One of my men cautiously retrieved from the commissar’s body a leather satchel stuffed with documents. He handed it to me and crawled back to place a grenade with the pin removed under the commissar. I hissed at him, ‘Forget it, Said. Come back.’ I knew we were deep inside enemy territory, many miles from our own scattered troops and with no helicopter support in all Oman. We would be surrounded and cut off in minutes. I whispered the retreat. ‘Rooch feesa. Guldi. Guldi.’ Mixed Omani Baluchi slang for instant withdrawal north to the desert and our Land Rovers.
Later in camp I found sleep elusive. I had often shot at people hundreds of yards away, vague shapes behind rocks who were busy shooting back. But never before had I seen a man’s soul in his eyes, sensed his vitality as a fellow human being, and then watched his body torn apart at the pressure of my finger. A part of me that was still young and uncynical died with him and his comrade the commissar, spreadeagled on a thorn bush with his red badge glinting in the hot Dhofar sun.
In 1970 a palace coup, orchestrated largely by my friend Tim Landon, replaced the elderly and ineffectual Sultan with his son Qaboos who was himself half Dhofari and the amnesty he immediately declared triggered a trickle of adoo deserters that soon became a flood. By 1975, with ongoing help from Britain, as well as Egypt, Jordan and Iran, the tide was turned and the Marxist threat removed from Dhofar. The old Sultan, exiled to the Dorchester Hotel in London with a group of retainers, died there in 1972, a sad but charming old man. In three short years, Qaboos heaved Oman from the Middle Ages into the twentieth century. He used his blossoming oil revenues to the benefit of his country and in doing so whipped the propaganda carpet from under the feet of the revolutionaries.
By the year 2007 Qaboos still reigned supreme in twenty-first-century Oman, popular with his people who, being Ibadhi Mulims, were uninvolved in Shia and Sunni strife and were not infected by the innate hatred of most Arabs for their biblical brethren, the Israelites.
On 2 March 1970, the day that Ian Smith proclaimed Rhodesia a republic ruled by whites, I flew back to England. I was twenty-six and my chosen career was ended. I must find a new civilian life that suited my startling lack of qualifications.
4
The Fastest River
In my absence Ginny had been busy on my behalf and signed me up with George Greenfield, the best literary agent in the adventure business who, seeing something interesting in her if not yet in me, procured an advance of £400 from Hodder & Stoughton for me to write a book about an expedition I had made up the Nile during my six weeks annual leave the previous year. Five of us had travelled by Land Rover and hovercraft, the latter then being a novel means of transport in Egypt so it removed barriers that might otherwise have cut our travels short in that volatile part of the world.
I was thankful to both Ginny and George and set to work on my first book. I also joined Foyles lecture agency and started to go round the lunch club circuit earning £25 a talk and selling my own book at the same time. A Talent For Trouble earned under £600 but it did seem I might be able to make a basic living if I could plan and execute an expedition every year between June and October and then write and lecture about it from November until May.
From a sofa in Ginny’s London flat, shared with three other girls (the flat, not the sofa), I set about organising my next project, an unambitious summer journey in central Norway. My only firm business rules were to spend no money on mounting an expedition. Everything must be sponsored. And, should any income result from an expedition through lecturing, writing or photography, this must be mine and mine alone. To this end I would take on no one who did not fully and happily accept this principle before signing on. After a lifetime of school and army, I was now on my own for the first time, with no capital, no income and no academic qualifications.
I had no itch to become wealthy – which was just as well – and absolutely no desire to marry and settle down. It never occurred to me to ask myself why on earth I had proposed to Ginny two years before if I never intended marrying anyone, not even her whom I adored. I can only assume that, dog-in-the-manger-wise, I had selfishly staked my claim on her with a diamond ring to warn off the competition. But Ginny was not someone to be misused. If I was not prepared to set a date for our wedding, even a distant date, now that I had left the Army, what was the point of remaining engaged? Did I really love her? Did I want children by her? As I listened to her, I felt like the worm that I was. I was truly ashamed but could not bring myself to accept the dreaded state of wedlock. Ginny made up her mind. If I would not promise her marriage, she would return her engagement ring and go away. She left for Scotland the following week and I returned to my mother’s home in Lodsworth.
My mother had grown attached to Ginny and was sorry to hear of our break-up. As usual she was comfortingly fatalistic: ‘Life must go on. You won’t find another Ginny but it’s not the end of the world.’ I immersed myself in organising the Norwegian expedition and tried to forget that Ginny was no longer a part of my life.
The general purpose of the expedition was to tackle a physically difficult task and to succeed, so that subsequent more ambitious schemes would more readily gain sponsorship. The specific purpose was to survey the Fabergstolsbre Glacier on behalf of the Norwegian Hydrological Department to see whether or not it was receding. Today global warming has made this kind of research a top priority but in 1970 we were merely considered an economical way of picking up a dropped thread. In 1966 the Hydrological Department had made a comprehensive survey of the twenty-eight glaciers flowing off the 10,000-foot Jostedal Ice-cap to compare with their 1955 survey. But the Fabergstolsbre had eluded them due to an error with the aerial dye-bomb markers. A land-based survey party like us would mop up the omission at no cost to the Norwegian tax payer.
We planned to be parachuted on to the ice-cap, but once the survey work was done we would have to descend on foot with the expensive and delicate loaned survey gear. The simplest route appeared to be straight down a glacial tongue and from there to the nearest roadhead via a glacial river in light boats. This would mean that all the team members must know or learn how to parachute, ski, river-boat and climb. Assembling such assorted talents took some time.
At weekends I jogged in the Welsh mountains with a sixty-pound backpack and a compass. For four years I had brooded about my time with the SAS, not my sacking which I had deserved, but the fact that I had only passed the final hurdle of the 1965 selection course with the help of a taxi. On applying to join the Territorial Army soon after returning from Dhofar, I discovered there was a curious anomaly known as Reserve Squadron, 22nd SAS Regiment, which was neither regular nor Territorial, but whose role was to provide reinforcements for the regular SAS in time of war. Applicants to join R Squadron had to pass the regular SAS selection course. Here was my chance to banish a ghost. Thanks to my Welsh jogging stints, I found no difficulty in keeping ahead of the hundred or so regular Army applicants. I passed into R Squadron, but only as a trooper. No matter. I had completed Long Drag without motorised help.
The sergeant-major in charge of my new unit turned out to be my old SAS training sergeant, Brummy Burnett. After six months with R Squadron, desirous of more pay, I asked Brummy if I might get a commission to captain. He looked down at me. ‘If you’re very lucky, Fiennes, you might make corporal in five years. But no promises. Pigs might fly.’
Many of the older SAS sergeants, though not I think Brummy himself, still held a grudge against me for my indiscretions of 1966 because I had caused a shaft of public scrutiny to fall on a unit with an obsession for secrecy and obscurity. In years to come the SAS was to be used as a public relations tool in the struggle against IRA terrorism, but my own peccadillos occurred when, to most people, SAS still merely meant Scandinavian Airlines System.
Norwegian preparations were all in order and I was living off my earnings from SAS weekends when I learned via the grapevine that Ginny, at work with the Scottish National Trust, had become good friends with the son of the Lord Lieu
tenant of Ross-shire. With no precise plan in mind, but aware that I must not let Ginny get too involved with this most eligible Scotsman, I decided to go to visit her on her birthday.
I owned a Triumph Tiger motorbike at the time and decided to ride all the way to Ginny on it. Proof surely of my devotion. By the time I reached London I was soaked through, so the Tiger and I used British Rail to Inverness before riding the last two hours to Ginny.
The Trust caravan where Ginny lived was parked close to Loch Torridon. Not stopping to think what I would say, I knocked on the door. When Ginny’s little face peered, startled, through the misted window, I saw quite clearly that I must marry her: if necessary that very week in Torridon kirk.
I revved the Tiger’s throttle. ‘Hello,’ I said. I did not mention British Rail.
‘Why have you come?’
‘I brought you a birthday card for next week.’
‘Couldn’t you have posted it?’
Gradually, over the next two days she thawed out a bit. On her birthday she drove me in her Mini to Applecross and we walked along the deserted coast which looks west to Skye. She let me hold her hand as we walked along the white beaches to the cry of gulls. But when I tried to kiss her and tell her I could not exist without her, there were bitter tears and she said I must leave and stay away for ever.
I promised to go the next day and that night, when it rained, Ginny let me into the caravan where I slept on the floor beside her narrow bunk. Before leaving for Inverness I asked if she would drive down to Newcastle in early August to see me off on the ship to Norway.
‘Maybe,’ she said.
A month later she was there. I told Ginny that if she would only agree to marry me, we would hold the wedding within ten days of my return from Norway. She looked happy but shook her head and refused to give me an answer. I confided in one of the team, Patrick Brook, an Army friend of many years, that she had turned me down and later saw him speaking to her urgently with much gesticulation. As I kissed her goodbye at the gangplank she whispered ‘Yes’, the most precious single word in my life.
‘What did you say to Ginny in Newcastle?’ I asked Patrick later.
‘Oh, only that if you were to fall down a crevasse in Norway – which is quite likely – she would never forgive herself for having said no.’
The likelihood of intimacy with a crevasse arrived soon enough when, in Bergen, we boarded a Cessna sea-plane after we had been taught, in theory, how to jump off its floats. As the engines roared, I licked my lips. My stomach felt furry-lined as squadrons of butterflies free-fell within it. I would be first to jump and did not relish the idea. The Sunday Times described the occasion as ‘The World’s Toughest Jump’, but they had paid £1,000 for coverage rights and wanted their money’s worth. I looked down 6,000 feet at the slits of crevasses big enough to swallow a regiment of parachutists without leaving a trace. I fought back the rising panic of vertigo.
Awkwardly, we levered ourselves into kneeling positions facing the door. The rough hand of our instructor, ex-SAS Don Hughes, shook my shoulder as he prodded meaningfully at the exit. But something was wrong. I had been waiting for the sound of the engines cutting back, the necessary preliminary to any free-fall jump. The Cessna was still at maximum speed. I pointed at the pilot, but Don’s ‘shove off’ gesture was repeated. I forced one arm through the slipstream and grasped the wing strut as we had been instructed. Then I lunged my legs outwards, aiming for the float. As my boots scrabbled for a foothold my hands lost their grip on the strut and I was sucked bodily into space. Out of control, I passed close by the fuselage and struck the side of the float with the back of my hand.
‘One thousand and one. One thousand and two . . .’ I heard my voice inside my helmet churning out the seconds and I opened my eyes. I will freeze solid in this ridiculous position, I thought, for coldness was the first sensation. Then came fear as I recognised the early signs of body-spin. Without warning I began to keel forward into a nose-dive. My arms snapped inwards to locate my ripcord but a camera had come loose inside my anorak and lodged itself against the ripcord bar. Grovelling in the folds I found the red handle and ripped it outwards. Then I snapped both arms back to the star position to arrest a rapidly materialising somersault. A second or two later, with a whipcrack sound and a breathtaking jerk, my orange canopy deployed fully. Two crevasse fields passed beneath my boots. The ice surface provided no perspective. I braced my legs, knees bent for impact. When it came I hardly knew it, as my landing was cushioned by the softness of a snow-bridge spanning an old crevasse. Four of the others landed close by, followed by our gear.
After some initial confusion as to which glacier we had actually landed on, and after a torrential storm, the survey work began in earnest as we liaised by radio with our ground party below. The work was cold and boring but allowed no lapses in concentration since even the slightest mathematical slip could render the whole project a failure. Geoff Holder, a Royal Engineers captain and our surveyor in chief, finally announced that the survey was complete. The paperwork was evacuated and we were free to look forward to the next stage of our enterprise, the descent of the Briksdalsbre Glacier. For this we had hired two of the Norwegian Tourist Board’s top guides. But we were in for a shock. The guides were unwilling to take us in dangerously thick mist on the forty-kilometre ice-cap journey to the top of the Briksdalsbre. On skis with light packs they could do the trip in eight hours. Pulling overloaded sledges, they reckoned we would take two days, if indeed we could get that far.
At length we reached a compromise. They would ski along the ridge for thirty kilometres, at which point they would leave one of our ice-axes pointing in the direction of the Briksdalsbre. They would then veer north to descend a different route. It took us eleven hours of non-stop hauling to reach the ice-axe marker. As it grew dark we entered our first crevasse field and gingerly threaded a maze-like route through wicked-looking fissures. We knew we should be roped up but were too tired and cold. Each new chasm forced us off our chosen bearing. From every side came the booming echoes of avalanches. With numb fingers we erected two tents and pegged their guy-ropes to ski sticks.
Next morning the mist cleared at dawn and we saw the first ice-fall of the Briksdalsbre Glacier directly below us. The descent was sudden and, in minutes, one of our laden sledges slid out of control and cartwheeled down into a crevasse. Alarmed, we donned helmets and roped up. About a hundred yards further down the yawning incline our second sledge turned turtle, dragging Roger Chapman and Patrick Brook behind it. Using a sawtooth sheath-knife, Roger slashed through the harnesses and saved both their lives. The pulk disappeared down a crevasse. All our skis were lost and our only remaining gear was in our backpacks, including one two-man tent between the five of us.
I winced at the thought of thousands of pounds’ worth of lost gear, of angry sponsors and the effect on my future expeditions. But there were more immediate worries to hand: 3,000 feet of near sheer ice, and none of us were climbers. At noon we were contemplating an unstable causeway of ice-blocks which we would have to cross to reach the main descent line. It looked lethally insecure. We sought radio advice from the boss of our Land Rover mobile base in the valley below, and were not comforted to learn that of the twenty-eight glacier tongues that pour off the Jostedalsbre, this was the only one still unclimbed by Norway’s ace glacier specialists. I edged warily over the causeway. In places only thin wedges spanned the gap and twice I froze as lumps of ice, disturbed by my passing, fell away like rotten planks from a footbridge. Once across, I made the rope firm and one by one the others joined me. I noticed blood on the ice and discovered that my fingers were bleeding. There was no pain, for my hands were numb. The others found the blood-trail a help when we passed through labyrinthine piles of loose ice boulders.
A twelve-foot crack that stretched across the entire glacier finally foxed us, forcing us back on to the rockface deep inside the bergschrund. Streams of icy water ran down our backs and a knife-like wind whistled down the dark
cranny. Subterranean torrents roared below us in the nether regions and I prayed I would not slip from my fragile holds on the wet rock. When we emerged from the cavern we had bypassed the crack but evening stars were already visible and we were forced to camp for the night, all five of us in our two-man tent. Next day we survived the perils of avalanche rubble and two 400-foot abseils to the glacial lake where our base team awaited us in an inflatable boat.
Ten days after returning to England, and with Gubbie as best man, I married Ginny in Tillington church, a mile to the east of Lodsworth and her River home where we had met as children.
I did not marry Ginny because I had decided she was more important than my freedom, but because I considered it should be possible to have both. The early days of our marriage were to test this bland assumption sorely, starting from day one. I did not consult Ginny about our honeymoon programme since my understanding of tradition was that bridegrooms do not interfere with wedding arrangements nor brides with honeymoon details. Unfortunately, she did not find the prospect of a tour through Eastern Europe only two years after Soviet tanks had crushed Dubcek’s Czechoslovakia as intriguing as I did. She also complained at not getting a turn to drive my MG and nearly abandoned me in Munich. Things did not improve. In eastern Yugoslavia the exhaust pipe fell off. The officials at both ends of Czechoslovakia were painstakingly unpleasant, the Bulgarian and Hungarian police hounded us, due to our noisy exhaust, and the East Germans screwed every pfennig from us at the obligatory campsites. As a last straw, when we reached Vienna, I went off to find us a couple of ice creams, leaving Ginny in the queue for the Opera House, but I didn’t manage to find my way back to where she was waiting before the last on-the-day ticket had been sold. To make amends I told Ginny we would visit Vienna’s famous Lipizzaner Riding School. Only to discover that the wonderful white horses were all away in Spain on holiday.
Mad, Bad & Dangerous to Know Page 5