by Shaun Clarke
The enemy were now very close and two of them had actually reached the wall of the larger sangar and attempted valiantly to push it over. This was brave, but unwise. Dead-eye and Les stood up simultaneously, the latter ignoring the pain in his wounded leg, and fired short, lethal bursts into the guerrillas, who quivered epileptically, their robes torn to shreds and soaked with blood, then fell back into the billowing dust.
Two more short bursts tore through the other guerrillas, killing some, wounding others, and the remainder fled back down the hill, leaving their dead, but dragging the screaming wounded with them. Before they could be shot at, Dead-eye and Les dropped back into the sangar, leaning against the wall and squinting through the deepening, dust-filled darkness at their ghost-like comrades. Captain Ellsworth was squatting beside the groaning, restless Terry while Ken, his eyes gleaming sardonically out of circles of dust, methodically exercised his wounded leg.
Sighing, Ellsworth left Terry and returned to the firing slit of the sangar to look down over the wall. The guerrillas had fled back down the hill and could not be seen in the darkness. They had dragged away their wounded, but the dead still littered the moonlit slopes, some so dusty that they resembled the rocks about them. The dust, which was still blowing over them, took the shape of spectral figures and moaned softly, eerily. There was no other sound.
‘It’s time to leave,’ Dead-eye said, brutally breaking the silence.
12
‘That was Lieutenant-Colonel Callaghan,’ Captain Ellsworth said, handing the microphone of the A41 back to the wounded Les Moody. ‘He’s just confirmed what we already knew: air cover has been called off for the night. We’re all on our own now.’
He glanced down over the wall of the sangar, but saw only moonlight gleaming on the smooth volcanic rock between patches of sand on the slope that ran down to the hamlet. Though seeing nothing else, he knew, as did the others, that the guerrillas were still down there, preparing to move against the sangars. Indeed, they were probably advancing right now by moving stealthily from rock to rock under cover of darkness.
Turning back to his men, he said: ‘Might as well admit it. Our original plan to mark the Paras’ DZ has gone for a burton. All we can do now is attempt to break out and make our way back to Thumier. There’s not going to be a rendezvous, so we might as well get on with it.’ Then, as if unable to hold in his frustration, he added explosively: ‘What a bloody disaster!’
‘Like this whole bloody war,’ Ken said, forlornly studying his wounded leg. ‘A complete waste of time from start to finish. Lost before it began. Bloody politicians!’
No one said anything, but they all agreed with him. This was one of the few engagements they had been in that had given them no sense of pride or achievement. As their squadron commander had told them, this war was a lost cause created by politicians intent on getting Britain out of the colony while leaving a British presence there at the same time. That remaining presence, of which the SAS was a small part, had the least enviable job of all: defending a people who did not want to be defended and increasingly supported the so-called enemy. Most of the men felt bitter about this and, rather than taking pride in what they were doing, just wanted to do their best while stuck there and get the hell back home as soon as possible. It was not a good way to fight.
‘Anyway, Callaghan agrees that we should try to break out and he’s arranged to send in another troop by helicopter, to lend us support. That chopper is already on its way and should be here soon. Meanwhile, we wait. Sergeant Parker?’
‘Yes, boss,’ Dead-eye said from his position at the sangar wall, where he was keeping his eye on the moonlit slope with the aid of his night-vision goggles.
‘Any sign of movement down there?’
‘Not yet – though I suspect they’re on the move. That chopper had better come soon.’
‘Indeed it had, Sergeant. Keep your eyes peeled. What about you men? Are you all right?’
‘Absolutely fine, boss,’ Ken replied laconically, looking down at his bandaged, bloody leg, then glancing across at his similarly wounded friend. ‘I’ve done my left leg, Lance-Corporal Moody’s done his right, and Trooper Malkin’s practically delirious with an upset stomach and a raging fever. Apart from that, we’re fine, boss.’
‘Do you think you can make it out of here?’
‘Yes, boss. Both of us can just about walk and we’ll do anything – and I mean anything – to get the hell out of here. As for Trooper Malkin, though, I’ve got my doubts …’ He glanced sideways to where Terry was stretched out in his shallow scrape, no longer tossing and turning on his rubber groundsheet because he was now too weak for even that. ‘What the hell do we do? The kid’s out like a light. Les and I can just about walk – we can’t carry Terry. That leaves you and Dead-eye. But if you carry him, boss, you can’t use your weapons.’
‘We’ll carry him if it kills us,’ Dead-eye said.
‘It just might,’ Ken replied. While they waited for the chopper to arrive with the support team, he checked his wounded leg again, tested it against the wall of the sangar, and thought about how nice it would be to be back in Blighty with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones on the radio and all the girls in their miniskirts. It was a good time to be in England, Ken reckoned. He wanted to sit in front of the television, watching the amazing Cassius Clay bring down the lumbering Sonny Liston or, even better, the sexy Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice-Davis bring down a government or, almost as good, the unfolding tale of the Great Train Robbers, who were fast becoming heroes to the British public. He wanted desperately to visit his local and have a pint of decent bitter, read about the antics of Peter Sellers and Britt Ekland in the Sunday papers, or the fights between Mods and Rockers. Or simply listen to Radio Caroline.
What he did not want to listen to was a lot of stuck-up, self-serving politicians spouting about Aden, Cyprus, Israel, Rhodesia, South Africa or Uganda; or about the fact that they were planning to waste £160 million of taxpayers’ money on building a totally unnecessary Channel Tunnel. Who wanted the Frogs on their doorstep?
Ken glanced at Terry, saw that he was still ivory-white, sweaty and unconscious, though mumbling constantly to himself in his delirium, and wondered how the hell they could get him out. Bad enough that he and Les had leg wounds; Terry just made it worse.
He was distracted by the sound of an approaching helicopter. Glancing up, he saw a Wessex S-58 Mark 1 emerge from the southern darkness, blocking out the stars as it drew near, but mercifully bringing the support team with it.
Having seen the chopper as well, Captain Ellsworth began guiding it in to the DZ with his SARBE surface-to-air rescue beacon. Unfortunately, any hopes he might have been harbouring that the guerrillas had disappeared from the lower slopes were brutally dashed when what sounded like a couple of heavy GPMGs roared into action and two streams of green tracer arced up into the sky towards the Wessex. The chopper kept coming, flying between the lines of tracer, but just as it was approaching the hill, some of the tracer hit it, causing showers of sparks to burst from it and making it shudder and list dangerously.
Immediately, the captain and Dead-eye fired savage bursts from their SLRs, hoping to silence the GPMGs down the hill. They were supported by the roaring of Taff’s Bren gun and the SLRs of Jimbo and the wounded Ben – but to no avail. The guerrillas returned the fire with a small-arms fusillade, causing bullets to dance off the sangar wall in showers of sparks that acted as beacons to the enemy marksmen.
Simultaneously, the lines of green tracer from the guerrillas’ GPMGs converged on the helicopter, turning it into a giant sparkler, making it shudder again and list more heavily, now pouring smoke. Even as the chopper turned away, the pilot was informing Captain Ellsworth over the radio that it was badly damaged and had to return to base while it could still fly. There was no chance of landing the replacements. Over and out.
Though exasperated and disappointed, the SAS men in both sangars gave the Wessex covering fire until it had limped ou
t of sight, leaving a trail of smoke behind it. When it had disappeared in the dark sky, the men stopped firing, conserving the last of their precious ammunition, and Captain Ellsworth contacted Lieutenant-Colonel Callaghan at Thumier on the encoded A41.
‘I’m afraid the Wessex didn’t make it through,’ he explained. ‘It’s damaged but luckily still flying, and limping back to base right now.’
‘Yes,’ Callaghan replied. ‘We’ve been informed. What options are left to you?’
‘None,’ Ellsworth said bluntly. ‘We’ll have to make a run for it under cover of darkness.’
‘Within range of the enemy?’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘Any other problems?’
‘Two men wounded in the leg; one with a serious stomach complaint and fever – now unconscious.’
‘Christ,’ Callaghan said softly. After a brief pause, he asked: ‘Can the wounded men walk?’
‘Not too well, but they can manage.’
‘They’ll slow you down.’
‘We all know that.’
‘And the unconscious man?’
‘We’ll have to carry him on a makeshift stretcher.’
‘That means your hands are full.’
Ellsworth actually chuckled. ‘Yes, boss.’
‘Two leg wounds and an unconscious body. It sounds suicidal.’
‘We don’t have any option.’
There was a moment’s uneasy silence, broken only by the static coming over the radio. The guerrillas, too, were silent, though probably still inching up the dark hill, determined to annihilate the Englishmen.
‘What’s the time of departure?’ Callaghan asked eventually.
‘Approximately 1930 hours.’
‘Can you make that precisely?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. We’ll lay down an artillery barrage on the southern hill at 1932 sharp, covering the area between the sangars and the hamlet below it. When you exit the sangars at 1930, take the northern slope. You should be out of the sangars by the time the first shells of the barrage strike the southern hill. With luck, we can keep them engaged long enough for you to get out of range. They’ll follow you, but at least you’ll have a head start and a fighting chance.’
‘We’ll be out and gone, boss.’
‘Right,’ Callaghan replied. ‘Good luck to all of you.’
Handing the radio back to Les, Captain Ellsworth said, ‘That’s it, men. We move out at 1930 sharp. That gives us approximately thirty minutes to pack up our kit.’
‘We’ll have to travel light,’ Dead-eye said, ‘so I recommend we leave anything we don’t really need or can’t reasonably carry.’
‘Agreed. But don’t leave it for the guerrillas. Destroy anything that might be of use to them.’
‘Will do.’
‘Right, lads, let’s get to it. Dead-eye, can you crawl over to the other sangar and tell them what’s happening?’
‘Yes, boss.’
Dead-eye left the sangar and did the leopard crawl to the other sangar: wriggling forward on his belly, using his elbows for leverage, with his SLR cradled in both hands. While he was gone, the men he had left behind began to remove what kit they needed from their bergens, strap on their webbing and destroy any equipment they did not intend carrying. Even the A41 was smashed to pieces. The separate Morse set was rendered unusable by extracting the crystals that controlled its operating frequencies; then the men smashed what they could of the set itself. Even before Dead-eye had returned, the sounds of similar destruction could be heard coming from the smaller sangar. By the time he had crawled back into the larger sangar, all the work had been completed and the men, each carrying only his SLR, water bottle, ammunition pouches and emergency rations, were ready to move. All except the still-unconscious Terry.
‘We’ll have to make a stretcher,’ Captain Ellsworth said.
‘Right,’ Dead-eye agreed. ‘By hook or by crook, we’ve got to carry him out of here. For that reason, the men in the other sangar have agreed to give us covering fire for two minutes, only moving out when the artillery barrage begins.’
‘Dangerous,’ Ken murmured.
‘Good of them to do it,’ the captain said. ‘Damned decent of them.’
Dead-eye checked his wristwatch. ‘Our time’s nearly up, boss. Let’s get that stretcher made for Terry.’
Before anyone could move, however, the guerrillas, now much higher up the hill and inevitably hearing the noise from the smaller sangar, aimed a sustained fusillade of rifle and machine-gun fire at it. The men in the sangar immediately replied in kind and soon the green tracer of the guerrillas and the blue of the SAS were criss-crossing. Bullets bounced off the sangar and the rocks well below it, sending up showers of sparks.
‘Fucking Guy Fawkes Night,’ Ken murmured, rising painfully to the crouching position, head bowed to avoid the overhanging ponchos, his SLR in his hand.
Without a word, Dead-eye reached up and tore off the poncho, letting air rush in and revealing the stars directly above. He then removed some of the thicker branches holding the poncho up, checked their strength, then lay them parallel along both ends of the poncho and folded its ends over each stick. With his Sykes-Fairburn commando dagger, he stabbed holes in the turned-over ends and through the poncho below, along the whole length of both covered sticks. Removing a coil of heavy-duty string from his bergen, he cut it into two equal lengths and used the separate pieces to ‘stitch’ the folded-over ends of the poncho around the thick branches, thus completing a crude but effective stretcher.
He did all of this in about five minutes while Ken and Les, both kneeling by the wall and obviously in agony from their wounded legs, added their SLR fire to the combined Bren-gun and SLR fire from the smaller sangar.
‘All right, boss,’ Dead-eye said to Captain Ellsworth, ‘let’s put him onto this stretcher.’
Still kneeling and keeping their heads under the top of the sangar wall, they lifted the shivering, moaning trooper and deposited him awkwardly onto the makeshift stretcher. Dead-eye picked up Terry’s SLR and slung it over his own shoulder.
‘No point leaving it for the guerrillas,’ he explained. ‘And it might come in handy.’
Ellsworth checked his wristwatch, then raised his eyes again. ‘One minute to go.’ He turned to Ken and Les, who had both stopped firing to reload. ‘Do you think you can make it on those legs?’
‘I’ve been legless before,’ Les said with a grin, ‘and I always got home.’
‘Same here,’ Ken said.
Ellsworth grinned. ‘Right. Here’s the drill.’ He glanced at his wristwatch again. ‘When Dead-eye and I hump out with the stretcher, you two exit with us, one at the front, one behind. You give covering fire as all of us move down the northern slope. As we make our escape, we’ll also be given covering fire by the other sangar. When we’re 100 yards or so down the hill, we’ll hit the ground and give covering fire to the men in the other sangar. When they reach us, we all take off together. By that time Callaghan’s artillery barrage will have started. That’ll put a wall of fire between us and the guerrillas, and give us a fighting chance. Any last-minute questions?’
Ken and Les shook their heads simultaneously.
‘Good. Let’s get ready.’
The stretcher lay parallel to the front of the sangar, one end pointing towards the gap in the side. Dead-eye knelt in front of the stretcher, between it and the exit, with his back turned to it. He had Terry’s SLR slung over one shoulder, his own over the other. His hands were angled backwards to take hold of the ends of the two branches, acting as handles. Ellsworth did the same at the other end, but facing the stretcher. Ken and Les were crouching low, one on each side of the exit, both tormented by the pains shooting through their wounded legs, but both prepared to move out with Dead-eye and Ellsworth. The latter checked his wristwatch. One minute to go. He raised his right hand, preparing to give the signal for ‘Go!’.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, a machine-gun roared from lowe
r down the slope. Even before Ellsworth could drop his hand, a great chunk of stone was punched out of the lower part of the sangar’s front wall and phosphorescent-green tracer shot through the space like a laser beam, before smashing through the back wall.
The stretcher appeared to explode beneath Terry, with pieces of branch and tattered strips of poncho flying everywhere as he was chopped to pieces by the vicious stream of tracer.
The sick trooper started screaming. He was jerking epileptically as the tracer bullets tore through both him and the stretcher, then passed above them and through the stones in the opposite wall. Some of the bullets flew around the sangar, expiring with a harsh, metallic clatter that only added to the deafening noise.
As abruptly as it had started firing, the machinegun fell silent. Terry stopped screaming and his spasms subsided into the frozen, anguished posture of violent death. Looking down through the dust settling eerily over him, the shocked survivors in the sangar saw that he had been cut to pieces and now lay, lifeless and soaked in blood, on the smashed, tattered remains of the improvised stretcher.
‘Not much we can do for him now,’ Dead-eye said eventually, tonelessly. ‘I think it’s time we left, boss.’
Ellsworth glanced at Terry, then at his own wristwatch. He then raised and lowered his right hand.
‘Go!’ he screamed.
With a last look at the dead trooper, the four men ran at the crouch from the sangar. Outside, all hell broke loose.
13
As the four men burst out of the sangar to clatter noisily towards the northern slope, two of them wobbling uncertainly on wounded legs, the guerrillas either heard them or saw them silhouetted against the skyline and responded with a clamorous barrage of small-arms fire, most of it coming from behind a couple of large boulders surprisingly close to the two sangars.
Les, in the lead, fired back with his SLR as enemy bullets whistled past his head. Coming up right behind him, Dead-eye was also blasting away at the hostile rocks with the SLR at his hip. Captain Ellsworth was between the two, while Ken, unsteady on his wounded leg, was acting as back marker and managed to get off a burst or two.
