I didn't relish the task. Moving carefully along the side of the Huey, I came to the passenger compartment. The sliding door was already open and the loadmaster was kneeling. He nodded grimly at the recumbent shapes in the back and said nothing. There were six bodies covered by blankets on the stretcher racks. This wasn't going to be easy.
I started with the three racks to the rear. Bending down, I pulled the blanket off the body on the bottom stretcher. The man looked as if he had been hit by a large piece of shrapnel. One ear had been ripped away and the side of his head was caved in. But his facial features were intact and he was clearly a Gulf Arab. I covered him quickly with the blanket and moved on.
The body on the stretcher in the middle was also an Arab. He looked about seventeen. His head was uninjured and his eyes stared back at me with a glassy expression. A cold shiver ran up my spine and I threw the blanket back over the staring eyes. Give me combat any time, I thought as I stood up to look at the top stretcher.
I peeled the blanket back nervously, wondering what horror this one concealed. The man lay face-down, his right arm crooked upwards, his forehead resting on his wrist. The face was obscured. I swallowed hard and grabbed the arm. To my horror it felt solid. The flesh was as cold and rigid as the barrel of a GPMG. The hair prickled on the back of my head. I paused a moment and tightened my resolve.
Then, with both hands gripping the elbow, I levered the whole body upwards and over. I was sledgehammered by the shock. I stared at the face. Even with part of the chin shot away and with sweat, blood and grime matted down one side, I would recognize those dark contoured features anywhere. It was Laba.
I finished checking the other three bodies as quickly as I could and scrambled out to suck in some fresh air. It was now 1230 hours. I had been on the go for seven hours solid. With the sharp taste of bile still in my mouth and the stench of death in my nostrils, I stared out over the plain of Mirbat, smouldering and broken, like a fire-ravaged pine forest. I watched a column of grey smoke slowly rising from above the fort, unsure whether I was glad to be alive or not. It was a day I would never forget, a carnival of carnage; a lifetime of experience crushed down into a few hours. I stared out over the flat expanse of Mirbat plain.
The perimeter fort at Mirbat. The coastal town's first line of defence, it was initially manned by just twenty-five Dhofar Gendarmerie and one Omani gunner. (Jason Jones Travel Photography/Getty)
Operation Jaguar. The first campaign for a newly badged SAS trooper.
Changing the clutch on a Land Rover, Mirbat 1972. The battle was fought a week after this photo was taken.
On patrol in Dhofar, 1971.
Mirbat plain as it was at the time of the battle. At left is the battleground, with the perimeter fort most clearly visible. On the other side of the town the G Squadron reinforcements landed by helicopter, about 3kms inland, and advanced around the back of the town to relieve the Batt House and the Mirbat forts. This photo was taken from a Skyvan resupply aircraft in 1974. (Brian Harrington Spier)
An officer in the sangar on the roof of the Batt House, in a 1974 photo taken before the British withdrawal from Oman. The .50-calibre machine gun position was on this wall in the foreground, and the Jebel Ali can be seen in the distance. (Brian Harrington Spier)
The view from the Batt House to the perimeter fort, where the twenty-five-pounder lay. This is the 500-metre run that Mike Kealy, Tak, and Tommy all made under heavy enemy fire to keep their single artillery piece firing. The gun pit was Laba's stand-to position, where he raced as soon as the first Adoo mortar shells exploded. (Brian Harrington Spier)
The front of the perimeter fort. The remains of the twenty-five-pounder gun pit can be seen in the foreground. During the battle, the heavy wooden door behind was locked, denying Tak entry. (Jason Jones)
The battleground of Mirbat. The Batt House, and the Wali's fort surrounded a small cluster of buildings, including a school, a mosque, and a clinic run by the BATT medics. The wadis provided some cover for those dashing to relieve the fort, which lies to the north-east. (Brian Harrington Spier)
Looking over the battleground, towards the Jebel Massif. The Jebel Ali, the hill on which the Dhofar Gendarmerie picket was killed, is to the left, off the edge of this photo. (Brian Harrington Spier) Jaguar, Dhofar 1971.
Labalaba during Operation Jaguar, Dhofar 1971.
Labalaba’s posthumous Mention in Despatches. Many believe he deserved the VC.
Labalaba's grave. The hero of Mirbat is buried in St Martin's Church, Hereford, under the winged dagger of the SAS and the harp and crown of the Royal Irish Rangers. Left to right: General Service Medal; Falklands Medal with rosette; SAF Campaign Medal; Victory in Dhofar Medal. The Accumulated Service Medal, for 1,000 days in a combat zone, has since been awarded.
Left to right: General Service Medal; Falklands Medal with rosette; SAF Campaign Medal; Victory in Dhofar Medal. The Accumulated Service Medal, for 1,000 days in a combat zone, has since been awarded.
The sins of Soldier I! Pete Winner's Regimental Conduct Sheet.
10
Belfast
The night sea was waveless but full of motion, crawling and glinting like a swarm of bluebottles on a cowpat. Faintly flashing lights gathered around the harbour, a handful of frozen sparks kindling brighter as we drew nearer. A depressingly heavy rain slanted through the sky and hissed onto the ferry foredeck. 1974. What a start to the New Year! It was enough to make even the most resolute of resolutions slide into the sewers with the next pint of beer or evaporate into thin air with the next cigarette.
I looked out over the dark water that separated us from the port. In my mind's eye, all I could see was the flat, smouldering expanse of Mirbat plain. The battle of Mirbat was a hard act to follow. Had it really been just two years ago? I felt dull. After the adrenaline high of Dhofar, the monotony of routine training and tours of duty was beginning to take its toll. Maybe, just maybe, this trip would be the breakthrough back into real action. We didn't expect to come face to face with the enemy in open battle; we were too tightly bound by the restrictions. And yet, here, anything could happen.
Belfast. The home of barricades, bombs and marching bands. The graveyard of the professional soldier's ambitions, the career charnel house of the military intelligence officer. We were heading into the gutters and backstreets, bowed under the weight of bergens loaded to overflowing with Whitehall edicts and Rules of Engagement to be obeyed like the Ten Commandments. We were to face an opposition unfettered by constitutional laws and diplomatic niceties. It seemed we were completely pinioned, like men buried to the neck in sand, watching the rising tide of political confusion, intelligence confusion, military confusion and legal confusion. Belfast! A nervous breakdown just waiting to happen.
To most of us mere soldiers the answer was simple. All you had to do was take out the ringleaders and the rest would fold like a pack of cards, putting the 'revolution' back twenty or thirty years. The Head Shed could not see this, and kept banging on about the democratic society and working within the law of the land. I began to have a sneaky suspicion they could smell easy medals, but I couldn't prove it. One thing I did know: with its sinister streets and alienated population, Belfast was no place for highly trained special forces. This was a job for armed police – switched-on operators who knew the law and could pick their way through the minefield of rules and regulations.
We hadn't got off to a good start. When we passed under the redand-white striped security barrier at the main gate to Bradbury Lines on our way to the ferry terminal at Liverpool, our regular freelance journalists were encamped as usual a few metres from the main gate. It was a public highway so we were powerless to stop this. God only knows what they made of our sudden departure and it was no doubt the cause of much journalistic musing. Absolute secrecy would be the key to our very survival, let alone our success, so it was crucial we weren't tailed.
Thankfully we weren't, but things continued to get worse. By the time we arrived at the depart
ure lounge of the ferry terminal, a latenight hush had descended all around. The lounge consisted of two linked rooms. The one further from the door – the larger of the two – was completely deserted. Dimly illuminated, the faded holiday-resort posters peeling from the walls failed miserably to cheer it up. In the corner of the smaller room by the entrance, a young couple in their early twenties huddled together. The woman was half asleep, her head lolling on the man's shoulder.
We split into ones and twos and drifted into the corners, trying not to appear too conspicuous. Easier said than done – we didn't exactly look like holidaymakers. Even though we were dressed down in our Oxfam reject specials to give the impression of itinerant building-site workers or casual hotel kitchen staff, and even though we assumed a nonchalant, bored air as if to say we'd made the journey so many times that we could afford to relax into indifference, it was hard to remain unnoticed. We studiously avoided all conversation, other than the occasional whispered remark, in order not to fill the rooms with telltale English accents. But in spite of all the obvious precautions it was extremely difficult for a team of highly alert men who had spent weeks and months as a family, eating, sleeping, drinking and training together, to melt unobserved into the background. We tried hard not to let the bond, the group consciousness that mates in a team create automatically, project and spill over into the confined space of the departure lounge.
Suddenly the door at the end of the room rattled open and in trudged a soldier dressed in full combat gear. I recognized him immediately. A year earlier he had been attached to the Regiment as part of the administrative support team, and six months ago he had been posted back to his parent unit. He must have been returning from leave to rejoin his regiment in Northern Ireland. He took one look round the room, his eyes twitching with recognition, and promptly darted into the toilets. Christ, I thought, this will be all round the NAAFI in Palace Barracks, Holywood by tomorrow night – our cover blown and we haven't even set foot in Northern Ireland yet!
The crossing brought a further twist of complications. We'd all assumed false names and adopted new regiments for the duration of the passage. One of the lads had a passion for painting wild flowers, believe it or not. In between operations in the more remote exotic locations, he would often search out an especially rare specimen, display it in a beer bottle and do a quick pencil sketch to take home with him. He had chosen the suitably horticultural pseudonym Orchid and completed his disguise by promoting himself to Sergeant. Unfortunately, he'd also decided to attach himself to the Royal Tank Regiment. Halfway across the Irish Sea, as fate would have it, a major from the Royal Tank Regiment decided to check the passenger list. He spotted the name Sergeant Orchid and put in a request for a meeting over the ship's tannoy system.
'Sergeant Orchid, Sergeant Orchid, Royal Tank Regiment. Report immediately to Major Jones in the Bursar's office.'
The tannoy boomed through the night air above the hissing sound of the bow-split waves rushing down the side of the ship. We were in the bar, riveted in our seats. No one dared move. One or two looked up and glanced at the others, saw their impervious, stony expressions and quickly lowered their gaze once more. Sergeant Orchid swallowed a mouthful of beer and continued to read the day-old newspaper he had picked up in the departure lounge. He betrayed not a single flicker of emotion. Without speaking a word we all knew one another's mind. We'd decided to sit it out in the hope that the major would eventually lose interest and conclude that there had been a clerical foul-up. It paid off. After one repeat of the message and a further agonizing wait, the tannoy fell silent. Our trip was beginning to look like the roughcut of a Carry On film, a real comedy of errors.
The final dangerous farce was played out on the ferry terminal in Belfast. As we disembarked, the pungent smell of diesel fuel, decaying seaweed and gutted fish flaring in our nostrils, a creased photo of our Belfast contact man was produced. The passport-size colour photo was of a young and impressionable-looking Rupert with short, slick black hair and an old school tie. It had probably been taken when he was serving with the Eton Rifles. We scanned the disembarkation area looking for a likely candidate. Nothing! Just a rather seedy-looking character with long, straggly hair. He was hunched into a well-worn donkey jacket, smoking a cigarette and looking distinctly furtive. With one arm crooked he was leaning heavily on a red sign marked with white lettering, 'Passengers only beyond this point'. It tilted at a precarious angle under his weight, even though its base was set in a concrete-filled tyre to prevent it from blowing over in the wind. The man gave no sign of recognition and looked more hostile by the minute.
I began to feel anxious. Our first time in Northern Ireland and already we were drawing attention to ourselves – a dozen heavies with long hair and second-hand clothes trying desperately to look inconspicuous. A movement caught my eye. It was Kevin. He'd just drawn out a grey, crumpled, elephant's ear of a handkerchief and was unconcernedly flapping it about. He trumpeted loudly into it, sniffed, then stuffed it unceremoniously back into his trouser pocket, finishing off the job with an exaggerated wipe with the back of his hand. My heart sank. Nicknamed the Airborne Wart, with a face like a blistered piss-pot, Kevin would look suspicious at a memorial dinner for Al Capone! What chance of passing himself off as an innocent traveller arriving in Belfast in the middle of a bleak January night!
I shivered violently and turned up my collar against the incessant rain. Where was the contact? The only sign of life was a pair of cats quietly growling at each other from either end of a piece of bacon rind. I glanced at my watch. Five minutes had ticked by. I looked out to sea. A series of red and green pilot lights glowed in the distance beyond the harbour entrance. Within the harbour itself, long thin concertinas of light shimmered on the surface of the water opposite the lamps on the far side of the docks. The harbour walls, dirty brown smudges on the black of the night, loomed up out of the water. They were topped by a rambling collection of offices, warehouses, huts and tanks. As I gazed at the buildings, the desolate cry of an unseen seagull pierced the night air, reinforcing the stillness and quietness.
I felt another wave of unease. Where was the transport? I blew into my hands and shuffled my feet, getting increasingly alarmed by our impossible attempts at inconspicuousness. I walked over to the exit door and squinted through the glass. All I could see was row upon row of empty cars lined up in the floodlit car park. Another five minutes had passed. My gaze returned nervously to the shabby figure still leaning impressively on the sign as he exhaled a cloud of cigarette smoke and flicked the dog-end into the water.
At last, Arthur, the team leader, realizing it was too dangerous to wait any longer, seized the initiative and made a decision. It was a risk, but there appeared to be no alternative. Looking incongruously smart in a houndstooth jacket and cavalry twills, the rain dripping from his check tweed cap, he walked over to the donkey jacket still leaning on the sign. In the dull, dingy surroundings he looked like a member of the aristocracy approaching a purveyor of pornography. We all tensed, ready for immediate action. A brief exchange of veiled speech followed, and then suddenly it was all over and we were being hurriedly ushered through the exit door into the back of a blue minibus. Contact had been made.
The rain hit the windscreen like a jet from a high-pressure hose as we sped through the grey, depressing streets of Belfast. It felt strange to be driving on the left. Whenever I had caught a boat or flown across a stretch of water in the past, I had always ended up driving on the righthand side of the road. Now I was in limbo, neither at home nor abroad. The road signs were not in an exotic foreign language as my mind half expected – but the place-names were almost culturally strong enough to qualify as foreign: Larne, Ballymena and Ballymoney going north; Lisburn, Lurgan and Craigavon going west. I rubbed the sleeve of my jacket over the condensation on the side-window and peered out. The night rain had oiled the glistening streets and slicked the pavements with dark puddles. Rows of derelict buildings dripped with angry graffiti: 'Touts will be
shot'… 'Provos rule'… 'Smash the H Blocks'… 'No surrender'… 'Brit bastards out'. Whitewashed gableends flashed past publicity hoardings in the battle for hearts and minds – raw, powerful murals, created by tragically skilled hands, depicting clenched fists, sectarian insignia and sinister hooded figures clasping lethal weapons.
What a far cry from the deep wadis, the open rolling plains and the blue skies of Dhofar. As the minibus turned onto the M1 taking us south I reflected on the events of the last few years. Since the battle of Mirbat in 1972 my troop had been decimated. Laba and Tommy lost, Tak was still convalescing, Bob was an instructor on training wing, Fuzz and Roger had left the Regiment, and Mike Kealy, his three-year tour of duty as a troop officer completed, had been posted back to a desk job at Group Headquarters. You have to be good at pushing paper to be promoted to field marshal.
I looked around the faces in the bus. Our composite team had been drawn from all four troops in the squadron; misfits who just happened to fit together. But there was not a Fijian in sight. After long and hard deliberation, the best brains in the Kremlin had finally decided in their wisdom that the Fijians, with their swarthy features, short black curly hair and heavy accents, wouldn't quite blend in with the local population, especially on the Falls Road and the sprawling estates of West Belfast. Valdez in Andy's Town – no way! It was perhaps just as well. I recollected that when we'd been at Otterburn taking part in a fire-and-movement exercise just before going to Dhofar, Valdez had joked about how his team had occupied their spare time by improvising a Ouija board. Whether they'd meddled with something they shouldn't have is a matter for speculation. What is certain is that during Operation Jaguar all four of Valdez's team were wounded. Stranger still, there had been a fifth man in the room there, Sam, who had refused to take part. He came through Operation Jaguar completely unscathed. We had a difficult enough job in Northern Ireland as it was, without having to contend with the supernatural as well!
Soldier I Page 15