by Geoff Wolak
Half an hour later we pressed on without incident, a few locals passed, a few lorries passed, a few donkey-drawn carts passed - old men and young boys aboard. The old men ignored us, the young boys waved.
Towards sundown we reached the point I had picked out of the map, a bend in the road with low ridges beyond it, a sand track or two snaking away. We pulled up.
Waiting in the road, I told the Paras to hide the jeeps beyond the ridges and to wait, and to make camp. When the SAS arrived I issued them the same instruction, then had my lads park their jeeps in a well and truly obvious spot. Out of the jeeps, we set-up a rotation, four hours stretches, and Rocko’s troop took the first watch, spreading out and hiding themselves as the rest made large camp fires twenty yards back from the road.
The human bait had been hung on the hook, the trap set, and as it grew dark I walked around the combined Paras/SAS camp and gave them the plan. ‘It’s simple, and probably no one will come down that road and have a go. If they do, you join in the fight as directed, but be very careful where you fire because my lads are close to the road and hidden.
‘Get some food on, then four hour rotations, we’ll be off at dawn, and watch out for snakes, scorpions ... and landmines,’ I left them with.
I positioned myself on a small ridge, a support for my back, and I watched the road as the fire crackled, a tin of meat tackled as I chatted to Henri. He had fought here before, but further south.
An hour later and rustling indicated someone walking towards us from the rear, heads turned, and our reporter came and sat by the fire, his face adopting an orange tinge.
‘Temperature drops quickly,’ he noted, a flat palm to the flames.
‘Nothing to hold the heat in,’ I told him. ‘No clouds, no moisture.’
‘Been an interesting two days so far, more than I would have figured,’ he said. ‘Figured there would be lots of sitting around and waiting.’
‘There usually is,’ Rizzo told him. ‘Then a panic. We spend more time sat waiting for the fucking planes than shooting.’
‘So the plan ... is to just wait?’
‘It is,’ I told him. ‘They would have seen us drive through that town and down this road, and if someone passes us they’ll report our happy camp, so maybe someone will come out to play. But denial of area is about a presence, and random chance. If the bad guys drive down this road we’ll have them, they know that, so they’ll alter their plans.
‘Same in Northern Ireland; we patrol some place, and they know it, so won’t take the chance of bumping into us. We only need to patrol once or twice a month in some places to scare them off.’
‘And Djibouti?’
‘Same denial of area practice, but on foot. French infantry like static positions, so we used them as bait as we wandered out and killed the rocket crews.’
‘They have rockets here?’ he asked.
‘Fucking hope not,’ Rizzo replied.
‘No rockets that we know about,’ I told him as the fire crackled.
Half an hour later a truck trundled past, but it slowed as it passed us, and we hoped that it would report our position.
At dawn we were still hoping, and yawning, men up and stretching legs and peeing in the sand.
‘Quiet night,’ our reporter noted.
‘Careful what you wish for,’ I told him, calling in the teams.
After breakfast we all mounted up, and the jeeps threw up sand as we joined the tarmac road, the long-axle jeeps bouncing along a sandy track and coming up behind us. When ready, and when I had counted the jeeps, we set off on a reverse course, but this time we by-passed the town and went around it.
Beyond the town I glanced left at isolated fields, something like green cactus being grown, two old men bent double. But sat on a wall was a young man, and he did not look like the farmer type.
‘Slow down,’ I told Dicky. I clicked on my radio. ‘Lookout man on our left, get ready.’
Slowing to a crawl, I stared ahead, but there were few places to hide a bomb or to set an ambush. We approached low stone walls.
‘Pull up. Everyone apart from Dicky out.’
We jumped down, weapons ready, and I walked forwards at a brisk pace, my eyes everywhere, Henri on my right. Fifteen minutes later, and after a good leg stretch, I halted, noticing a cigarette on the road, half smoked. I lifted it and sniffed; it was fresh. I knelt, the lads copying, eyes everywhere.
‘Stay here,’ I transmitted, up and moving forwards, footprints visible on the left. Keeping the footprints in sight I broke left and over the sand and rocks and on fifty yards. I could see the wire. Tracing it back with my rifle, it snaked all the way back to me and beyond, through the bushes...
A face. I opened up and dived down, a burst coming back my way.
The man made the mistake of standing, trying to get an angle on me, and he was hit twenty times in two seconds and knocked flying. It fell quiet and I eased up, not the best idea I had since breakfast, the blast knocking me back down.
I lay face down in the sand, coughing and spluttering, and I rolled over. ‘Fuck’s sake...’
Pounding noises preceded the sun being blocked by two men. ‘You OK?’ They lifted me, and I spat out sand, getting my water bottle out.
With my mouth clean, just about, I said, ‘Rizzo, next time you go forwards.’
I brushed sand off as I walked back, the dust cloud wafting away to the left, jeeps pulling up. ‘Anyone hurt?’ I asked, finding that Henri had been blown off his feet, his nose hitting the road, but apart from that we were OK.
Crab pulled his jeep alongside mine and looked me over. ‘Going to be a long fucking slow drive back!’
I nodded. To my lads I said, ‘Mount up. Henri, with me.’ I sat on Crab’s bonnet and got comfy, Henri next to me. ‘Slowly, Sergeant, slowly.’ We set off, slowly, eyes everywhere, and at sundown made it back without further incident, Captain Harris and our logistics officer waiting.
‘Been having fun?’ Harris asked.
‘Well we know we’re in the right spot,’ I said, sighing, my back killing me. ‘9am, planning session.’
Back in the hut, we dumped kit and flopped down, sighs issued. When my sat phone trilled it was Bob. ‘Hey Bob, we just got back.’
‘I heard, yes. Two roadside bombs, that’s a worry.’
‘Might need a different strategy, we have the helicopters, can’t walk around here too well.’
‘Your reporter got two stories out and pictures so far. First the medics and the RAF Regiment, then the wounded being treated and the story of the attack on the mine, so it’s reading like a serial day by day. Funny, but all my brain-box Oxford graduates are reading The Sun on the way into work.’
I laughed. ‘Instead of the Guardian or The Times. Do them some good, they can connect with the working class man!’
‘So what’s the plan?’
‘Plan is to re-think the plan, never figured on so many roadside bombs, and they’ll get one of our patrols sooner or later. We’ll take it easy for a few days, get some training in, see what happens.’
‘Let me know.’
I had a wash, a tonne of sand on me, my hair full of it, and finally ambled around to the canteen, finding it busy. With a plate full of food I sat with Henri, Jacque and Moran.
‘Anything?’ I idly asked Moran as I ate.
‘Not a sausage, but I’m getting the hours in, good practice. Going to do a night patrol tonight, might see something.’
I nodded as I ate.
‘We were lucky,’ Henri said to no one in particular, shaking his head. ‘No way to fight a war.’
‘It’s an insurgency, not a war,’ Rocko noted as he ate. ‘This is Northern Ireland all over again, with the fucking sunshine.’
‘We need to out-think them,’ I said.
‘You have a plan?’ Moran asked as he ate.
‘Nope,’ I said. ‘Best plan is often to react to what they do, but they don’t come out and do it often. Intel would help, then we attack, but I�
��m not hopeful.’
‘Eyes on?’ Moran hinted.
I considered that. ‘Would be tricky, but not impossible. But...’
‘But ... what?’ Moran nudged.
‘OPs might work. Bit of a risk for whoever is in the OP, but we have the open spaces and distances.’ I nodded. ‘I may have half an idea, be good practise for the lads as well. Let me sleep on it.’
Our roving reporter came and found me later in our hut. ‘Change of strategy?’
‘As I keep telling Captain Moran, we make a plan when we see what we’re dealing with. Plans, in wartime, always go wrong, so we assess what we’re up against, look at the lay of the land, have a cup of tea, then make a plan.
‘We now know more about the local malcontents, and we got the information without casualties, so now we adapt and change. And ... I’m a captain, so if I sent out a patrol and they were all killed by a roadside bomb my decision to send them out would come into question now that we know about the bombs – and me being a captain would come into question.’
‘Why, not your fault?’
‘Ah, my foolish friend, how little you know about how the military works.’ He shot me a look. ‘I will enlighten you. An officer leads his men into battle, or sends them in. If it goes well he gets a medal and is promoted, but if it goes wrong he is sidelined or court martialled when the press – and the families of the poor dead young soldiers – demand blood.’
‘It’s that cut throat?’
‘It can be, yes. And with me ... they expect spectacular successes, few casualties, or they’re very disappointed. With other officers ... they don’t expect much more than the following of orders.’
‘Your successes have made a rod for your own back,’ he noted.
‘Ah, how wise you are. Your beard is indeed a beard of wisdom.’
He ran a hand down his beard as Rocko laughed at him. ‘So you’re under pressure to get it right.’
‘Always, my good man, always. But ... fact is I don’t give a fuck. I care about my men, I want the mission to succeed, but should a job go wrong and they complain – I’d tell them to fuck off, and I’d get a job as a painter decorator.’
‘Do they interfere with your plans?’ he asked.
‘Oh, no, they’d not do that, because then they ... would have the responsibility if something went wrong. You starting to see how this works?’
He nodded. ‘So what exactly is your remit here?’
‘Our remit ... is to assist the French, a show of solidarity in Europe, and to set back the rebels when and if we can, maybe rescue some hostages, the plan not big on detail – that’s left to me.’
‘Is that ... normal?’ he puzzled.
‘No, normally there would be a directive from the top, a colonel issuing orders, and I would be low down in the food chain of command decisions.’
‘The jobs you do are always the most dangerous,’ he puzzled.
‘They are, and this group of men are the best the British Army has to offer, apart from Smitty – he’s an apprentice. Many of my lads are not regular SAS, they were seconded after doing well on my three-day scenario.’
‘I heard about that; three days of hell whilst shooting accurately, jelly and sand down your underwear, chased by dogs and getting blown up a lot.’
I nodded. ‘Rocko here, he scored 95%, which means he’s in the top ten soldiers in the British Army, and he was seconded from the Paras Pathfinders, those lads in the hut next door.’
‘So how does that work, compared to SAS selection?’
‘It’s tougher,’ Moran put in as he sat cleaning his rifle.
‘Three days of hell,’ Rocko added.
I said, ‘If they can do well on the three days, they can pass SAS selection, and then some. The purpose of the three day test is to see if they can shoot straight when very tired, and very uncomfortable.’
‘So normal selection is bypassed?’
‘It is, and men are invited back to work with us, but some of these are regular SAS, and Tomo was a territorial SAS, but he did very well on the three day, and Mouri was SBS but did well on it and was invited over.’
‘So ... you do well because you have the cream of the crop,’ our reporter surmised.
Moran said, ‘We do well because Wilco plans the training and the operations. Good men to start with, good attitude, well trained, good plans executed, no fucking about.’
‘Why thank you, Captain,’ I mockingly offered Moran.
‘And some even fly planes?’
‘They do, because someday we might be stuck behind enemy lines and we might be able to steal a plane,’ I told him. ‘We have a good training budget, and we get what we ask for.’
Rocko said, ‘The lads put in the hours, not go home.’
‘Go ... home?’ our reporter puzzled.
‘Prime Time, it’s called,’ I explained. ‘When not on a course or off to war, SAS soldiers have a briefing in the morning and then go home, or they can do what they like. Ours train all day, and go off to war.’
Moran said, ‘And that’s why Rocko can’t hold onto a girl.’
The lads laughed at Rocko, who smiled. ‘Yes, that’s the reason,’ he mock-agreed. He faced Moran. ‘How’s your ex?’
‘Oooooh,’ Swifty let out. ‘Bitch, bitch.’
I faced our reporter, still grinning. ‘Our social lives are not always what we would like them to be.’
‘They pressure you?’
‘No,’ Moran said. ‘We pressure ourselves. Wilco is always telling us to take time off, but we like the work. It gets to be addictive. See this rifle, this is now my companion, not my ex-girlfriend.’
Rocko asked, ‘Does it answer back?’
‘No, never; it silently obeys, never breaks down, doesn’t grab the TV remote,’ Moran told Rocko, the lads laughing.
I told our reporter, shaking my head, ‘We get no pressure from above. We like what we do, and we have a good camaraderie.’
‘And Henri and the other French soldier?’
‘French special forces, proven in battle, so we pinched them away,’ I explained. ‘It helps to have them with us because we work with the French a lot. Henri is our father figure -’ He looked up and frowned his disapproval. ‘- and Jacque teaches master class in how to meet girls.’
Jacque lowered his head and looked away as the reporter focused on him.
‘And the one lad is a Kiwi?’
‘Yes, on secondment to the SBS, who seconded him to us because he’s very good.’
‘And this “E” Squadron?’ he asked.
‘You shouldn’t believe all you hear about them, they’re just former SAS men who’re still on the books, and they get called in to do bodyguard work in some place like Bogota, for diplomats, that kind of thing.
‘Most are old and drunk and tell stories down the pub, but because they do the protection for the Foreign Office it’s all kept quiet. You won’t be able to report on them, nor should you believe the crap about them.’
He nodded, and did not press it further. ‘And the next step here?’
‘Probably a few OPs.’
‘Could I ... be in an OP?’
‘Are you trained ... to be in an OP?’ I teased.
‘Well, no.’
‘Then tomorrow we’ll organise some training for you. Can you shoot?’
‘I’ve fired a few weapons over the years.’
‘Could you lie still for ten hours, pee lying down?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘I can try.’
In the morning we gathered at 9am for the usual command meeting. ‘OK, gentlemen, we now know a little more about what we’re dealing with, knowledge garnered from that tried and tested method known as standing on the mine.’
They laughed.
‘We were lucky yesterday, and the day before, in that we spotted something suspicious, we may not be so lucky next time, so jeep patrols would not be my first priority – unless to send out people we don’t like.’
They laughed ag
ain.
‘OPs are an option, so tonight we’ll put together teams of four with provisions for a day or two and go out by helicopter, dropping men when we know that the road is clear. They’ll hide themselves at least two hundred yards from the road, camouflage netting or brown cloth to be used. No GPMGs will be taken, just rifles, light kit, plenty of water.
‘And then ... we’ll see what we can see. If we see something interesting then we’ll go have a look by helicopter, and we’ll have our high altitude supersonic spotter planes up there. With those aircraft in mind, each OP should have a number drawn in the sand in large letters, that way the aircraft can warn you of the approach of bandits.
‘Make sure that you have sat phones, or you won’t be getting picked up for a ride home. OK, Staff Sergeant Rizzo, pick three men, you are Echo One. Rocko, Echo Two, Sergeant Crab is Sierra One, second troop is Sierra Two, Paras are Papa One, and we rotate every two days or so, enough men back here to launch an assault or a rescue.
‘Each of you should write your call signs in the sand in large letters, so don’t hide in the rocks, try and find some sand please. Your inserts and extraction will be at night, so you have time before dawn to move around.
‘A word of warning: keep sleeves and shirts done up, and watch out for scorpions and snakes crawling up your trouser leg. Anyone want to tell me the best thing to keep them at bay?’ I waited as they glanced at each other. ‘Diesel oil, a dab on your wrists and neck and hair, like Channel Number 5. Rizzo, your smell will keep them at bay anyhow.’
‘Hey, I don’t smell,’ he protested as they laughed at him.
‘Wanna bet,’ Moran told him.
‘Today, flyers up, see what you can see, rest of you – those that may go to the OPs, I want five times around the perimeter at least, because once in the OPs you’ll not use muscles and you’ll go stale. So get some exercise today, a nap around 5pm for an hour. When you’re in the OP, in daylight hours, you never stand up – at all. They call it the hard routine, and you’ll see why soon enough. Pick your teams, get ready for around 7pm take-off.’
I focused on our reporter. ‘We’ll get you some training today.’
He nodded, keen, yet was fat and sweating.
