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

by James Philip

  “When I was in South Africa the government there was mightily impressed with the line we’re taking over the Falklands,” the junior man remarked to the professional head of the Royal Navy. “I think they’d been beginning to ask themselves where it left them if and when we started retrenching, sir.”

  Sir Varyl Begg guffawed and shook his head.

  “I think we’re all asking ourselves that,” he confided. “We might have lost David Luce and Julian Christopher but their spirit lives on. Dammit, after what Julian’s boy did at Malta nobody in the Service would be able to look at themselves in the mirror if we started taking backward steps now.”

  Nick Davey nodded enthusiastically.

  Deploying the Oberon and Porpoise class boats to the South Atlantic had been a brave thing to do. Fortunately, they had a government that did nothing by halves.

  Thank god!

  The ongoing war operations in the South Atlantic came under the umbrella of Operation Sturdee, named in honour of the First World War victor of the Battle of the Falklands, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Frederick Charles Doveton Sturdee. The three two-hundred nautical mile Total Exclusion Zones – TEZs – had accordingly been named ‘Invincible’ (the Falklands Archipelago), ‘Inflexible’ (South Georgia), and ‘Glasgow’ (the South Sandwich Islands). At the Battle of the Falklands in December 1914 it had been the battlecruisers Invincible – Sturdee’s flagship – and Inflexible which had battered the out-gunned armoured cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau of Admiral Maximillian von Spee’s German East Asia Squadron to pieces, in company with the light cruiser HMS Glasgow.

  Nick Davey was less of a naval historian than many of his contemporaries; until his retirement from the service shortly before the October War, he had been much too busy living life to the full to bother overmuch with history books. Looking back he had spent a large part of the first half of his career mucking about in racing yachts and chasing women with his greatly lamented recently deceased old friend Julian Christopher.

  Notwithstanding, he had once met an old salt from HMS Glasgow – the only British ship to have been present at the debacle of the Battle of Coronel in which von Spee’s guns had demolished a much weaker Royal Navy Squadron off the Chilean coast on 1st November 1914 – and the Battle of the Falklands five-and-a-half weeks later. He could not remember the old salt’s name, both men had been a little the worse for drink at the time, but he did remember that the man had told him that at one time during the Great War the Glasgow’s mascot had been a pig called ‘Tirpitz’.

  All of which was incidental to current ongoing operations in the South Atlantic. As a result of his conversations with the Republic’s Prime Minister, Hendrik Verwoerd, and several of his senior ministers, the South African Navy had taken responsibility for the protection of an oiler and a submarine support ship strategically positioned in mid-South Atlantic; a floating depot for the submarines on station thousands of miles from the nearest friendly port.

  Nick Davey had left Pretoria with mixed emotions. Having been forewarned that but for the October War Hendrik Verwoerd would gladly have severed all military ties with the United Kingdom, he had been surprised by the pragmatism of his mainly Afrikaner hosts. That said, their ‘Apartheid’ system of segregation had the look and the feel of a very dirty business. The Ambassador, John Maud, an old Etonian former Master of Birkbeck College, had warned him to steer well clear of ‘local racial politics’, and to forget anything he had heard about the Nationalist government having had Nazi sympathies ‘during the forty-five war’. Not for the first time in his life Davey was glad he had never paid that much attention to politics. Politics was a filthy business at the best of times.

  The South African contribution to Operation Sturdee meant that within the next few days three of the four larger Royal Navy ships based at Simons Town – the destroyer Cavendish, and the anti-submarine frigates Eskimo and Blackpool – would be steaming around the Cape to join Davey’s squadron.

  A man naturally given to optimism and good cheer he preferred not to dwell on the fact that the USS Kitty Hawk possessed several times the offensive punch of his entire rag tag Persian Gulf flotilla. The Americans were taking a backseat on this one; so be it. He would work with the tools he had been given by the Admiralty. Ideally, he would have liked a couple of big carriers – Ark Royal and Eagle would fit the bill nicely, thank you – and not one but both of the ‘big cats’ and lots of air defence destroyers like the modified ‘Battles’, not to mention a proper fleet train to keep his ships continuously at sea for weeks on end. But he did not have any of that. Thankfully, what he did have was a squadron made up of men and ships with plenty of recent combat experience who understood, as only men who have been in the heat of battle can understand, that the coming campaign was probably going to be a very close run thing.

  Nick Davey escorted the First Sea Lord down through the chaos of the stern to his day cabin where, without delay he called to his flag lieutenant to organise a ‘brace of pink gins’.

  Presently, the two men were alone, having dismissed their secretaries and flag lieutenants. They sat in chairs, eyed their surrounding for some moments as they cradled their glasses in steady hands. HMS Tiger was a wartime hull that had lain idle many years before she was completed with modern gunnery and electronics. Much of her below decks layout was old-fashioned, albeit that there was more space for her crew because she mounted only two rather than the traditional World War II three or four main battery turrets. The day cabin was relatively spacious by contemporary standards for what was essentially, only a medium-sized cruiser. Light streamed in through several open scuttles and the ship had about her a hard driven but still new feel and smell.

  “You and I have not always seen eye to eye, Nick,” the First Sea Lord said. “That was a dreadful business on Malta,” he added. “Julian was a damned fine officer and nothing that happened at Malta was in any way his fault. He was let down. We were all let down. I’d like to be able to say that we’re better off without the Americans, except you and I both know that’s not true.”

  Nick Davey said nothing. Varyl Begg had always been a man who looked for closer and better relations with the US Navy, for the greatest possible transfer of technology and ever more intimately compatible systems. He had been a missiles advocate who did not believe that the Navy needed or could afford more big carriers; but that had been in an age when every First Sea Lord had been able to count on the Royal Navy being in league with the United States Navy, operating in a tactical environment in which its ships always operated beneath the impenetrable shield of overwhelming of American naval airpower. Nick Davey suspected that Begg, like so many sinners who genuinely repent of their former ways, was still a little uncomfortable with his former views. Recanting was one thing, atonement another.

  “Julian Christopher and I had our differences,” Begg admitted gruffly. “But that was all before the war. We exchanged friendly notes after his appointment to the Med, buried the hatchet, as it were. For the record I entirely endorsed your posting to the Persian Gulf Squadron. I think you are just the fellow for the job.”

  “That’s jolly decent of you to say so, sir.”

  The men sipped their gins.

  The First Sea Lord looked up.

  “For your ears only at this stage Operation Cold Harbour has been authorised at the highest level.” He paused briefly. “Execution date and hour to be confirmed in due course, pending the finalisation of planning for Operation Lightfoot. Whatever happens in the coming weeks we will give the Soviets one heck of a bloody nose. You are the man on the spot. You have a completely free hand to liaise with C-in-C Middle East as to the implementation of Operation Cold Harbour. The objective will be to inflict the maximum possible casualties on the enemy and to support Allied land forces to the absolute limit of your power.”

  Nick Davey contemplated his gin.

  “Do you have any questions?” The Firs Sea Lord inquired quietly.

  “No, sir.”

  “Yo
u should be ready to launch Operation Cold Harbour no later than the first week of July. The latest intelligence is that the Red Army will be in Baghdad by the weekend.”

  Nick Davey nodded, a rueful smile forming on his lips.

  He raised his glass to the First Sea Lord.

  “Confusion to our enemies!” He proposed.

  “Damnation to our enemies!” The other man countered grimly.

  Chapter 44

  Wednesday 27th May 1964

  RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, England

  “Comrade Alexander Nikolayevich,” Lieutenant Colonel Francis Harold St John Waters, VC, translated, “maintains that we have to fight a war to justify our seats at the peace table, Prime Minister.”

  Margaret Thatcher raised a disdainful eyebrow, as did the Soviet delegation’s female interpreter, a hard-faced, barrel-shaped woman of indeterminate middle years with piggy eyes and a fixed sneer on her lips.

  This woman, dressed in a green uniform with KGB flashes on her jacket lapels rasped her own simultaneous translation of what the somewhat battered and hungry looking SAS man had just said.

  The Russians sat one side of a trestle table; Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin flanked by Academician Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov on his left and by First Secretary of the KGB, Alexander Nikolayevich Shelepin to his right. Opposite sat Margaret Thatcher, with Deputy Prime Minister James Callaghan to her right, and the Chief of the Defence Staff, Field Marshall Sir Richard Hull to her left. Frank Waters sat at Sir Richard’s elbow, and the Soviet Delegation’s female interpreter at Shelepin’s side.

  There was nobody else in the draughty, cold hangar on the edge of the air base. Every few minutes the conversation ceased, drowned out by an aircraft landing or taking off.

  The strained ‘pleasantries’ and introductions had gone on interminably before Margaret Thatcher had cut to the heart of the matter and asked directly: ‘have you flown to England with a peace proposal?’

  To say that this had perturbed the members of the Soviet delegation was an understatement on a par with a suggesting that the Cuban Missiles War had been an ‘unfortunate misunderstanding’.

  Kosygin and Shelepin had looked at her as if she had just disrobed and begun dancing on the table.

  “That’s the sort of nonsense that caused the war over Cuba,” the Angry Widow retorted.

  Margaret Thatcher had not expected this ‘conference’ to be a civil, or a necessarily productive encounter. She had demanded the Soviet authorities acknowledge her warning about the future use of nuclear weapons. A simple plain text radio transmission or a publicly broadcast unambiguous statement of policy would have sufficed; although she had secretly hoped for a renewal of face to face contact and possibly, one last chance to defuse the escalating disaster in the Middle East before she once again sent British and Commonwealth troops into battle.

  Alexei Kosygin cleared his throat, irritation written in his grey eyes.

  “After the First War there was Versailles, after the Great Patriotic War there was Yalta and then the United Nations experiment.” The sixty year old hero of the siege of Leningrad shrugged, as if he too was questioning whether there had been something lost in the translation of their previous remarks. “There will be a peace conference after this last war too. Or,” he shrugged again, resignedly, “there will be more wars.”

  Margaret Thatcher shook her head.

  “How can you talk about peace while the Red Army is invading two sovereign countries, Mr Kosygin?”

  The Russian’s eyes were bleak.

  “You threaten us with nuclear weapons,” he said. It was neither a question; nor an accusation. “You threaten us as if we are naughty children. This is no way to conduct international affairs.”

  “Neither is putting the Shah of Iran up against a wall with a group of semi-clothed young women and mowing them all down with machine guns!” Margaret Thatcher replied angrily. “Or destroying the capital city of a country with which you were not at war with a huge nuclear bomb!”

  Kosygin waited for the translation.

  He shrugged, spoke sadly.

  “You destroyed my country. You killed one hundred million of my people.”

  “You need to tell President Kennedy that!” The Prime Minister snapped. “Not me!”

  “Yet you still fight the Americans’ war for them?” Kosygin said blandly.

  James Callaghan stirred by his Margaret Thatcher’s side.

  He coughed.

  “May I say something, Prime Minister?”

  Margaret Thatcher nodded

  “Of course, Jim.” She sat back and made a conscious effort to relax her shoulders, swallowing a little of the rage that was threatening to consume her.

  The eyes of the Soviet delegation switched to the large, clumsy-looking figure of the Deputy Prime Minister.

  “The Cuban Missiles War happened because you and our allies, the Americans, made a series of terrible mistakes. We in the United Kingdom were just caught in the middle. In any event, recriminations belong to a World that no longer exists; the thing that we have to decide today is whether we want to live in peace in the World that we actually find ourselves in.”

  This prompted cold stares.

  “May I ask a question?” Andrei Sakharov inquired, raising his right hand.

  James Callaghan nodded ponderously.

  “Why did you not retaliate when those Krasnaya Zarya zealots attacked you in the Mediterranean?”

  The stillness was almost hurtful to the ear.

  Margaret Thatcher did not trust herself to reply.

  Jericho had blown away the last mysteries surrounding Red Dawn. Red Dawn had been a Stalinist legacy, a monster within the Soviet state but not, like the KGB had tried to convince the rest of the World, a completely rogue apparat. Red Dawn had been under the control – albeit flawed control - of the collective leadership of the new Soviet Union ever since the October War; a monstrous smokescreen for the Russians’ long planned revenge on the West. However, back at the beginning of February nobody had known that, and the ‘not knowing’ had been one of the reasons she had categorically refused to sanction an Arc Light thermonuclear counter-strike.

  Every time the Prime Minister flicked a glance towards the glacially cold-eyed First Director of the KGB, Alexander Nikolayevich Shelepin, she had to suppress a shiver. Shelepin and his deputy, Yuri Andropov had been the puppet masters of the Red Dawn abomination. While Andropov had paid the price for losing control of Krasnaya Zarya beast when he fell into the hands of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s secret police in Bucharest; the only reason Shelepin had not yet moved against the ‘collective leadership’ was that his own reputation, and to a degree the fear in which he was universally held in the Soviet Union, had been temporarily tarnished by his deputy’s shortcomings. If the Rumanian Securitate had not beaten Andropov so badly that he almost died on the flight back to Sverdlovsk, it would have been Shelepin’s head that was on the block.

  Shelepin was the man who ran the Soviet gulag, the man who commanded the legions of penal battalions; the man who directed the slave labour camps scattered across the steppes providing the human fodder to run the new factories. Shelepin was the man who, in effect, oversaw the Soviet post-war ‘dispersed command economy’, the man who had been charged with ‘enforcing’ the Chelyabinsk-based collective leadership’s first ‘five year plan’ whose primary purpose was the rebuilding of the Soviet war economy.

  It was all there, this and so much more, in the wealth of Jericho decrypts. GCHQ had been overwhelmed by the ‘gold dust’ which had fallen into its lap and every day piles of fresh intelligence piled up, mostly unread for want of qualified analysts. No matter, sooner or later the Prime Minister knew that she would need something with which to bargain, or if things went really badly, something she could sell to the Kennedy Administration. She had Jericho and Jack Kennedy had an election to win, Jericho might be the ace up her sleeve one day. Because of Jericho she had no need of existential psychic tricks, traps or pow
ers to get inside the heads of the men sitting across the table from her because she knew exactly what they were thinking.

  The Politburo, which held Kosygin, Brezhnev and the old soldier, Chuikov, in a loose but nevertheless threatening head lock; was getting cold feet about the war in Iran and Iraq and had ordered Kosygin to attempt to sow division in the ‘capitalist camp’ and to explore the possibility of persuading the ‘Angry Widow’ to step aside in the Persian Gulf.

  The British threat to ‘go nuclear’ had grabbed the attention of the Soviet leadership but it had not panicked it; because the Soviets had never stopped fighting the October War.

  “The Tehran strike was the first use of nuclear weapons by one sovereign nation against another since the October War,” Margaret Thatcher said softly. “As you say, the strikes in February were the work of zealots.”

  Sakharov understood the distinction perfectly.

  His companions regarded the distinction as being irrelevant.

  “The Arabs will not fight against us,” Shelepin announced disinterestedly. “Soon the Red Army will be in Baghdad,” he clasped and unclasped his pale hands on the table. “And then, Basra. Do you really think you can stop us taking Abadan. Or anything else that we choose to take in the Arabian Gulf?”

  Kosygin sniffed.

  “Unless you want another nuclear war?”

  “Nobody wants that,” James Callaghan murmured.

  Field Marshall Sir Richard Hull shook his head.

  “Prime Minister,” he prefaced respectfully. “I should be grateful to hear what terms these gentlemen have brought with them from Chelyabinsk? Before, that is, we send them on their way with a rather large flea in their ears.”