The War that Never Was
Page 33
3 While Camus was convalescing at his father’s villa on the island of Ischia, his fiancée was killed in an air-crash on her way to join him. Thinking there was nothing left in life for him, he returned to the Yemen, to die, but there recovered his zest and became an excellent operator.
4 Personal communications, 2009 and 2010.
5 Jack Miller recorded in his diary that the gebile ‘have a weird addiction to tribal dances, including the use of knives therein, and their strange, high-pitched singing . . . might, in the distance, be likened to the droning of the Scottish pipes. Pipes here are in frequent use and even more barbaric in sound than their Scottish counterparts.’
6 Kilbracken had borrowed a cine-camera from the mercenaries, and knew a lot about their activities, but never mentioned them in his articles.
7 Later the Marchioness of Salisbury.
8 He had left after the discovery of financial discrepancies.
9 George, a Belgian, was a mortar expert; Amiral, a small, bearded Frenchman who liked to operate on his own, had won an amazing number of medals.
10 Eugene Rogan, The Arabs, p.332.
11 FO 371/179863.
12 FO 371/174638 BM 1041/369G Secret FS/64/133.
10 A High and a Low
1 Jimmy Knox had been in the merchant navy, but after an incident at Malta he was seized by the police, and the only way he could escape gaol was by joining the army.
2 Arabian Assignment, p.188.
3 Ibid., p.190.
4 McLean Papers, IWM, Duxford.
5 Sunday Telegraph, 25 April 1965. In his memoirs he wrote that he left Humeidat on 6 April, and so missed the battle, which took place on the 21st, (Arabian Assignment, p.190).
6 In August 1965, after the battle, when the Egyptians applied for help to withdraw troops from Hazm to Humeidat, through Dahm territory, they asked for members of the tribe to travel with them as a guarantee of safe conduct.
7 Arabian Assignment, p.182. Over the years Adham accumulated an immense amount of money through various deals, and in 1992 was fined $105 million by United States prosecutors for his part in the scandal involving the Bank of Credit and Commerce International.
8 The Conspirators, p.71.
9 In the commentary on a film that he made for the BBC.
10 Arabian Assignment, p.191.
11 In some respects the men in the field were better off than the diplomats in Saudi Arabia. The British Embassy had to import their drink as ‘furniture’, and one dinner party in the First Secretary’s house was interrupted by a telephone call from customs saying that the ‘British Embassy’s furniture is leaking. Could someone please come quickly to collect it before the smell of alcohol wafting through the airport leads to arrests.’
12 Gassim eventually defected to the Republicans and was murdered.
13 Lan ansahib min al Yaman wa lau Jaffat myah al Nile – I will not withdraw from the Yemen even if the Nile’s waters run dry.
14 Peter Hinchcliffe, John T. Ducker & Maria Holt, Without Glory in Arabia, p.70. FO 371/179858.
15 ‘Overseen’ was not quite correct. The SIS were aware of Woodhouse’s involvement, but did not control his movements.
16 Weekly News from Saudi Arabia, 11 January 1966.
17 Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes, p.84.
18 CO 1055/307.
19 Over Saudi Arabia, Brian Carroll, a former Lightning chief examiner, took one of the aircraft up to 87,300 feet, at which height he reported that control was ‘on a knife-edge’. The Kuwaitis also bought Lightnings, but lacked the skill to maintain them.
20 PREM 13/1923 C417465.
11 In the Balance
1 Interview with Sultan Ghalib al-Qu’aiti, 14 June 2010.
2 Bob Walker-Brown was known to some of the mercenaries as ‘Bob Danvers-Walker’, after the presenter who announced the prizes in the television show Double Your Money.
3 Personal conversation, 3 November 2009.
4 When he returned to England in December 1966 Thesiger gave an informal report to members of the Defence Intelligence Staff. DEFE 13/571.
5 Thesiger’s grandfather, 2nd Baron Chelmsford (1827-1905), commanded the British force that was defeated by the Zulu army at the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879.
12 Fresh Blood
1 Personal correspondence, 10 December 2009.
2 This was for covering maps, to lengthen their life.
3 Mac was very suspicious of Bushrod Howard, ‘who purports to lobby Americans in support of Royalist cause and demands large sums money in return . . . An unsavoury person.’
4 Yemen: the Unknown War, p.263.
5 This claim was later denied; but another source said that the Egyptian pilots were German-trained.
6 Personal interview, November 2009.
7 In his memoir Arabian Assignment Smiley described this visit to Amara and other places in the Yemen, but made no mention of the fact that by then he had been ostracised by the leaders of the BFLF.
13 Exit Jay
1 Rochat, a Swiss, was a smooth former hotelier then in his early forties. David Bailey had a blistering row with him over the Red Cross’s supine attitude.
2 PREM 13/1923 C417465.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 The gas bombs were designed to break open on impact, rather than explode.
6 In its issue of 7 August 1967 the American Newsweek reported that the gas had been identified as phosgene.
14 Smash Hit
1 The Arabs, p.333.
2 Private conversation, 10 May 2010.
3 Jonathan Walker, Aden Insurgency, p.271.
4 PREM 13/1923 C417465.
5 Yemen: the Unknown War, p.295.
6 Aden Insurgency, p.288. In Vol Two of the Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, 1966–68, p.384, Crossman noted: ‘George Brown has been appallingly uncertain of himself about the Aden policy.’
15 Aftermath
1 Britain and the Yemen Civil War, p.72.
2 Funeral address by David Walker, 30 July 2008.
3 ‘Return to Yemen’, in the journal of the British-Yemeni Society, August 2003.
(Above) No detailed maps of the Yemen were available to the mercenaries, and many named features existed only in the minds of the local inhabitants.
Johnny Cooper: ‘a sinewy major with sun-blackened skin and the features of a Greek bandit.’
Jim Johnson, founder and commander of the mercenary force, on his one visit to the Yemen.
Tony Boyle (left) and Jim Johnson on a captured Jordanian tank, after the Six-Day War in June 1967.
Liam McSweeney – ‘Mac’ – who had wrestled under the pseudonym ‘Milo the Greek’.
Bernard Mills high in the Khowlan.
Tony Boyle, Jim Johnson’s second-in-command, organiser of the Israeli supply flights.
Jimmy Knox, radio operator and specialist cave-enlarger.
Rupert France – ‘Franco’ – lynch-pin of the mercenary organisation in Aden, Beihan and Jeddah.
Alastair Macmillan, recruited by Jim Johnson while walking through St James’s Park.
Duncan Pearson (Gassim) about to inject his favourite patient, with her mother in close attendance.
Meals were always irregular: the mercenaries ate whenever they got the chance.
Chris Sharma – at the right, with spectacles – from Birmingham, styled himself ‘Mansoor ibn Nasr al Beni Borhwa, Honory [sic] Emir of the Royal Kingdom of Yemen.’
John Woodhouse on his reconnaissance trip to the Yemen: he was eager to bombard the Sana’a airfield with 120mm mortars.
Envoy extraordinaire: Billy McLean on one of his innumerable missions to recruit political and financial support for the Yemeni Royalists.
(Above) Mercenaries give elementary instruction in the control and maintenance of a captured Russian heavy machine gun.
Sundown in bandit country: a lone sentinel keeps watch from an outpost in the Khowlan.
Jim Johnson in city slicker mode.
‘An unlik
ely-looking guerrilla sheikh, small-boned and delicate’: Prince Abdullah Hassan.
Imam al-Badr was an indolent and ineffective leader, yet commanded immense loyalty and respect among his subjects.
The self-styled Brigadier-General Abdurrahman Bruce Alphonso de Bourbon-Condé (left) – a combination of titles weird enough to make any British officer uneasy.
Johnny Cooper in conversation with Abdullah Hassan.
Troglodyte living: Dandy (David Bailey) and Kudu (Kerry Stone) at home in the mercenary base at Mustang.
Ancient rifles were highly prized, and many of the Yemeni tribesmen could hit a Maria Theresa silver dollar at 50 paces.
The safety of every mercenary depended on the loyalty of the bodyguards assigned to protect him.
Loading a camel in a sandy wadi.
Even small boys of ten were carrying a Mauser and 50 rounds.
Casing of a Russian gas bomb, dropped by the Egyptian air force.
Captured Russian heavy machine gun, jacked up on rocks for use against aircraft.
John Woodhouse (in turban) with Gassim Monassir and followers on a high point above Sana’a.
He could dig faster than a mole: Jimmy Knox enlarging a cave.
Anti-aircraft position set up above the entrance to one of the headquarter caves.
The bulging cheek of a qat chewer contrasts oddly with his Canadian military jacket.
Tribesmen and their camels break the journey, camouflaged among the rocks.
(Above) Going in: a camel-borne party sets off into the High Yemen from the Beihan border.
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