No Fear: The True Story of My Deadly Life After the SAS

by Devereux, Steve

  I awoke 12 hours later, sweating like a bastard. The air conditioning had packed up. I had a mouth like an escaping Iraqi's flip-flop on the road to Basra. I'd missed the RV at Cloggies. Still, there were bound to be other times.

  Two days later, I was on the road to Zomba, which was a good one. It had tarmac, lots of it. The time was 05.00hrs and I hadn't seen a single vehicle since leaving Blantyre. Once outside the city the countryside opened up into acres and acres of flat, well-cultivated fields of all sorts of vegetables and fruit — cabbages, corn, watermelons, every field had something planted in it. I didn't have too much of a conversation with the driver. He spoke to me mainly in his native language, Chichewa, with just occasional bursts of broken English, and anyway, riding in a Land Rover is the vehicle equivalent of flying in the back of C130 Hercules transport. With the engine sounding like it was on the back seat and the noise caused by the tyres on tarmac, I couldn't hear jack shit, so just stared out of the window enjoying the view.

  Every so often we would pass through a village. There seemed to be a mass exodus from them. Hundreds and hundreds of men and women, brightly dressed with what looked like floral-patterned curtains wrapped round them, could be seen walking along the road on their way to work in the plantations. Every now and then the smells of wood-burning fires and their spicy breakfasts still cooking away would waft through into the Land Rover and tantalise me.

  Avenues of trees bordered the village roads, types I had never seen before. The most striking were the jacarandas. These were like the old gnarled oaks which surround a lot of commons in England, but the difference was that they were covered in magnificent purple blossom and every so often, when the sun caught them right, the flowers looked blood red. This, mixed with the rich greens and yellows that made up the landscape, was a delight. I wondered if such a flamboyant tree could grow back home. Probably not, otherwise it would have been introduced into the UK years ago.

  My journey through this apparent paradise took a couple of hours, then we eventually drove into the air base. The guard at the barrier was expecting me. A single-strip tarmac runway with a few buildings and two large newly-built, dark-green hangers off to the right was all there was.

  We drove up to the neatest-looking of these buildings, which I could see was the Mess and Operations room for the pilots. It was a single-storey L-shaped building painted sky-blue, with a dark corrugated roof. In front was a well laid out garden and a car park containing a solitary vehicle. The whole complex was bordered by small boulders painted white, and I laughed as I saw these. Typical legacy of colonial Britain! The monotonous routine of painting rocks was something these Malawians took just as seriously as the British had done.

  As I walked into the Mess, I saw it was definitely RAF vintage. Framed pictures of aircraft old and new covered the walls and small wooden plaques donated by previous visiting military units filled in the spaces between. Air conditioning, a cold water dispenser and a small wooden table laid out with aircraft magazines, and Henry my pilot, dressed in his pilot's khaki one-piece overalls waiting to greet me, completed the RAF-clone impression.

  Henry was a short black Malawian around 30, about five feet four inches, thin and sinewy, and sported an almost-but-not-quite handle-bar moustache. He spoke excellent English, a great comfort to me. I'd had visions of being flown across the border by the seat of my pants in a 1940s Dakota DC 3, and not being able to communicate with the pilot should the shit hit the fan. Actually, it didn't really matter what the aircraft was like. I'd flown in a few rust-buckets before and hadn't banked on this flight being any different.

  We had an hour or so to kill before flying so I made the most of the conversation and got a lot of information out of Henry. It transpired that he'd learnt most of his flying from the Brits, Americans and until recently the Germans, who had 'donated' three brand-new aircraft to the Malawi Government — for what reason I never found out. He had been flying for almost 12 years, mainly fixed-wing aircraft and choppers, but now he had been promoted to flying cross-border missions in one of the three military versions of the German-built Dornier DO 228, a small but robust 20-seater twin turbo-prop transport aircraft.

  Things were looking better and better. A very articulate English-speaking pilot, with stacks of flying experience under his belt, and three state-of-the-art aircraft under his command. Was this too good to be true?

  After about 30 minutes Henry's navigator came into the mess. He introduced himself as Sam but his real name was Samalukatauka as far as I could gather; it certainly had a lot of tongue-twisting syllables. Sam said that there was to be a delay of about one hour. It transpired that although the pilots were up to scratch with these new aircraft, the ground crew was still in training and there was a problem with something or other. Henry and Sam went off to sort it out.

  Henry had been able to give me what appeared to be an unbiased view on the war I was about to fly into. First-hand knowledge was invaluable in these circumstances, so I tried to take it all on board and add it to what I already knew about the two warring sides, the Renamo (the baddies) and the Frelimo (the side I was working for, the good guys).

  Henry didn't know too much about the team's operation in this country, or if he did he didn't let on. All he said was that he and his team flew into Mozambique once a week, sometimes twice if it was a Priority One mission, Casevac or 'special delivery' — whatever that was! — to pick up and drop off supplies, mail and pax (an airforce term for passengers). It was really a high-class taxi service, but with the risk of getting blown out of the sky on every flight.

  Our time of flight was to be just over an hour. The aircraft shook violently as Henry released the brakes and sped off down the runway. Soon there were heavy thumping sounds, and the aircraft bounced as the undercarriage hit the least-used part of the runway — the end. This was Henry's cue to pull back on the controls and get us airborne. The engines strained to capacity as we put height between us and the earth. We were now up and flying out north-east.

  A river of sweat continually poured off my nose and onto the map I was holding, it then dripped off into one of the hessian sacks filled with cashew nuts, which were stacked two-high and covered the floor of the aircraft. I had no seat as such. I sat perched on a cool box, gazing out of a window.

  Curiously I watched my body fluids drain away — nose to map, to hessian sack — and wondered when I would get the chance to replace them. Two bottles of fizzy orange back at the mess an hour earlier were obviously not enough for the old body. Already I had drunk half my canteen of water and needed to save the rest in case we had to put down unexpectedly. This was my survival supply and experience had taught me not to drink it, no matter how tempted I was. And now I was gagging. The dehydration was not helping my brain to register the dried-up river beds 1,500 feet below and compare them with those which I was trying to follow on my map. I was trying to orientate myself with the ground but the map I had was pretty useless, so I eventually gave up.

  I couldn't hear much above the drone of the twin engines, which drowned out everything else. The sacks of nuts were not for resupply but to act as bullet stoppers should a horde of roving Renamo guerrillas spot us and decide to have a day out on the range to practise their anti-aircraft drills, knowing full well that we were not armed. These sacks would probably turn out to be the most expensive 'bullet stoppers' in the world, once their contents had been repackaged and stacked on the shelves of Tesco's.

  Every now and then Henry would put in a steep turn, drop or pull the aircraft up severely to avoid the small arms fire which occasionally came our way. There was not much chance of being shot down at 1,500 feet but the odd stray 7.62 round could rip open one of our fuel tanks, or worse, a lucky shot could take out the pilot, which would not be good news. Furthermore this was good tactics, to keep any baddies on the ground guessing where we were heading. Varying our insertion route into Mozambique was OK by me. Henry could fly upside down if it helped put the Renamo off our scent. Luckily for us they p
ossessed no aircraft. Hitherto, all their atrocities had been carried out on foot, according to local intelligence — but this was no time to find out that this was wrong.

  There was ample headroom and I could stretch out my legs, which was great. There's nothing like a bit of legroom when one flies. The aircraft was a bit of a Tardis, bigger inside than it looked from the outside. It could have carried about 20 seated passengers, but had been totally gutted to accommodate as much supplies and kit as possible. The only two seats left were those of the pilot and navigator.

  The heat was unbearable and, to make matters worse, kit and equipment constantly shifted about as Henry banked sharply, changing course. A box of tinned tomatoes broke free and fell on a sack of potatoes, then the rest of the stock followed. I couldn't hear a thing, I only saw the stack tumble. I had tried to hold them back as much as I could, but since Henry had now put the aircraft into a Stuka dive I really wasn't achieving much. Then the aircraft levelled out.

  'Jesus Christ,' I screamed, to no one in particular. I was now getting pissed off with this white-knuckle ride. A mixture of dehydration, fear and that nauseous feeling everyone gets when they fly was getting me really angry. I looked at my watch. Can't be long now, I remember thinking.

  A couple of cardboard crates ripped open and sent their contents rolling all over the place. I turned to look up front and made eye contact with Sam. He'd been trying to catch my attention and was just about to come back and shake me. His head phones were half off his head and he was pointing downwards. I jumped across all the shite which had come loose and looked out of one of the windows. I could see a small airstrip and, off to one side, a small town. This I guessed was the town of Cuamba, and the Stuka dive was obviously our tactical descent.

  When we took off from Zomba I remember looking down at the fields. I didn't need a map now to know when we crossed the border into Mozambique. The cultivation literally stopped. It was as if the Malawi farmers cultivated every field up to the border, yet on the Mozambique side there was nothing; no tracks, no hedgerows or defined barriers. A desolate land with no sign of habitation, the scene continuing for miles. We did fly over a lot of water but these lakes were covered in weed and looked pretty much stagnant. Then, as we came in lower, I could see there were fields of sorts, but not as cultivated as those in Malawi. Still, it was an obvious sign — man at work.

  Cuamba looked a heavily populated place, so I could easily make out the town and its boundary, bisected by a single railway track leading to sidings beyond it. It seemed to be a couple of miles across, and contained low-level villa-type buildings, none over three storeys high. Outside the town I could make out hundreds and hundreds of small mud huts, dotted all around the place. People were everywhere and it looked like they were all heading towards the runway.

  I felt that landing was a bit of a problem for Henry. As we hit the runway I had a mental image of the fuselage breaking in two. You know that feeling you get when something really unpleasant is about to happen, and the situation is totally out of your control? Well, that's how I felt!

  I still remember a time when I was about 12. I had climbed a tree in my friend's garden, the aim being to see who could reach the highest point. Even before I started, I knew that something was going to go wrong. And, of course, it did. I lost my grip trying to stretch out and grasp the highest branch on the tree, and fell to earth. I was falling through the air, quite conscious, just waiting to hit the ground, knowing that it was going to hurt, that terrible pain was just a second away. The long and short of it was that I broke my left wrist. It was that feeling I now had in the aircraft.

  But this time, the ending was different. The fuselage held together. We still had two engines and two wings. There was no problem, no catastrophe.

  'Welcome to Mozambique, the arsehole of the world,' joked Henry. He turned round to me with a grin as wide as the Zambezi river. 'Sorry about the landing. That was Sam's first! I'm teaching him how to fly the baby. It's unofficial, but then again, so is your business here.'

  There was nothing I could say. I was just grateful that I was in one piece. When I used to fly in the Paras or the SAS there was usually a heart-stopping episode at the end of each flight. Why should it be different now I'm a civilian? I was left wondering. Same shit, different day.

  The port door of the aircraft was suddenly opened by someone outside. It was a small door and, like on any of these aircraft, very flimsy. Tins of tomatoes fell out on to the ground. A cool gush of wind rushed in, followed by a friendly face with an outstretched hand.

  'Welcome to Mozambique. Brad Tasker, ic of the team. You must be Steve,' said a Scouse voice.

  Brad was from the 'old school'. I'd heard that he left the Regiment back in the late 1970s after a pretty distinguished career, mostly spent fighting in Oman against the LMD (the Liberation Movement of Dhofar, Dhofar being a vast stretch of desert between [at the time] South Yemen and Oman). The LMD was a communist organisation backed by the regime of South Yemen, who considered they had rights to this land as part of the six provinces of South Yemen. Oman thought otherwise, hence a long but little-known war, backed by the British Government and mostly carried out by the SAS. All the guys on this team had served at one time or another in Dhofar and were from the same mould: 40/50, very fit, very experienced in the art of warfare.

  I was introduced to Kenny, another team member, in charge of our stores. He was organising the off-load of all administration and stores into the back of two Land Rovers. Stores for the local militia had come on the same flight, so it was important that our kit was identified and grabbed as quickly as possible, because there would be no exchanging of kit with the militia if 'by accident' they took something which was not theirs.

  'Well Steve, what d'ya think of the show so far? Pretty shite eh, a load of bollocks or what?'

  I detected a certain amount of sarcasm in his voice. After all, he was only doing what all soldiers ever do, loading and off-loading stores, in the event of 'closing' with the enemy.

  'Fuck, I love it. I can't think of anywhere else I'd like to be.'

  'Fuck aye. It's fucking great, this. Getting a sun tan and getting paid for it, it's just like being back in the SAS,' Kenny replied.

  I instantly liked Kenny, who looked a lot younger than his 53 years. A Jock and proud of it, he had come from the Parachute Regiment and then into one of the Air Troops of the SAS — the same background as mine, but a generation before. He, too, had seen a lot of action around the world, and had loved every bit of it.

  Crates of beer and 'stims' — a slang word short for stimulants: cola, lemonade, etc. — were at a premium and only our team could afford them. That's what Kenny was telling me as I helped sort out our kit. Everything with red tape wrapped around it was ours, he added.

  He had formed a line from the aircraft to the Land Rovers, and with the help of half a dozen of our Frelimo recruits, we shifted the lot in no time.

  Cuamba Airport consisted of just a runway, because the main terminal and surrounding buildings had been bombed some years before. Their remains had then been systematically stolen, brick by brick by the locals. Perhaps 'stolen' is too strong a word; 'liberated' would be more correct.

  From what I could see, there wasn't much of anything at the airport: no perimeter fence, no Customs and certainly no other aircraft. Nevertheless, that didn't really matter. Only one thing did — the guerrilla war being fought 20 ks north, east and south of us.

  The ride to our camp took only a few minutes. The thick red dust which covered the area reminded me of Hereford during the ploughing season. Tractors would come off fields on to country lanes taking half the earth with them. When this dried it created exactly the same sort of coloured dust I was seeing now.

  Soon we pulled up outside a small compound, about half the size of a football field, enclosed by a locally-made wooden lattice security fence, about eight feet high. There was no specific access for vehicles so we had to leave them outside, with a local guard on them. The
entrance was just a part of one of the lattice sections propped open wide enough to get through.

  'This is home. Get your kit and come and meet the others. I'll get a guard to watch this lot,' Brad said. Squeezing through the hole in the fence, I followed after the other two.

  Inside the compound was a series of brick, wooden and metal-clad buildings, and in the centre of them all was a small jungle-type hut with no sides. The roof was made out of what looked like palm leaves, and beneath it were seats fashioned out of two Y-shaped pieces of wood driven into the ground, with a log resting in the Y. This was typical SAS-style furniture. I did not need any more clues to its function — it was the bar. Thirty feet to the left of the bar was a 15-foot long single-storey concrete building beyond which was the ablutions area. Around the rest of the compound were three 20-foot containers — obviously our accommodation; washing hanging out to dry around them proved the point.

  Behind the concrete block I could see a small telegraph-type pole poking up above a small apex of a roof, supporting electrical wires which criss-crossed the compound. That had to be the generator hut. The only other building which stood immediately to the right of the entrance was the ops sitting room hut, a similar concrete building, about the same size. This is where I met with the rest of the team: Jimmy, a short jock whom I was to work with and Josh, another old hand who had worked out in this part of Africa for many a year.

  It all seemed quite genial. I got a rough in-country brief from Brad, then the other guys filled me in with their own views, not only of the war, but also of the nature of the job and all the hows, whats, whens, whys, dos and don'ts. They seemed a good bunch, with their priorities in the right order. Every evening, after 'prayers' (a formal debrief on the day's events and training) in the ops room, it was SOPs to meet in the newly constructed bar and thrash out, unofficially, any problems that might have occurred during that day's 'prayers', sort out any niggles that might be pissing someone off in the team, or assess any personality clashes with our fellow Frelimo unit.