Eye of the Storm

by Peter Ratcliffe

  In the event it took just under four days for the Regiment to complete the move from Victor to Al Jouf. On our jumping-off night, 16 January, the Deputy Director and half a dozen members of his staff turned up. For the life of me I couldn’t work out what the hell they thought they were doing there. Everything that could have been arranged by that stage was already well in hand. Furthermore, they were no better informed than we were. It turned out that they didn’t even know that the night we had chosen to move up to the front was also the night that General Schwarzkopf had chosen to launch his air war – and they had just come from his HQ in Riyadh.

  Between midnight on 16 January and dawn on the 17th, a total of 671 Allied sorties, involving God only knows how many thousands of aircraft and cruise missiles, were launched against Iraq. Somewhere in among them were three RAF C-130s lumbering north-westwards at 350 miles per hour, carrying some of our men and their gear. Aircrew and SAS alike marvelled at the number of F-117 Nighthawks – the so-called ‘Stealth fighter’ – zipping past them just overhead. They had come from Khamis Mushait airbase, in the far south-west of Saudi Arabia, and were on their way to hit Saddam where it hurt – right in his own back yard.

  At Victor, the first that we and, I’m sure, the Deputy Director’s party knew of the start of the Gulf War was when we heard it announced on the BBC World Service the next morning. One result of the launching of the air bombardment of Iraq was that only one of our C-130s got back that morning. Its pilot said that during the return flight from Al Jouf all three aircraft had been ordered to land at Dhahran because of the number of Allied attack planes in the sky. He had refused and had continued on to Victor, but the other two C-130s were at Dhahran, waiting for clearance to fly again.

  They arrived back that afternoon, and were immediately reloaded and, each with a fresh flight crew, were quickly on their way back to Al Jouf. By midnight on the 17th the Allies had flown 2,107 sorties and the SAS had moved a quarter of its force to the front line. Yet the air war already seemed to be going the way Schwarzkopf had predicted. Who needed Special Forces?

  Al Jouf, like Victor, was a brand-new airfield which had never been used, although it was intended for civil use. It was about the same size as Luton airport, and had a runway long enough to take jumbo jets. As each SAS group arrived the mobile fighting patrols unloaded their vehicles and moved directly to a point south of their start line, which was approximately a hundred miles north-west of Al Jouf. They were to wait there until the order to cross the boarder into Iraq should be given.

  The rest of us – signallers, intelligence and other headquarters staff, regimental personnel, the quarter-master and storemen, logistics personnel, and support staff from 7 Squadron, RAF, who were there to look after the Chinook helicopters – about a hundred people in all, remained at Al Jouf, where we were located under canvas around the terminal building. Most of our administration offices were to be in the luggage-collection hall inside the terminal, with some of our desks actually positioned on the luggage conveyor belt, but that was still being organized when we arrived. The CO and I moved up to Al Jouf on 18 January.

  The whole regiment was now on ration packs. There was no fresh food to be had, only the boil-in-the-bag field rations. You simply placed the tinfoil pack into a mess tin full of water and boiled it. Then you used the water to make your tea. The meals served a need, but that was all. The RAF, however, who were camped next door to us, had a proper mess and proper food. The air force’s powers that be had decreed that pilots could only be expected to carry out their jobs if they had decent chefs preparing decent meals.

  For once, the CO and I were all in favour of this junior-service favouritism, because we used to sneak into their mess without telling any of our boys where we were going and enjoy a first-class breakfast of eggs and bacon with toast and butter. The RAF put up with us, but swore us to secrecy; ‘We can’t accommodate any more of you poor, half-starved characters,’ we were told. That was fine by us. We would stroll back to our area, pretending we had just been eating our boil-in-the-bag rations. Being in charge had its distinct advantages. Perhaps it’s true, and there’s no point in having power if you don’t occasionally abuse it. To be fair, among the rest of the Regiment, apart from a few regular whingers who would have moaned whatever food they had, there were no complaints about the rations. They went with the job.

  The cold was a different matter, however, and one that was to have severe consequences once we were actually operating in Iraq. Everybody was complaining about what they mostly referred to as the total ineptitude of our weather forecasters and intelligence officers. At night it became very cold indeed. Some people wore their desert camouflage outfits with their nuclear, biological and chemical warfare (NBC) suits on top and a jacket over that. The charcoal-coloured lining of the suits would run off on to the camouflage outfits underneath and turn them dark, but the suits were windproof and did keep you warm, which is what mattered.

  Fortunately that was all the NBC suits were needed for, as Saddam never resorted to using nerve gases or other agents against us. At the time, however, it was a very real danger. As well as the suits, we also had our gas masks, pre-loaded hypodermics with which to inject ourselves in case of a nerve-gas attack, and Naps tablets, which were kept inside the gas-mask container. One of these was supposed to be taken daily as a defence against nerve gas and other chemical poisons, but I never took any of mine. I don’t like popping pills at the best of times, and I simply didn’t trust the things. Nobody could put his hand on his heart and say that there would be no contra effects after taking Naps tablets, and I just wasn’t prepared to risk it.

  To this day I wonder whether this ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ that has affected numbers of servicemen who took part in that war, and which successive governments have denied exists, might not be related to Naps tablets rather than anything else. Very few of the men in the Regiment risked taking them. The British Army had not faced NBC weapons since the First World War, and most of us decided that the risk of taking the tablets, with their unknown side effects, was greater than the risk of coming under NBC attack.

  At Al Jouf we were much more concerned about being blown to Kingdom Come by one of Saddam’s Scud missiles, which we had been warned to expect at any time, night or day, from the moment we arrived. As the airfield was less than 150 miles south of the Iraqi border, we were well within range of even the antiquated and inaccurate Scuds, and it was known that Saddam had plenty of them. There would be early warnings, but since the Soviet missiles, which the Iraqi’s had developed further to improve their range, were very fast, only a few minutes at the most.

  The first warning, when it came, left me none the wiser. It happened just after dawn on 20 January. I was enjoying my breakfast of a fried-egg sandwich and idly watching the B Squadron OC briefing his men some distance away. The squadron had arrived that morning on the last C-130 from Victor. Suddenly they all started moving, grabbing for their kit and generally running around like headless chickens. I worked out that the meeting must be over and that they were grabbing their packs to go and put a brew on.

  Then I noticed one guy who was walking around saying something to them. As he came closer I heard him calling out, ‘Good morning. Good morning.’

  ‘You’re a jovial little bastard,’ I said. ‘Have a good morning yourself.’

  ‘He’s not saying “good morning”,’ the RQMS said from behind my shoulder. ‘He’s saying “Scud warning”!’ The men of B Squadron hadn’t been dashing off to make a brew, they were trying to locate their kit in order to get out their gas masks.

  As it turned out, the Scuds fired that day came nowhere near us, but the danger was very real. Obsolescent it may have been, but since the Scud could carry high-explosive, chemical, biological and even nuclear warheads, its inaccuracy was not necessarily a hindrance. In addition, it could be fired from mobile launch pads, which were difficult for Allied aircraft to locate and destroy.

  The Iraqi missile attacks had started two
days earlier, on the 18th, which was to prove a significant date for the SAS. On that day the Iraqis had fired their first Scud missile of the Gulf War – at Dhahran, the main marshalling base for US aircraft. The Americans had predicted this, and as a defensive measure had ringed the base with MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air (SAM) missile launchers, specifically designed to destroy incoming surface-to-surface missiles (SSMs).

  The way the Patriots worked was very simple. As the Scud hurtled towards its target at just under 4,000 miles per hour and came within range, the radar-guided Patriot would be launched in its path. In the fraction of a second when they were passing one another the Patriot’s radar would trigger it to explode, hurling hundreds of gobstopper-sized metal chunks into the immediate vicinity that would detonate the Scud’s own warhead. As a principle it was almost childishly simple, but it worked as long as the timing of the Patriot’s launch was spot on. Which it was at Dhahran that day. The Americans were justifiably cock-a-hoop with their success, and deserved to be.

  What they had not anticipated, however, was that Saddam’s small, easily concealed mobile-launcher teams would scuttle to positions in the western Iraqi desert and, that same day, fire off seven more Scuds towards Israel. Three landed in Tel Aviv, two in Haifa, and two in open country. On the following day two more hit Tel Aviv, wounding seventeen people, and two others fell in unpopulated areas. Thus far all the Scuds launched had been armed with conventional warheads – but the Israelis feared, not unnaturally, that future missiles might carry chemical and biological payloads. In a brilliantly calculated move, Saddam had substantially upped the ante and now had an almost unbeatable ace on the table.

  The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, has never been famed for its moderate reaction to terrorist attacks. The policy of ‘eye for eye’ is not only religiously correct to Jews, it is politically correct in Israel. Now the Israeli people, angered by the Iraqi attacks, were baying for blood, and they expected their leaders to order swift retaliation. The Allies, however, emphatically needed the opposite. For the Coalition, it was vital that the Israelis do nothing; indeed, that their country be kept entirely out of the war. If Israel attacked Iraq, then many of the Arab nations in the Coalition would almost certainly pull out, led by Syria and Egypt. It was paramount that Israel should be kept out of the conflict, and the only sure way to achieve this was to put a stop to the Scud missile attacks.

  With its solid-fuel propellant and crude targeting devices, the Scud was a dinosaur in 1981, let alone 1991. The Iraqis, however, had themselves extended the range of the basic Soviet weapon with Israeli targets in mind, and though the missiles were highly inaccurate over long distances, enough were landing on target to ensure that the Israelis continued to press vehemently for retaliation. Anxious to defuse the situation, America’s diplomats made frantic efforts to keep Israel out of the conflict. At the same time, Schwarzkopf ordered hundreds of Patriot missiles to be dispatched to Israel – the first of them arrived on 20 January – along with the launchers and the crews to operate them. Meanwhile, from Saudi Arabia he launched continuous air sorties by several squadrons of F-15E Strike Eagles into the southern and western Iraqi deserts, tasked solely with seeking out and destroying the Scuds and their mobile launchers.

  The Iraqis, however, turned out to be far better at hiding or disguising their Scud launchers than Schwarzkopf had bargained for. The F-15s returned from sortie after sortie with negative reports: no Scuds found or destroyed. As a result, Schwarzkopf was finally forced to concede that this was one task his beloved air jockeys were technically incapable of handling. ‘It looks,’ he finally told an exultant General de la Billière, ‘like a job for those SAS guys of yours. Send ’em in.’

  DLB snapped back a quick, ‘Yes, General,’ but neglected to explain that he had anticipated his supreme commander’s reaction by some thirty-six hours – and that we had already prepared for insertion into Iraq. By the time Schwarzkopf ‘s orders had been relayed down the chain of command to the CO at Al Jouf, A and D Squadrons, in 4 mobile units totalling 128 men, had already been dispatched to the edge of enemy territory – the start line – on DLB’s earlier instructions, ready to ferret out the Scud launchers, mobile and fixed, and destroy them.

  By midnight on 20 January the first four fighting units were heading across the Iraqi border. The SAS was officially at war.

  Chapter Sixteen

  IN the space of just forty-eight hours the Regiment had gone from having no part at all to play in the Gulf War, to being responsible for taking out the greatest single enemy threat to Allied victory. We had been hurled in at the deep end with a vengeance.

  Singlehandedly, 22 SAS had been tasked with saving the Coalition, which would undoubtedly fragment if Israel struck at Iraq. To achieve this, we had to locate and destroy Saddam’s remaining Scud missiles and their mobile launchers, and cut the concealed fibre-optic and other land communications that linked Baghdad with both the static launch sites and the elusive mobile launch teams. It seemed almost as though we had been suddenly placed on a countdown to save the world.

  The American pilots had done their damnedest, but had proved incapable of finishing the job from the air. Now the Scuds had to be cleaned up at ground level, and we were the outfit that loved getting its hands dirty.

  In essence, the SAS had now had thrust on them the task of keeping the people of Israel safe, and their country out of the war. It was a race against time, for the decision for us to go in on the night of the 20th came even as the Israelis threatened to send troops and aircraft into western Iraq to sort out the missile threat themselves.

  ‘We are supposed to defuse the situation,’ the CO told me. He had been receiving constant sitreps (situation reports) fowarded from London and Washington, and shared the latest intelligence with me. The lines between the White House, Downing Street and Jerusalem must have been at melting point as President Bush and John Major begged Yitzhak Shamir not to take action against Iraq. The Israeli Prime Minister was as furious as the rest of his countrymen, however, and was making no promises. Far from it, for the Israelis could well go in that night with a couple of parachute battalions and air support. Whether they took any action depended on whether Schwarzkopf could satisfy the Iraelis that we would do their dirty work for them – and just as efficiently.

  Everything apparently hinged on whether or not the Israelis were sufficiently aware of the Regiment’s reputation to trust us to handle it alone. We were not altogether convinced that they would leave us to do the job. Furthermore, if the Israelis did go in, then it would be into the ‘Scud box’, an area that started twenty-five miles over the same border that we were to cross that night. (Because of the missile’s limited range, Scuds targeted on Israel could only be launched from western Iraq.) That in turn meant that our patrols might well have been attacked by Israeli troops and supporting aircraft, in mistake for Iraqis. As a result, the four half-squadrons were ordered to cross into Iraq but to hold at the twenty-five-mile line that night and hole up there until the next day. By then we would know just what course the Israelis intended to follow. All we could do was hope that, for all our sakes, they decided to leave the Scud threat to us.

  We were the best hit-and-run outfit in the world, the purpose for which the Regiment had been founded. Now we were to take on the role once again. Spearheading the assault and taking on the most dangerous and difficult missions were the men of A and D Squadrons. Split into four elusive, heavily armed and highly mobile fighting columns, they would crisscross the western Iraqi desert in a campaign of destruction intended to annihilate Saddam’s secret missile force.

  At last light they were given the go-ahead to leave their holding positions on the Iraqi border and head out into enemy territory. No one was there to see them off. Everything that needed to be said had already been said. It was no time for heroic speeches or jingoistic bullshit; besides, we had already had some of that from the Deputy Director when he visited Al Jouf. It was time to get going.

  They woul
d cross at varying locations, to give more direct access to their particular areas of operation, in whichever parts of the western Iraqi desert that had been assigned them. We had received reports that it was bitterly cold up on the border, and in their open Land Rovers – even wearing their NBC gear – these men were going to feel half frozen by the time they had crossed into enemy territory, established a lying-up position (LUP) and bedded down for the day. I fervently hoped that they would not find a hot reception waiting for them on the Iraqi side. To go into instant action when your fingers and face are numbed and cracked with cold is no picnic, as I knew only too well.

  For their part, they were probably saying that it was all-bloody-right for us, safe back in Al Jouf and heading for our camp beds. But as stupid – and as clichéd – as it may sound, I did wish I had been going with them. I had never had to sit out a hostile situation before. It felt very strange – as though I was not pulling my share of the weight. I knew I would do my bit at Al Jouf, just like everyone else. But I’d much sooner have been out there with them than waiting at our forward mounting base for news.

  After twenty years of the toughest military training in the world I was absolutely in my prime as a soldier, with a wealth of operational experience. I was ready, willing and more than able to take on Saddam’s soldiers, Republican Guard and all – and unable so much as to fire off a single round in the enemy’s direction. It was extremely frustrating. I was simply not used to kicking my heels while somebody else did the fighting, and there were many others around me who felt the same.

  Yet, although I didn’t know it, Fate was already preparing to step in and scatter a few wild cards around. And one card had my name on it, although, had I seen it at the time, I would not have believed what it predicted. So when I slipped into my sleeping bag on my camp bed that night it was with one enormous regret: that by the time I woke up in the morning the men of 22 SAS – my men – would be in Saddam’s back yard, about to start kicking hell out of the Iraqis. And I would not be with them.