27. Simon, in the Sahl region of Goundam, examines the cadaver of a cow. Skulls and carcasses littered the bush. Simon developed malaria soon after we entered the Ivory Coast jungle region.
28. Charlie (foreground) and Simon clear the brush beside the Bandama Rouge River. Here Charlie found a 9-inch black scorpion in his tent.
29. I split the platoon into three groups: one to find a safe route to the desert, one to ambush the Dehedoba trail and the third to patrol the Sands.
30. In the great gravel deserts that skirt the Empty Quarter we helped the companies’ artillery along our dizzy ‘road’ from the desert to the enemy-held Qara.
31. My section of the Reconnaissance Platoon in the Dhofari nej’d. Far left is Ali Nasser. Far right is Said Salim.
32. A jebali family at home on the Plain of Salalah. The mother is in her early forties.
33. A bedu family we came across living in a cave near Habarut in the Dhofari nej’d.
34. When we camped in the frontier wadi’s oasis of Habarut between the twin fortresses, one on either side of the border, the atmosphere was tense and heavy with the hostility of the Mahra inhabitants. They disliked the Sultan’s army, for they felt that all Habarut should be Yemeni territory.
35. Our long stint in ambush hides were memorable for the unwelcome attendance of ticks, scorpions, midges, mosquitoes, biting ants of various sizes and colours and, always, the background awareness of being in territory held by a cunning and aggressive enemy.
36. The longest time our sections stayed motionless in a single ambush was four days and nights.
37. Tim Landon and his Intelligence group in Salalah. When he told me where and when to lay an ambush in the mountains, I could usually be sure of exciting results.
38. Ali Nasser.
39. Said Salim.
40. Salim Khaleefa.
41. Mohammed of the Beard.
42. Every month, if our work schedule allowed, we came to the Pools of Ayun to wash away the sweat and the dirt, and to fill all our water containers.
43. Said bin Ghia, a sheikh of the Bait Qatan jebali tribe, was one of the earliest adoo but he switched to our side and led me on many ambush patrols, once being shot through the wrist right beside me.
44. The hidden cleft called Fiend Field that the author and Fiend Force used as their base near the Dehedoba Trail, from which to mount patrols and ambushes.
1. Brought up in South Africa, I roamed the Tokai woods with the local gang. In the season of the berg-winds, I watched the fires at night on the flanks of nearby Table Mountain.
2. My grandfather, Eustace Fiennes, with his friend and neighbour, Winston Churchill, in the local Territorial Regiment. Grandad, like Winston, fought in the Sudan and in South Africa.
3. Grandad (1864–1943), at left, front row, in the British South Africa Company’s Police (1890–2), when he acted against the Portuguese on the Mozambique border.
4. John Hanning Speke (1827–1864). Colleague and later rival Nile explorer to Richard Burton, Speke discovered Lake Victoria Nyanza.
5. Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890). Burton was an acclaimed explorer, traveller and writer.
6. James Augustus Grant (1827–1892). Like Speke, Captain Grant was an Indian Army Officer and tiger hunter. He was an integral part of the great Source of the Nile controversy of that time.
7. Sir Samuel White Baker (1821–1893) and his ex-slave wife, Lady Florence ‘Flooey’ Baker (1841–1916). Baker was a multifaceted Victorian hero, as was his wife, who accompanied him on his expeditions.
8. Doctor David Livingstone (1813–1873). Livingstone started his working life on a cotton mill, then trained as a missionary doctor. His dream was to travel throughout Africa to spread Christianity and to fight slavery.
9. Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904). As a journalist, he was sent to Africa to find the then ‘missing’ Livingstone. Stanley made his name reporting on Livingstone and thereafter made epic journeys of his own.
10. Charles Gordon (1833–1885). Gordon had a distinguished military career, after which he was made Governor of Equatoria in the Sudan where he mapped the Upper Nile and fought slavery.
11. Horatio Herbert Kitchener (1850–1916). After military service in Palestine and Cyprus, he became Governor of Sudan.
12. Tippo Tib (1837–1905). Real name Hamad bin Muhammad al-Murghabi, his mother was an Omani with royal family connections and his father was a coastal Swahili with slaving traditions. He built his own trading empire based on ivory, slaves and political cunning. He claimed the Eastern Congo for the Sultan of Zanzibar and, with associations with the likes of Stanley and the King of Belgium, became involved in the Congo–Arab War. He died of malaria in Zanzibar.
13. Most adult slaves of both sexes were roped together in gangs and often with six-foot-long individual heavy beams of wood pinned around their necks, to prevent escape as they journeyed along well-used routes from their location of capture to the coast.
14. An awkward moment unloading one of our hovercraft from a Wadi Halfa cattle barge on the Nile.
15. The two hovercraft, Baker and Burton, on the banks of the Nile with the author and Charles Westmoreland.
16. The Atlantis of the Nubian Desert. The Commissioner of Wadi Halfa shows the author his murals, which depict the town and oasis as it was before being totally submerged as a result of the construction of the Aswan Dam.
17. A breakdown in the Nubian Desert – Peter Loyd at the right.
18. The hovercraft doing well en route to Akasha.
19. Bilharzia is an ever-present menace in the shallows by the banks. Peter Loyd servicing one of Baker’s drive motors. Nick Holder contracted bilharzia at about this time.
20. Baker, after the collapse of a bridge in the warzone of the Bor Forest, subsequently the scene of many massacres.
21. We came across an apparently endless file of black ants, some half an inch long. They packed a shocking bite, as Ollie discovered when a couple became lodged between his shirt tail and pants.
22. The townsfolk of Malakal watch the arrival of their first visit by a hovercraft.
23. Ginny masterminded the Transglobe Expedition between 1972 and its completion in 1982.
24. Father Charles Eugène de Foucauld (1858–1916). De Foucauld served in the French Army in North Africa, before becoming a dedicated Trappist monk and settling in the Sahara, living among the Tuaregs of the Hoggar mountain region. He was murdered in 1916 and beatified by the Pope in 2005.
25. Ollie (foreground) and Simon in the Sahara.
26. For 50 miles we drove along rocky tracks into the canyons of the Hoggar and, at 8000 feet, came to the pass of Assekrem.
27. Simon, in the Sahl region of Goundam, examines the cadaver of a cow. Skulls and carcasses littered the bush. Simon developed malaria soon after we entered the Ivory Coast jungle region.
28. Charlie (foreground) and Simon clear the brush beside the Bandama Rouge River. Here Charlie found a 9-inch black scorpion in his tent.
29. I split the platoon into three groups: one to find a safe route to the desert, one to ambush the Dehedoba trail and the third to patrol the Sands.
30. In the great gravel deserts that skirt the Empty Quarter we helped the companies’ artillery along our dizzy ‘road’ from the desert to the enemy-held Qara.
31. My section of the Reconnaissance Platoon in the Dhofari nej’d. Far left is Ali Nasser. Far right is Said Salim.
32. A jebali family at home on the Plain of Salalah. The mother is in her early forties.
33. A bedu family we came across living in a cave near Habarut in the Dhofari nej’d.
34. When we camped in the frontier wadi’s oasis of Habarut between the twin fortresses, one on either side of the border, the atmosphere was tense and heavy with the hostility of the Mahra inhabitants. They disliked the Sultan’s army, for they felt that all Habarut should be Yemeni territory.
35. Our long stint in ambush hides were memorable for the unwelcome attendance of ticks,
scorpions, midges, mosquitoes, biting ants of various sizes and colours and, always, the background awareness of being in territory held by a cunning and aggressive enemy.
36. The longest time our sections stayed motionless in a single ambush was four days and nights.
37. Tim Landon and his Intelligence group in Salalah. When he told me where and when to lay an ambush in the mountains, I could usually be sure of exciting results.
38. Ali Nasser.
39. Said Salim.
40. Salim Khaleefa.
41. Mohammed of the Beard.
42. Every month, if our work schedule allowed, we came to the Pools of Ayun to wash away the sweat and the dirt, and to fill all our water containers.
43. Said bin Ghia, a sheikh of the Bait Qatan jebali tribe, was one of the earliest adoo but he switched to our side and led me on many ambush patrols, once being shot through the wrist right beside me.
44. The hidden cleft called Fiend Field that the author and Fiend Force used as their base near the Dehedoba Trail, from which to mount patrols and ambushes.
Heat Page 47
