A Line in the Sand: The Gulf War of 1964 - Part 1 (Timeline 10/27/62)

by James Philip

  However, the man standing at the British Ambassador’s shoulder was – his reputation apart – an unknown quantity to Prince Abdulaziz Al Saud.

  It was said that Sir Thomas Harding-Grayson, since December of last year the British Foreign Secretary and one of that woman Thatcher’s ‘inner circle’, had once been ostracised by his superiors for his anti-American stance and the man’s wife was, of all things, a famous novelist!

  Of only average height, balding and in appearance older than his fifty-nine years, the dapper, suited Englishman stepped forward and nodded his head in a cursory bow.

  “Thank you for altering your schedule at such short notice to do us the honour of meeting with us at this place, Your Highness,” Tom Harding-Grayson said in halting Arabic.

  “You speak our tongue, Sir Thomas?”

  “Not so well as I did in my younger days I fear, Your Highness. It is many, many years since I was last in this part of the World.”

  Prince Abdulaziz Al Saud gestured for his interpreter to step forward. There could be no scope for misunderstandings today.

  “I am here today at the request of Crown Prince Faisal,” he declared. “He met Secretary of State Fulbright yesterday. It was not a satisfactory meeting. Our American ‘friends’ wish to ‘sell’ us arms and to assure the Kingdom of their undying ‘support’, and have sought assurances that the war supplies deports at Jeddah and elsewhere will be ‘respected’. This last matter I personally found to be most curious.”

  He waited for his interpreter to translate.

  And looked the British Foreign Secretary in the eye.

  The other man met his hawkish stare without blinking.

  Sir Colin Crowe coughed politely.

  “Might I suggest we retire to comfortable chairs, Your Highness?” He suggested.

  He led the others to chairs around a low table. Viciously strong, bitter coffee was served in small cups and then the exchange resumed as if there had been no interruption.

  “With respect,” Tom Harding-Grayson observed, “the status of the war supplies depots is a thing which ought to preoccupy the United States, Your Highness.”

  “How so, Sir Thomas?”

  The Englishman did not so much as bat an eyelid.

  “Because my generals and air marshals want the contents of those depots so that they can better assist your armed forces in the defence of your borders, sir.”

  There was a deathly silence.

  It went on for ten, fifteen, twenty or more seconds.

  “My forces,” the Minister of Defence and Aviation said dangerously, “are perfectly capable of defending the holy soil of the Kingdom.”

  The British Ambassador raised his coffee cup to his lips, thought better of it and replaced cup and saucer carefully on the table.

  “At this time,” he observed, “we do not think it is the Soviet intention to immediately invade the Kingdom, Your Highness. However, we do think that the enemy’s ultimate strategic objective is to command the waters of the Persian Gulf, to occupy most of Iraq and Iran, and to eventually expand his sphere of influence in the region to encompass the whole of the Arabian Peninsula. It is also our assessment that it is the Soviet intention to seize or destroy all the oilfields of the region.”

  “That’s madness!” Prince Abdulaziz Al Saud exploded.

  Tom Harding-Grayson shook his head.

  “With respect, sir. He who controls two-thirds of the World’s oil has his hands around the throat of the whole World.”

  Prince Abdulaziz Al Saud did not need a Westerner to tell him what was patently obvious to the humblest beggar in Riyadh. This was after all why the prevailing mood within the Saudi government was one best categorised as ‘barely contained panic’.

  Had it not been for the Crown Prince’s veto the Saudi Army would already have broken into the ‘American Depots’. The Defence Minister had also spoken against such a precipitate and irreversible move but not out of any consideration for the likely reaction of the United States. His concerns were wholly prosaic; he did not have a sufficiently large cadre of trained men to use the majority of the weaponry stored at Jeddah or Dhahran and in the camp outside Riyadh. Untrained conscripts from the backstreets of the Kingdom’s cities, or the sons of desert wanderers could not suddenly learn to drive and fight an M-48 tank, or handle a howitzer, let alone fly a modern jet aircraft, or for that matter, any kind of aircraft. Moreover, large stocks of general munitions – thousands of tons of shells and bombs - posed insuperable problems to his forces; if he let his people break into those depots they would probably inadvertently blow up the damned places!

  “The Kennedy Administration believes that the Soviets may content themselves with seizing the oilfields of Iraqi Kurdistan. The Central Intelligence Agency says that the Russians are too weak to invade the whole of Iraq. The Soviets have already decapitated the regime in Iran,” Prince Abdulaziz Al Saud involuntarily winced as he said this, mindful of the grainy movie of the execution of the Shah of Iran, copies of which had mysteriously been delivered to several key ministries in Riyadh in the last week, “perhaps, all they plan to do is threaten your Imperial fief at Abadan?”

  This savagely pointed barb bounced of Tom Harding-Grayson.

  The British Foreign Secretary put aside the hypocrisy of being taunted about ‘Imperialism’ by a man who was currently in his present elevated post only because he happened to be one of the thirty or forty offspring of a former monarch of the Kingdom.

  “No, Your Highness. That is not the objective of the Soviet High Command.”

  It was stated in a tone as unequivocal as the words.

  Prince Abdulaziz Al Saud’s eyes narrowed.

  “How can you be sure, Sir Thomas?”

  The Englishman smiled thinly.

  “The Red Army will drive south to the Persian Gulf, Your Highness,” he said. “It will assault Abadan. There is nothing you or I can do about that. True, we could start another nuclear war but I think we’ve all come to the conclusion that’s not a terribly good idea. The RAF is flying in reinforcements every day but without heavy equipment and munitions we’re up a creek without a proverbial paddle. Every available tank and armoured vehicle in the United Kingdom has been or is being loaded onto fast merchantmen and sent to the Gulf via the Cape of Good Hope. There’s even talk of rushing HMS Ark Royal out of dry dock and using her for a fast run around the Cape loaded to the gunnels with all manner of war supplies. But hardly any of that will arrive in time to be any use. Unless, of course, the Kingdom and its neighbours join us in the fight to save your oilfields and your systems of government and belief from the Godless interlopers who mean to crush you all beneath the heel of a new Marxist-Leninist monster.”

  Chapter 29

  Sunday 17th May 1964

  Steps of the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, Philadelphia

  Notwithstanding that the American government, the newspapers, and the radio and television networks were horribly negative, even derisive about everything that the ‘old country’ touched, the two young Maltese women had adored practically everything else about America. Neither they nor their husbands had encountered so much as a scintilla of personal hostility since they had disembarked from the Queen Mary; to the contrary, they had been greeted – feted indeed – as if they were movie stars. Thus, it was with only mild trepidation but without surprise that the two sisters emerged from the sepulchral splendour of the Cathedral onto the steps down to North 18th Street to be greeted by an even larger than usual crowd. There were the normal photographers, a cordon of Philadelphia Police Department men, their own bodyguards – led by Chief Petty Officer Jack Griffin, proudly wearing his scars from the Battle of Malta – and perhaps a hundred or more Philadelphians simply wanting to catch a glimpse of the visiting celebrities.

  These ‘events’ had already developed their own rhythms and unwritten protocols. Marija and Rosa would pose shyly for the newspaper photographers, and smile nicely. The husbands would shift on their feet
in the background like two self-effacing Englishmen abroad who honestly and truly did not know what all the fuss was about; and before they made their escape the couples would briefly hold hands separately, concluding events by standing together for one final photo call and a self-conscious wave to the bystanders.

  Often, as today, they would be cheered as they drove away in the big Embassy cars in which they were obliged to travel in the city.

  The Ambassador had been very insistent about how they were to travel around the city.

  ‘The average American citizen is by nature welcoming, friendly and wishes you nothing but happiness,’ Lord Franks had explained. ‘But as experience in Washington showed in December there are also some very strange and some very dangerous people about. In the city you must be careful at all times.’

  Not that there was any chance of not being careful when Jack Griffin was in charge of one’s security detail. Not only did their faithful guard dog growl and scowl at anybody who remotely gave his charges – particularly his ‘ladies’ – a cross look, at all times he was at pains to broadcast the impression that if anybody got out of line he would not hesitate to crack their skull.

  This morning the women jumped into the first car; knowing their husbands would want to talk about ‘Navy’ matters, specifically about their forthcoming trip to Norfolk, Virginia, home to the US Atlantic Fleet. Jack Griffin had held the door for the women, scowling watchfully at the nearby crowd before dropping into the front passenger seat beside the driver. He was never far away when ‘the girls’ were outside the protection of the Embassy compound.

  “What a lovely service,” Rosa Hannay declared breathlessly. She was beginning to get over the sensation that she was completely in her sister’s shadow. Until she had married Lieutenant-Commander Alan Hannay, DSO, two days before embarking on the Queen Mary at Southampton the women had been ‘sisters-in-law’, now they were just sisters and basically, each other’s best friends. They were both newly married, transported thousands of miles from the misery which might have otherwise plagued them had they still been in their native Malta, and each was positively drunk on a diet of exciting new places, sights and sounds. And unashamedly a little overwhelmed by America, with which they were fast falling into love.

  It was the second Sunday that they had attended Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. The Cathedral was magnificent and it was hard to believe it was, in the scale of things, so young.

  The Embassy staff had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the two ‘Navy couples’. The advent of two newlywed catholic girls married to ‘heroes’ who had if not embraced, then taken onboard their wives’ Catholicism, had been seized upon by their Ministry of Information ‘minders’ with delight.

  There had been an early and very public introduction to the Catholic Arch Bishop of Philadelphia, John Krol, who had proudly taken them on a tour of his ‘church’. Designed by Napoleon LeBrun who had also designed the Academy of Music in the city and later the Masonic Temple and a host of other ecclesiastical buildings in New York, the Cathedral had been built between 1846 and 1864. The Cathedral was, and remained the largest Catholic church in Philadelphia – and incidentally, the city’s largest brownstone structure - capable of seating two thousand worshippers. Built in a Romano Corinthian style it was modelled on the Lombard Church of San Carlo al Corso in Rome. According to Arch Bishop Krol its Palladian façade and aqua oxidized-copper dome drew on influences from the Italian Renaissance.

  Marija had not had the heart to tell the good Arch Bishop that his church did not hold a patch on the Cathedral of St Paul’s in the Citadel at Mdina, where she and her Peter had been married only seventy-one days ago. That would have been rude and un-Christian and besides, Lord Franks had been quite explicit about how he expected the two young couples to ‘play the game’.

  Lord Franks and his wife, a kindly and very distinguished lady, had entertained the newcomers to an English tea the day after their arrival in Philadelphia. Significantly, the men from the Ministry of Information had been summarily excluded from the tea.

  ‘Things may be a little bit sticky at present,’ the Ambassador had admitted. ‘Back home there is no doubt a lot of loose talk about how the Americans have let us down, and so forth. That is not how most decent, hard-working, family-loving, God-fearing Americans view the situation. By the way, most Americans are transparently decent, hard-working, family-loving, God-fearing and instinctively welcoming in my experience and this is my second stint over here as Ambassador.’

  The Christophers and the Hannays had listened respectfully.

  ‘The Kennedy Administration has not betrayed us. The United States is a democracy and the President cannot lead his people where they will not go. This is election year and if President Kennedy sends American GIs to the Middle East he will be swept away in a landslide in November. You will find that the rhetoric and distemper of the American TV, radio and printed press is directed not at Britain, or at British people but at the British Government, and at what many Americans still perceive to be British Imperial pretensions. You will – generally speaking – be welcomed with open arms wherever you go providing,’ Lord Franks had counselled, ‘that you do not allow yourself to get drawn into politics. Under no circumstances are you to offer any opinion, positive or otherwise on the American body politic, its Byzantine machinations or upon the character or sayings of any of its players. Other than when you are in this building you should say nothing whatsoever about politics to anybody.’

  Marija’s husband had whispered to her afterwards that if they were not in the Embassy they ought, actually, to assume that their conversation was being ‘bugged’. She thought he was being a little bit paranoid and had indicated as much.

  ‘We are a long way from home here, my love,” he had sighed.

  In the back of the Embassy car the two young women were tempted to pinch themselves. Life was suddenly even more marvellous. Marija had accepted that sooner or later she would have to leave Malta; she had never dreamed it would be in these circumstances or that she would be accompanied by her best friend.

  “I wish we were going down to Norfolk with ‘the boys’,” Rosa decided, catching her breath and watching the streets rush past the window.

  “We’d only get in the way,” Marija giggled.

  Rosa giggled, also.

  Their husbands had spent most of yesterday clambering over big grey warships in the Philadelphia Naval Yard; tomorrow there was talk of a helicopter ride out to a re-commissioned guided missile destroyer conducting trials just off the coast.

  The men from the Ministry of Information had scheduled meetings with Congressmen and various other luminaries at City Hall, the American version of Parliament, tomorrow for the two women. Rosa thought it sounded dreadfully boring; secretly Marija was actually quite excited about the prospect.

  But then everything was exciting about America!

  Marija understood that she and Peter had been sent across the Atlantic to be ‘ambassadors’; she understood why she was being treated like minor royalty and that everybody she met was on their best behaviour. But even so she was beginning to form a real feeling for the country around her, the sprawling mass of its cities, of a population descended from a hundred different races, tribes, places and religions all thrown together into a single bewildering, fascinating melting pot.

  She had been born into and raised in a society which was, albeit on a vastly smaller scale, just such a melting pot. Her father was half-English, half Maltese distantly descended probably from Jews expelled from Spain around the time of Christopher Columbus, her mother was Sicilian, her maternal grandparents were possibly from southern Italy, she almost certainly had the blood of Phoenicians, Greeks and Carthaginians in her veins and yet she was Maltese. She was Maltese in the same way that all the people around her, regardless of their ancestry and family traditions were American. Of course, nothing was that simple. She might be Maltese but she had married an Englishman; her children would
be Maltese-English or English-Maltese, it mattered not which, like her own father. If the wheel turned once, it soon turned again for that was the way of the World. Another complication: if they were to be in American two years not only would her first child be born in America, but possibly her daughter’s younger brother or sister too before she and Peter returned home. Wherever home was to be?

  “You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve said!” Rosa complained with laughing eyes.

  Marija shrugged apologetically and brushed the palm of her right hand across her abdomen. Rosa had that dark, Norman look about her sometimes. Of the two women she was the more naturally curvaceous, flashing-eyed. Rosa had always had boys in tow in her teens. Hers was an old Maltese family with a lineage mapped back ten generations; such short genealogies were superficial in the history of ancient Malta. In the last thousand years Norman knights, Christian crusaders, Ottoman Turks, Barbary pirates and the human flotsam of a score of wars had swept around, through, and sometimes washed up on Malta’s unforgiving rocky shores. Marija was nutmeg-haired and almond-eyed, Rosa was dark haired and her complexion fairer, both were equally the children of their tiny archipelago situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean, fought over, broken and rebuilt countless times through history; once pagan then Christian, Moorish and Christian again. Although they came from a place that would probably fit inside the geographical footprint of greater Philadelphia the two women were oddly at home in America...

  CLANG!

  The women looked to each other.