by James Philip
Vladimir Andreyevich Puchkov did not have much time for over-educated intelligence officers at the best of times; and even less for the KGB ones that shithead Andropov had foisted on his division, who spent more time writing down what real soldiers thought about politics than they did collecting useful combat intelligence. The scowl that creased his sunburnt, scarred face suddenly concentrated the KGB man’s thoughts.
“Miqdad ibn Aswad Al-Kindi was one of the Sahabads of the Prophet Muhammad, Comrade General,” the younger man went on hurriedly. “That is, one of the so-called Four Companions. Miqdad ibn Aswad Al-Kindi was said to be a perfect Shia...”
Puchkov shook his head.
Where did the KGB find these useless fuckers?
“Great. So everywhere we go we can expect to have a bunch of fanatics come at us in a fucking banzai charge like these comedians?” He gestured towards the scorched, smoking carcasses of the knocked out M-48s.
“Er, I don’t know, sir.”
Puchkov told the officer to fuck off and not to come back until: “You’ve got something useful to tell me!”
He turned to get down from the turret.
A ninety-millimetre round from one of the M-48’s had hit the cupola beneath his feet and bounced off, leaving a twenty-millimetre deep boot-long gash in the armour. An armour-piercing round from a one hundred and five-millimetre fifty-two calibre rifled British L7 gun fitted in the Centurion Mark II, would have cleaved through the steel at his feet like a red hot knife through butter. Puchkov hesitated, stared a while longer at the blackened M-48s, wondering privately how this little battle would have turned out if the Iraqis had had been riding in British Centurions or the latest American M-60 main battle tanks.
Bloodily, he suspected.
However, he did not dwell on this overlong as he jumped down and trudged towards where he had ordered his communications truck to park up in dead ground below the ridgeline. A mine clearance detail halted in mid-stride and snapped to attention as he passed.
Nobody seriously believed that the suicidal zealots who had attacked a numerically superior force equipped with bigger, longer range ordnance in broad daylight had paused to lay mines under or alongside the road ahead. But it paid to be safe. Up until the last week the main enemy had been the terrain and the occasional interventions of high altitude RAF bombers; the last few days had seen a number of sharp little actions like this afternoon’s south of Sadiyah.
Troopers from the Divisional Headquarters Company were disembarking from half-tracks and ancient requisitioned Fords and Dodge six-wheelers when he arrived at the radio truck. His boys had been forced to seize and repair whatever vehicles they found on their way south.
By the time the Division got to the Persian Gulf it was going to resemble a bloody gypsy caravan at this rate!
Chapter 42
Wednesday 27th May 1964
Headquarters of the 3rd Imperial Armoured Division, Khorramshahr, Iran
Brigadier Mirza Hasan Mostofi al-Mamaleki was in sombre mood when Lieutenant General Sir Michael Carver arrived at his headquarters that afternoon. A week ago the Provisional Government – an ad hoc collection of middle-ranking couriers and survivors from the Shah’s regime, and elderly Army officers based in a disused Royal Palace outside Isfahan – had appointed a new Military Governor of Khuzestan Province, which covered the Khorramshahr-Abadan Sector.
It seemed that General Jafar Sharif-Zahedi – members of whose family had literally been in bed with the Pahlavi dynasty ever since it came to power in the 1920s, and had little or no actual ‘soldiering’ experience – who had based himself and his entourage in the town of Bandr Mahshahr some thirty miles to the east, was more preoccupied with recovering the ‘jewel of Abadan’ than he was securing the country’s western borders. Like the rest of the Provisional Government he viewed the war in Iraq as a sideshow; the main thing was to first, hold the Soviet invaders within the mountains of the north, and second, eventually expel them from the holy soil of Iran. Oh, and to enrich oneself and one’s family – and one’s numerous retainers – in the process.
Bizarrely, it seemed that the Provisional Government had convinced itself that the Red Army’s appetite for conquest would be wholly sated once it had consumed Iraq. The thinking went something like this: there was already a dysfunctional socialist regime in Iraq, therefore an Iraq ruled by the Soviet Union would in some way be a more stable, predictable neighbour and because it lay to the west of Abadan and the southern oilfields it was unlikely to impair Iran’s ability to continue to export that oil via the Persian Gulf to the outside World.
It was the sort of complacent logic that made re-arranging the deck chairs on the deck of the Titanic look like a rational survival strategy.
Al-Mamaleki had already made arrangements for his wife and children to travel south to stay with relations in Shiraz, hopefully beyond the reach of the idiots in Isfahan. His single meeting with General Jafar Sharif-Zahedi, a corpulent unimaginative man with no understanding of the realities of modern armoured warfare, had convinced him beyond any reasonable doubt that the inmates had seized control of the asylum. This he freely confessed to Michael Carver as they stood over the map table at his headquarters in the eastern quarter of Khorramshahr.
With the pencil in his hand he prodded the line of the Alborz Mountains stretching across his country from the Caucasus in the northwest most of the way to Afghanistan in the east.
“A couple of squadrons of my Centurions could hold the passes through those mountains forever,” he snorted derisively. “The Soviets know that. The key sector is down here opposite Basra. Abadan is the key.”
“Is there anything to be gained by my travelling to Bandr Mahshahr to pay my respects to General Jafar Sharif-Zahedi?”
Al-Mamaleki shook his head.
“He would probably have you arrested, my friend.” The Iranian officer sighed. “People like Zahedi care about nothing beyond their own little satrapy,” he went on derisively. “He thinks that because he is the ‘master’ of Khuzestan Province that Abadan and the oilfields are his own personal possessions, to enjoy and to dispose of at his whim.”
Michael Carver was silent for several seconds.
“What of your situation, Hasan?”
“My uncle is Governor in Shiraz. My family will be safe there.” The Iranian shrugged, his lips formed into a grimly thin line on his still handsome now darkly bearded face. “My officers understand that this is the key front. This,” he added resignedly, “is where the Russians will strike next when they have digested the easy meat of the Basra garrison.”
The Englishman became aware that his friend’s stare was suddenly hard, unrelenting.
“The fools in Isfahan and many of their servants, men like Zahedi in Bandr Mahshahr, imagined that you will meekly surrender Abadan to me. They don’t believe me when I tell them that you would fight to the last tank and wreck the place from end to end to stop it falling into the hands of the Russians.” He smiled roguishly. “Or us.”
Michael Carver made no attempt to contradict the other man.
“This I know,” al-Mamaleki guffawed. “Because you and I, we are soldiers. But those imbeciles in Isfahan? Even after what the Russians did to Tehran and the Shah,” his momentary good humour died, “they still don’t understand that unless we fight, those bastards will enslave us for generations to come.”
Not for the first time Michael Carver found himself admiring the poet that invariably emerged in troubled times from somewhere deep within the Persian soul.
“What of your officers, my friend?”
“Those who are still with me will fight when the time comes.”
Al-Mamaleki’s brigade had grown into an over-sized division boasting as many as two hundred armoured fighting vehicles of which over sixty were Centurions – a mixture of Mark Is and up-gunned Mark IIs - and over seventy American M-48 Pattons. Notwithstanding that the original ‘brigade’ had been re-designated a ‘division’, no battlefield or brevet prom
otion had been bestowed on its commanding officer; a thing which spoke volumes for the suspicion in which al-Mamaleki was obviously held by his new master in Bandr Mahshahr.
Before driving up to Khorramshahr from his headquarters in Abadan – a journey of around seven miles – Michael Carver had summoned his staff to brief him on events in and around Abadan during his absence in Saudi Arabia.
His own smaller ‘Abadan Garrison’ force of some thirty tanks, several batteries of seventeen and twenty-five millimetre anti-tank artillery, a total of six battalions of partially mechanised infantry, and around a thousand lines of communication troops supported by two squadrons of RAF Hawker Hunter interceptors, half-a-dozen helicopters of various descriptions and a flight of four Canberra jet bombers represented a formidable fighting unit but if the Red Army was to be struck a telling blow it would be by al-Mamaleki’s massed armour, not by the British and Commonwealth forces defending Abadan Island. In a perfect world Carver would have explored ways of extending Abadan’s air defence umbrella – two batteries of long-range surface-to-air Bristol Bloodhound missiles – to cover the Iranian 3rd Imperial Armoured Division’s over-extended northern front opposite Basra. The Bloodhounds already covered the airspace over Khorramshahr, and two troops of Centurions were already imbedded with al-Mamaleki’s garrison within the town. Sometime within the next ten days it was planned to bring HMAS Sydney up the Shat-al-Arab to offload several Centurions, a squadron of Australian Navy Westland Wessex helicopters and to deliver an addition ANZAC rifle battalion to Abadan.
“I reported to Bandr Mahshahr that I ‘demanded’ fuel and lubricants from ‘the British’,” al-Mamaleki confessed, ruefully. “The idiots had no idea that the only thing which had been keeping the 3rd Division in the field was your supply organisation.”
Michael Carver saw the funny side of this, smiled.
Last night he had dined with the Foreign Secretary, Sir Thomas Harding-Grayson, a most erudite and perspicacious man with an apparently encyclopaedic knowledge of the history, religions and customs of the Middle East, and a profound understanding of the mindsets of principal members of each of the major governmental, religious and ethnic leaders. Sir Thomas was deeply distrustful of Nasser even though he personally admired the man; ‘fascinating, remarkable fellow’ he had said ruminatively, ‘but he will let us down in the end’. As for the Saudis ‘they would blow up Abadan themselves if they could but without the Americans they feel vulnerable, as much to an internal revolt as they do to external aggression’.
The Emir of Kuwait was pleading for his small country to be packed full of British and Commonwealth troops but shuddered at the idea of Egyptian tanks rumbling across his sands. Likewise, in the emirates along the southern shores of the Persian Gulf the local potentates, sheiks and despots felt both reassured and fearful watching the big grey allied warships out at sea, listening to the silvery jets noisily overflying their barren lands and by the ongoing ‘pull out’ of the American conglomerates prospecting for black gold in their fiefdoms.
The whole Middle East was ready to explode.
‘Nasser won’t send us more than a token brigade or maybe a couple of under-strength regiments from his 1st and 3rd Armoured Divisions,’ the Foreign Secretary had explained. It was not said cynically, he was simply stating facts. ‘Oh, he’ll dress it up as a massive military commitment, a huge investment in pan-Arabism, or some such. But that’s not the thing. The thing is that Egypt will be putting down a marker that the Soviets will not be able to ignore in years to come. It is pointless expending unlimited blood and treasure stopping the Red Army in its tracks if, when the shooting is over everybody looks to us to guarantee the peace because that is certainly not a burden we can carry alone.’
Michael Carver had quizzed the Foreign Secretary over the as yet unpublicised Anglo-Egyptian Mutual Defence Treaty.
‘Will we actually go to war with Israel if the Israelis attack Egypt after this is over? Assuming we don’t get thrown out of the Gulf, that is? Say, if there’s a war between Egypt and Israel next year?’
‘Probably not,’ Sir Thomas had conceded. ‘But Nasser knows that. In the long run he also knows that it will be in our interests to be his arms manufacturer and in the foreseeable future, his naval bulwark in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Israelis won’t know what we and Nasser have cooked up; they’ll have to assume, for a year or two at least, that if they make a wrong move that either the Ark Royal or the Eagle will come steaming into the Eastern Mediterranean. That wouldn’t be good for anybody. In the meantime Nasser knows he’s got a free hand in Libya to secure his western borders against a possible insurgency and to start building his pan-Arab empire along the North African coast, safe in the knowledge the Royal Navy is guarding his seaward right flank. Diplomacy is like politics, and most things in life I suppose, it is the art of the possible. We have made a number of distasteful compromises and accommodations because at the end of the day we need a reliable constant supply of crude oil from this region.’
Hasan al-Mamaleki was watching Michael Carver with thoughtful eyes that threatened to read his friend’s mind.
“General Zahedi doesn’t understand,” he said stepping back from the map table. “None of the people in Isfahan understand. If you and I were playing a staff college exercise, a war game, nine times out of ten the result would be the same. Whether we stand and fight or whether we run and hide the result would be the same.” He nodded towards the map. “Abadan will be lost.”
The Englishman nodded.
Chapter 43
Wednesday 27th May 1964
HMS Tiger, Tarout Bay, Damman
Pipes twittered as the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Varyl Begg, marched down the gangway from HMS Triumph, the slab-sided former aircraft carrier which had been converted into a heavy repair ship, a floating dockyard by any other name. He blinked as he emerged from the shadows into the dazzling afternoon sunshine and stepped onto the deck of the cruiser.
The twelve thousand mile high speed run from Malta, with a forty-eight hour refuelling stopover at Simons Town at the Cape, had taken a heavy toll on HMS Tiger. The rigors of that twenty-three day passage had worn down both the ship and her crew and Rear Admiral Nicholas ‘Nick’ Davey, who had joined the ship in South Africa after flying down to Pretoria for meetings with the Republic’s Prime Minister and other cabinet colleagues to discuss a possible South African contribution to the assembling ‘Middle East Task Force’, had reluctantly shifted his flag ashore to permit the cruiser to come alongside the heavy repair ship HMS Triumph to address her most pressing mechanical needs.
The First Sea Lord had determined that he wanted to see, and to be seen, on as many of the ships of the ABNZ Squadron assembled in the Persian Gulf as possible during his forty-eight hour visit, and his host had been delighted to oblige him; hence the meeting onboard the cruiser.
“Welcome aboard Tiger, sir,” Rear Admiral Nick Davey declared proudly.
The other man looked around at the tangle of cables and the dismantled equipment in every conceivable state of repair strewn everywhere in a decidedly un-Navy like way.
“Good to be out here at last,” Admiral Sir Varyl Begg retorted.
“Sorry about the mess, sir,” Davey remarked. “I need Tiger back at sea in five days time and there’s rather a lot to do!”
“That’s hardly surprising after her run around the Cape.”
Dispatching at least one ‘big ship’ from the Mediterranean Fleet the ‘long way around’ the Cape of Good Hope to the Persian Gulf had been a largely symbolic gesture, a thing primarily designed for public consumption back home. Ideally, the ‘big ship’ would have been an aircraft carrier but unfortunately the Royal Navy had run out of seaworthy options in that regard; Ark Royal was in dockyard hands in Portsmouth, the Eagle could not be spared from the Mediterranean, Hermes was in Gibraltar undergoing major repairs to her starboard turbines, and repairs to HMS Victorious, currently being ‘patched up’ at Malta were anticipated – assuming
she was not written off as being not worth repairing - to take a year to eighteen months once she was, most likely, towed either to Gibraltar or Portsmouth. The other ‘carrier’ in the Mediterranean, HMS Albion, was actually a ‘commando’ or ‘helicopter carrier’; and although she would have looked good on the front pages of newspapers she too was badly in need of time in dockyard hands, having been repaired in an unholy rush after her mining in Algeciras Bay back in December. Albion was currently unable to steam at more than twelve knots. Albion’s sister, Bulwark, similarly converted to the role of a ‘commando’ carrier, had remained in the Pacific when Centaur, the Navy’s least modified ‘aircraft’ carrier, sporting an obsolete radar and electronics suite and incapable of operating the most modern fighter and strike fast jets had been, quite literally, the ‘last carrier standing’. Basically, the Royal Navy’s cupboard was somewhat bare and the only available ‘big ships’ capable of a long, hard steam around the Cape had been one of the two ‘big cats’.
Tiger’s surviving sister ship, the other ‘big cat’, the Lion had stayed in the Mediterranean, acting as the Eagle’s guard ship. HMS Hampshire, the newly commissioned second ship of the new cruiser-sized County class guided missile destroyers had been provisionally pencilled in to join Tiger; but then she had been requisitioned to transport big bombs out to Cyprus for the RAF and to carry away the nuclear warheads salvaged from the wreck of the big cats’ sunken sister, HMS Blake in Limassol Harbour.
The Navy had run out of ‘big ships’.
The South African government had offered to send the Type 12 frigate President Steyn, and the old ‘W’ Class former Royal Navy destroyer Jan van Riebeeck to the Persian Gulf but after much discussion it was decided that for purely logistical reasons, the Republic’s contribution should be limited to sending as many as four battalions of mechanised light infantry to the theatre utilising locally available shipping. Davey’s mission to the Cape after a brief stopover in Pretoria had been as much to co-ordinate the South African Navy’s supporting role in the submarine blockade of the Falklands Archipelago and the islands of South Georgia, as it was to supplement the motley fleet coalescing in the Persian Gulf.