by Shaun Clarke
‘So what’s happening over there?’ Ricketts asked.
‘Are you guys probationers?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your sergeant must have a lot of faith in you, letting you run this machine-gun post unsupervised.’
‘He’s just down the slope a bit,’ Ricketts explained, ‘and we’re in radio contact.’
‘Still, he must trust you,’ Baker said, sipping more tea. ‘A very nice brew, this.’
‘So what’s happening?’ Andrew asked.
‘A force of between twenty and thirty adoo hit the positions over on the west with AK-47s and RPD light machine-guns as back-up. The SAF took no casualties, but had two hits, which makes us one up.’
‘Why has the attack tapered off?’
‘We think the adoo were just testing our strength. Some of the SAF got over the rim of the hill and found them already gone. The generally received wisdom is that they’ve retired to their stronghold at Jibjat, six kilometres west of here. That’s where we’re going tomorrow.’
‘Why?’ Ricketts asked.
‘Because the Head Shed,’ Baker replied, referring to their CO, Major Greenaway, ‘thinks that makeshift airstrip down there, on Lympne, is fucking useless. Apparently it’s already breaking up from this morning’s resup landings. So tomorrow, at first light, we’re going to march on Jibjat.’
‘That’s only 7500 yards away.’
‘Right,’ Baker said with a grin. ‘A short hike to the enemy.’
‘Who dares wins,’ Ricketts said.
Before first light, after a night in the sangar during which they took one-hour turns on watch, or stag, they packed their bergens and prepared the GPMG and tripod for carriage. They destroyed their sangar, dismantling it brick by brick, then moved down the hill to join Sergeant Lampton and the others. The ground around Lampton’s sangar was pock-marked with shell holes and the structure itself had been partially damaged by an explosion. Tom and Bill were still cleaning the weapons that had been clogged up with falling soil and dust. They both looked exhausted.
‘Bloody marvellous,’ Tom said. ‘I cleaned these weapons at Um al Gwarif, I cleaned them again at the Mahazair Pools, I cleaned them when we climbed up to here, and then, after that fucking attack, I had to clean them again. Gravel, sand and dust spewing in every time a shell hit. A right fucking misery!’
‘At least it wasn’t your guts spewing out,’ Bill said philosophically. ‘Count your blessings, I say.’
‘So what’s happening, boss?’ Ricketts asked.
‘We’re marching to Jibjat,’ Lampton replied. ‘Six kilometres west with all our gear in the heat of the noonday sun. Mad dogs and Englishmen.’
‘Terrific,’ Tom said. ‘More sand, dust and other shit. More cleaning of weapons. Absolutely terrific.’
‘This bothers you?’ Lampton asked.
‘It gets on my fucking wick.’
‘You’re still on probation,’ Lampton said. ‘If you don’t like it, pack it in.’
‘What?’
‘I think you heard me, Trooper.’
‘Jesus, boss, I didn’t mean …’
‘Don’t take anything for granted,’ Lampton said, ‘just because you’ve been badged. All you people are on one year’s probation, so never forget it.’
‘Forget every word I uttered,’ Tom said. ‘Just wipe it out of your mind. OK, boss, what’s the rope?’
‘The rope is six kilometres long and it takes us to Jibjat. Do you walk or stay here?’
‘I walk, boss. I’m on my feet already. I’m raring to go.’
‘Then let’s go,’ Lampton said.
Impressed by Lampton’s deceptively gentle demolition job on Purvis, Ricketts and the others helped to destroy the sangar, taking it apart stone by painful stone, as they had just done with their own; then they picked up their heavy loads and took their position in the spectacular gathering of some 800 men, broken up into dozens of extended, snake-like lines, stretching down the eastern hill, across the airstrip, then up the lower slopes of the western hill. All of them were wearing camouflaged clothing, with the firqats half hiding their faces in their wind-blown shemaghs and looking all the more fearsome by so doing. When everything was in order, a series of hand signals came down the line and the men moved out.
There was no talking. The various lines stretched out a long way, over the western hill, but the only noise was the jangling of kit and weapons hanging from webbing. At first the air was cool, but the sun was rising fast, and before long, as the last men crossed the hill, the heat made itself felt. Ricketts wiped sweat from his face; he swatted flies and mosquitoes. Though physically uncomfortable, he felt oddly at one with the great column of men snaking down the hillside, towards the flatland where the Jibjat airstrip lay. He knew that the adoo would be there, waiting for them, ready to fight, but even that thought filled him with a kind of wonder, rather than fear.
The march did not take long and soon the airstrip came into view in the distance, enclosed in a great horseshoe of high, rocky terrain, where the adoo were almost certainly entrenched. Immediately, as if communicating with body language, a subtle change came over the hundreds of marching men as they instinctively became more tense and watchful. They moved slightly away from one another, spreading out across the desert plain, until they were covering the broad area leading up to the rocky bottleneck leading to the airstrip. All of this was accomplished without a word.
Then the first shots rang out. Surprisingly, they were single shots from Kalashnikov rifles, fired by the adoo with unerring accuracy to pick off some of the SAF troops up front and perhaps demoralize the others. Some men fell, but the others kept marching, first walking as before, picking up speed, then gradually breaking into a run as they raced for the bottleneck. More shots rang out and more SAF troops fell, then a distant thudding sound indicated that mortars had just been fired.
The first explosions erupted on a wide arc where the troops were advancing, ripping up the ground between them and sending up a screen of boiling sand and smoke. The men at the head of the column disappeared into this as the adoo opened up with their machine-guns.
Green tracer illuminated the murk, exploding in silvery flashes, and making jagged, spitting lines in the sand that sent some of the advancing troops into convulsions before jerking violently backwards. The other troops continued to race into the turmoil as the medics ran to and fro, crouched low, bravely tending to the wounded, the dying and the dead.
‘What the fuck are those bastards firing?’ Gumboot asked, ‘that can reach us from the far side of that airstrip?’
‘Twelve-point-seven-millimetre Shpagin heavy machine-guns,’ Lampton said as they all gradually broke into a trot. ‘They can outrange anything we have, so we’ll have to get a lot closer before returning their fire. Come on, lads, pick your feet up.’
Ricketts and his team tried to run as best they could while carrying the separate parts of the dismantled GPMG. For Ricketts it was hell, with the legs of the tripod biting into his neck and chest, but eventually he found himself in the thick of the smoke-filled, spewing sand, where the mortar shells and heavy machine-gun fire were causing most havoc. Here the other men advancing through the gloom were no more than shadows.
‘Christ!’ Andrew said, running beside him, ‘I can’t see a damned thing.’
Ricketts almost fell, one foot slipping into a shell hole, but Andrew grabbed him by the shoulder and tugged him upright, then pushed him ahead. Gumboot was there beside him, his face streaked with sand and sweat, running beside Tom and Bill – a trio of ghosts. The mortar shells were still exploding, making the sand roar and swirl about them, and green tracer zipped through the air with a vicious, spitting sound.
Suddenly, from the gloom of the swirling sand, they plunged back into daylight. For a moment it was dazzling, seeming brighter than it really was, but then, when Ricketts managed to adjust to it, he saw that the bottleneck leading to the airstrip had been blocked with a barricade of trees and barbed w
ire. Then he saw the adoo retreating across the airstrip, firing on the move, and gradually scattering up the rocky slopes beyond, where they could hide behind boulders.
‘We should be in range!’ Lampton shouted. ‘Set up the machine-gun!’
Relieved to be unburdened, Ricketts dropped to his knees and, with Andrew’s assistance, set up the GPMG. Once it was on place on its heavy tripod, he closed the top cover on a belt of 200 rounds and Andrew hammered out a test burst of 50. He then slipped the hinge-clip off the foresight of the barrel, took the foresight blade between his thumb and forefinger and screwed it up into position. After replacing the hinge-clip, he again took up his firing position, index finger on the trigger and thumb behind the pistol grip, so as not to accidentally move the gun with the natural pull of his fingers. Then, with Ricketts feeding in the belts, he started pouring fire into the hills where the adoo were sheltering.
It was difficult to tell what effect Andrew was having personally as by now the other SAF machine-gunners were also peppering the hill and the mortar crews were laying down a barrage that soon covered the whole area in smoke. The adoo, however, were in retreat, moving back up the hill, allowing the SAS demolitions team, led by the dour, red-headed Corporal Alfie Lloyd, to race across to the bottleneck to begin the task of blowing away the trees and barbed wire blocking the way to the airstrip. They were given covering fire, not only by the many machine-guns, but by a fusillade of fire from the 7.62mm FN rifles of the SAF, firqat and Baluchi troops now massed on both sides of the barricade.
With Ricketts feeding in the belts and Gumboot acting as observer, Andrew kept hammering away with his GPMG, helping to force the adoo back up the slopes of the western hill and over its rim. Meanwhile, Jock was in constant touch with the Head Sheds, who soon relayed the information that the barricade was about to be blown up. By this time most of the adoo appeared to be well up the western hill, clearly retreating back over the rim, out of range of the SAF guns, so the machine-gun fire gradually tailed off. Andrew also stopped firing. Finally, the SAF rifles fell silent and the troops, realizing that the barricade was going to be destroyed, hastily retreated from both sides of it to crouch on the ground near the SAS.
Ricketts borrowed binoculars from Gumboot and scanned the rim of the western hill. Magnified by the binoculars, he could see the adoo clearly. Wearing jellabas, shemaghs and sandals, they were heavily burdened with webbing, ponchos, bandoliers of ammunition and long-bladed kunjias.
To Ricketts’s untrained eye, the adoo looked just like the fearsome firqats. This could, he thought, cause some confusion in the future. Even as he watched through the binoculars, most of them stopped firing and retreated back up the hill, cradling their Kalashnikovs in their arms. Ricketts handed the binoculars back to Gumboot when the last of them were about to disappear over the rim of the hill.
The demolition men had completed their work and were retreating backwards, crouched low, uncoiling the detonation cord as they went. From where he was kneeling, Ricketts could clearly see the plastic explosives taped to the up-ended trees. The det cord, with one end fixed to blasting caps embedded in the explosive charges, was running out from the explosives to the roll being uncoiled by Alfie Lloyd. When he and his assistant had reached the detonator, Lloyd cut through the cord with scissors, expertly bared the wires with a pocket knife, fixed them to the electrical connectors on the detonator, then kneeled above the latter, resting his hands lightly on the plunger.
He scrutinized the barricade to ensure that no one was near it, then glanced at Major Greenaway, who was kneeling about ten yards to his right, beside RSM Worthington and a radio crew. When Greenaway raised and lowered his right hand, Lloyd pressed down on the plunger.
The noise emerged from what seemed like the bowels of the earth to explode with a deafening roar and spew out a mighty mushroom of soil, sand, dust and loose gravel. The trees were blown apart and burst into flames, raining back down through the boiling, dark smoke as a fountain of fire, falling into the murk some way to each side of the bottleneck and causing more dust to billow upwards.
The fading noise of the explosion was followed by another – the spine-chilling, macabre wailing of the excited firqats, rising eerily above the cheering and shouting of the SAF and Baluchi troops. As one man, they jumped to their feet and raced through the billowing smoke in the bottleneck, between the exploded, flaming trees, then spread out across the deserted airstrip, firing their weapons repeatedly in the air to announce their triumph.
Bemused by the furore, the SAS men followed them in.
Chapter 13
Though the position had been taken, it had to be consolidated, a job beginning with the clearing of the airstrip, which was littered with spent shells and the debris of mortar and other explosions. As the runway had not been tarmacked, but was merely level ground cleared and flattened by human hand, the filling in of the few shell holes was relatively easy and completed by men from the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers (REME), most of whom worked stripped to the waist in the boiling heat. The job was almost completed by noon, when the sun was a white ball in the azure sky.
As Major Greenaway well knew, the adoo ‘retreat’ was in fact merely part of a typical guerrilla strategy involving staying out of sight and harassing the enemy with sniper fire, mortar shells, and small, daring hit-and-run raids of the kind the SAS could only admire. These activities went on throughout the morning while the REME teams filled in the shellholes and cleaned up the airstrip, to enable the planes to bring in more men, supplies and equipment, including some badly needed ground transport. Luckily, most of the mortar shells had fallen on the lower slopes of the western hill, well short of the runway, and the sniper fire, while causing the REME men to jump, also fell well short.
Nevertheless, knowing that small groups of adoo snipers would almost certainly sneak down the western slope to fire from behind rock outcrops, within range of the airstrip, the SAF commander, after consultation with Greenaway, sent some of his own teams to patrol the lower slopes.
By mid-afternoon, Ricketts, Andrew, Gumboot and Jock had built another sangar, on a hill due north of the airstrip. There, sitting on their bergens and drinking a brew-up, they were able to rest while observing the work going on below. When not sipping hot tea or surveying the activities around the airstrip, Andrew scribbled more poetry in his notebook.
‘What the fuck are you writing about now?’ Gumboot asked him.
‘What’s going on down there,’ Andrew replied, not looking up from his notebook.
‘How the hell can you write poetry about that?’ Gumboot asked. ‘I thought poetry was all blue moons and posies.’
‘It can be about anything, Gumboot. War and peace, love and hatred, the sound of church bells ringing out over Hereford, the smell of your old socks.’
‘One word about my old socks,’ Gumboot said, ‘and I’ll have you for libel.’ He glanced down the hill. ‘Nice to see those REMF sods doing some work at last.’ ‘REMF’, not to be confused with ‘REME’, meant rear echelon motherfuckers, which is why Gumboot used it with such relish. ‘They’ve been sitting on their arses since we got here, so let them sweat for a change.’
‘They work for their keep,’ Ricketts said, ‘making life more pleasant for us. So stop complaining.’
Glancing down the hill, he saw that Sergeant Lampton, whose friendship he had already come to value, was again sharing a sangar with Tom and Bill. Obviously, the sergeant was making sure that all of his probationers were in sight and easy to reach. Below, around the airstrip, the REME were opening a lot of packing crates and removing some of the tools they would need to construct the camp. More tools and the heavier equipment would be brought in on the planes.
‘I wonder how Greaves was,’ Jock asked, removing his shirt and wiping the sweat off his white skin. ‘He looked a right bloody mess.’
‘He was scorched by the blast,’ Ricketts said, ‘and peppered with shrapnel. He won’t walk for a long time.’
; ‘A lot of SAF troops copped it as well,’ Jock said, putting his shirt on again to ensure that his white skin did not burn, ‘and they won’t walk at all.’
‘No, I guess they won’t, Jock. They were pretty fearless, weren’t they?’
‘Aye, they were.’
‘Not like those fucking firqats, Gumboot said. ‘Ready to lay down their arms at the least excuse.’
‘That’s not cowardice,’ Andrew said, slipping his notebook into his breast pocket. ‘They never stop fighting because they’re scared. They either do it on an impulse because of something else that’s come up – say, they feel offended by something – or for religious reasons, such as Ramadan.’
‘I don’t give a shit about their reasons,’ Gumboot said. ‘My concern is that the bastards aren’t dependable. That’s what has me worried.’
‘You’re always worried about something, Gumboot. A regular bundle of anxieties, you are. Go ask the doc for some Valium.’
‘A couple of pints would do me better,’ Gumboot sighed.
‘Sweat and suffer,’ Ricketts said, then contented himself with looking down the hill, at all the work going on far below in the increasing light and heat.
As the REME finished clearing the airstrip and organized the building of defensive ‘hedgehog’ emplacements and sangars, as well as marking out the separate areas of the camp they would create here, Alfie Lloyd’s demolitions team blew up the last obstructions placed by the adoo between the airstrip and the western hill, leaving the way clear for a full-scale advance at a later date.
Remarkably, the first of the resup aircraft were flying in before last light. The very first Skyvan brought in the keenly awaited marquee tent to be used as a mess, a proper field kitchen, supplies of compo food, water and mobile electrical generators to be used for general lighting around the camp and for recharging radio, vehicle and other batteries. The second Skyvan brought in dismantled 25-pounders, for emplacement in the ‘hedgehogs’. The three Hueys and single Sikorski helicopter began the lengthy process of landing more men while the first Skyvans took out the wounded and dead, including Greaves, for casevac from RAF Salalah back to England.