Operation Iraq

by Leo Kessler

  BOOK 1 – Revolt in the Desert

  CHAPTER 1

  The sun slashed the cockney corporal's eyes like the blade of a sharp knife. To his front the scrub desert shimmered a light blue. As he and the flight sergeant squatted there in the turret of the pre-war armoured car, their shirts turned a wet black with the intense heat. Flies were everywhere. Automatically they brushed them off but they knew, from their years in Iraq, the flies would be back. They always were. As the little corporal was wont to moan, "Give the frigging place back to the Arabs."

  But now he and the balding RAF flight sergeant were too interested in the file of soldiers slogging their way through the sand and scrub towards them to notice the insects. The flight sergeant had almost forgotten the 'Mespot' – the break-up letter wives sent long-serving husbands in Mesopotamia. It had told him, as wives of the Iraq garrison always did, that she had "found someone else". He focused his glasses and tried to make out the details of those dark-skinned soldiers advancing upon the hidden armoured car.

  "They're not Iraqis," the balding flight sergeant said after a while, the sweat dripping down his brick-red face.

  "Well, they're some kind of Arabs," the corporal objected. "Only them and poor sods like ourselves would be out in the desert at this time of the sodding day."

  The flight sergeant grunted something and adjusted his glasses more accurately. The leading soldier came into focus more clearly now. He wore a turban like some of the Iraqi levies did, and he carried a pre-war Lee Enfield rifle, but there was something about the man's bearing which distinguished him from the sloppy, ill-trained Iraqi levies in British service. It was his pack. It was squared off and well-balanced, the brasses gleaming in the harsh rays of the midday sun. Slowly he lowered his glasses, his fat face puzzled. "Corp," he said hesitantly. "That lot seems to be Indian Army."

  "Indian Army?" the cockney NCO echoed. "But there ain't no Indian Army in Iraq, just us poor sods from the frigging RAF and a handful of brown jobs back at HQ. Besides, what's those blokes doing out here in the middle of nowhere?" He indicated the featureless barren desert with a wave of his bronzed arm. "There's nothing going on here. I mean, where they come from and where they frigging going to, I ask yer, Flight?"

  For the first time that day since they had set out from the great RAF base at Habbaniyah, west of Baghdad, the fat flight sergeant forgot his unfaithful wife back in the UK, and the image of her naked in some other bloke's arms while he rogered her, going at her like a bloody fiddler's elbow. "Yer right, Corp," he said after a moment. "There's something fishy going on here."

  "Yer can say that again, Flight," the little cockney agreed. "Take a gander at the machine gun that Arab in the second file is carrying. If me glassy orbs don't deceive me, Flight, that bloke's carrying a Jerry machine gun. It ain't no Bren, for certain." He turned to the puzzled senior NCO. "Now tell me what a bunch of sepoys is doing in the middle of nowhere, carrying a Jerry machine gun, eh?"

  But the flight sergeant had no ready answer for that overwhelming question. Instead he said, voice suddenly unsteady, "I think, Corp, we ought to hoof it back to base. I don't like this, I don't like it one bit."

  "I ain't exactly falling in love with it," he agreed. "You're right, Flight. Let's bugger off before they spot us."

  "Better get in wireless contact with base, too, while we're at it," the flight sergeant said. "We'd better do this proper, Corp."

  "Right you are. Blind 'em with bullshit, eh?" His bronzed face cracked into a momentary smile. "You can do the hard graft, Flight, and wind up the elastic."

  The flight sergeant nodded. As the corporal slipped on the earphones of the armoured car's primitive wireless set, he dropped over the side of the vehicle, which it was rumoured at base had once seen service with Lawrence of Arabia back in the Old War. Even as he did so, he undid the flap of his revolver holster – just in case.

  Now the column of marching men were some couple of hundred yards away. But as yet it was obvious they had not seen the armoured car. The sun was in their eyes and the vintage fighting vehicle was camouflaged to merge into the yellow waste all around. The flight sergeant spat on his palms and then seized the car's starting handle. Inside the turret, the corporal seated at the radio was commencing the usual service wireless litany. "Charlie, Able, Baker... Charlie, Able, Baker... Are you receiving me? I repeat... Charlie, Able, Baker, are you receiving me...? Over..."

  He flexed his muscles and tugged hard at the handle. There was a hollow groan. He cursed. As usual the ancient vehicles refused to start. They were clapped out like all the RAF equipment in Iraq. The government in London had ruled the rebellious Iraqis for over a quarter of a century on the cheap, using obsolete aircraft and armoured cars to keep the tribes under control, bombing them and sometimes gassing them into submission when they had been too troublesome. It had been cheaper that way, instead of using properly trained British infantry.

  The flight sergeant, his fat face already lathered with sweat, as if it had been greased in Vaseline, tried again. The groan turned into a whine. To his ears, it sounded as if it could be heard all the way to Baghdad. Still the advancing column of what appeared to be Indian Army soldiers didn't seem to hear. They plodded on in their files, eyes concentrated on the way ahead.

  The NCO threw caution to the wind. With all his strength he turned and turned the starting handle. It was almost as if he were winding up the elastic of the toy motors he had played with as a kid. Inside the turret, the corporal was still trying to raise the big base at Habbaniyah.

  It had to happen, and it did. The leading Indian soldier, if that was what he was, turned in the direction of the ancient armoured car. For a moment it seemed he was unable to take in what he saw there. Suddenly he shouted, unslung his Lee Enfield and dropped to one knee in one swift movement. A second later the rest of the files were doing the same, and the sweating flight sergeant realised abruptly that he was in for trouble.

  Desperately, the beads of sweat hanging like opaque pearls from his balding forehead, he turned the handle with all his strength. The whirr was now followed by a harsh wheezing. From the exhaust there came a series of gasps. The desert air was suddenly full of the cloying stink of petrol. Inside the turret, the corporal had given up trying to raise the base. For he had spotted there was danger imminent. Instead he grabbed hold of the twin handles of the armoured car's only weapon, the pre-war Vickers machine gun. He pulled back the firing slot and peered through the sights.

  Two hundred yards away, the strangers were preparing to fire, and he could see from their firing postures that these were trained soldiers. But if they were soldiers of the British Indian Army, why would they attack an RAF armoured car? As the first volley rang out, the corporal posed a question that he would never live to answer. For already the first slugs were howling off the vehicle's thin armour, and the flight sergeant was down on both knees, blood jetting from his back in a bright red arc, mouth gaping open like that of some stranded fish. "Bug-ger off, Corp," he choked. Next instant he fell to the sand, dead before he hit the ground.

  For a moment the little cockney was undecided. Could he abandon the flight sergeant just like that? It didn't seem right. They'd been out here in Iraq together ever since 1939 and, as flight sergeants went, the senior NCO wasn't a bad lot.

  The slug that shattered the radio in a flurry of blue sparks and tiny red flames made up his mind for the corporal. The Indians were on their feet, advancing in a skirmish line, firing expertly from the hip, confident that they had nothing to fear from the stationary armoured car. "Bugger this for a game of soldiers," the corporal swore. He dropped the handles of the Vickers and slid into the driving seat, shoving home first gear as he did so, praying that he would not stall the ancient vehicle's tricky engine.

  With a rusty grunt the armoured car moved out of its hiding place. The Indians, sensing that the armoured car was going to attempt to make a run for it, broke into a swift advance, yelling angrily as they did so. Sweating frantically now, k
nowing that he was fated to die like the flight sergeant had if they caught up with him, the corporal eased the car up the sand slope, He started suddenly. There was the sound of heavy nailed boots clambering up the engine cowling to his rear. One of the Indians had outflanked him and had clambered on to the vehicle. He felt a cold finger of fear trace its way down his spine.

  He pressed his foot down harder on the accelerator. But the car didn't respond. The ancient vehicles were sluggish in soft sand. "Fer frigging hell's sake!" he cursed. "Get a frigging move on, will yer!" He gritted his teeth and willed the armoured car to move more swiftly. As soon as he gathered speed, he'd attempt to do a swift turn and shake the bastard off the rear. Stubbornly the armoured car refused to give him the speed he needed, and the sound of the unseen Indian's heavy boots was getting closer.

  While he steered, he freed one hand and reached for his pistol holster. He'd blast all hell out of any other Indian who attempted to clamber on to the armoured car. For now they were closing in on the slow-moving vehicle, its tyres attempting to get a grip on the loose sand. He gasped. He'd forgotten to put on his pistol belt when he and the dead sergeant had taken up their watching post earlier on. "Shit... shit... shit...!" he cursed, feeling himself overcome by a wave of sheer fear. He was defenceless and, whoever his attackers were, he was quite sure that he could expect no mercy from them if he fell into their hands: these Middle-Eastern Arabs never showed mercy when prisoners fell into their hands. And their prisoners didn't die swiftly either. In the past three years here in bloody Iraq, he had seen what had happened to some of his fellow RAF comrades when they had fallen into the hands of the locals: gouging out eyes and chopping off a bloke's John Thomas was only the start of the buggers' tortures.

  The bullet hit him in the shoulder as if he had been whacked by a tremendous blow from a cricket bat. Red-hot pain skewered his flesh. He yelped. Above him in the open turret a dark, gleaming face, all white teeth and burning dark eyes, glowered down at him in triumph, as he fell momentarily back in the driver's seat. "You die now, Tommy, eh?" the Indian said in accented English. "Gildy, Corporal wallah!"

  Suddenly he forgot his pain. Anger surged through his skinny body. How dare the Arab bastard talk to a white man like him in that fashion? The adrenaline started pumping. Ignoring his wounded shoulder, he twisted the wheel sharply. Even in the soft sand, the armoured car responded. The Indian was caught off balance. He yelled. Next instant he tumbled inside the turret, to lie there momentarily, groaning, blood seeping from a great gash made by one of the Vickers' firing handles in his forehead.

  The corporal didn't give him time to recover. He grabbed the reserve starting handle, steering the best he could with one hand. With an animal grunt, he brought it down hard across the Indian's face. The man raised his hands to protect himself. Too late! The angry, wounded NCO brought the handle down again with all his strength. Something snapped. The man's front teeth splintered. Blood welled from the Indian's broken nose, streaming down his chin, his shattered teeth gleaming like polished ivory. The corporal hit him again in the very same instant that the stray slug from the men firing outside struck him in the chest. For a moment he couldn't comprehend what had happened to him.

  Then, with red and silver stars exploding in front of his eyes and a dark mist threatening to engulf him at any moment, he steered through his attackers blindly, scattering them to left and right, till, leaving them behind him, he could stay conscious no longer. His head slumped to the wheel, but his right foot remained clamped firmly to the accelerator. Thus the dead Indian and a dying corporal of the Royal Air Force disappeared into the desert, bearing with them the first indication that the destruction of the 300-year-old British Empire had commenced in this godforsaken hell-hole.

  CHAPTER 2

  "Say, Jumbo," the young flying officer with the little moustache, which stubbornly refused to grow into the typical RAF aircrew handlebar one, lisped. "What's going on?" He and his companion narrowed their eyes against the glare of the midday sun after the cool darkness of the officers' mess. "These towel-heads are making a fuss, what."

  His companion, equally young and inexperienced, said, "Arabs and shitehouse wallahs at that. What can you expect? Arabs!" He spat out the word, as if by itself it was explanation enough.

  The young flying officer from the great sprawling Habbaniyah training base was not appeased. "Shitehouse wallahs don't run around at this time of day and in this heat," he commented, as more and more of the natives who cleaned the camp's latrines and burned the evil-smelling ordure in large pits on the outskirts of Habbaniyah left their unpleasant tasks and ran towards what looked like an RAF armoured car which was slowly approaching the centre of the base. "There's something up, Jumbo."

  Behind them, Air Commodore Jeeves, erect and somewhat sour-faced, still limping from the wound he had received in the Battle of Britain the year before, frowned. That silly young fool Gore-Smythe, with his even sillier moustache, was right. The natives didn't usually go galloping about like this in the baking midday heat, where it was sometimes possible to fry an egg on the decks of the armoured cars which patrolled deep into the desert around the remote base, which the British used to control Iraq. Besides, what was the armoured car that had attracted their attention doing weaving all over the place like that? If he hadn't known better, he would have thought that the unknown driver was three sheets into the wind.

  Jeeves turned to Squadron Leader McLeod, commander of the RAF armoured car squadron and an old hand in Iraq, who was just behind him, finishing off his Victory cigarette before he went over to his workshops. "One of your cars, McLeod. D'yer think the driver's suffering from heatstroke? The bugger's all over the place."

  McLeod, nut-brown, face pared down to the bone from years in the desert and the illnesses he had suffered here since he had first come out to Iraq during the British campaign of 1920 against the unruly Iraqis, snapped, "Bin watching him myself, sir. Does look as if he's in trouble. Want me to have a look see?"

  At any other time, Jeeves would have smiled. The dour Scot was not one to waste words. He always chopped off his sentences like that. But not this April day. There was trouble – serious trouble in the air. Everywhere in the Middle East the situation was deteriorating rapidly for the British Empire. Not only in North Africa, where the Eighth Army was suffering defeat after defeat at the hands of the Huns, but also in Syria, now controlled by the French puppets of the victorious Germans. Iraq was no better. Here and in Persia, the Germans were trying to raise the tribes against the British. They had done so in the First World War, and now, with the British fighting alone and without success, it was clear that the Arabs would be only too eager to throw in their lot with the Hun and get rid of the hated Inglizi.

  "I'll get the Norton, sir," McLeod offered.

  "And I'll come with you," a worried Jeeves added. "There's something ruddy wrong over there." And then, angry at the two young flying officers still in training with his wing for some reason he couldn't quite fathom, he snapped, "Well, the two of you, don't just stand around like a couple of pregnant penguins. Get back to your manuals. You've got one hell of a lot to learn before the balloon goes up, and I can assure you it will, sooner than you two young twerps think." They fled.

  "Oh my God!" Jeeves exclaimed, as McLeod slithered to a stop in a curve of flying sand, sending the gawping Iraqis to one side, as they gazed at the battered armoured car, which had finally come to a stop, crashed into one of the marker beacons which indicated the end of the base's runway. But its engine was still running. Jeeves thought the sound strange. Like the beating of a metal heart, although no other sound came from within the vehicle.

  McLeod waved his swagger cane threateningly at the natives. They retreated even further back. They all knew the squadron leader. He was a feared man. Anyone who crossed him disappeared silently and suddenly; McLeod didn't have the normal Britisher's sense of discipline and fair play. The dour Scot was worse than their old Turkish masters, and these piercing light-blu
e eyes of his were supposed among them to bring evil upon anyone who gazed at them too long.

  For a moment or two, the officers gazed at the stalled armoured car, its sides pocked with the silver scars of bullets, and at the dead Indian soldier sprawled along the engine cowling. Then McLeod moved. He clambered aboard, looked down at the driver slumped over his wheel, the blood congealing from his wounds and great bluebottles beginning to crawl across his pale face into the sightless eyes. He turned to the air commodore. "Dead – the driver, I mean."

  Jeeves nodded his understanding. He indicated the Indian sepoy.

  "I know, sir," the Scot said slowly and thoughtfully. "What in hell's name is a member of the Indian Army doing here in Iraq?"

  Jeeves bit his bottom lip in puzzled vexation. Most of the regular Indian Army was in the Middle East fighting the Hun; the rest were on the Indian frontier with Burma, waiting for those evil little yellow men, the Japs, to attack, which undoubtedly they would do soon. There were no Indian Army troops to spare for this sideshow in Iraq. So what was the Indian doing here? Why had he been involved in what was, Jeeves hazarded, an attack on the RAF armoured car patrol; and, to judge by the number of bullet holes in the car's side, Jeeves guessed there had been more than one attacker. He pushed back his forage cap and scratched the back of his shaven head. There was something funny going on here, but for the life of him, he couldn't make out what it was.

  Five minutes later, when the police had arrived and cleared away the evil-smelling 'shitehouse wallahs', McLeod started to enlighten the puzzled air commodore. While the RAF police encircled the armoured car, rifles and clubs at the ready, Jeeves clambered on to the car and squatted where the Scot was examining the dead Indian. McLeod said, "Oh yes, Commodore, he's an Indian all right. Look at the mark on his forehead. Lower caste, admittedly, but a caste mark all right. The gear's Indian Army, too. But look at this." Relatively gently for him, McLeod turned the dead man over. "Take a gander at his water bottle. Not British Army issue."