Eye of the Storm

by Peter Ratcliffe

  Our other cast-offs, mainly the cardboard boxes that had contained our ration packs, were all placed in a pile and set on fire the following morning. I wanted to make as much smoke as I could so as to attract a little attention to ourselves in an attempt to draw out the enemy. The Union jacks were spread out as usual, so that friendly pilots could identify us from the air as British if, attracted by the smoke and flames, they flew by for a closer look. A few of the lads got a bit nervy about giving away our position, and once again wanted to know what would happen if we attracted enemy tanks.

  ‘Then we call in the RAF,’ I explained to them. ‘We’re on a plateau and can see one hell of a long way. A tank doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. It blows up a great cloud of dust which can be seen twenty miles away. Just relax. Settle down and enjoy the fresh grub.’

  It was a real treat to have fresh fruit and vegetables – and even meat – again, although we knew we’d be back on the rations soon enough. I had noticed that I had already begun to lose weight. A different way to diet, perhaps, but very effective.

  I decided that the patrol would stay put that day, which would allow the men to cook themselves a couple of decent meals and catch up on a bit of personal maintenance. Just after midday, however, we received orders from Al Jouf that we were to try to find them a usable airstrip somewhere in our territory, and safe from prying Iraqi eyes. In the coming month, February, we would be without moonlight from the 14th to the 20th, which meant that the helicopters would not be flying and so would not be able to resupply us. Someone at HQ had suggested, as an alternative which had been backed by the CO, that a C-130 fly in at night to make the resupply. In other words, an aircraft 30 metres long with a wingspan of more than 40 metres and weighing, when fully loaded, over 75 tons, would put down in absolute blackness on an unknown airstrip 200 miles behind enemy lines.

  The RAF pilots in 47 Squadron* really were brilliant flyers, all of them. Most were former fighter pilots who had flown Harriers, Tornados, Jaguars, Buccaneers and the like before being switched to the Special Forces flights because of minor medical problems or something equally trivial. They and their aircrew were a great bunch of guys; they were also extremely brave men. Give them a short, narrow strip of barely level ground and these characters would set a Hercules down on it. I have never encountered their like anywhere. They would fly in at almost zero altitude and land these huge monsters on grass, gravel, mudflats, even a frozen lake – anything that was just long enough and wide enough, and more or less level.

  For night flights we would mark the runway ourselves. We would set markers at each end and in the middle of the runway – that was all these pilots needed to set down in the middle of nowhere, unload or collect men or gear, turn round and get back in the air.

  That evening I took part of my group on a recce north-west of our location and sent Pat with part of his group to the north-east. Our task was to find a suitable landing strip for the C-130 and, if we were lucky enough to locate one, to try to pinpoint and assess any enemy activity in the area. It must have been our lucky night, because after some twenty kilometres we came across a disused airfield; better still, it wasn’t even marked on the map. Like dozens of others, it had probably been built during the Iran-Iraq War and then abandoned after the armistice.

  It was a clear night with barely a cloud in the sky, and even though there was only a slight moon it was very light. The scrub-grass runway was sharply etched by the moonlight, looking for all the world like a worn, pea-green carpet. Peter and I walked its length to check that it was still level and free of any craters, then sat on the centre line to have a cigarette.

  ‘If you think about it,’ he said after we’d smoked in silence for a while, grinning across at me, ‘this is really quite bizarre. Here we are, sitting in the middle of a grass runway, in the middle of Iraq, having a fag. There’s nobody here who gives a damn, or who is going to stop us or check our passports. It’s quite surreal, actually – but it gives me a damned good feeling.’ I could see what he meant, although being in strange situations in remote places is so much a part of SAS life that I probably wouldn’t have even thought about it if he hadn’t said something.

  In the early hours of the next morning, having caught a fascinating glimpse of the new motorway, still under construction, which would soon replace the main supply route out of Amman, we returned to our LUP, where I’d left half our force with the Unimog and some of the Land Rovers. We waited for Pat to return. He was back just before dawn, reporting that his unit had found only one possible landing strip, which would in any case need a certain amount of clearing.

  The disused airfield seemed our best bet, and I therefore radioed headquarters to give them the exact coordinates, which would then be passed to the C-130 pilots. Once that minor task was out of the way I could give time to planning our way forward. I intended to move north again that night, 5 February, and take up position near the main supply route so we could begin observing the enemy’s movements along it – including, I hoped, movements of mobile Scud missile launchers.

  The morning of the 6th found us in position close to MSR3. It was drizzling and bitterly cold. Around us the desert was a dun and dirty grey, studded with low black hills and huge grey boulders. It looked and felt fiercely inhospitable. Early that afternoon, while I was trying to catch up on some sleep under the Land Rover, I found myself being shaken awake by Harry, my radio operator.

  ‘Sorry to wake you, Boss, but it’s your call sign coming in from HQ. They have an immediate signal for you.’

  ‘Probably only routine,’ I groaned, rolling from under the vehicle and staggering to my feet.

  But the message, when I had finished decoding it, proved to be not at all what I had expected.

  Alpha One Zero was ordered to penetrate and destroy a microwave Scud-control station known as Victor Two, the mission to be carried out by no later than 0600 on Friday morning, 8 February – just under thirty-nine hours away. We had to take out the major switching gear and fibre-optic cables contained in a fortified underground bunker. The control station, situated right on the MSR, was in a key staging area used by civilian convoys, and was defended by a minimal enemy force of about thirty soldiers, according to the signal.

  All of a sudden we were going in at the sharp end. Just from the sparse information I had been given in that first order I knew we were being sent into action.

  * The RAF squadrons operating Special Forces flights are Nos 7 and 47, the former operating Chinooks, the latter C-130s.

  Chapter Twenty

  I HAD a gut feeling from the very outset that we would be walking into a heavily defended location, from which perhaps not all of us could expect to walk away.

  It was almost certain that we were being sent into a situation that must result in a firefight. Even from the few details I had received so far, it was plain to me that Intelligence was only guessing at the enemy’s strength. Indeed, I was also very dubious about their estimate of the number of enemy troops we were likely to encounter. Right from the start I realized that the figure thirty, which so conveniently matched our own strength, somehow failed to emit that much desired – and hoped for – ring of truth.

  For obvious reasons we would try to make this a covert operation, which meant we’d be going in at night, but if the target was defended by the enemy in any great numbers, then the chances were that the mission would ‘go noisy’ on us – our euphemism for all hell breaking loose – before we could even get the explosive charges into position. Furthermore, no matter how difficult sneaking in might prove, getting out again promised to be even more of a nightmare.

  I already had a number of burning questions buzzing around in my head, all of which needed answering before I could plan the mission with any accuracy. It was certain, too, that there were a few more I hadn’t even thought of yet. I therefore decided that this was one of those rare occasions when several minds were better than one. I called Mugger over and told him to seek out Major Peter, Pat and Des
and have them rendezvous at my wagon in ten minutes.

  Meanwhile I brewed myself a strong mug of tea, carefully rolled a cigarette and sat in the sunshine with my back against one of the Land Rover’s rear wheels. After a few minutes the others drifted over and I suggested they sit down facing me. When they were all settled I took a long swallow of my tea, looked at each of them in turn and announced, ‘We’ve had a signal giving us a target – known as Victor Two – which HQ want taken out. According to them it’s a microwave station which is only lightly defended. There’s a civilian parking lot near by but no major enemy presence.

  ‘I’ve signalled Al Jouf that I want a direct satcom voice link with the ops officer in half an hour so I can get some more info. I’ve already come up with a bunch of questions myself, but if you three can think of any others then let’s hear from you. The more we know, the better prepared we can be.

  ‘Which, of course, doesn’t mean a dicky bird if they don’t actually know anything else. In fact, let’s face it – they could come back with a “don’t-know” response to all our questions, leaving us with just the info we can pick up ourselves.

  ‘But there is a deadline on this one. They want us to complete the mission by zero six hundred hours on Friday.’

  That grabbed their attention and gave them something to chew on, and for the next twenty minutes or so we sat by my vehicle weighing up the pros and cons. By the time the satcom link was established and Harry had called me over, the four of us had come up with a dozen very relevant questions. I was told by the ops officer, however, that most of our queries – particularly those concerning the enemy’s strength and their deployment, for which we were most eager to get replies – could not be answered until the following day.

  What Intel could tell us was that the main target – a bunker about forty metres square – was completely surrounded by an eight-foot-high wall of prefabricated concrete slabs slotted into concrete posts. Between this wall and the target bunker was a six-foot-high intermediate chain-link fence. Having reached the main building we would find steps leading down to three underground rooms, one of which contained the vital switching gear. Just behind the bunker was the secondary target, a 250-foot-high mast. About a quarter-kilometre south-east of the military installation was a lorry park, which was used by civilian drivers as a night stop.

  And that, apparently, just about covered all the information the ops officer back in Al Jouf could give us. Having made an arrangement to speak with him again at the same time the following day, I replaced the radio handset. Then I turned to face the other three and repeated all the details given in the ops officer’s briefing. They were silent for a moment; then Pat said, ‘If the stuff we’ve got to destroy is in one of three rooms, how the hell will we know which one? Does anyone know what communications switching gear looks like?’

  The others looked as blank as I did. Time to take a hand, I decided.

  ‘OK, let’s not worry ourselves about that,’ I told them, far more cheerfully than I was actually feeling. ‘We’ll blow up all three rooms to make quite sure we’ve got the right one. The tricky bit is going to be the getting in and the getting out. Compared with that, the demolition side of it is a complete doddle.’ I paused to let this sink in, then went on, ‘I want a bit of time to myself to work out a plan, but let’s meet back here in one hour. Meanwhile,’ I added, ‘let’s try to build ourselves a model of the target.’

  As they dispersed back to their vehicles I wandered off about twenty yards from the Land Rover until I found a rock to lean against. Sitting down, I rolled myself another cigarette and turned my mind to the coming operation.

  From the location HQ had given me, Victor Two was situated about ten kilometres north of the new motorway being constructed to the south of the main supply route from Jordan, and which we had stumbled across on our way back from the airstrip recce the night before. This put the target about thirty-five kilometres from our LUP.

  Our first problem was how to cross the motorway. It was most probably of British design and construction and, just like the motorways at home, consisted of three lanes each way with crash barriers lining both sides of a central reservation. According to Intelligence, the road needed only the finishing touches before its official opening.

  Once over the motorway our next major hurdle, other than approaching the target without being spotted and challenged, would be making our way through the wall and fence protecting the main bunker. I worked out that the only way the demolition team could successfully breach the target was by blowing a way through both obstacles with instantaneous shaped charges, then rushing through the gaps and heading straight down the steps. Once below ground we could use similar charges to remove the doors, if any, to the three rooms, and place charges with two-minute fuses in each of them. The team would then make a dash back to the main group, which would be laying down supporting fire and otherwise responding to any enemy threat that might arise.

  The mission was already exhibiting signs of being difficult, even dangerous, but certainly not impossible. I decided I could do the actual job with just three demolitionists, with two men assigned to each both to help carry the gear and to cover them. That meant just nine men in all for the most dangerous part of the operation. I would be one of them, while the remainder of the half-squadron would act as fire support and provide any additional backup that might become necessary after the primary task had been completed.

  Having mentally sketched out the bare plan, I returned to the Land Rover and summoned all the senior NCOs and Major Peter and Captain Timothy. When they had all arrived I outlined the plan to them. ‘The final details depend a lot on the recce I want carried out tonight, and on the one I intend to lead myself just before the actual job,’ I told them. ‘But essentially that’s it.

  ‘It’s certainly not going to be easy,’ I continued. ‘I expect there to be guards on duty, and other additional troops floating around. In fact, I think we can take that as almost certain. But it’s just as certain that HQ want this little task carried out by zero-six-hundred Friday.’

  Although details on the target were still sketchy, the others had managed to put together a model based on the little information we had and on what we could gather of the target area from our own maps. We had no photographs or imagery of any kind – what wouldn’t I have given just then for a portable fax machine – so we had to try to picture the target using the bare description we had been given over the radio, and from that build a very basic model. Between them the guys had come up with a selection of objects – some of the hexamine blocks, the white, one-and-a-half-inch cubes of solid fuel we used in our cooking stoves; small squared-off stones; sweets; cigarette packets; odd scraps of wood; matches; even some buttons – out of which to fashion a model. It may seem strange, but if you give the guys a look at even a crappy model before they attack a target, it boosts their confidence tremendously. They feel they have a far better working knowledge of what they’re getting into, and as a result are much more assured about the tasks that face them.

  We knew that the base lay on the north side of an east-west road – MSR 3, soon to be superseded by the new motorway – and that fifty yards east of the main bunker and mast another road led off at right angles to the first, running towards the south. It would be along-side this north-south road that we would be making our approach. Having scraped the outlines and the relative positions of the two roads on a flat, sandy surface the guys had found conveniently near my Land Rover, they had created a square model of a building with a mast just behind it and ringed by both a fence and a wall. Squatting down by the model, I took them through the plan detail by detail.

  ‘The attacking unit will cross the east-west road directly in front of the target building,’ I told them, pointing the way with a stick. ‘The main fire-support group – at least half our total force – will be positioned south-west of the junction where the north-south road joins the first one. The rest of the men will be given their positions nearer th
e time – when, I hope, we know a bit more.

  ‘The reason we should know a bit more is because Pat and Serious here are going out tonight with their section to do a recce of the motorway and locate a decent crossing point.’

  ‘When do we leave?’ asked Pat.

  ‘Just before last light. We went that way last night and the going was good. It’s about thirty kilometres maximum to the motorway. Your job is to find us a place to cross, either underneath the roadway through one of the culverts, or across the middle where there’s a break in the crash barriers.’ Both NCOs nodded, and I continued, ‘There was no military presence there last night; in fact, there wasn’t a sign of anyone at all. It was like a ghost motorway. Even so, what I don’t want is you drawing any attention to yourselves or, worse, getting compromised.’

  Our briefing ended, and it was a thoughtful group of NCOs who made their separate ways back to their own Land Rovers. Oddly enough, though, I was the one who felt uneasy, and for all the time that Pat’s unit was gone I found myself unable to relax. I was usually good at waiting, but now I had an uncomfortable feeling that the target wasn’t all that it seemed; that there was a lot more to it than I was being given by HQ. Throughout the night my gut feeling, and the knowledge that the main target was on a major junction, told me that we were in for an interesting time, to say the least. There was one thing I was certain about – we were going in come what may. Even so, I was standing on the edge of our LUP, waiting, when Pat and his recce group arrived back. I hadn’t been anxious about their safety because, having been in the area they’d just visited the night before, I knew that there was no Iraqi military presence there. But I wanted to have their intel – indeed, I needed it urgently.