The War that Never Was

by Duff Hart-Davis

  It must be realised in UK that moves in and out of any areas in the Yemen are not streamlined like VIP visits . . . Delays by tribal, political, absent princes, enemy activity, ransom and tolls all combine to delay our moves, therefore maximum warning of any UK-ordered moves must be given from now on.

  Writing to Johnny from London in self-defence, Tony stressed that ‘our main problem has been money for running the show’:

  Sammy [Shami] is presently (we hope) renegotiating our contract with Seymour [Prince Sultan] . . . [but] it would be quite improper for us, and would put Sammy into an intolerable position, if we at this stage were to propose the plan of six outstations and two bases.

  Jim and Tony were also worried about Chris Sharma, who was now styling himself ‘Mansoor ibn Nasr al Beni Borhwa, Honory [sic] Emir of the Royal Kingdom of Yemen’, and whom they thought had already ‘become too Arab’. Earlier, Rupert France had described him going off to the Jauf ‘with guns hanging from every crook and cranny, hand grenades and a bayonet. Sleeps with a loaded revolver and the safety catch off’. Now Tony wrote, ‘The longer he remains, the more Arab he is going to become and hence the less effective. We all agree people must not be forced to operate alone for too long.’ Sharma, for his part, was well aware of how much he annoyed Jack Miller, and apologised to Tony for the fact that he appeared ‘to rub him up the wrong way’. ‘I have always maintained that my primary concern is to establish and maintain communications,’ he wrote stiffly, ‘which appears contrary to Jack’s policy.’

  Now Sharma, unaware of the latest financial crisis, had rejoined the Imam at a temporary headquarters in a cave about half an hour’s climb from the road-head at Shida, just inside the Yemen–Saudi frontier. There he found Shami, who reassured him that there was money in London; but when, in the morning Sharma asked the Imam’s secretary, Yahya al-Hirsi, to arrange an interview with the ruler, he found himself caught in the usual thicket of delay, tersely described in his diary:

  30/9 Request to see HM. Emir Yahya replies, ‘Later’.

  1/10 Request to see HM. Yahya replies ‘Later’. Write to HM in Arabic. Answer: ‘Please wait’. Ask Yahya for order to use radio in Jizan. He says, ‘Must see HM first.’

  2/10 Request to see HM. Yahya replies, ‘Later’. Ask for order to go to Jizan to work radio. He says, ‘Must see HM first’. Ask to see him at once. As always, told, ‘Later’. Ask for truck to front to help Amir Abdullah al Hussein by tank hunting. Told by Yahya, ‘Must see HM’ . . .

  Bloody cold at night, since Yahya said there were no blankets free. Yahya and HM slept on portable sprung-mattress beds!

  Sharma did eventually gain regular access to the Presence, and enforced idleness over many days gave him a chance to write at length to Boyle, outlining his view of the situation:

  As I now see HM every day I have had a chance to get to know him and vice versa. We get on very well, and he was quite worried when I said I would like a month’s leave and that I was only here temporarily anyway. He told me today that he has written to Shami to ask you that I may stay here . . . Personally, I would like to stay, and I feel that I have his confidence and he will abide (to some extent) by my advice on weapons etc.

  The guiding principle is at present that the Egyptians must leave sooner or later. HM also realises that the troops in this sector are not soldiers by anybody’s standards, except for about 200 of the royal guard. It appears that as long as we can maintain the status quo territorially, we will win, as the Egyptians cannot afford the expenditure indefinitely. On the other hand, gold must flow into the Royalist hands, or the Royalists have had it . . .

  It must be understood that the gebile, or peasants, like anywhere, only wish to live in peace and quiet.5 Thus whether the territory is ours or theirs, the gebile are happy if there is peace. Thus the primary objective now of the sector commanders in the south is not to provoke an Egyptian attack. The gebile, who bear the brunt of the bombs on their homes and lands, justifiably get annoyed when they see their life savings go up in smoke.

  As is generally admitted, the Royalists can only hold their own mountains, and since practically all mountains are Royalist, one just tries to stop the Egyptians increasing their territory. HM fully admits that the only real fighting has been done by John Cooper with Abdullah bin Hassan, where there were mountains to be gained. For the record, he thinks John C is great, and that the Khowlan would have been lost to the Egyptians long ago but for him. The locals here regard him as some sort of super-Emir, of infinite wisdom and strength, and are quite awed by what he has done, as well as hero-worshipping Abdullah bin Hassan.

  Mansoor/Sharma was so busy talking to the Imam that he neglected his day-to-day duties – to the great annoyance of Lord Kilbracken, on assignment for his newspapers, the London Daily Express and the Evening Standard. Provoked beyond endurance by various delays, Kilbracken took out a blunt pencil and scribbled a furious note:

  The camel arrived five hours late. Of course there was no mule. So I have only just arrived here and God knows when the camel will turn up . . . You said at 4 p.m. yesterday that you would send down provisions to the hospital ‘immediately’. Of course none arrived, so I had no supper. This meant that I had to walk today on an empty stomach – as well as in the full heat of the day.

  I regard these as typical final examples of your total inability to arrange anything. You presume to refer to yourself as ‘Military Adviser to His Majesty’, but in fact you couldn’t give advice to a lance corporal in Fred Karno’s army. At least it will all make good copy, which will NOT be subject to censorship.

  Kilbracken6

  Sharma was worrying members of his own team, as well. ‘Really Mansoor will have to consider himself less indispensable or we shall have a mutiny on our hands,’ wrote Jack Miller, after the two of them had interviewed the Imam:

  He was becoming almost condescending to the Imam and talking so much that I had to get rid of him half way through our interview in order to finish our agenda by daybreak. He wants to be sent here as resident operator, but I do not consider he is safe to be given authority to do more than operate and repair sets in case he makes a fool of himself by trying to run the whole country on his own!!

  Mansoor seemed to attract trouble wherever he was. On one occasion all his kit was stolen by Mohamed bin Hussein’s soldiers – but Jim, in Jeddah, managed to recover £70 from the Prince, and told him in a letter: ‘I think we can all congratulate ourselves having got it from him’. Another time, at El Qara, Sharma had an argument with Mac and drew his .38 Webley – but the former wrestler had no difficulty getting the weapon off him.

  In London, Jim’s anxieties were sharply increased by the advent of a Labour Government on 16 October 1964, when Harold Wilson won the general election and became Prime Minister. His majority was so small – only four votes – that he could not immediately introduce sweeping reforms; but his party’s traditional dislike of colonialism inevitably raised fears about the future of Aden and the whole of South Arabia.

  For the time being the BFLF carried on as before, encouraged by the fact that in November King Saud finally succumbed to Feisal’s pressure and abdicated, going into exile in Greece, whereupon Feisal – always a strong supporter of the British effort – succeeded to the throne of Saudi Arabia.

  Bernard Mills had by then returned to a new station near Gara in the Khowlan, where he spent two months on his own. In the middle of December fighting broke out for three days between the Republicans and the Ben Haridh tribe, whose Sheikh had been summoned to Sana’a to settle a dispute, but had refused to go. In an attempt to stamp out the squabble, a combined force of Republicans and Egyptians was assembled under the command of the Yemen Chief of Police, Abdullah Barakat, but when he found how strong the resistance was, he suggested a meeting, and in the end the Egyptian forces were obliged to pay 40,000 MTDs and four oxen, to obtain a precarious ceasefire. Republican casualties were mounting rapidly, and Royalist mining had become so effective that the Egyptians were ob
liged to sweep roads with 20mm cannons mounted on trucks, backed by tanks, in an attempt to detonate mines laid during the night.

  Allegiances constantly shifted; treachery was ubiquitous. One ruler near Jebel Raza (where the Imam was in hiding) had been a noted Republican since the revolution; but in December 1964 he declared for the Imam, sending his son as a hostage, to show his good faith. The Imam returned the son, together with some money, saying he had never doubted the Sheikh’s good faith, and quite understood the difficulties under which he had been labouring. Soon afterwards the Egyptians wanted to pass through the Sheikh’s territory and were granted free passage – until they came to a narrow wadi, where the whole group was exterminated by men concealed among the rocks on the surrounding hillsides. Even if the figure of 400 dead, which the Sheikh claimed, was an exaggeration, he had dealt the invaders a nasty blow.

  At about that time Bernard began to feel ill, with severe pains in his lower back. After radio consultations with Aden he thought the trouble must be kidney stones – and it was a measure of Abdullah bin Hassan’s esteem that he proposed sending a party down to Sana’a to raid the military hospital, capture a couple of doctors and bring them up into the mountains by force to treat him. Towards the end of December Bernard was too ill to take the next planned para-drop, even though the Israelis were pressing for it, and from Aden Johnny told him to take no unnecessary risks over his health. Rather than risk letting his condition deteriorate by waiting, he should lock up everything in the camp and come out whichever way he thought best.

  On the 16th Bernard was feeling slightly better, having followed radioed medical instructions and injected himself, but he was clearly very sick and decided to go out via the Jauf, east of the central massif. Leaving his station ‘well booby-trapped’, he set off on Christmas Eve, riding Prince Abdullah’s own mule, which wore a chaplet of silver bells around its neck to announce that a Person of Importance was on the move. He spent that night in one of the highest villages in the Yemen, and as he listened to a Forces’ broadcast from Aden on his radio, he felt rather low; but on Christmas Day, with frost on the ground and his bodyguards running beside him, his spirits lifted. Continuing to the north, he went through the Egyptian lines after dark on New Year’s Day 1965, and made his way to the Red Cross hospital at Uqd, near the Saudi border. The doctors there decided that his problem was not kidney stones, but something else – so he carried on through the frontier to Najran, caught a plane to Jeddah, flew down to Aden and thence to London, where he arrived on 10 January 1965.

  Meanwhile the BFLF office had suffered a serious loss with the departure of Fiona Fraser, who had decided to go travelling, on one of the long journeys that she favoured. Luckily for Jim, she found an excellent replacement in the form of another Scot, Hannah Stirling.7

  At the end of February 1965, cured of his illness, Bernard duly returned to the Yemen, with instructions from Jim to proceed to the Jauf, where he could ginger up Mohamed bin Hussein and ‘get them fighting’. Another reason for his posting to the eastern sector was that, from there, should medical problems recur, he could be evacuated to hospital by the rough road that skirted the mountains and ran up around the edge of the desert to Najran. That way, he would not have to pass through the Egyptian lines, whereas – he knew only too well – there was no road to or from the mercenary stations in the Khowlan. A third reason was that Johnny Cooper was already back in the Khowlan, and there seemed little point in having the organisation’s two best Arabic-speakers (him and Bernard) together in one place.

  Johnny, however, was furious about Bernard’s posting. He himself had been privately planning to take over from Rupert France (Franco) as anchor man in Aden, and now complained bitterly to Jim:

  I am led to believe that Bernard is returning on his own account and not under my command to an area he wants. This I cannot accept. If he is in the Org he must come into line, or all order/discipline will cease. I want Bernard if and when he returns to go to Zone 3 in Arhab [the rocky plateau north of Sana’a] . . . His short stints have not made him very popular with the others, as they maintain the rules are for all to follow.

  This is completely contrary to my planning. Consider your/Bernard intentions should have been sent me Field Boss before implementation. Your policy all personnel [re]moves my responsibility – if you lack confidence my judgement please clarify.

  In spite of this outburst, Bernard duly went up into the Jauf, where in due course he masterminded the planning for the most resounding Royalist success of the entire war, the battle in Wadi Humeidat.

  Apart from that problem, Johnny was in ebullient form. ‘We are at the top of the popularity pole [sic] in all people’s eyes,’ he told Jim. In the past twenty-three days three parachute-drops had come in; all the radio stations were operating; there had been a lot of medical activity; weapons were being repaired. The worst problem was a shortage of operators:

  The French have lost their commander8 and George [a mortar expert] is filling the seat at Rose until a new one arrives . . . They are down to twelve all told! Amiral wants to stay with us and is first class in all respects. George would like to join too so if their contracts do expire we have the best here! The man under training I want ASAP. We are too few chasing too many, and when I leave for Aden it will leave my three on the ground.9

  So please what is the situation re recruits? We must build up to about ten to allow leave . . . and to avoid this problem of all due their leave at the same time . . . Jim, can I recruit?!! If so how many and at what rank?!

  Meanwhile there was a good deal of activity in the east, where some of the tribes had begun to take action against the enemy forces based around Harib, Juba and Marib. This pleased the Saudis, since their supply route to the Royalist forces in the southern Jauf ran through the area, and they accordingly increased their flow of weapons and money to Sherif Hussein of Beihan, who passed them on to the tribes. These people were not Royalist, being Shaffei (Sunni) rather than Zeidi (Shia), but they detested the Egyptians, and in early 1965 they stepped up their attacks on the occupying forces.

  Under this increased harassment, the Egyptians withdrew their garrison that had been holding the vital Al Hagla pass above Harib, close to the Yemen border, and left a Republican force in its place. Spurred on by one of the British Field Intelligence Officers in the Protectorate, across the frontier to the south, the Murad and Abida tribes seized their chance and went on the attack. The assault began badly, when one lot of tribesmen bumped into another and started shooting, setting off an instant blood-feud and killing half a dozen men. But after a ritual shouting match the British officer managed to bring the leaders together – whereupon they got on with the war, recaptured the pass, held it, and on 14 March occupied Harib.

  The Egyptians could ill afford to abandon outposts of such importance and, after once being beaten off, brought a whole brigade to recapture the pass. This they managed, losing their brigade commander in the process, but they were not strong enough to retake Harib. For the next two months their line of communication between Harib and Marib was so severely harried that they withdrew, first to Juba, then to Marib, and finally from Marib, so that the Royalists’ southern flank was secured as far afield as Sirwah and Jihannah on the road to Sana’a.

  By then, from Jim’s point of view, the international political outlook had taken a turn for the better, when the Americans at last admitted that in backing Nasser’s assault on the Yemen they had made a mistake. Belatedly they realised that he would never win the war, and that he had been ‘blinded by his mission to promote revolutionary reform in the Arab world’.10 In talks with Parker T. Hart, the US Ambassador in Riyadh, Feisal (now King) emphasised the extent to which Nasser had become dependent on the Soviet Union for the supply of weapons, and said that the Egyptian leader could not easily extricate himself from the Yemen, even if he wanted to.11 In January 1965 the same point was taken up by the Saudi Defence Minister, Prince Sultan, who told Billy McLean that Hart had compared Nasser’s posit
ion to that of a fly stuck on fly-paper – he was caught in the Yemen, could not escape from it and would slowly die there, like the fly.

  Like its predecessor, the new government in Whitehall had not publicly acknowledged the existence of Jim Johnson’s private army. But now the Foreign Secretary, Patrick Gordon-Walker, began to argue that the mercenaries should no longer be allowed to move through Aden and the Federation with the freedom they had enjoyed until then. In particular, he asked that McLean and Amery, who were planning another trip, should not be granted RAF transport. ‘I told you I thought the time had come when these facilities should be denied to them,’ he wrote to the Colonial Secretary, Anthony Greenwood, ‘and that they should be told to move off British territory’:

  Their presence there is inconsistent with our position that we are not interfering in the internal conflict inside Yemen: it complicates our efforts to get on better terms with the UAR government, and it is liable to encourage the Egyptians to increase their efforts to make difficulties for us in the Federation.12

  Whatever might be said or thought in Whitehall, no pressure was put on Jim to call off his operation. As far as he was concerned, business carried on as usual, and the only constraints were financial: he was haunted by the continual possibility that the Saudis might stop sending out gold to the Yemeni princes, and cut off the flow of money with which he was paying his own operators. This anxiety made the frequent Israeli air-drops all the more welcome, for although the volume of weapons and ammunition that the Stratocruiser could deliver on each flight was relatively small, the psychological value of the Repairs operations was beyond calculation.