Soldier J: Counter Insurgency in Aden

by Shaun Clarke

  Breaking Dead-eye’s ruling that no one should turn back, Larry backtracked, dodging lines of spitting sand and ricocheting bullets, until he was with Les and Ken. While the others waited for him, he roughly dressed Ken’s bloody shoulder, at least stopping the flow of blood. He then jumped up and dashed back to his original position, narrowly escaping death a second time.

  When Dead-eye and Jimbo jumped up and ran forward it all started again.

  So they made their way along the wadi, alternately running erratically through a murderous hail of bullets and providing covering fire for the others.

  Surprisingly, the wound in Ken’s right shoulder, which prevented him from firing his SLR, seemed to have startled him back to some semblance of awareness and now he was no longer stopping during the dangerous runs. As his weapon had, anyway, been left behind in the wadi where he was wounded, he was able to use his arms for better balance when he made the dangerous runs on his wounded leg, hopping along in an ungainly manner.

  As for the others, miraculously no one was hurt, and two hours later – the time it took to travel less than two miles – they were approaching the end of the wadi.

  The guerrillas, who had followed them all the way, were now perched on the western end of the ridge, parallel to where the wadi opened out into flat, featureless desert. This was where the SAS men would make their escape and it was, ironically, where they would be most exposed.

  Safely sheltered behind a group of large boulders at the very end of the wadi, Dead-eye looked up at the Arabs massed on the ridge, then across the featureless desert plain that ran for less than a mile to the Dhala Road and, not too far along it, the Thumier base.

  ‘It’s only a quarter of a mile,’ Jimbo said hopefully.

  ‘We’ll never make it,’ Dead-eye said.

  They were silent for a long time, both deep in thought, until eventually Jimbo looked up and said: ‘We can’t stay here for ever.’

  ‘I know,’ Dead-eye replied. He glanced up to the ridge and saw that an increasing number of guerrillas were making their way down to the lower slopes, having surmised that the SAS were running out of ammunition and would, if they were forced to fight back, run out completely.

  ‘Smart bastards,’ Dead-eye said. ‘And absolutely dedicated. They’re willing to die charging us to make us run out of ammunition. When we do, the survivors will just march down and cut us to pieces. You’ve got to admire them.’

  ‘I do,’ Jimbo replied. ‘I’m forming a fan club for them. In the meantime, while I print up the letterhead, how do we keep my heroes at bay and still save our ammo?’

  ‘We can’t,’ Dead-eye confessed.

  ‘So?’

  ‘I say we take a gamble. We gamble that if we start a fire-fight, the sentries at Thumier will hear us and come to the rescue.’

  ‘The gamble being whether the cavalry get here before we run out of ammo or after we’ve been overrun.’

  ‘I knew you’d understand, Jimbo.’

  An urgent Chinese parliament produced agreement from the rest of the men, including Ken, who, though twice wounded and clearly on the brink of collapse, had at least regained his presence of mind.

  ‘We better start soon,’ he said, pointing up at the ridge. ‘They’re coming down to get us.’

  Glancing up, they saw that the Arab guerrillas were indeed starting to swarm down the hill like ants, making their way from one rock to another with the skill of mountain goats. Some of them were already halfway down. They all had curved swords on their hips, supplementing their rifles.

  ‘Spread out among these rocks,’ said Dead-eye. ‘Fix bayonets. Start firing at my signal. We have to make the fire-fight last as long as possible, so only fire on single shot. Any questions?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ken said from where he was leaning against a rock, one arm in a sling, his bloody wounded leg stretched out before him, ‘what about me?’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I don’t have an SLR.’

  ‘Then you wait until they get within range and use your 9-milli to pick them off.’ Dead-eye unholstered his own Browning, then gave it and his ammunition to Ken. ‘Take this as a spare. Try not to use it until they get really close. You can protect yourself, and give us backup if we get involved in a CQB situation. That’s it, men, let’s shake out.’

  The instant they broke apart and ran at the crouch to their respective rocks, the guerrillas on the hills let rip with a hail of rifle fire. The SAS men all managed to find shelter just as the enemy bullets tore up the sand between them and bounced noisily off the rocks, spraying them with flying fragments. As soon as he saw that his men were ready, Dead-eye gave the signal to fire.

  ‘Fire at will!’ he bawled, raising and lowering his right fist.

  The SLRs roared in unison, picking off the Arabs who were now scrambling down the lower half of the slope. Instantly, the area being covered by the guerrillas turned into a maelstrom of spitting sand, swirling dust and shattered rock as the SLRs’ bullets tore the ground up and wounded or dead Arabs rolled down the hill, their jellabas flapping wildly about them. Immediately, the guerrillas higher up the ridge unleashed another fusillade on the SAS positions, turning them into a similar hell of sand, dust and rebounding bullets.

  Kneeling beside his friend, Les narrowly missed losing an eye when a bullet blew chunks off the rock and a sharp stone slashed across his left cheekbone. Temporarily blinded by his own blood, he cursed, checked the wound with his fingers and realized that the skin was hanging loose. Seeing Les’s predicament, and not yet in a position to take part in the fire-fight, Ken removed a surgical dressing from his belt, and with trembling hands pressed the flapping, bloody skin back into position and applied the dressing. Meanwhile the other men around them kept firing at the advancing guerrillas. When Ken had finished dressing the wound and crawled back to cover, Les gamely picked up his SLR and began firing again.

  The clouds of sand and dust created on the lower slopes by the combination of bullets and rolling bodies formed a screen that partially obscured the other guerrillas and allowed many of them to slip down unscathed. The first of them were now bursting through the suspended sand and dust and racing across the bed of the wadi, some firing from the hip, others swinging their curved swords above their heads. Most of them were cut down in a hail of SAS bullets, but the rest kept coming and those cut down were followed by others.

  Lying belly down behind his rock, in great pain but more aware of feeling useless and frustrated, Ken smiled when he saw the guerrillas advancing. ‘That’s it,’ he whispered, unholstering his Browning and lying it on the ground by his wounded leg. ‘Keep coming, you bastards.’ Still holding Dead-eye’s 9-milli in his good hand, he released the safety-catch, rested his wrist on the rock, and took aim. ‘Just keep coming,’ he whispered.

  Dead-eye had deliberately taken shelter behind a rock situated well in front of the others, from where he was methodically, unerringly picking off one guerrilla after another, particularly those racing up on either flank. But now, as the surviving Arabs raced straight across the wadi towards him, he saw that those massed on the summit of the ridge had begun to swarm down it as well, eager to hasten the massacre of the SAS troops. Realizing that time was running out and that he would soon be engaged in hand-to-hand fighting, he switched to automatic and started firing in a series of short, savage, lethal bursts that made the advancing guerrillas shudder, jerk, twist sideways and finally collapse amid clouds of exploding sand and billowing dust.

  ‘Grenade!’ Jimbo bawled.

  Dead-eye saw the hand-grenade sail languidly over his head and fall behind him. He glanced back over his shoulder as it exploded near Ben and Taff, picking up the latter in a fountain of spewing soil and boiling smoke, spinning him over and slamming him back down a few feet away. Without thinking, Ben scrambled out from behind the rock, firing his SLR on the move, to kneel beside the dazed Taff, grab him by the shoulder and shake him back to awareness even as rebel bullets stitched the ground on al
l sides of them. ‘Christ, Taff, get up! Move it!’ With his face and body grazed by shrapnel and blistered by the blast, Taff was not a pretty sight. Nevertheless, he sat up, shook his head from side to side, saw the lines of spitting sand moving in on all sides and, suddenly galvanized back to his senses, grabbed his SLR and scrambled back behind the rock with his friend. They both recommenced firing immediately.

  As the lead guerrillas raced up to Dead-eye’s position, where he was rising to his feet and firing from the hip, Jimbo, right behind him, realized that the need to save ammunition was past, and switched to automatic as well. The nearest Arab was swinging his sword at Dead-eye’s head when Jimbo fired his first short burst, catching the enemy across the stomach, practically cutting him in two, and making him collapse like a blood-soaked banner. Dead-eye, meanwhile, had fired his last shots and was thrusting upwards at another guerrilla with his bayonet. Jimbo therefore made it his business to give Dead-eye cover, cutting down the Arabs nearest to him while Dead-eye expertly stabbed one, cracked the skull of another with the plastic stock, ducked to avoid a second swinging sword and, before coming up, stabbed his bayonet through the man’s foot, pinning him to the ground and making him scream terribly, before removing the bayonet and plunging it through his heart. Even before the Arab had fallen, Dead-eye had heaved the bloody bayonet out again and was turning to face another assault, moving coolly and murderously.

  While Dead-eye was thus engaged, other Arabs rushed around him on both sides and came straight at Jimbo, who fired the last of his ammunition, then prepared to defend himself with his bayonet.

  Meanwhile Ken was helping the lethal pair by carefully picking off any Arabs coming up on one of their blind sides. Lying belly down on the ground, his bloody, wounded leg stretched out behind him, he was propping himself up on his wounded arm and methodically firing one shot after another from Dead-eye’s Browning. When he had emptied this, he picked up his own and began the same methodical procedure with it. Each time he fired, an agonizing pain shot through his wounded shoulder, yet it failed to stop him. He saved Dead-eye and Jimbo from death many times, though neither was aware of it.

  Suddenly, the combined roaring of 76mm QF and .30-inch machine-guns resounded over the general din of the battle. Almost simultaneously, a murderous rain of bullets tore through the guerrillas behind those already at the SAS positions and made the area all around them explode in a convulsion of sand, soil, dust and pulverized rock. As the guerrillas to the immediate front were screaming and dying, a hail of bullets from another set of 76mm QF and .30-inch machine-guns started inflicting the same fate on the guerrillas swarming down from the summit of the ridge, cutting bloody swathes through them and making most of them retreat back the way they had come.

  Glancing left at the same time, Dead-eye and Jimbo, both still engaged in furious hand-to-hand fighting, saw two 6x6 Saladins, machine-guns blazing, trundling across the plain from the direction of the Dhala Road. While the two armoured cars were heading straight for the besieged SAS troop, another two had broken away towards the lower slopes of the ridge, cutting off the line of retreat of the guerrillas engaged with the SAS and concentrating their fire on the Arabs now attempting to escape back up the ridge. The guerrillas not slaughtered in the vicious inferno of machine-gun fire were heading back the way they had come, along the summit of the ridge, in frantic disorder.

  Exhilarated, Jimbo turned back to the fray just as the Arabs in front of Dead-eye were either being cut down by the Saladins or trying to make their escape across the wadi. Behind him, however, Larry had just fired his final bullets at two guerrillas, killing one and making the other turn around and flee. Swinging his sword automatically at Jimbo as he passed, the Arab caught his arm, opening it from shoulder to elbow and exposing the bone beneath the skin.

  Screaming, Jimbo dropped his SLR, slapped his left hand over his arm where the blood was pouring out of it, and fell to his knees. The guerrilla, rushing away, was shot in the back of the head with the last bullet from Ben’s SLR and lunged forward, his arms flung above his bloody, smashed skull, to fall face first to the ground – as did Jimbo, from shock and loss of blood.

  The few guerrillas still remaining at the SAS positions now turned and fled back towards the wadi, but found their retreat blocked by the two Saladins crossing the lower slopes to fire at the guerrillas retreating along the top of the ridge. The other two Saladins kept raining fire on the guerrillas in the wadi, even when they had reached the SAS positions. There, while the two gunners continued firing, the third crew member climbed down to hand out more SLR ammunition to the SAS men still standing.

  Dead-eye, Larry, Ben and the bloody, blistered Taff therefore had the pleasure of helping to rout the last of the fleeing guerrillas. Even Ken had crawled through the sand to pick up the unconscious Jimbo’s SLR, load it with ammo given to him by the British Army corporal, and make amends for his moments of shock-induced madness by expertly dispatching the last two fleeing guerrillas, firing from the belly-down position, using one arm. He passed out within seconds of having done so.

  When the other two Saladins had chased the surviving guerrillas far enough along the wadi to know that they would not come back, they radioed the Habilayn airstrip, asking for air support to clear the last of the guerrillas off the summit of the ridge. They were returning to help the other two Saladins pick up the SAS men when two Hawker Hunters roared low over the ridge and poured a devastating hail of gunfire into the fleeing guerrillas. By the time the two Saladins had reached the SAS men, the summit of the ridge was obscured by an immense cloud of dust and smoke which mercifully concealed the many dead below. The few survivors crawled out of that pall of smoke and limped back to the Radfan.

  While the Hawker Hunters flew back to Habilayn, the four Saladins shared the SAS troop between them. Jimbo’s badly sliced right arm was given interim treatment by Larry, who closed it with emergency sutures and stopped the bleeding with a tourniquet and bandages; then the still unconscious sergeant was hoisted up into one of the Saladins.

  He was followed in by Les and Larry, the latter intending to replace the blood-soaked emergency bandage on Les’s cheek as the Saladin carried them back to the base.

  In the second Saladin, Ben and Taff were not in much better shape. The lengthy, scorched gouge across Riley’s back had been reopened during the hand-to-hand fighting and was now bleeding profusely, soaking through his tattered shirt and dripping on the steel floor. As for Taff, though the scars of his shrapnel-shredded face would heal eventually, right now, in combination with the blisters caused by the heat of the grenade explosion, they made for a stomach-churning sight.

  With his wounded shoulder and twice-wounded left leg, Ken had to be helped into the third Saladin by the third crew member, Corporal Phil Rossiter. Ken had regained consciousness and was surprisingly alert. After making him comfortable, the Regular Army man turned to Dead-eye, still standing beside the Saladin, and said: ‘You men did a hell of a job out there, Sarge. You should be proud of yourselves.’

  ‘We did nothing,’ Dead-eye said to Rossiter with icy rage. ‘The Saladins did the job. The Hawker Hunters did the job. You did it. We didn’t do a damned thing! This war stinks to high heaven.’ Then, having vented his spleen, he stomped off angrily to take his place in the fourth armoured car.

  Corporal Rossiter turned in amazement to Ken. ‘What the hell’s the matter with him?’ he asked. ‘Is it because you lost two of your men?’

  ‘Not because we lost them,’ Ken replied. ‘It’s because the Arabs captured the bodies. That’s what’s eating Dead-eye … It could have repercussions.’

  ‘It surely could,’ Corporal Rossiter replied dryly, before climbing into the Saladin.

  Growling aggressively, the four armoured cars trundled away from the wadi, back across the flat, dusty desert plain, to the tarmacked Dhala Road and, farther along it, the SAS base at Thumier, leaving a pile of dead bodies in the sand as food for the vultures.

  It was that kind of w
ar.

  17

  The operation begun by the SAS in the mountains of the Radfan was continued by the Paras and 45 Royal Marine Commando, who climbed and fought their way up the 3700-foot Al Hajaf hills, where most of the guerrillas were based. The same operation was completed by six major units which, between them, managed to subdue the area five weeks later. The inhabitants were then banished from the region.

  A few days after the SAS had returned to Thumier, a macabre intelligence report regarding the fate of the bodies of Captain Ellsworth and Trooper Malkin reached Major-General John Gibbon, the General Officer Commanding in Aden. According to a Radio Taiz Yemeni propaganda broadcast, the heads of the two dead soldiers had been put on public display in the Yemen.

  Asked to verify this at a press conference held on 3 May 1964, the GOC confirmed that he had received ‘reliable information of their decapitation and the exhibition of their heads on stakes in Yemen’.

  This response was to lead to singular embarrassment for the security forces, as the next of kin had been unaware of the deaths and, even worse, had been informed that the men were on a routine exercise on Salisbury Plain.

  Following hot on the heels of Major-General Gibbon’s press conference, the republican government in Yemen, denying its own propaganda broadcast, denounced the decapitation story as a ‘British lie’.

  In Taiz, the US Embassy, which was handling British interests in the absence of UK diplomatic recognition of the republicans, investigated the matter and concluded that there was no truth in the rumours that the heads of two British soldiers had been exhibited in the Yemen or anywhere else.

  However, ten days after the press conference, confirmation was received that a patrol of the Federal Regular Army had found two headless bodies buried in a shallow grave in the area of the SAS battle. There was no sign of the heads.