by Shaun Clarke
‘What’s up?’ Ricketts asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Lampton replied, ‘but I’m going to find out.’
As the sergeant hurried away towards the front end of the column, Gumboot wriggled out of his bergen and lay on his back.
‘Ah, God,’ he said breathlessly, ‘that’s wonderful. That’s just bloody beautiful.’
Andrew wiped sweat from his gleaming black forehead as he lay back with his head on his bergen. ‘I don’t give a shit what’s happened, so long as it buys a rest.’
‘Which it has,’ Ricketts said.
‘I’ve thrown up twice already,’ Tom told them, ‘and I still don’t feel too good.’
‘Who does?’ Bill asked rhetorically. ‘Not me, mate.’
They fell silent after that, trying to get their breath back, not wanting Lampton to return and make them get up again. Unfortunately, he did so five minutes later.
‘Heart attack,’ he said. ‘A radio corporal. He collapsed with his radio, got stuck between some rocks, and had a heart attack trying to free himself. He’s conscious again, but he’s going to have to be carried on a stretcher to the RV, from where he can be casevacked back to base.’
‘Lucky bastard,’ Tom said.
‘The poor bastards who have to carry him aren’t so lucky,’ Lampton replied. ‘OK, men, on your feet.’
‘What?’ Andrew’s head jerked around. ‘You mean we’re moving already?’ Lampton nodded towards the front of the line. When they all turned in that direction, they saw a series of hand signals coming towards them, indicating that the march was recommencing. ‘Shit!’ Andrew exclaimed.
Luckily, they were near the end of their journey. They had been marching for two hours and the sun was going down. After another three-quarters of an hour the slopes became less steep, indicating that they were nearly out of the wadi. Eventually, as the sun sank, a breeze, blowing down from the level ground, cooled the sweat on their foreheads.
Ricketts was beginning to believe that he was on his last legs – stabbing pains in his shoulder blades, his neck aching, his lungs on fire – when, just before darkness fell, they emerged from the wadi and headed across an open area, where pale moonlight was reflected off the water in the Mahazair Pools, in the shadow of the mighty Jebel Dhofar.
They could rest up at last.
Chapter 10
The rest only lasted a few minutes. At last light, with the eerie wailing of the mullah rending the silence, the firqats, their faces half hidden by shemaghs, knelt in circles and bowed their heads to pray while holding their rifles between their knees.
‘I don’t think we can depend on these geezers,’ Gumboot whispered out of the corner of his mouth to Ricketts and Andrew. ‘They’re not allowed to fight during the holy month of Ramadan – and that’s due to begin later this month.’
‘Right,’ Andrew said, nodding. ‘But these guys have been let off on the grounds that they’re Islamic warriors fighting a Holy War.’
‘That’s convenient,’ Ricketts said.
‘And the fact that they’re praying right now,’ Sergeant Lampton informed them, ‘is a sign that Operation Jaguar’s about to begin.’
‘What, already?’ Bill asked, glancing automatically up at the mighty Jebel, then across at the firqats kneeling in prayer, their rounded shoulders bathed in the moonlight when they bowed their covered heads.
‘Yes,’ Lampton said, ‘Already. We have to make the climb tonight, under cover of darkness.’
‘There’s no way we can do that,’ Tom said. ‘Not after a day like the one we’ve put in. It’s asking too much.’
‘Do you want to keep that badge or don’t you?’ Lampton asked him.
‘You know the answer to that, boss.’
‘Then it’s not asking too much. Zero hour is thirty minutes from now and you’d best be prepared.’
Realizing that they were actually going to have to get up and go, the men drank more mugs of tea, cleaned and oiled their weapons, filled magazines and water bottles, and stared curiously at the still kneeling, praying tribesmen, now bathed in the moonlight. Beyond them, near one of the pools, was the collection of tents and lean-tos of the SAS base camp that had been established here a few weeks before. Some of the troopers were outside their tents, brewing up in the open.
‘I don’t envy them their job,’ Andrew said, glancing at the men in the base camp. ‘Stuck up here for weeks on end with sweet fuck all to do.’
‘It’s good training for OP work,’ Lampton told him, ‘and you’ll get plenty of that in the future. That’s why you had all that psychological flak during Sickener Two – to prepare you for days, sometimes weeks on end, in an observation post with only yourselves for company and not much to do, other than keep tabs on enemy movements. It’s the worst, the most difficult, job of all.’
‘It couldn’t be worse than climbing the Jebel,’ Jock insisted.
‘Don’t even think about that,’ Lampton warned him. ‘It won’t help you a bit. You’ll just give up before you start.’
Glancing up at the vast, imposing plateau, now almost jet-black and ringed by stars in the gathering darkness, Ricketts was reminded of his last night on the Pen-y-fan, during Sickener Two, and had a good idea of the tortures awaiting him.
The thought was disturbing, but also undeniably exciting, a contradiction of emotions that he had learned to live with ever since he had worked on the North Sea oil rigs. He was not a hard man, nor did he think himself cruel, but he definitely had a low boredom threshold and the need for adventure.
Thank God Maggie understood that. His wife was a treasure. Like Ricketts in that she was sentimental and romantic, she missed him not being at home a lot, but was satisfied that he was not fooling around when out of her sight. She knew him enough to know that he was not that kind of man, but merely needed the kind of excitement that normal life did not offer. The line between that need and the love of violence was thin, but, as Maggie well understood, her husband was on the right side of it. Though understanding the moral ambiguity of what he was doing, Ricketts could not still his urge for adventure, no matter how dangerous. So, he accepted it, while remaining wary of it, careful not to let it run amok.
Nevertheless, only when he experienced that odd combination of fear and excitement – as he was doing right now, in the shadow of the mighty Jebel – did Ricketts feel truly, electrically alive. This was a truth he could not deny.
‘Any minute now,’ Lampton said, checking his wristwatch. ‘In fact, any second now.’
He was right. It was now completely dark, with no sign of the moon, and the sudden sound of equipment being moved in the firqats’ area indicated that the operation was under way.
Clambering to his feet with the others, Ricketts checked his kit and weapons, then again let Andrew help him hump the heavy GPMG tripod onto his shoulders. The rear leg bit immediately into his neck, reminding him of what he was in for, but also making him resolve to endure it, no matter what the cost.
The firqat guides led off in the darkness, heading south-east, and the rest of the assault force, including the SAF, now all wearing shemaghs instead of berets, followed in a single file that gradually stretched out to form an immense human chain, snaking up the lower slopes of the Jebel. At first the slopes were gentle, presenting no real challenge, but soon they rose more steeply, sometimes almost vertically, turning the hike into a mountain climb that tortured body and mind. The steeper gradients were often smooth, making the men slip and slide, and often, where the gradients were less steep, loose gravel led to the same problems. A lot of cursing passed down the line. Men fell and rolled downhill. The climb was made no easier by the moonless darkness, which hid dangerous outcrops and crevices. The column nevertheless continued to snake upwards, making slow, painful progress.
‘Take five,’ were the words passed down the line an hour later, by which time most of the men were sweating, out of breath and aching all over.
Removing the tripod, Ricketts slumped to the g
round with the others and, like them, gratefully gulped water from one of his three, rapidly emptying bottles.
‘God,’ he said, ‘this is murderous.’
‘It’s what we joined for,’ Andrew reminded him.
‘I can’t remember why I wanted the badge,’ Gumboot said. ‘I must have been mad.’
Still gasping for breath and soaked in his own sweat, Ricketts glanced along the line and saw Sergeant Parker squatting on the ground near the firqats, dressed just like them, as impassive as them, and not displaying one drop of sweat.
‘Right,’ Andrew whispered. ‘Don’t say it. I know just what you’re thinking. That bastard, Dead-eye Dick, is sitting there as cool as a cucumber, not fazed at all.’
‘He’s not normal, that bastard,’ Gumboot said. ‘I’d lay odds he’s a fucking psychopath. He gets his kicks out of suffering.’
‘How good do you think he really is?’ Ricketts asked no one in particular.
‘He’s exceptional,’ Lampton told him. ‘He’s as good a marksman as any adoo – and that’s saying a lot.’
‘Thanks, Sarge,’ Andrew said, ‘for those encouraging words. It’s nice to know that we’re going up against an enemy that shoots better than we do.’
‘No point in telling lies.’
‘Little white lies have their moments.’
‘In this kind of war,’ Lampton insisted, ‘it’s best to know what you’re up against. And the adoo, believe me, are good. They have the eyes of eagles.’
‘Fucking wonderful,’ Gumboot said. ‘That’s all I need to know. After killing ourselves climbing this bloody mountain, we’ll get picked off like flies. Let’s all kneel in prayer.’
Five minutes later, they were on the move again, killing themselves as they slogged up the ever-steeper mountainside, slipping and sliding in loose gravel or on smooth stone, catching their feet in fissures, banging their heads or elbows against outcrops hidden in darkness.
For the next five hours, they halted every hour and wetted their parched throats with more water. They soon began to run short.
‘According to the firqats,’ Lampton said, ‘there was a well four hours march from the Mahazair Pools. We’ve now been on the march for five hours and there’s still no sign of it.’
‘Apart from knowing how to slit enemy throats,’ Bill said, ‘those A-rabs don’t know a damned thing.’
‘They better,’ Lampton said, ‘because they’re the ones guiding us up this mountain.’
‘I’ll believe it when we see it,’ Tom said, ‘and I don’t think we’ll see it.’
‘Let’s hope that at least they find the well,’ Andrew said, ‘before our water runs out.’
‘I’m low,’ Ricketts said.
‘So am I,’ Gumboot told him.
‘Stop talking about it,’ Lampton advised them, ‘and you won’t feel so thirsty. Also, you won’t feel so breathless. You’ve still got a long climb ahead of you, so try conserving your breath.’
An hour later, after six hours of climbing, they halted again – unfortunately not for the well, but because another of the men, laden with three radios and marching right in front of Ricketts, suddenly choked, vomited and collapsed.
Andrew, who had had special medical training, dropped immediately to his knees beside the unconscious man, loosened his webbing, removed the radios and other heavy kit, then hammered on his chest in an attempt to revive him. When this failed, he applied mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but this was also to no avail. Without thinking about his own diminishing supply, Andrew opened the only one of his three bottles still containing water and poured some down the unconscious trooper’s throat. The man coughed and spluttered back to dazed consciousness just as Major Greenaway and RSM Worthington appeared on the scene, having walked back from the front of the column.
‘Christ!’ Greenaway exclaimed in frustration. ‘Not another heart attack!’
‘Don’t know, boss,’ Andrew said, ‘but whatever it is, it’s not fatal. He’s not in the best condition, but he’s conscious and I think he’ll be OK.’
‘Can he walk?’
‘I wouldn’t ask him to try just yet.’
Greenaway turned to Worthington. ‘If we call in a casevac chopper, we could compromise the whole operation. We’ll have to send him back to the base camp. From there, he can be casevacked back to RAF Salalah.’
‘That means a stretcher, boss, and two men carrying it. No easy job on this mountain.’
‘We’re not here for easy jobs, Bob, so get this man on a stretcher.’
‘Yes, boss, will do.’ As Greenaway marched back to the head of the column, a lot higher up the mountain, the RSM looked around him, then jabbed his forefinger at two troopers. ‘You and you,’ he said.
‘Aw, shit, no!’ one of the men protested.
‘Right, boss,’ the other said. ‘We’ve been through hell to get this far and now you’re sending us back. It isn’t fair, boss.’
‘It isn’t a question of fairness,’ Worthington replied. ‘It’s a matter of necessity. We can’t afford to lose any medics before the battle commences, so he has to be taken down by two troopers and I’ve chosen you.’
‘Why us?’
‘You happen to be nearest. Now shut up and wait until I send down a stretcher. Then take this man back to base.’
A few minutes after the RSM had hiked back up the mountain, towards the front of the column, two medics came down with a rolled-up stretcher. After unrolling it, they hoisted the groaning trooper onto it, then turned to the men chosen by the RSM to carry him back to base.
‘OK,’ a medic said, ‘he’s all yours.’
‘He should be all yours,’ one of the troopers replied.
The medic shrugged and grinned. ‘It’s all in the lap of the gods, meaning the lap of the RSM. Have a good trip, lads.’
Before the troopers could reply, the medics hurried back uphill. The troopers, looking disgusted, hoisted the stretcher up between them. ‘Fucking diabolical,’ one of them said, as they started downhill with the groaning man.
‘OK,’ Lampton said, ‘let’s move out again.’
Knowing that first light would be at 0530 hours, Greenaway marched his men mercilessly, following the hardy firqats uphill through the darkness, still with no sign of the promised well and its life-giving water. Even at this time of the morning, in that total, moonless darkness, the heat was considerable, clammy, suffocating and rendered worse by the dust kicked up by hundreds of marching feet. More men choked and were sick.
Ricketts began to suffer from heat exhaustion and dehydration: dry mouth and throat, swollen tongue, cracked lips. He also began to hear lurking adoo with every sound and to see them in the dark outlines of rocks and outcrops. Aware that the adoo were superb marksmen, able to pick off enemy troops at distances so great they had been called the ‘phantom enemy’, his imaginings along these lines became increasingly vivid.
As they pressed on, the firqats up front decided to lighten their heavy loads by discarding valuable items of kit, such as ration cans, portable hexamine cookers and blocks of hexamine fuel. These littered the upward trail and made the going even more difficult for the SAS troops behind them. When reprimanded by RSM Worthington, the Arabs started screaming angrily, threw their weapons and kit to the ground, and threatened to return to the base camp. Appeased by their diplomatic friend, Dead-eye Dick Parker, they picked up what they had just thrown down and continued the march.
‘Selfish fucking bastards!’ Gumboot managed to groan between anguished breaths.
Nevertheless, the climb continued, with more men collapsing and either being revived and made to keep going or, if they were in serious condition, sent back to the base camp.
About half an hour before first light, the men ahead began disappearing one by one over the skyline, filling Ricketts with the hope that this must be the top of the plateau.
In fact, it was a false crest, only leading down into another wadi. The men gathered together at the bottom of that wa
di just as dawn’s light appeared in the east. At the head of his hundred men, but behind the SAF and firqats, Major Greenaway consulted with RSM Worthington, both of them studying their maps by torchlight, neither looking pleased.
‘We should have been on Lympne by now,’ Greenaway said loudly, in exasperation. ‘Those firqat guides have led us in the wrong direction. We should be on high ground.’ He glanced angrily at the masked guides. ‘Those stupid bloody …’ Not wanting to cause trouble with the notoriously proud and temperamental Arab fighters, he let his voice trail off, scratched his chin in deep thought, then turned to the RSM. ‘Go and talk to the scouts,’ he said. ‘Find out just where we are.’
The RSM went off, embroiled himself in a heated discussion with the firqat guides, then had a talk with the fearsome-looking Sergeant Parker. The latter nodded, then hurried away, clambering up the steep face of the wadi with the agility of a mountain goat, eventually disappearing in the darkness. When he had gone, the RSM, looking frustrated, returned to Greenaway.
‘Those bloody firqats aren’t sure where the track leading to Lympne is, so I’ve sent Sergeant Parker on ahead to do a recce. He’s the best tracker we’ve got and if anyone can find the trail, he can.’
‘Right,’ Greenaway replied. ‘We might as well make the most of the opportunity. Tell the men to take five.’
In a state of exhaustion made worse by lack of sleep, the men squatted on the ground as best they could while still wearing their bergens. As even glowing cigarettes could betray their position to the enemy, they were not allowed to smoke, but they compensated for this lack with chocolate and chewing gum, and by releasing their frustration over the firqats.
‘Fucking typical!’ Gumboot exploded. ‘We’ve been trained for this kind of work, but they leave it to the A-rabs and before you can say boo we’re lost. I could piss on their heads!’