by Shaun Clarke
Finally, when Dead-eye saw that Ken had fallen behind and this time was making no attempt to catch up, he started back down the line. Ken saw him coming, waved frantically, silently, for him to stay out of sight, then lowered himself to the ground, gingerly holding his leg.
Dead-eye and the others instantly hit the ground, then Dead-eye advanced by the leopard crawl until he reached Ken. The corporal pointed back the way they had come.
‘Someone’s following us,’ he mouthed as if speaking to a deaf person, not wanting to be heard by the guerrillas.
When Dead-eye wrinkled his forehead in a questioning manner, Ken nodded and again pointed back along the track, to where it curved around some rocks and disappeared in the darkness.
Raising his left hand – the other was gripping his SLR – Dead-eye spread his fingers, then dropped them one by one, asking silently how many guerrillas Ken thought he had seen. Ken raised a single finger of his left hand, then three of his right, indicating that one man was in the lead, followed by three others.
Dead-eye glanced at the corporal’s leg and saw that again blood was seeping through the soaked bandages and dripping to the ground. Raising his eyes, he carefully studied Ken’s face and saw that it was deathly white, the skin drawn taut on the cheekbones, betraying great physical and mental stress. The corporal was clearly in considerable pain and losing strength through loss of blood. Was he hallucinating?
Dead-eye was just about to don his PNGs and unclip his binoculars when he heard a noise from along the trail and looked back to where it curved out of sight around the tall rocks. An Arab in an off-white jellaba appeared around the rock, treading carefully and carrying a .303 Lee-Enfield. His fluttering shemagh was covering his mouth and nose, making him look like a bandit.
Dead-eye rolled instantly to one side of the track, indicating that Ken should go to the opposite side. Unable to move so quickly and not willing to roll on his wounded leg, Ken gritted his teeth, then forced himself up into a crouching position and made his way to the other side of the track. Once there, he lay down on his belly behind some thorn bushes, taking aim along the Trilux sight of his SLR. On his own side of the track, Dead-eye did the same.
Glancing back where he had come from, he was relieved to see that the rest of the patrol had disappeared from the track and had doubtless divided up to hide at both sides of it. Glancing to the front, he saw that the Arab scout was drawing ever closer and that three others were just appearing around the tall boulder.
Looking across the track, he saw Ken staring at him, waiting for some kind of instruction. Using his index finger, Dead-eye pointed first to Ken, then to the Arab in the lead, indicating that the corporal was to concentrate on him. When Ken nodded that he understood, Dead-eye pointed to the three men behind, jabbing his finger three times, indicating that he was going to deal with them while Ken was to shoot the scout. Again Ken nodded.
Still belly down on the ground, Dead-eye released the safety-catch on his SLR and carefully took aim. Only the quiet tread of the Arabs’ slippers broke what seemed like a very lengthy silence but was in fact no more than a few seconds.
Dead-eye waited until the scout was only ten yards away, then fired the first shot at one of the three men behind him. Even before the guerrilla had staggered back from the impact of the bullet, Ken was firing his own first shot, which punched the scout backwards, then made him twist to the side, dropping his weapon and falling face down. He had yet to hit the ground when Dead-eye fired at the second of the three men behind him.
The sound of his shot was followed almost instantly by Ken’s second, both bullets hitting the same man. As this unfortunate was jerking convulsively from the double impact and dropping his weapon, before falling himself, the final man dived desperately for the shelter of the tall rock just behind him.
Dead-eye and Ken fired at the same instant. The latter missed his moving target, but the former put a bullet into the Arab’s side, spinning him over and throwing him to the ground with his rifle clattering noisily away from him. Surprisingly, he clambered to his knees, clutching his blood-soaked jellaba, then scrambled forward to get at his weapon.
Again, Dead-eye and Ken fired simultaneously, this time both hitting the target. The Arab was punched left, then right; then he slammed backwards into the rock, his skull cracking as he did so. Sliding slowly along it, he dropped to his knees, then flopped forward into the dust, where he quivered like a bowstring for a few seconds, then collapsed and was still.
None of the guerrillas made a sound. That meant there were no wounded. Even so, Dead-eye climbed carefully to his feet and walked over to the scout. Kicking him gently and receiving no response, he moved on to the other three men and confirmed that all of them were dead.
Relieved, but still wary, he walked to the bend in the track, switched the SLR to automatic, and fired a lengthy burst into the darkness, thereby hoping to dissuade any other guerrillas lurking there from following immediately. When he heard nothing and saw nothing, he turned back the way he had come.
Ken was staring enquiringly at him, his face gleaming with sweat, the skin taut with strain. Dead-eye nodded, indicating that the job was done. He walked up to the corporal and said: ‘You didn’t do badly for a wounded man. How’s the leg?’
‘Terrible.’ Ken sat down gently in the dirt, his legs stretched out in front of him. He wiped sweat from his face and tentatively exercised his wounded leg. ‘Christ!’ he said softly.
One by one the rest of the SAS patrol emerged from behind bushes at both sides of the track and walked up to find out what had happened. When Jimbo saw the four dead Arabs on the track, he gave a low whistle and said: ‘Not a trick of the moonlight this time!’
‘No,’ Dead-eye replied. ‘They were following us … and they certainly wouldn’t have come alone. The others can’t be far behind.’
‘You fired a burst along the track?’
‘Yes.’
‘No response?’
‘No.’
‘Still,’ Jimbo said, ‘I recommend we do a double check by setting up here in ambush positions for another ten minutes. If no one appears by then, we’ll know they’re a good way behind and we can move off again.’
‘You men agree with that?’ Dead-eye asked, as if conducting a ‘Chinese parliament’, taking in the opinions of the others, including the troopers. All of them nodded silently. ‘All right, let’s spread out.’
They divided into two groups and assumed ambush positions behind the thorn bushes at both sides of the track. They waited for another ten minutes, but there was no sound except the moaning of the warm wind blowing over the dead men. The dust covered them gradually.
15
Eventually, satisfied that the guerrillas were not close behind them, the SAS men moved off again. This time, however, they marched even more cautiously than before, each man glancing back from time to time, checking that no Arabs were in sight. For the first hour, at least, they saw no one and could march on in peace.
Out in front on point, Dead-eye trudged in grim silence along the track that would lead to the Dhala Road, across a flat stretch of desert, closely bordered on both sides by high ridges. Keeping his eyes peeled and never forgetting what he was doing, he was nevertheless dwelling bitterly on the deaths of Captain Ellsworth and Trooper Malkin.
Impelled by his life-long ambition to be a good soldier, and forged like steel in the hell of the Telok Anson swamp in Malaya and the jungles of Borneo, Dead-eye usually accepted the death of comrades with equanimity, studiously avoiding any kind of sentimentality. This time, however, while not giving in to sentiment, he was burning up with bitterness, not just because of the loss of two good men but because their deaths had been unnecessary.
Proud to be in the SAS, Dead-eye normally believed in what he was fighting for, but such was not the case here in the Radfan. This was a politicians’ war, a public relations campaign, and Dead-eye resented the fact that two worthy men had died for no good reason. He also felt humiliat
ed because, as Callaghan had said, this was not a war that could be won and what had happened to this patrol was proof of that. They were retreating with their tails between their legs and, even more shameful, had left two dead SAS men in the hands of the enemy.
Marching behind Dead-eye, Jimbo was less bitter, though not exactly happy with his lot. Glancing across the flat, dark desert, then left and right at the high, potentially treacherous ridges, he was reminded of his earliest days with the SAS, in the North African desert. That had been a real war, an honourable war, vastly different to this mean little action in a place that few people back home knew existed. Even now, Jimbo could recall his adventures in North Africa only with pride and exhilaration: racing in on the enemy positions in the Chevrolet lorries of the Long Range Desert Group, the wind in your face, machine-guns roaring from the back of the open vehicles, then speeding out again before the enemy knew what had hit them. It had been a war fought by men who believed in what they were doing and were proud to be doing it.
Jimbo was particularly proud of having fought with the original founder of the Regiment, Captain David Stirling, as well as Lieutenant-Colonel Callaghan, his present CO at HQ Thumier and a bit of a regimental legend in his own right. He remembered with fondness, too, the other ranks he had known and respected, many since dead in Malaya or Borneo. That pride in those he had fought with, the fights he had fought and the Regiment in general was something he did not feel now as the patrol made its way along the wind-blown desert track towards the Dhala Road. This was virtually a ‘secret’ war, unknown to most people. It was secret because it was dirty and fought for no good reason against an enemy that did not respect you and for whom you had no respect. Jimbo could not stomach that.
Marching between Jimbo and Larry, Ben and Taff had no feelings about this war one way or the other, having nothing to compare it with. Being new to the Regiment and on their first mission with it, both of them were in a state of shock over the deaths of Captain Ellsworth and Terry, which, in some unvoiced way, they had not quite expected. They were further depressed by the fact that Ken and Les, the two soldiers from whom they had hoped to learn the most, as they were their direct superiors, were in fact badly wounded and, in Ken’s case, starting to show distinct signs of stress.
When they glanced back over their shoulders, as they felt compelled to do often, they saw, well behind Larry, the two back markers, Ken and Les, hobbling along side by side, the latter desperately coaxing his mate onward. Ken was in a bad way, bleeding profusely, and his consequent loss of strength was making him lose control and behave like a crazy man. Les was in better shape, though clearly suffering. Neither man was any longer in a position to help the two troopers.
Ben and Taff felt isolated, more dependent upon one another. They respected Jimbo and were in awe of Dead-eye, but neither NCO was as approachable as Ken or Les had been before they were wounded. Everything had changed, and the two troopers were now besieged by doubts.
Their uncertainty was exaggerated by their mounting physical and mental exhaustion, but they were not experienced enough to know that. Having been badged together, flown to Aden together, thrown up in the trucks together and shared their baptism of fire together, they felt very close, almost like brothers, taking strength from one another in order to combat the rigours of this hellish hike through the dangerous night.
Larry was fighting his fatigue and delayed shock by thinking of his girlfriend, Cathy, and wondering what she was doing right now, back in Devon. Formerly of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) and having previously served with the SAS in Borneo, Larry was a good, experienced soldier who had witnessed violent death before and suffered the horrors of swamp and jungle. This had not hardened his heart to such a degree that he could, like Dead-eye, bury his feelings about lost comrades. Nor could it make him view romance as something trivial when compared with war’s brutal realities. So, while Larry suffered silently like the others, shocked by the two deaths, disturbed by the wounding of the other men, and increasingly twitchy from lack of sleep and exhaustion, he was able to endure it by conjuring up visions of the girl he loved.
He did this, however, while maintaining a good degree of vigilance: on the one hand constantly checking for any sign of enemy movement behind the rocks on the ridges on both sides of the desert track; on the other, occasionally letting himself fall back to where Ken and Les were acting as back markers more by will-power than anything else.
No matter how many times Larry came back down the line to bandage Ken’s bloody left thigh, the two bullet holes kept bleeding, relentlessly draining Ken of physical strength and, inevitably, weakening him mentally as well. It was now clear to Larry, as it was to the others, that not only was Ken in serious danger from loss of blood, but he was starting to ramble in thought and action. He jumped at every unfamiliar sound, saw the enemy in every shadow, and had started mumbling constantly to himself in his growing delirium.
Designated as back markers because they were the slowest and always falling behind anyway, the two wounded men were as mutually supportive as they could be in the circumstances. Les had taken it upon himself to be Ken’s crutch. Ken was his friend and a hell of a good soldier, but he was now in a terrible mess.
Hardened by his experiences with the 3rd Battalion, Royal Green Jackets, in Malaya and Borneo, Les was willing and able to endure the screaming agony in his own wounded leg each time he placed his right foot on the ground, which was every second or so for the past two hellish hours. But even he was finding it difficult to endure his own pain while attending to his friend, who kept stopping and starting, and seemed anxious to wander out of the file and head for one or other of the ridges on either side of the desert track. While trying to maintain his own equilibrium by visualizing a foaming pint in his local in Southend, or placing a winning bet, or making love either to his wife or some bint he had picked up in a pub, Les attempted to keep his friend occupied by talking constantly to him about his wife and three children back home in Somerset, the joys of wildlife photography in the Brendon Hills, which Ken had done so often, and the prospect of once again fishing and hiking on Exmoor. Ken responded coherently at times, but mostly with incomprehension, mumbling about being too warm and having a dry throat.
Unfortunately, the minute Les stopped talking to him, Ken would focus his increasingly unhinged mind on the ridges to left and right, often starting at some imagined sound or movement, raising his weapon, intending to fire it, but always prevented from doing so by Les. He stopped, he started, he slumped down again, severely hampering the progress of the patrol.
Given Ken’s penchant for seeing enemies in every shifting shadow and unfamiliar sound, it came as a surprise to Les when he himself thought he had heard movement behind him and turned around to check if someone was following. He did this more than once and never saw anyone, but each time he heard the sound it seemed closer, until eventually it sounded like the rustle of slippered feet.
As the track curved back around the eastern ridge, where it disappeared into darkness, Les could not see very far. Yet when again he stopped and strained to hear, he was convinced he was listening to the sound of more than one man advancing and hurrying to catch up. He was not mistaken.
Ken was just about to wander off the track yet again when Les grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him down with him to the ground. Turning onto his side, he then used a hand signal to indicate to Larry that someone was following them. The same hand signal then went from man to man along the line until it reached Dead-eye, still out on point. At another hand signal from Dead-eye, the men gathered together, then split into two firing groups, one to each side of the track, as before. Hidden behind parched jujube and doum palms, the men adopted kneeling positions, then cocked their SLRs and aimed them at the trail on a point of impact some 15 yards away.
Ken, Les noticed, was alert enough to have done the same, though his wounded leg, propping him up in the kneeling position, was visibly shaking and seeping blood.
Th
ough the wait seemed interminable, it was less than two minutes. Eventually, the men on their trail emerged stealthily from the darkness, both wearing jellabas and shemaghs, and carrying .303 Lee-Enfields. One was looking down to check the footprints on the trail, the other carefully scanning the track ahead. The latter was obviously also scanning both sides of the road, but could not see the SAS men in the distance. Satisfied that they were still well ahead, he nodded to his companion and both men advanced along the track.
The SAS men aimed along their Trilux sights. The signal to fire would be the sound of Dead-eye’s first shot. He waited until the guerrillas were at the estimated point of impact for most of the weapons, then he fired at the man nearest to him.
The other SLRs roared simultaneously in a short, shocking fusillade that peppered the two Arabs with 7.62mm bullets, making them convulse wildly, drop their weapons, stagger first left, then right, and finally fling themselves to opposite sides of the track as more bullets spat off rocks and stones, creating billowing, swirling clouds of dust around them. In fact, they were already dead, torn to shreds by the fusillade, but one man, at least, kept firing at them as if he could not stop.
Having switched to automatic and aiming from right to left, from one dead Arab to the other, Ken was continuing to fire as he clambered to his feet, wobbling on his wounded leg, muttering to himself and pumping one burst after another into the dead men. His bullets kicked up a hail of sand, soil, gravel and broken stones over the tattered bodies of the Arabs, jolting them first this way, then that, in an insane dance of death.
Ken kept firing until he ran out of ammunition. Then, in a demented fury, he once again began talking unintelligibly to himself as he frantically changed the twenty-round box magazine, wiped sweat from his white, drawn face, raised the weapon and took aim again.
Les ran up to him, slapped his hand over the plastic foregrip of the SLR, pushed the barrel down, then gently removed the weapon from his friend’s hands. Ken stared at him, bewildered, then staggered to the side of the track to sit down and weep.
