SAS Heroes

by Pete Scholey

  In the early hours of the morning of 19 July 1972, the very day that B Squadron was due to pull out, Mirbat came under sustained attack from the mortars and heavy machine-guns of an Adoo force determined to overwhelm the town and massacre its inhabitants. Advancing towards Mirbat in strength – estimates have put the Adoo battle group at anything between 250 and 400 – they heavily outnumbered not only the SAS team, but also the local armed units tasked with defending the town. The events that unfolded are described in detail in this book in the chapter on Labalaba and Takavesi, but an element of repetition is necessary here to highlight the heroic part played by ‘Little Tommy’.

  The SAS team swung into action. As the others manned their positions behind the sandbags that lined the low walls on the flat roof of the BATT house, Tommy worked quickly and methodically at the rear of the mortar pit, flinging open the cases that were packed with 81mm mortar rounds, unscrewing the caps on the individual canisters and sliding the bombs out. Then he checked the charges, removed the safety pins and replaced each bomb in its container nose first, ready for use. He prepared dozens of bombs, carefully slotting the containers into well-ordered stacks, then grabbed his SLR (Self-Loading Rifle) and hunkered down in his own fire position, scanning his field of fire for any opportune targets.

  As the battle raged, it became clear to the SAS commander, Captain Mike Kealy, that two of his men, Labalaba and Takavesi, who were manning the 25pdr field gun near the old fort on the edge of town that was the main focus of the Adoo attack, were in serious trouble. The two men were known to have been wounded and now all radio contact with the gun emplacement had been lost. Kealy needed a volunteer to go with him across half a mile of undulating scrubland that was a killing ground for every Adoo who poked his Kalashnikov out from behind a rock. Tommy didn’t hesitate. The whole team volunteered, but Tommy knew he was the one that Captain Kealy really needed. He was the medic that his friends up there in the gun pit really needed. He caught the officer’s eye and Kealy nodded. Tommy quickly turned and reached for his medical kit. He made sure he had saline and plenty of morphine, and from the medical store he took as many field dressings of different sizes as he could stuff into his pack. Then he slipped the strap over his head and across his body, pulling it tight so that the pack nestled safely on his back.

  Grabbing the carrying handle of his SLR, he lifted the rifle into his arms and slid back the mechanism to check that he had a round in the chamber. Then he was ready to go. He and Kealy dashed from the BATT house to the cover of a wadi running roughly towards the fort. This was a less direct route to the gun position than that taken by Laba and Tak, but it afforded them slightly better cover. Then they sprinted from one patch of sparse cover, one shallow ditch, to another with Adoo rounds whistling past their ears, one giving covering fire as the other ran. The constant fire from the Browning .50 calibre and GPMG on the roof of the BATT house swept over their heads to keep the Adoo occupied. With one final, heart-thumping sprint, they both made it to the gun emplacement, Kealy tumbling into the adjacent ammunition bunker as Tommy leapt over the sandbags into the gun pit.

  The stench of cordite stung his nostrils and an awful sight met his eyes. The floor of the gun pit was littered with spent shell cases and was awash with blood. Walid Khamis, the Omani gunner, lay in one corner of the dug-out clutching his stomach and bleeding profusely from a bullet wound. Takavesi was propped up against the sandbag wall at the opposite side of the pit, aiming and firing his SLR with one arm, the rifle’s barrel resting on a sandbag. Tak was smothered with blood. It had coated his face from a wound somewhere on his scalp and his clothes were heavy with blood from wounds to his abdomen. He still managed a weak smile when he saw Tommy. Incoming rounds continued to slam into the sandbags and hammer at the 25pdr’s steel shield. Tak squeezed off another shot, sending some back to the Adoo.

  Labalaba lay face down on the carpet of smoke-blackened, blood-smeared shell cases; a dark patch of blood from a gaping wound at the back of his neck sent Tommy’s heart into his boots. There was no way the big Fijian could have survived that. Taking in the whole scene in the blink of an eye, Tommy’s training kicked in and he prioritized the casualties. Laba was the worst. He had to be checked out first. Dropping his SLR and ripping off his pack, Tommy crouched over Laba’s prone form and examined his friend’s wounds while checking for a pulse. Laba had a second bullet wound to his chin. There was no pulse, no vital signs, he was dead. Tommy knew he had to move on. He had to deal with the gunner then get to Tak. The gunner would need to be put on a drip and would need a fresh field dressing. He reached for his pack and turned toward the injured Omani.

  At that moment, an incoming Kalashnikov round, undoubtedly not even aimed at Tommy but simply loosed off in the general direction of the gun pit, came whistling in over the sandbags. In moving towards the gunner, Tommy turned his head into the path of the bullet. It smashed into the side of his face, ripping away most of his lower jaw. Tommy collapsed forward beside Laba. His part in the battle of Mirbat was over.

  The beleaguered garrison fought on, with Captain Kealy and Tak defending their gun pit until air strikes and the arrival of G Squadron drove off the Adoo. Casevac helicopters airlifted Tommy, Tak and the rest of the wounded to be cared for by the Field Surgical Team at Salalah. They were eventually flown back to the UK for treatment and Tommy spent many months in the military hospital at Woolwich. Reg Tayler managed to visit him there, as he did with so many of our wounded, but Tommy’s injuries were so severe he ultimately succumbed to his wounds. He died in the hospital and was laid to rest in the churchyard of St Martin’s in Hereford, close to the Regiment’s base.

  Tommy had earned the friendship and respect of his peers during his short time with the Regiment, no mean feat when professional standards and expectations are set so high, yet his achievements reach far beyond even that. Tommy was the purest of all heroes. He put his life on the line not to profit himself or in any foolhardy quest for glory. He made his sacrifice while attempting to help others, he laid down his life for his friends, and there can be no more heroic act than that.

  I have brought Tommy and Pete together in this chapter for the simple reason that their careers were so markedly different. Tommy’s time with the Regiment was tragically short whereas Pete had what must be the longest SAS career of anyone who has ever served with the Regiment.

  Peter Derek Loveday was called up for National Service on 5 January 1950, joining the Suffolk Regiment. The Suffolks had a long and glorious history dating back to the days of King James II, who ordered the Duke of Norfolk to raise a regiment to help deal with the pesky Monmouth rebellion. The duke recruited men from both Norfolk and Suffolk, creating a unit that would endure for the next 274 years, serving King and Queen and Country all over the world, including India, Afghanistan and South Africa. Its 1st Battalion was almost wiped out at Ypres in 1915, suffering more than 400 casualties, but by the end of World War I the Suffolks boasted 23 battalions. During World War II their 1st battalion went to France in 1939 with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and returned to the UK, bloodied but unbowed, via Dunkirk the following year. They returned to France as part of the Assault Brigade that fought its way ashore on Sword Beach in Normandy in 1944. Other elements of the regiment served in the deserts of North Africa, and the Suffolks fought a desperate rearguard action against vastly superior Japanese forces all the way down the Malay peninsula before helping to mount the last-ditch defence of Singapore. A large proportion of the prisoners then forced by the Japanese to work under inhuman conditions on the infamous Burma Railway were men of the Suffolk Regiment.

  When Pete began his training, the Suffolks were back in Malaya again, heavily involved in suppressing the Communist Terrorists (CTs) who had so much of the rural countryside in their uncompromising grip. The insurgents’ cruelty towards the indigenous populations in the isolated jungle regions was legendary, but while they still had the manpower to mount cohesive operations, the security forces were never safe f
rom their attacks either.

  Pete found this out for himself when, after only six weeks’ basic training, he was dispatched along with the rest of his intake on a troopship bound for the Far East. They travelled via the Suez Canal (still in friendly hands at that time) to Singapore where he found himself organized into A Company, 3rd Platoon, The Suffolk Regiment. It seemed he hardly had time to draw breath before he was trekking through the jungle with a Bren gun, searching for communist camps. The Suffolks had the best tally of enemy kills of any unit operating in the Malayan jungles, even though 70 per cent of them were, like Pete, National Servicemen at only 18 or 19 years of age. Most of their junior officers, too, the men who led them on their jungle excursions, were National Service recruits, not time-served professionals.

  Every six weeks or so they would get the chance for a few hours of rest and recuperation (R&R) in Kuala Lumpur, when they would hit the NAAFI bar at the battalion headquarters in Wardiburn barracks for a few beers, before heading into town to banish all thoughts of their tasteless jungle compo rations with a massive plate of steak and chips at their favourite bar, Nanto’s. Then they would sink a few more Tiger Beers before rolling back to Wardiburn to sleep it off prior to the journey back up country the next day. If they were lucky, they might get 24 hours extra and a rail warrant to take them as far as Singapore. But the journeys to and from their much anticipated ‘rest’ breaks could be every bit as dangerous as their forays into the jungle, as Pete was to discover on one rail journey back to base from a wind-down period in Singapore.

  It was dark outside as the train trundled up the tracks, heading back north with its cargo of Suffolks, delivering them back to the jungle that had become so much like their second home. The windows were open, but there was little respite from the stifling heat in the carriage. The train lacked any comforts as sophisticated as air conditioning and the Malayan night was warm and humid, so there was no cool breeze rushing in to chill the sweat on their bodies. Where there was a window that would open a few inches, the space served only as a vent to suck the fog of cigarette smoke out of the carriage. When the train rounded a bend and the breeze caught it from the wrong direction, the open windows also let in the sooty exhaust expelled from the steam engine’s smoke stack, so they were at times not only an inefficient but also an undesirable form of ventilation.

  Pete and the other Suffolks lounged on the hard wooden bench seats, the cotton of their tropical issue uniforms seeming impossibly heavy in the overcrowded carriage. They had stowed what kit they had brought with them in the racks above their heads or under the seats, but finding enough space to stretch or even sit comfortably in a carriage full of 18–20-year-old youngsters all trying to do the same thing was never going to be easy. A few murmured conversations bubbled up here and there, but for the most part they journeyed with only the sound of the engine pumping away up front and the steel wheels clattering over the joins in the track. They had done their partying in Singapore and were now thoroughly exhausted after 25 hours of solid ‘rest’. A few of them dozed. Others read and re-read well-thumbed letters from home. Some even tried to scribble their replies.

  Pete could feel himself slowly being rocked to sleep by the motion of the train. That was no bad thing. A few hours’ extra kip would stand him in good stead when they headed back into the jungle again. Would that be tomorrow, or maybe the next day? Nobody had told them yet. It wouldn’t be long, that was for sure. Then, he thought he felt that soporific rocking change just a little. They weren’t about to come into a station were they?

  Suddenly there was a horrendous screech of metal against metal as the wheels skidded along the rails. The train slowed rapidly, too rapidly. Kit bags tumbled from the racks and drowsy soldiers who had been facing the front were flung onto the floor, the whole train straining to cling to the track and rob itself of its forward momentum. The lights went out. Then the men seemed to float for a moment and the carriage tipped sharply sideways. More kit flew through the air, accompanied this time by the flailing arms, legs and boots of soldiers plucked from their seats and flung across the carriage. Then, with one last lurch, the train came to a complete halt. The carriage was listing, clearly derailed, but still more or less upright and in reasonably good order. The same could not be said for the passengers. In the darkness, Pete could hear the moans, groans and curses of those who had suffered minor cuts, bruises and seriously disturbed naps. But what on earth had happened?

  The answer came in the form of the instantly recognizable chatter of a Sten gun, a crackling volley from a handful of .303 rifles and the thump of grenades detonating nearby. The crash of breaking glass filled the air as the windows were shattered and incoming rounds buried themselves in the fixtures of the carriage. The men hugged the floor in the darkness. There was no panic in the carriage. The soldiers just lay dead still, hoping that they were behind substantial cover, praying that they were invisible and impregnable. From somewhere on the train came the comforting bark of a Bren gun returning fire, then another. After a brief exchange, the gunfire petered out and all that could be heard was the sound of orders shouted in the darkness over the mournful creaking of a wounded train. The CTs had struck and melted away back into the jungle, just as they always did. Their attack had achieved more nuisance value than it had serious casualties. Righting the train would cause a greater delay in returning the Suffolks to their jungle patrols than any injuries sustained. Next time the enemy got this close to him, though, Pete would be the one with the Bren and it would be the CTs on the receiving end of the first strike. He’d make damn sure of that.

  Pete’s platoon, in common with so many others, suffered frequent attacks by the CTs when travelling in truck convoys by road or, as in the overnight journey from Singapore, when on trains. They were constantly frustrated by the fact that the enemy never hung around long enough to put up a proper fight – they followed classic guerrilla hit-and-run tactics, much the same tactics, in fact, so often employed by the SAS.

  Soldiering in Malaya with the Suffolks, however, was not all danger and disappointment. Pete found that he enjoyed the excitement of active service and the camaraderie of the men. He felt at a bit of a loose end when his two years’ National Service was suddenly over and he was shipped back to the UK. While he went through the bureaucracy of the demob process, he knew that some of his old mates were in Trieste, trying to keep the peace between rival groups of Italians and Yugoslavs, both sides claiming the city and the surrounding countryside as their own, just as they had been doing for countless years before. Those guys were still in the thick of it, still together. He was on his own, contemplating the bleak prospect of trying to find a normal job.

  Pete missed the army, so, after a year in ‘civvy street’ he joined the TA, hoping that part-time soldiering would fill the void. It didn’t. Then he heard of the SAS, at that time relatively unknown, which was heavily involved in deep-penetration patrols in the Malayan jungle. In 1953 he applied to join, and passed a very exacting Selection course.

  Before he knew it Pete was back on a troop ship en route to Malaya to join A Squadron. He had ten days’ training in jungle patrolling, a week on a final exercise, then his para course at the RAF station in Changi. After that, he was back on operations in the jungle. It must have seemed like he’d only just left.

  The operational timetable the Regiment adhered to at that time was three months in the jungle, then ten days’ R&R leave. This was a tough regime, but for Pete going back to the jungle felt a bit like going home. He revelled in it, completing two three-year tours in Malaya with A Squadron in the 1950s, taking part in all the major operations. This included, of course, participating in the infamous tree jumps. Pete counted himself lucky to survive five of these, three in training and two on operations.

  The Malayan operation that Pete regarded as the most satisfying and rewarding was staged in 1954. Pete, of course, was a veteran of jungle warfare by then, but still something of a new boy in A Squadron and the action was to serve as a forma
tive experience for him in learning how the SAS worked. The squadron was deployed to Kajang, an area of treacherous swamp on the west coast of northern Malaya just above Malacca. They had received intelligence that a terrorist group was mounting barbarous attacks against isolated villages, plundering food and livestock and raping and murdering the villagers. The leader of the group, Loon-Kon-Kim, had been dubbed ‘The Bearded Terror of Kajang’ by the locals.

  A local jungle scout was chosen to lead an SAS troop in search of Loon-Kon-Kim’s base. Like the rest of his colleagues in A Squadron, Pete was by now more used to operating as part of a four-man patrol, so it felt a little like being back with the Suffolks when the best part of four patrols stalked through the swamp country. Wading through fetid water that could, at times, be almost chest deep, Pete took great care to keep his Bren gun out of the sludge. He was too old a hand to risk any kind of a stoppage when he knew that a close-quarter jungle firefight could erupt at almost any moment.

  When they moved across higher ground they were hardly any less wet than in the swamp, the heat and humidity combining to leave their clothes drenched with sweat. Eventually the scout indicated an area up ahead and a series of silent signals were passed down the column. They sank to the jungle floor, Pete resting on one knee, the heavy Bren supported on his left thigh. The scout went forward with the patrol commander, creeping towards a clearing, crawling low in the foliage to find a vantage spot from which they could take a better look at the camp. The troop adopted an all-round defensive formation and waited.