkland Islands, the weather changed in an instant. A wicked wind whipped up the sea and two of the boats under tow broke free. The three men in each boat were reduced to paddling with their mess tins to try to make it to shore. Only one of the boats did. The three who had been in that boat were so far from where they were meant to be that they had no choice but to sit tight for several days until they deemed it safe to use a SARBE to summon help without fear of compromising the operation. The other boat that had gone adrift was swept out to sea. The three clinging to this boat for dear life spent seven hours drifting helplessly on the open ocean before they were found and rescued by a helicopter. Pete and the others were therefore well aware of the potential problems in transferring from ship to shore in the South Atlantic.
The tension that hung heavy in the air inside the submarine, making the confined conditions seem even more claustrophobic, was not generated solely by thoughts of the trip to shore, however. The mission that lay ahead of them was a truly daunting prospect. Their job was to land on the Argentine mainland at Tierra del Fuego, the Land of Fire, and make for the Argentine air base at Rio Grande. There they were to use explosives and anti-tank rockets to destroy the five Super Etendard jets based at the airfield along with the deadly Exocet missiles with which the aircraft were armed.
It was an audacious plan, bold and daring in the true tradition of the SAS – but it was never to happen. They were in position, ready to go, the sub sitting 2 miles (3.2km) off the Argentine coast with all the dress rehearsals having been completed en route, when the news of the Argentine surrender came through. Having evolved through several different abandoned plans (including one scheme to land two C-130 Hercules aircraft packed with troops on the runway at Rio Grande, just as the Israeli special forces had done at Entebbe in Uganda in 1976), Operation Mikado had ended in anti-climax. Pete, however, counted himself lucky to have been there at all. His Falklands War, and his eventful life, had almost ended on his way south before he got anywhere near the action.
It hardly seemed possible that a handful of scrap metal merchants, landing on an island 8,000 miles (12,874km) from Britain to dismantle the rusting remnants of an old whaling station, could precipitate the creation of the largest British naval task force most people in the UK had ever seen. In 1982, however, that’s pretty much what happened. The Falkland Islands, including the territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, have changed hands many times since the major seafaring nations first became interested in them in the 16th century. Bleak and remote, the islands are comprised mainly of treeless moorland and mountains, with a similar geography to the Orkney or Shetland Isles off northern Scotland. Since 1833, the islands have been under British administration and by 1982 the population of just under 2,000 certainly regarded itself as British, although Argentina has always claimed sovereignty. Most of the islands’ inhabitants live in Stanley, the islands’ capital and only real town, on the east coast of East Falkland. South Georgia, some 900 miles (1,448km) south and east of Stanley, had a regular population of only about 20 – the scientists of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) team. The South Sandwich Islands, 350 miles (563km) from South Georgia, are normally uninhabited, Antarctic in climate and actively volcanic by nature.
It was on South Georgia that Constantino Davidoff’s scrap metal team arrived on 18 March 1982. Having landed without permission, Davidoff proceeded to raise the Argentine national flag, an act that had almost immediate diplomatic consequences. Davidoff’s workers were, without doubt, acting under instructions in order to create a situation that might run to the advantage of the Argentine government. Argentina had threatened the islands on many occasions in the past, the regular naval manoeuvres always having been regarded as ‘testing the water’ for a military takeover of the territory. The only people on the island when the Argentine scrap men arrived were the scientists of the BAS team and two documentary film makers. A small detachment of Royal Marines from the ice patrol ship HMS Endurance, which was on patrol nearby, was landed to protect the survey team. Meanwhile, the Royal Marines permanently based on East Falkland were put on alert. Although they numbered only 60 men, the British government under Margaret Thatcher considered that they constituted a significant enough military presence to deter the Argentines from embarking on any military adventures on the islands. Unfortunately, Mrs Thatcher was wrong.
At the end of March 1982, scheduled manoeuvres by the Argentine Navy with the Uruguayan fleet were shelved in favour of Operation Rosario – the Argentine invasion of the Falklands. On Friday 2 April at around 4.30am, Argentine special forces came ashore on East Falkland and less than two hours later they were engaged by the Royal Marines. By 8.00am, the main Argentine force was disembarking at Stanley and, despite the heroic efforts of the Royal Marines, it was clear that they could not hold out against the Argentines. The islands’ governor ordered a surrender at 9.15am. The Marines on South Georgia had been called on to surrender when two groups of Argentine special forces came ashore by helicopter near their positions. The Marines’ response was to attack. They destroyed one helicopter and badly damaged another before taking on an Argentine Navy frigate with anti-tank missiles, holing the ship below the waterline and knocking out its main gun. Ultimately, however, they knew that they, too, had little choice but to surrender.
Sekonaia Takavesi, aka ‘Tak’.
Pete Winner on patrol in Southern Oman, 1971.
Tommy Palmer with his wife Caroline after receiving his QGM (Queen’s Gallantry Medal) from the Queen for his actions at the Iranian Embassy siege in 1980.
Having discarded his hood and respirator after they caught fire, Tommy Palmer enters the Iranian Embassy, 5 May 1980.
Pete Winner changes the clutch on a Land Rover, a week before the Battle of Mirbat (19 July 1972) in which Laba and Tommy Tobin died.
Pete Winner (left) and Joe Farragher carrying out a census of the local villages, southern Oman, 1971.
Tommy Tobin, who died from wounds sustained while trying to help Laba and Tak at Mirbat.
Stev
e Callan deciphering a message from base in his jungle ‘basha’ in Borneo, 1963.
Major Glyn Williams, D Squadron commander (centre), coordinating the squadron’s operations in the Radfan mountains, Aden 1966.
Steve Callan (5th left, standing) with members of A Squadron in the Borneo jungle.
Pete Loveday takes a breather in the desert mountains of Muscat in 1958, having transferred there directly from the jungles of Malaya.
Pete Scholey (left foreground) with 18 Troop, D Squadron, awaiting heli-lift in Aden, 1966, after a seven-day operation.
Tommy Palmer driving a ‘Pink Panther’ during desert training in Iran.
Gavin Hamilton.
