Without a word, my resolve stiffened to ruthlessness by the news of Laba's death, I pushed the safety-catch on the .50-calibre to 'safe' and raced down the steps to the radio room. I began hammering the key, pushing out the message in clear, precise morse. 'Zero Alpha. Zero Alpha. This is 82. Message. Over.'
'82. This is Zero Alpha. Over.'
'Zero Alpha. This is 82. Laba dead. Sekonia VSI. Tobin VSI. Situation desperate. Send reinforcements. Over.'
There was a brief pause, and then the reply boomed in my ear. '82. This is Zero Alpha. Roger your last. Send wet rep. Over.'
'Wet rep!' I shouted aloud in great exasperation to no one in particular. A weather report at this stage of the game! My mind was so filled with the exigencies and emotions of the moment that I didn't realize the implications of this request from base. I jumped up quickly, jarring the radio table with my knee and sending the chair teetering across the floor. I poked my head out of the door. Cloud base must be about 150 feet, and the flags were limp on the flagpoles. That would do. '0815 hours. Heavy cloud. No wind.' I hammered out the wet rep, waited impatiently for confirmation, then sprinted back to my position in the command post.
As I brushed past Bob to get at the .50-calibre, the high-pitched roar of a jet's exhaust filled my ears. Two Strikemaster jets broke into view through the mass of sullen cloud and monsoon mist. The speed at which they appeared meant that they must have been in a holding pattern circling immediately above the battlefield. The jets streaked over the town and raced eighty feet above the plain, contour-flying on a low-level groundattack mission. The bravery of the pilots in these weather conditions and in the face of sustained fire from the Adoo was awesome.
'Who's controlling them?' shouted Bob urgently.
'Must be Roger,' I screamed in reply above the noise of the howling jet engines. 'He thought another casevac chopper was arriving and took the blue sarbe to direct it to the beach helipad. He must be controlling the jets with it.' I broke off as the ammunition-box pyramid behind me rattled violently. I spun round to see the sweating face of Roger appearing over the lip of the sandbagged wall.
'The Seventh Cavalry has arrived!' he shouted triumphantly. 'Here's the sarbe; I'm going to help with the wounded on the ground floor.' And with that he was gone again.
Bob grabbed the ground-to-air radio and settled down to control the jet strike. 'Hello, Red Leader. This is Batt House. Enemy left and right of the fort. Over.'
'Roger, Batt House. How long have they been going at you?'
'Since dawn,' Bob informed them.
The pilot gave away no sign of reaction to the feats of resistance taking place below him. 'Roger, Batt House. They are like ants down there – I can see hundreds of them.'
The jets began wheeling and swooping like hungry gannets searching for prey. The enemy now ceased firing on the fort and the town and, throwing themselves behind the nearest cover, concentrated the firepower of their light machine guns on the flashing jets. Hot green tracer flurried upwards in a blizzard of burning steel across the sky. The first jet went into a vertical dive, spraying bullets and death around the perimeter wire to the left. The second jet, amidst a barrage of machinegun fire, stabbed two rockets into the wadi to the right. The wingtips of the aircraft seemed to brush the walls of the DG fort as they sped past. And then they pulled up violently, twisting and dodging, stretched to the limits of their capabilities, to escape back into the mist. Moments later they reappeared, plunging out of the cloud across Mirbat Bay. They streaked around the contours of Jebel Ali, with lines of HMG in hot pursuit and closing. Then they headed low-level back into the maelstrom to start their strafing run over again.
All along the wire, rockets and lead cascaded from the sky. The Strikemasters tracked each other. More bullets, more rockets, and then the jet on the right spawned a 500kg bomb. The large black object plummeted earthwards and buried itself among the enemy massing in a shallow wadi just east of the fort. The smoke-filled air was rent asunder by a blinding flash and a thunderous explosion. But disaster followed triumph. One of the jets caught a burst of HMG fire in the tail as it made an impossibly low pass at the enemy. It banked steeply and then, subdued as if ashamed of the jagged hole in its tail section, it drifted away to the north, limping into the cover of the mist. The remaining jet circled for a while, then swooped downwards into one last steep dive, hammering the Adoo along the perimeter wire. Finally, its ordnance totally expended, it followed its partner into the clouds on its way back to Salalah.
The pressure on the fort area had been momentarily relieved, but for how long? At this point a new and disturbing dimension crept into the battle. Heavy firing could be heard behind us, well over to the east. Scarcely able to withstand the enemy frontal assault, our nerves began to pulsate at crisis level with the realization that the Adoo had regrouped and were counter-attacking from the east. That meant only one thing: not only had our air support gone, but we were now completely surrounded.
* * *
The pilot of the first Huey 205 chopper with G Squadron reinforcements on board just glimpsed the rear half of a Strikemaster jet being swallowed up in the mist as he flew the 205 on a ground-assault mission, heading for the south side of town.
Crammed into the confined space behind him were Doug, Scouse, Ian, Dave, Dennis, Neil, Ian, Eric and Stonker. They carried with them a formidable array of weaponry: five GPMGs plus at least 1,000 rounds per gun; an M79 plus 100 bombs; and SLRs with 100 rounds of 7.62mm per man. As they broke through the mist, Doug looked through the window and saw five heavily armed Adoo dragging a body. Hell, Doug thought, they're going to open up on the chopper! 'Adoo! Adoo!' He grabbed the pilot's shoulder, shook him and screamed in his ear to make himself heard above the racket of the rotor blades, emphasizing his words with a pointed finger jabbing down at the figures on the ground. To his surprise, as the chopper banked and came down, the Adoo disappeared into the mist.
Once on the ground, the fighting patrol rapidly went into all-round defence 3,500 yards from the town to secure the LZ for the arrival of Alistair Morrison, the squadron commander – who in 1977 would make a name for himself during the hijack of Flight 181 at Mogadishu, advising the German GSG 9 commandos who stormed the jet – and Wilbur Watson, the troop corporal. Minutes later they arrived in the second chopper, bristling with firepower and carrying 10,000 rounds of back-up ammunition for the gimpies. With G Squadron reinforcements fully deployed, twenty-four men in all, Alistair assessed the situation and made an instant decision. Allocating one group to secure the LZ for the second wave of reinforcements, he directed Stonker and Doug's group to move towards the east of the town to flank the fort and winkle out pockets of enemy resistance on the way. Just as they were moving off, four figures appeared out of the mist, calmly looked in their direction and walked over a rise no more than seventy metres away. Ian squinted at them through the powerful binoculars and shouted, 'They're Adoo, they're Adoo! They've got AK-47s!' They ran forward tactically to the top of the rise, engaged the four figures – who by now were running furiously in the direction of the Jebel – and downed them in a hail of machine-gun fire. The exchange attracted the attention of other Adoo east of Mirbat. Stonker and Doug's group now came under sustained fire.
* * *
The walkie-talkie crackled into life and cut though our anxious thoughts. It was Mike again. For one trembling moment I thought it was more bad news. With relief I learned that Mike and Tak were still clinging onto their position by the fort. Mike was requesting mortar fire support. In calm, measured tones he asked Bob to put down a ranging bomb in the wadi, seventy-five metres to the right, and then he would make corrections. Bob did his mental arithmetic – a quick estimation of range and charge. He gave a long, low whistle. This was going to be tricky. He would have to do a line-of-sight shoot based on estimated range, charge and elevation. Bob shouted on his first fire mission to Fuzz, who by now was firing the mortar on his own. He watched anxiously as Fuzz pulled the bipod legs backwards, set the mort
ar at an extreme angle, bubbled up the sight and slid an HE bomb down the barrel. I watched the performance with growing frustration and alarm. The .50-calibre was causing big problems. I was down to single shots, and after each one I had to recock the firing mechanism myself. The breechblock and slide had become clogged with brass shavings, the result of firing the gun over a long period without a number two to feed the heavy belt.
Fuzz's mortar bomb whooshed over the plain in a blurred crescent and exploded harmlessly 800 metres away on the far side of the fort. Mike's correction crackled over the air and Bob relayed his estimated fire mission to Fuzz. Each correction after that brought the exploding mortar bombs closer and closer until Fuzz reached maximum elevation on the bipod. At the next correction from Bob, Fuzz hesitated for a moment, glanced at Bob as if he'd asked him to summon a heavenly army of angels from the clouds and then, with one determined movement, clasped the mortar barrel to his chest and raised it until the bipod legs dangled clear of the ground. 'Frag them,' roared Bob. Fuzz looked like some demonic dancer in a drunken two-step as he hugged the barrel as tightly as he could and sent bomb after bomb spilling down on the enemy position.
The welcome drone of aircraft engines filled our ears again. Two more Strikemasters pounced down out of the clouds in a shallow dive across Mirbat Bay. They banked, levelled off to obtain greater accuracy and, hugging the contours, screeched across in front of us at the start of their strafing run.
Bob clicked on the blue sarbe. 'Hello, Red Leader. This is Batt House. Enemy HMG on Jebel Ali. Also rear of fort.'
'Roger, Batt House. It looks hot down there.'
'Roger, Red Leader. Sheets of lead! Sheets of lead!'
The two jets split in a scissor-like manoeuvre. The first one, in a low pass, went for the fort. The second banked round steeply, plunged like an out-of-control kite, levelled off at the last moment and streaked towards the HMG positions on Jebel Ali, going for a gun kill with its two wing-mounted GPMGs. Death and destruction sluiced down from the skies. The sangars on top of the hill disappeared in a hail of red tracer. The Stikemaster screamed past Jebel Ali and out across the bay. After banking round lazily like a condor on hot thermals it began its next run in, fifty feet above the water, this time going for a rocket kill. It roared over the top of Jebel Ali sticking rockets into the circular sangars like darts in a dartboard. The top of the hill disintegrated in a huge ball of flame. As the jet disappeared back into the clouds, surging masses of black smoke climbed up into the mist, then began to drift as the force of the upper-air breeze overcame the impetus of the explosion. The two Strikemasters returned for one final low pass, fifty feet above the perimeter wire, just to one side of the fort. Smoke and flame belched from their wings, and rockets and tracer rained down on the nowretreating enemy. The high-pitched jet whine deafened the occupants of the fort as the two aircraft shrieked overhead in a spectacular display of firepower. Then they pulled upwards, climbing steeply through the mist until they were both swallowed up by the heavy monsoon clouds.
The second wave of 205 helicopters, carrying the other ten G Squadron men, a doctor, two medical orderlies and a mound of ammunition, hovered down onto the LZ like giant sycamore seeds. It was 1020 hours. Alistair Morrison decided he and his group could now move forward to clear the enemy from the south of the town. They closed on three Adoo and a GPMG concealed in rocks on the beach. After a brief exchange, the enemy were killed. Five more Adoo were spotted in a wadi behind a ridge. Alistair's group advanced to within 200 yards. Three of the five were gunned down and two wounded. A third party of Adoo opened fire from another clump of rocks. All six died. As with the others, their bodies were searched and their weapons removed. Many more enemy still remained between Alistair and the town. The group pushed forward with fire suppression and flanking attacks, capturing a small hill on the way. More Adoo fell. Two RPGs and a number of rockets were recovered. A helicopter, flying tactically, brought over a platoon of the Northern Frontier Regiment to join Alistair's group. Then, as one body, they moved in disciplined formation towards the Batt House.
* * *
As I watched the two Strikemasters race away into the distance, my tired, bloodshot eyes were drawn to the landscape east of the fort about 2,000 metres away. I could see figures appearing on the skyline. They looked a disciplined and determined body of men as they surged forward at a brisk pace, methodically working their way across the undulating ground in extended-line formation. Now that the frontal onslaught of the Adoo had been broken by the jet strikes, a tiny voice inside me reasoned that we had just a chance of surviving if this new threat from our rear could be overcome. Mechanically, my body reduced by fatigue to functioning only as a well-programmed automation, I lined up the front sight blade of the .50-calibre on the lead figure. I might be down to single shots, but that was all I would need to take the officer out. Who were they? I wondered. At this range it was impossible to tell. They appeared merely as black dots in an expanse of dull brown sand and rock.
Around the fort and Jebel Ali area the cacophony of battle had decreased significantly. Only the occasional burst of machine-gun fire cracked over the Batt House. All our attention could now be focused on the new developments in the east. I looked at Bob. He was switched on to the same direction. He seemed to be agonizing over a decision.
At a signal, the figures suddenly swung off to the right flank and disappeared into the shallow wadis on the far side of the town. Heavy firing in the area erupted almost immediately.
'Go down to the radio and get a sit rep from base. Find out what's happened to the reinforcements,' shouted Bob suddenly, his voice taking on a new urgency.
A few moments later, the morse crackled over the headset. The message was music to my ears. I hardly dared believe it. My mind struggled to prevent wishful thinking from overtaking cold logic. I looked at my watch: it was just 1030 hours. I did a quick time appreciation, fearful that my initial calculations might prove wrong. Twenty minutes by chopper from RAF Salalah to Mirbat, five minutes to shake out on the ground. It was like finding the last piece to a puzzle. Surely I was right. My conclusion fitted the facts perfectly. The figures on the skyline must be the second wave of G Squadron reinforcements. I was now convinced of it. Even though I was exhausted and seemingly drained of all emotion, a warm surge of exhilaration swept up from deep inside me. I was jubilant as I raced up the sangar steps with the good news.
Bob's face remained as cool and impassive as ever as I relayed the contents of the message. 'I guessed as much,' he said quietly, then added, totally professional to the end, 'I've sent Fuzz up to the gun pit with the other medical packs to assist with the wounded. I don't think we need the mortar any more.' With that he grabbed his SLR and, leaning on the parapet of the sangar, began sniping at the retreating Adoo. Following his example, I cocked the .50-calibre, cursing the stoppage, chambered a round and searched the perimeter wire for a target.
Across the battlefield the orgy of violence and killing had diminished. The Adoo were in full retreat, shoulders bowed with the humiliation of defeat. They slunk away in ones and twos across the shallow wadis of the plain, heading towards the ignominious safety of the mist-shrouded Jebel. The sad, quiet debris of battle lay everywhere: abandoned weapons, clothing and webbing, the dead and the dying. It was a forlorn and desolate scene.
Dark thoughts began to drift through my mind as we continued to snipe at the occasional exposed guerrilla. How could all this have happened? Why had we not been warned? It was later revealed that the green slime had received Grade A reports that groups of Adoo had been seen massing in various parts of the Jebel over the last few weeks, many of the reports coming from our own local Firqat. Perhaps they had chosen to ignore them. My critical ruminations were interrupted by the heavy thudding noise of a helicopter's rotor blades. A Huey had landed minutes before in the area of the twenty-five-pounder gun pit, and now it hugged the contours of the plain as it made its way across to the Batt House. The chopper went into a hover as it flew leve
l with the main door of the house. Then, amid swirling clouds of dust and sand, it landed fifty feet away from the side of the building.
'Go down and help Roger with the casevac.' I could only just hear Bob's voice above the noise of the helicopter blades. I scrambled my way quickly down the two flights of stairs to the ground floor. As I got to the bottom and began making my way to the front door, I thought that I had stumbled into an abattoir refuse-room. The whole area was covered with wounded men, either lying down or propped up against the walls. The floor was littered with bloodstained shell-dressings. The stench of blood, sweat and urine was everywhere. Clusters of flies buzzed frenziedly around, feeding greedily on open wounds and bits of flesh and bone. Roger knelt, trying to force a drip into the trembling arm of a man with a gaping hole in his throat. The man's rapid breathing made a terrible whistling and bubbling noise.
I looked past Roger and through the front door. The pilot of the casevac chopper had his arm out of the cockpit window and was beckoning me towards him. The rotor blades thudded above my head as, doubled up, I ran quickly towards the cockpit and stuck my ear into the open space of the window. It was a struggle to make sense of the pilot's words through the noise, like trying to have a conversation with a loomoperator in a clatter-filled weaving shed. 'Go and check the bodies in the rear!' he shouted slowly and deliberately, his face an inch from my ear. 'Confirm to the loadmaster which bodies belong to the BATT.'
Soldier I Page 14