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

by James Philip

  There was also the matter of Egypt’s own oilfields. Commercially viable fields had been discovered in the first decade of the twentieth century in the Gulf of Suez, other, as yet unexploited but potentially much larger reserves of oil lay under the Sinai Peninsula around Abu Rudeis and Ra’s Sudr. New reserves were regularly discovered in both the Western and the Eastern deserts; had the World not gone mad in October 1962 Nasser’s Egypt might have already been well down the road to becoming a major global oil producer by now. The riches that might have brought would have made possible to fund his regime’s raft of radical social reforms; made it unnecessary to go cap in hand to the old superpowers to finance great projects like the High Dam at Aswan.

  Those oilfields, ‘under the auspices of a new pan-Arab Republic, and those of Kuwait and Southern Iraq, perhaps, allied with those of Abadan and the adjacent Iranian oilfields might yet underwrite a new and lasting Arab economic, cultural and military renaissance’.

  These were the exact words that had come from the mouth of a British Foreign Secretary!

  It was hardly surprising that Nasser and Sadat had looked at each other in askance, momentarily too stunned to respond.

  ‘Of course,’ Sir Thomas Harding-Grayson had continued, as if he was discussing some small and insignificant caveat in a ten thousand word long treatise on building sand castles, ‘one cannot ever be entirely certain how things will play out. War is a notoriously messy business.’

  Egypt was to have a ‘free hand’ in Libya; to be at liberty to restore order to that ‘sadly perturbed land’ and thus ‘secure the southern flank’ of the Central and Eastern Mediterranean ‘theatre of operations’. Moreover, the British had no objection ‘in principle’ to Cairo extending its ‘influence’ further west into, for example, Tunisia, or south into Sudan, etcetera. However, if Iraq succumbed to invasion, not just Arabia was threatened and ‘British interests’ robbed of a hitherto relatively secure supply of oil, Egypt’s own position in the region was inevitably undermined ‘perhaps, for all time’.

  Sir Thomas Harding-Grayson had proposed a pact; albeit the sort of diplomatic pact that nobody in their right mind would dare to write down in black and white, let alone append his signature to.

  The British wanted three things.

  Firstly, at least one, preferably two Egyptian armoured divisions, with supporting infantry and logistics support to somehow be transported around the Arabian Peninsula by sea to be ready for full scale offensive operations not later than 30th June. No, at this stage Sir Thomas was not at liberty to discuss the significance of that date or any other ‘military matter’.

  Secondly, the above mentioned forces would be placed at the disposal of and under the orders of the Allied Commander-in-Chief, Middle East for a period of not less than thirty days after the ‘commencement of offensive operations’.

  Thirdly, after the cessation of hostilities in Iraq – there had been no mention of Iran in the contract – the United Kingdom and the Arab Republic of Egypt would seek to establish good relations based on shared economic and geopolitical interests including a mutual defence pact covering the Eastern Mediterranean and ‘those territories’ surrounding the Persian Gulf.

  Both Nasser and Sadat were military men who understood exactly what was on the table.

  ‘Let us be clear; after we fight the Soviets in Basra Province?’ Nasser had inquired of the British Foreign Secretary. ‘You understand that it may not be possible for my tanks to retire immediately to their initial start lines?’

  ‘Yes. That is not a problem.’

  That was when Nasser and Sadat had known the gamble was worth the candle.

  ‘It is all very simple,’ the Englishman had explained. ‘You have a free hand in the Western Desert all the way to the Tunisian border. Simultaneously, your Army has a chance to earn a glorious victory in the east. Thereafter, with your oilfields secure for a generation you will be able to afford to purchase the fruits of regenerated British industry with which to modernize your economy.’

  Nasser had ordered the 1st and 3rd Armoured Divisions of the Egyptian Army to twenty-four hours readiness to move several days ago. At the same time he had ordered units under the command of several of his most trusted men to ‘guard’ key installations and facilities within the capital. In a revolutionary state all large troop movements caused ripples of alarm and sparked in dissidents sudden hopes of a new coup d’état.

  “What is your advice?” Nasser asked his friend.

  Sadat hesitated. When it became obvious that the regime was, to all intents, siding with the British against the Soviets the remaining stay behind elements of the phalanx of Russian experts and advisors who had avoided the round ups after the Ismailia strike, would almost certainly attempt to foment an uprising. The streets of Cairo would run with blood well before this thing began to play out, and if the adventure ended in failure both he and Nasser would probably pay for it with their heads.

  “There are those who will never forgive us,” he observed sadly. “But the British are right.” The words stuck in his throat. “If we do nothing in a few years we will either have to bow to the Russians again, or perhaps, the Americans. Before the October War we believed that this was our destiny; that and the endless conflict with the Israelis.”

  “Ah,” Nasser sighed, “the Israelis.”

  “I think the British are right that the Israelis will sit this thing out. In any event Palestine is a matter that we cannot resolve at this time.”

  “I agree.” Nasser forced a grim smile. “Summon the Chief of Staff of the Army and the commanders of the 1st and 3rd Armoured Divisions to the Presidential Palace. I will personally give them their orders.”

  Chapter 34

  Thursday 21st May 1964

  British Embassy, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  J. William Fulbright was having a hard time containing his anger and this was patently obvious to every member of the Embassy welcoming committee that morning. This was hardly surprising since he felt like he was not so much walking barefoot over hot coals, as tiptoeing into an invisible wall of disdain as he was ushered into the Ambassador’s spacious private office. The fact that Lord Franks, the United Kingdom’s Ambassador to the United States of America was at pains to pretend that nothing whatsoever was amiss, did not help; nor did the charming pleasantries of Lady Franks, or the immaculately neutral tones of the Chargé d’Affaire, or the grim, fixed expression on the face of the tall, angry-eyed young naval officer who completed a reception line whose civility was of that particularly English, coldly polite variety.

  The Secretary of State waited for the Ambassador to separate himself from his retinue but when Lady Franks made her excuses and left to supervise the provision of tea and coffee, the Chargé d'Affaire, fifty-five year old Sir Patrick Henry Dean, and Captain Sir Peter Christopher, VC, remained.

  Fulbright had known Dean from before the October War, when Dean had been the last Representative of the United Kingdom to the United Nations. As for Peter Christopher, his only previous meetings had been those of the polite nodding acquaintance type which had given him no real insight into the younger man’s temper or character. This was unfortunate because right now Peter Christopher looked like he wanted to hit him with a baseball bat.

  “I know that the President has written to you,” Fulbright said to Lord Franks while he looked to the young naval officer, “but I would like to take this opportunity to personally apologise to you, Sir Peter and to send my best wishes and hopes for her swift recovery from her injuries to Mrs Hannay.”

  The ‘personal security detachment’ provided by the Philadelphia Police Department had permitted an imposter dressed in one of their uniforms - riding a Harley Davidson – to drive unchallenged up to the first of two Embassy cars transporting the two couples back to the compound after attending Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. The assassin had been able to fire several shots into the passenger compartment of the vehicle – carrying Marija and Rosa
Hannay – with Navy Colt forty-five and would have dropped a hand grenade through the shattered offside window of the car had not Jack Griffin, while the vehicle was travelling at over thirty miles-an- hour thrown open his front passenger side door and hurled himself under the wheels of the assassin’s Harley.

  The grenade had skittered away and exploded on the pavement some distance from either Embassy car, killing an elderly man and seriously wounding his wife as the cars sped away, leaving Jack Griffin, bloodied but incandescent with rage beating seven bells out of the attacker. Needless to say the first Philadelphia PD men on the scene had attempted to arrest Griffin for apparently attacking one of their own, and had it not been for his ankle having been broken when he came off his motorcycle, the assassin would probably have escaped in the melee.

  The end result of the whole outrageous farrago was that Rosa Hannay had received superficial injuries from flying glass, and mercifully, Marija had not suffered so much as a scratch but Jack Griffin was still in hospital nursing injuries entirely consistent with those one might reasonably expect to sustain in falling out of a moving car, unseating a motor cyclist by the reckless, nevertheless effective expedient of rolling under his wheels, and from the subsequent brutal pummelling he had received at the hands of the Philadelphia PD.

  “Thank you, sir,” Peter Christopher responded stiffly. “Mrs Hannay’s injuries are on the mend, sir. As you know, my wife was unhurt. Although,” the younger man sniffed, biting back what he had been about to say before settling on a mildly accusative: “the same cannot be said for Chief Petty Officer Griffin.”

  It was the quiet, seething courtesy in what Peter Christopher said next that stung J. William Fulbright, in the moment and whenever he thought about it later.

  “But for Jack’s bravery and courageous self-sacrifice my wife and Rosa Hannay could very easily have been killed due to the negligence of the police and the other local and federal law enforcement officers into whose hands we had been so unwise as to trust ourselves.”

  Peter and Marija had already been visited at the Embassy by the Chief of the Philadelphia Police Department, Commissioner Howard Leary, one of the shortest policemen Peter had ever met. The man was barely an inch or so taller than Marija. Marija had been Marija, utterly charming. Peter had been moody and churlish, communicating in terse monosyllables for which his wife had gently chastised him after Leary had departed.

  “That was deplorable,” the Secretary of State agreed with no little gravitas.

  “Quite, sir,” Peter concurred. In truth his mood had not been improved by a meeting earlier that morning with Rachel Piotrowska – the woman he had previously known as Clara Pullman – whom, it seemed, was now an openly acknowledged officer of the newly formed National Security Service, of which GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 had become subordinate branches under the directorship of Sir Dick White. Clara, or rather, Rachel, had been a little vague about the purpose of her visit to Philadelphia which was par for the course with spooks. Presently, she was ‘talking’ to Rosa, ‘just to tie up a few loose ends’, presumably concerning the ‘Malta end’ of the big lie that he and the two wives had been asked to live in the wake of Samuel Calleja’s execution. To ‘facilitate’ this little tête-à-tête Peter had been ‘asked’ to send Alan Hannay on ‘an appropriate errand’ for a few hours. Much as this was intensely galling he had sent his friend – if they had not been close, good friends before they came to America they were most assuredly that now - over to the Navy Department building in Camden to organise a ‘proper visit’ by Marija and himself early next week; a publicity exercise with photo shoots and such like to persuade the American public that the hero of the Battle of Malta did not hold any grudges against the tardy late arrival of the US Navy.

  Actually, he did not hold any such ‘grudges’, and certainly not against the ‘American public’ or ‘people’. His war had started in early December last year in the gun line bombarding Santander in Northern Spain, turned grim the next day when Talavera was bombed off Cape Finisterre, and red hot in the fire fight inshore at the Battle of Lampedusa. The fight to save the USS Enterprise south of Malta in February already seemed an awfully long time ago; and the events of the Battle of Malta after which he had been pulled out of the cold drowning sea by American sailors who had dived into the flotsam of Talavera’s sinking to tie a line around him, well, all that was very nearly just a bad dream. The last six months had rushed past in a blur and in the middle of it he had found, met and married the love of his life. Occasionally, he wondered if he had already lived his life and that everything that happened in the future, would be in some way diminished by what he had lived through and against the odds, survived these last few months. However, those were thoughts only for the darkness. When he was with Marija he had no doubts that the best of his life was still to come and that as sure as night followed day, sooner or later he would find himself again standing on the bridge of another big grey warship. Although, hopefully never again leading his people into the jaws of death...

  Rachel Piotrowska would be talking to Rosa and Marija, who had insisted on being present during the ‘interview’, about Rosa’s dead first husband. She would want to know, to double and triple check each and every one of Rosa’s memories. Who had Samuel met? Who had he spoken to or of, his movements, habits, what he said in his sleep, on and on forever? It must be intolerable for Rosa not to be able to confide a single word of this, any of it to Alan. The worst of it was yet to come; one day the wreck of HMS Torquay would be raised from the bottom of the Grand Harbour where she had lain since January – her back broken by a Red Dawn saboteur’s demolition charges - and on that day human remains would be discovered. Later those remains would be identified as those of Samuel Calleja (1932-1964) and buried, with due ceremony and presumably no little public fanfare. Samuel Calleja, the story would go, had been an innocent dupe of evil men and in years to come nobody would connect the execution of a Soviet parachutist for war crimes on 6th April 1964 at Paola Prison, with Marija’s brother, and Rosa’s husband. Or that at least was the great plan concocted by the Ministry of Information because the country needed heroes and heroines, princes and princesses and whatever the players thought about it, they owed it to their people to accept and to play the roles which fate had randomly assigned to them.

  Peter hated having to lie to Alan Hannay.

  It felt like betrayal even though it was his duty.

  It was duty which had made him drive Talavera into the big guns of those Soviet warships off Malta less than two months ago; and it was duty that compelled him to go along with the lie.

  “Marija and Rosa survived, sir,” Peter Christopher told the Secretary of State. “That is all I care about. That, sir,” he added, “is the end of the matter. Marija and Rosa would be mortified if this unfortunate incident was allowed to in any way further sour the relations between our two countries.”

  The British Ambassador decided to take charge of the meeting.

  “I have asked Sir Patrick and Sir Peter to be present,” he explained with brusque courtesy as he waved the other men towards a circle of chairs near the high, old-fashioned windows that allowed sunshine to fill the room with warmth each afternoon. “Sir Patrick will minute whatever we have to say to each other, Secretary of State.”

  “This meeting is better ‘off the record’, Ambassador,” Fulbright objected.

  “Circumstances make that impossible, I fear.”

  The four men sat down, the Chargé d'Affaire picked up a large lined hard back notebook and a propelling pencil. Sitting next to him with the US Secretary of State fulminating to his right Peter Christopher had no idea what he was still doing in the room.

  “You wanted to speak to me,” Lord Franks prompted. “You have the floor, Mr Secretary.”

  Fulbright had requested the United Kingdom’s Ambassador attend him ‘at his earliest convenience’ at the State Department Building in downtown Philadelphia; Oliver Franks had politely declined that invitation. Acting against h
is own better judgement on orders from Oxford – orders that came from the very top – he had informed the Secretary of State that: ‘I am to convey to you that since it is obviously unsafe for representatives of the Unity Administration of the United Kingdom to travel the streets of Philadelphia at present, that I must, respectfully suggest that you call on the Embassy.”

  “Your Prime Minister virtually threatened to nuke the Soviets if things went badly in Iraq,” Fulbright stated unhappily.

  “Yes,” Lord Franks agreed. “That is what Mrs Thatcher said.”

  “That’s madness!”

  “What? Threatening nuclear war?” The Ambassador posed the questions rhetorically, wearily. “Or waging it without warning anybody first, Mr Secretary?”

  Peter Christopher winced.

  Then to his astonishment J. William Fulbright, the man who had inherited the poisoned chalice of America’s disastrous post-October War foreign policy after the Battle of Washington in December last year, smiled. He actually smiled.

  “That’s below the belt, Oliver.”

  “I apologise,” Lord Franks returned graciously. “I’m not sure President Kennedy took the Prime Minister seriously when she spoke about drawing lines in the sand. When she flies over in a few days time she plans to re-iterate exactly what she means...”

  “This is the wrong time for Mrs Thatcher to come over...”

  “Fine,” the Ambassador retorted. “The Prime Minister will make a personal visit. Perhaps, she’ll bring over the twins. For a short holiday, as it were. Obviously, while she is over here it would be rude if she didn’t make herself available to talk to the networks...”

  “Dammit, Oliver! A head of state can’t come to another country and start playing politics behind a President’s back. You wouldn’t countenance the idea of the President meeting the Irish Government delegation in Oxford last month...”