As I finished the message and placed the headset on the pile of message pads, another explosion pummelled the Batt House, the sudden intensity of the explosion rocking the building to its foundations. It felt like being at the epicentre of an eight-Richter-point earthquake. Sand ran down in fine trickles from the expanding wall cracks, and big pieces of plaster from the wall in front fell onto the signals table, covering the spare radio batteries in dust and masonry.
* * *
Lofty gave the padlock a couple of tugs. Having reassured himself that the armoury door was once more securely locked, he turned and set off down the steps. He was surprised to see the same trooper still there doing his boots up. He was just about to question the usefulness of this time-consuming exercise in perfectionism when the Duke approached. With a grim look on his face he took Lofty to one side and told him quietly that the town of Mirbat was under heavy attack and that he should prepare a step-up operation and a quick move to the SAF headquarters at RAF Salalah.
* * *
Things were getting hot. I could hear the throb and rumble of distant explosions, the murderous whistle of shrapnel. I decided it was high time to move back to the command-post sangar on the roof and get the .50-calibre Browning into action as quickly as possible. I sprinted up the sangar steps to my gun position, checked the ammunition belt once more and eased the safety-catch to 'fire'. Suddenly an enormous explosion slammed into the tower of the DG fort. It gouged away a huge chunk of masonry, leaving a gaping hole with jagged edges silhouetted against the first glimmer of dawn. The flash of detonation briefly illuminated the Second World War-vintage twenty-five-pounder artillery piece located in the defensive sangar at the base of the fort walls. The figure of Laba was clearly visible kneeling behind the gun's protective armoured shield. 'That looks like a 75mm RCL,' Bob shouted at Mike Kealy above the roar of six explosions detonating in rapid succession. My ears screamed with the roar of the noise and for a moment I was totally disorientated, until I realized with immense relief that it was the BATT mortar initiating a pattern of harassing fire.
I shook the noise and confusion out of my head and studied the landscape that rolled away into the distance. The darkness was receding, and the first flickers of light revealed the blurred and shadowy foothills of the Jebel. The battle now began to flare up, roaring into a sense-stunning and mind-numbing conflagration. The din and racket of combat reached a frenzied crescendo, all the noises running into one another to create a surreal clatter of machine guns, green tracer ricochets leaping like firecrackers around the buildings and walls of the town, the throaty swish of incoming mortar rounds followed a few seconds later by the deadly crump of detonation, and the ear-splitting explosions of the BATT mortar returning fire. I looked at my watch: it was just about 0600 hours.
The two machine guns on the roof remained silent. This could be another stand-off attack, albeit a particularly determined one, so we didn't want to risk compromising our position by giving the Adoo telltale gunflashes to aim at. I looked over to the left. The thirty Askars in the Wali's fort evidently had the same idea. The ramparts bristled with old bolt-actions .303s, but they remained silent. As the first rays of dawn filtered through the thick, spongy monsoon cloud hovering over the plain, the flashes of the Adoo mortars became paler. Far from diminishing as the light exposed the Adoo mortar positions, the bombardment increased in its ferocity. The racket from the Spargen heavy machine gun and the LMG fire gradually escalated. All along the wire for as far as the eye could see, plumes of sand and earth spewed as if from distant volcanoes. Winged daggers of flame leapt skywards. The air above and around me teemed with the cracks and hisses of the lethal lead zingers. I glanced nervously around the roof. The other members of the team were at their stand-to positions, poised over their guns like cobras ready to strike. We were waiting, our fingers welded to the triggers, every muscle and nerve rigid, screwed tight with the tension of facing the unknown.
* * *
Lofty, showing no sign of emotion, his face blank and expressionless, his eyes methodically searching the reopened ammunition store, worked flat out issuing all the GPMGs, semi-automatic rifles and M79 grenadelaunchers he could find. A human chain was formed to hump box after box of 7.62mm link and ball ammunition from the store to the trucks. Between them the men had soon loaded 20,000 rounds. In a matter of minutes the ammunition store had been cleaned out. As dawn broke over the volleyball court, the dangerously overloaded Bedfords, sagging heavily under the weight, stood ready to go.
* * *
Forty well-armed Adoo formed into an extended line and began moving at a brisk pace across in front of me towards the DG fort, following the line of a shallow wadi that ran between the perimeter wire and the Jebel Ali. I stared at them intently. The figures broke into a run. My eyes felt like oversized pebbles pressing achingly into my sockets as I continued to stare. Beads of sweat broke out on my forehead. My breathing resumed a steady and rhythmical pattern. I took up the first pressure on the trigger of the .50-calibre.
This was it. The few fleeting moments before the battle is joined. Too late now to do any more training. Too late now to fine-tune and zero the weapons. Too late now to strip and oil the mechanism's liquidsmooth action. The same pitch of intensity in human experience as at birth and death themselves. The fear wells up and you welcome it. Without fear you cannot perform fully. Without fear you do not have that razor-edge extra of concentration that can make the difference between you and the enemy, between life and death. The few fleeting moments before battle is joined. You mentally go through every move. There's nothing else to do. You are on automatic pilot. You lapse into unconscious behaviour patterns, comforting routines: the curled finger caressing the smooth metal trigger, the moist hand rubbing against the rough trouser material, the blowing of cool air onto tightly bunched-up fingers, the anxious chewing on the bits of broken skin at the edges of fingernails. The few fleeting moments before battle is joined.
I looked around at Mike Kealy for the order to open fire. Mike had his back to me. He was looking towards the DG fort. With a sudden shock I realized he was oblivious of the movements taking place in the Jebel Ali area. 'Mike,' I screamed, my voice rising above the noise and confusion raging around us, 'look over there!' My left arm pointed towards the running figures. Mike spun around and stared in the direction I was pointing. He squinted into the acrid fog of fumes and mist and white phosphorous smoke wafting over the undulating ground in the middle distance. His blank stare remained fixed. His face registered no reaction.
I was confused, my concern growing by the second as I waited for a response. After a few moments his right hand slowly came up to the pocket in his OG shirt, undid the button and withdrew a pair of thinrimmed spectacles. He pushed his face forward into the glasses and leaned over the parapet of the sangar as if some invisible force was drawing him towards the hottest part of the action. He carefully removed his glasses, wiped off the dust on his loosely flapping shirtend, unhurriedly replaced them, peered into the distance once more and said slowly, 'Don't open fire yet, it could be the Firks returning.' His voice sounded calm, steady and deliberate amid the tumult of the moment. Still the figures on the plain swept on unhindered. They looked confident, inspired. Then their weapons came up into the fire position. A split second later, a Bren gun rattled out its deadly rhythm from the Wali's fort. A short pause followed, then the whole of the ramparts suddenly exploded into a frenzy of action.
* * *
Lofty went through a last-minute visual check. Completely satisfied that G Squadron were now prepared and fully equipped for battle, he walked swiftly towards the transport waiting to whisk them off to the airfield at RAF Salalah. As he jumped into the driver's seat of the nearest Land Rover, he could see that over by the armoury the same character was still there doing his boots up. 'Hey, Scouse,' shouted Lofty, leaning out of the window as he eased the Land Rover down a gear and drew level with the armoury steps, 'you can stop doing your boots up now, it looks like we're goin
g into combat.'
* * *
'Open fire!' screamed Mike urgently above the chatter of machine-gun fire and the crackle of the old Lee Enfield .303s. The calmness of his voice had given way to ruthless urgency.
The moment that battle is joined. The moment that the days, the weeks, the months of training have all been leading up to. The moment that seems to stand still, but is only as long as the split-second pause at the end of a pendulum's swing. Only a split second, but one that holds in its brief passing a thousand thoughts, a million feelings. The moment that battle is joined. My first major battle, but my mind is drilled to precision. The steel shutter has crashed to the floor; humanity is locked outside beating its fist on the cold, hard surface. No sound, no cry of compassion can penetrate within. I am now ruthless and single-minded. It's a kind of insanity. You have to be insane to survive. It's me or him. At our level, at the sharp end, when the whistle blows, it's not politics, it's not heroics or war-games, it's not the big picture of world affairs. It's me or him, it's kill or be killed, it's the quick and the dead, the law of the jungle. Over the top and into no man's land. Brutal, efficient killing. We take them out, we root them out, we blow them away, we pick them off, we eliminate them. We don't really kill them. It's something we block out of our minds completely. We don't even talk about it among ourselves. The enemy are not human beings. They are everything else – a threat, an attack, a movement in a rifle sight, a running, lunging, shouting, adrenaline-charged shape. You don't think of them as real people, as fathers, family men, with a picture of the wife and kids in the back pocket. You can't afford to. It's me or him. They are to be eliminated, it's as simple as that. That is my duty, my role. At this moment, my only concern is to not let my mates down. I am determined to not be a weak link. In the split second that battle is joined, we are together, we are a team, the sum is now greater than the parts. We have fire in our eyes, ice in our veins and metal in our hearts. The highly lubricated precision machine bursts into life. The moment that battle is joined.
We opened fire simultaneously, unleashing a hail of GPMG and .50calibre bullets at the assaulting Adoo troops. The running figures became a focal point where the red tracer and exploding incendiary rounds converged in a frenzied dance. It rained fire and lead. Where moments before there had been an orderly advance, parts of the line now faltered and collapsed. Figures staggered under the impact of the heavy .50-calibre rounds, falling, twisting, screaming. We traversed the machine guns right, a burst of fire scything a lethal harvest among the exposed enemy. But still the Adoo kept coming. Wave upon wave on the plain, dull shapes advancing at speed. They were in groups of ten and well spread out. They were moving steadily, relentlessly, towards the DG fort and the town. A nightmare scene, with bodies appearing to fall and get up again like homicidal zombies, there were so many of them.
Machine guns chattered, rifles cracked, yells, curses and explosions echoed across the plain. But still the Adoo kept coming. They reached the perimeter fence and tore with bare hands and blind zeal at the vicious, razor-sharp barbed wire as if it was tinsel on a Christmas tree. A Carl Gustav rocket-launcher spat death, the rocket impacting against the fort wall and showering the immediate area with shrapnel and flame. In the gun pit, the gleaming figure of Laba applied the gun drills with slick precision, like a sweating stoker feeding a boiler in the smoky bowels of a steamship. Laba worked feverishly to load and blast the big gun at the fanatical enemy struggling through the fence only a few metres away. The twenty-five-pounder was traversed through forty-five degrees and used in the direct-fire role, dealing death at point-blank range. The breech detonations threw up clouds of cordite. A pall of acrid fumes hovered over the firing mechanism, growing bigger by the minute. Dead Adoo were soon hanging over the perimeter wire like ragged crows strung out along a farmer's fence.
Back at the Batt House, Tak received an ominous message on his walkie-talkie. The strained voice of Laba informed him that a bullet had grazed his chin. He added that otherwise he was all right, but Tak, his fellow-countryman, was not convinced. He knew Laba too well – a huge man with huge courage and huge modesty; a man of few words when the going was tough. The radio then went dead and defied all Tak's attempts to re-establish communications.
In an instant, Tak had decided he must join his Fijian brother at the twenty-five-pounder. Still wearing his flip-flops, but with a pair of desert boots dangling round his neck, he grabbed his SLR and, with the sharp staccato of the Adoo Spargen MGs ringing in his ears, started his 500metre run towards the DG fort. Even with high-velocity rounds cracking and popping around him, with explosions to the front and rear of him and with shells screeching overhead, all he heard was the roar of the crowd, the shrill scream of the whistle, all he saw was the flash of the cameras. He was back on his favourite rugby field at home in Fiji, and he was going for the greatest try of his life. He had been a top-class flank forward in his time, and long swerving runs were his speciality. Taut lines of hot tracer zipped across in front of him as he surged forward, bobbing and weaving.
Two hundred metres to go. He was still going strong, the breath burning in his throat. One hundred metres to go. Bullets threw sand and dirt all around him as they hit the ground close to his feet. He swerved around the lunging tackles. Fifty metres to go. He could see the try line, nothing could stop him now, his determination was incredible. A mortar bomb burst nearby. The roar of the crowd became louder. A piece of shrapnel made him duck instinctively. He tucked in his head to avoid an out-thrust hand. Ten metres to go. The try line was within reach. In a final lung-bursting sprint he ran up the last incline that led to the DG fort. He launched into the air, his body arching across the line. He was up and over the sangar wall. Miraculously, he had reached the gun pit without so much as a scratch. He had scored the try of a lifetime.
Tak steadied himself, the rasp in his throat slowly subsiding. Through a mist of perspiration, he surveyed the chaos in the gun pit. Laba was firing the gun on his own. He had looked around briefly, nodded an acknowledgement, pointed to the unopened ammunition boxes and turned back to the gun. Tak squinted through the smoke and dust at the broken ramparts of the fort. If there was any firepower left in the fort, if he could organize and motivate the DG to help out in the gun pit it could make all the difference.
Tak carefully eased himself over the sandbagged wall of the sangar and, crouching to the lowest profile possible, sprinted across the short distance to the great doors of the fort. Grasping the large metal handle in his left hand, SLR at the ready in his right, he twisted the locking mechanism and pushed. Nothing. He swore in Fijian, and shouted at the DG. Surely they would recognize his voice – he was always up there drinking tea with them. Impatiently he cranked the mechanism again before putting the full weight of his muscular shoulders behind the next push. Still nothing. The door was solid. He cranked the mechanism a third time. Every moment he remained in this exposed position he was in mortal danger. Suddenly, he heard the heavy metallic sound of a bolt being withdrawn. The door creaked open and there, to his relief, in the small opening he recognized the dark features of the Omani gunner. Tak motioned him over.
Just then a burst of HMG fire hammered into the fort wall above Tak's head, sending small stone splinters whining viciously past his ear. He sprinted back to the cover of the gun pit. As he jumped over the side of the sangar wall, he glanced around to see the Omani, who had started to follow him, spinning around and around, pirouetting like a ballet dancer with an insane grimace on his face, then falling to the ground clutching his stomach.
The big gun continued to belch flame. It looked brave and defiant, spitting death at close range. It wasn't called the artillery machine gun for nothing – and in the hands of Laba and Tak, the Adoo must have thought it was belt-fed! They were now working as if possessed, shovelling the shells into the breech like madmen. Open breech, slam a shell in, ram it with baton, fire. Open breech, eject hot spent cartridgecase, kick it away. The same mechanical sequence repeated time aft
er time after time. Laba, covered in sweat, the front of his clothes blackened with cordite, had no time to think. He just kept laying the sight – bubble up, line, bubble up, line. On. Fire! And still the Adoo kept coming. As one group reached the wire and was gunned down, another replaced it almost instantaneously. Wave after wave surged up behind their fallen comrades, willingly following the same fate, a relentless waterfall of human beings plunging over the precipice of life.
The heat from the red-hot breech made sweat run down Tak's face in dirty rivulets. Open breech, slam one in, ram it, close breech. Fire! A small group close to the wire disappeared in a rain of shrapnel, smoke and dust. Open breech, slam one in, ram it, close breech. Fire! Tak was soon surrounded by piles of empty ammunition boxes and spent cartridge-cases. He searched frantically for another shell. His hand closed around a dull brass case – and in that instant he tumbled backwards and sideways. The pain in his shoulder exploded into his brain as he slumped against the sangar wall. He looked towards Laba without uttering a sound. Then another round parted his thick black hair and ploughed a bloody furrow through the skin on top of his skull. 'Laba, I'm hit!' he shouted violently in Fijian, the whole of his upper body suffused with the pain of the 7.62mm round lodged somewhere in his back, perilously close to his spinal column. Another millimetre, and his spine would have been snapped in two.
Soldier I Page 12