by Shaun Clarke
Sweating in the afternoon heat as he got on with his business, the medical Batman, trained at the US Army’s special forces medical school at Fort Sam Houston in Texas and at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, told them what he was up to as he continued working: cleaning and bandaging cuts, lancing boils, treating bad burns and dispensing a wide variety of tablets. The most common problems, he explained, were boils, burns, ruptures, messed-up circumcisions, conjunctivitis, dysentery, malaria, yellow fever, sand-fly fever, dengue fever from mosquitoes, trench fever from lice, spotted fever from ticks, every kind of typhus, even leprosy and the bloody lacerations caused by floggings ordered as punishments by the Wali.
The major problems were the fight against the primitive practices of local witch doctors and working out which of the villagers were really sick and which were merely becoming pill addicts.
‘However, more and more of the villagers are coming to depend on us while rejecting the advances of the adoo, so the hearts-and-minds campaign is undoubtedly working. We’re pretty proud of ourselves.’
‘So you should be,’ Marty said before taking his leave with the others.
The following day, Crowley guided them to Mirbat on the south coast of Dhofar. This was little more than a collection of dusty mud huts and clay buildings, with the sea on one side, a barbed-wire fence on the other. The settlement consisted of a cluster of houses to the south and a market by the sea. About thirty Omani guards, the Askouris, were housed in an ancient Wali’s fort to the west. Another small fort, about 500 metres farther west, held twenty-five men of the Dhofar Gendarmerie, or DF; and another Gendarmerie outpost was 800 metres north of the northern perimeter, on the slopes of Jebel Ali. Near the market, in the middle of the compound, a mud-built BATT house held nine Batmen under the command of the 23-year-old Captain Mike Kealy.
‘The adoo have publicly sworn to capture this town at any cost,’ Captain Kealy told them. ‘Unfortunately for us, our only heavy weapons are a twenty-five pounder in a gun-pit next to the DG fort, a single sevenpoint-six-two millimetre GPMG on the BATT house roof, an eighty-one millimetre mortar placed beside the building, and a point-five-inch-calibre heavy machine gun. In other words, practically nothing– but when the time comes, we’ll defend this place, no matter the cost. And that time will come soon.’
Leaving the BATT house, they were introduced to three Fijian members of B Squadron, including the immense Labalala, whom they knew from the KeeniMeeni operations in Aden. After shaking hands all round and trading a few jokes about Aden, they left the sandbagged gun-pit, where the three Fijians were cleaning the 25-pounder, and then saw their first firqats. Just down from the hills, they were returning their FN rifles and other weapons to the armoury in the Wali’s fort. Though they all had similar shemaghs, the rest of their clothing was widely varied, from the djellabas worn by most locals to khaki drill (KD), or light tropical uniforms. Festooned with webbing, ponchos, bandoliers or ammunition and, in particular, with the large Omani knives called kunjias tied around their waists, they looked like a particularly fierce band of brigands.
‘I wouldn’t like to cross swords with those bastards,’ Tommy said. ‘They all look bloody murderous.’
‘Only when they’re aroused,’ Taff informed him.
‘And from what I’ve been told,’ Marty said, ‘it’s easy to do that. One word out of place, one sidelong glance, and they’ll slit your throat open.’
‘At least they’re on our side,’ Sergeant Crowley said. ‘Thank God for small mercies.’
The grand tour continued. At Rayzut they found British Army engineers constructing a new harbour from large cement blocks raised around the bay. In the same place, an SAS BATT team was inoculating the local labour force, many of whom, Marty noticed, were so intrigued by modern medicine that they were queueing up eagerly to have their jabs. At Arzat, little more than a random collection of mud huts with a small garrison of Dhofar Gendarmerie, they found an SAS BATT team showing the locals how to purify the water tanks with fluoride and transform their rubbish into fuel. SAS veterinary surgeons were showing them how to improve the breeding of their cattle and training them in basic veterinary medicine. In another small town, Janook, Marty and his mates were given an enthusiastic lecture by a four-man BATT psyops team, former of the Northern Ireland regiments and now responsible for psychological operations in Oman. These included, apart from the writing of propaganda leaflets dropped from the Skyvans, the showing of English and Hollywood movies to the locals. In a similar propaganda exercise, they found at Suda, another windblown, dusty village scattered around a lovely bay on the Arabian Sea, a BATT team teaching the local children English with the aid of carefully selected illustrated books that showed them the wealth and wonders of the West – none of which, as the Batmen repeatedly emphasized to their impressionable pupils, would be supplied by the communists.
Finally, during the late afternoon of their fourth day, Crowley guided Tommy Taylor, who had replaced Marty as driver, to a desolate village of clay huts in scorched flatland west of the Jebel Dhofar, in a region once patrolled by the rebels but now back in the hands of the SAF. There they found a group of SAS sappers gathered around the village well with explosive charges, detonating cords, primers and other demolition equipment. They were being watched attentively by many villagers, including excited children.
When they stopped to observe what the sappers were up to, Sergeant Crowley explained that the adoo were fanatical communists, backed by the Soviet Union and China. Often removed from their parents to be schooled in the PDRY – the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, formerly Aden – to be sent to guerrilla warfare schools in Russia and China, they were returned to their mountain villages as fanatics who would establish communist cells, break down former loyalties, and then organize their equally fanatical converts into village militias or battle units that showed absolutely no mercy to the Moslems. They also banned all religious practices, tortured village elders into denying their god, and routinely raped Moslem women. In other words, they were engaged in a campaign of terror designed to wipe out Islam altogether and establish communism in Oman – and they were ruthless in doing it.
About sixteen months ago, just before the old Sultan had been deposed by his son, Qaboos, he was informed that this village was sympathetic to the adoo. Reacting as he always did, the Sultan sent his SAF troops in to hang the suspected adoo and seal the wells, the lifeblood of the village, by pouring in gallons of wet cement direct from mixers. This didn’t stop the adoo from carrying out their customary brutalities against the same unfortunate Moslems. Indeed, the adoo came into the village that very afternoon, while some of the Sultan’s victims were still dangling from ropes – deliberately kept up there as grim reminders to the villagers and guarded by SAF troops. The adoo shot the troops, then engaged in their usual practice of trying to persuade the village elders to renounce their Islamic faith publicly. As is one of the adoo customs, when the elders refused, their eyes were gouged out and their daughters repeatedly raped. When the adoo then melted back into the wadis of the jebel, the villagers were left without their life-giving water and, even worse, with many of their menfolk dead or blinded. In short, the village was doomed.
Now that this area was back in Sultan Qaboos’ hands, it was the job of the SAS to right the wrongs of the previous Sultan and remind the Moslems of what would happen to them should they let the adoo return. In the case of this particular village, their first task was to unseal the well and give water, therefore life, back to the villagers. Once that had been accomplished, they would bring in the BATT teams, including medics and veterinary surgeons, to restore the sick to health and help the rest get the most out of the water, the crops it would help to grow, and the livestock it would help to increase. After that, they would bring in English teachers, radio sets, comics, books and other seductive Western luxuries. This, Marty realized, was the heartsand-minds campaign at its very finest.
To seal the well, the former Sultan’s men had poured wet concrete in from mec
hanical mixers and let it harden at the bottom. That hardened concrete was now two metres deep. What the sappers were trying to do right now, Crowley explained, was blow the concrete apart without also destroying the walls of the well, which would only top the concrete with more debris and make the sealing even more permanent. If they were successful, the pieces of broken concrete could be hauled up from the bottom of the well in buckets, giving access to the water still below.
While Marty and the others looked on, the SAS demolition team, led by a former Royal Engineers sapper, then ammunition technician with the RAOC (Royal Army Ordnance Corps), drilled about halfway through the hardened concrete, filled the narrow hole with C3 plastic explosives, then fixed a time fuse, blasting cap and detonating cord to the explosive, with the cord running up out of the well and across the village clearing where its other end was fixed to a detonating plunger.
In this case, when the plunger was pressed, the explosion at the bottom of the well was just enough to break up the concrete and leave the water beneath exposed. With the water back, the village was saved. The Arabs cheered and applauded.
Finally, near the end of the two weeks, Marty and the other newcomers were driven out of the camp for three days of weapons training in the baking heat and dust of the Arzat ranges. Regardless of the heat, they were kept at it all day, every day, practising on the firing range and learning to clean and reassemble their weapons in the desert’s harsh environment.
It was hell on the firing range, the heat relentless, the sunlight too bright, with the dust getting up their nostrils and filling their mouths, the sand clogging the chambers and barrels of the weapons, jamming the works. Also, the ground was the habitat of poisonous scorpions, centipedes and hideous camel spiders; and the buzzing flies, whining mosquitoes and stinging hornets assailed the men constantly as they tried to take aim and fire at the targets.
As the adoo were renowned marksmen, the troopers were issued, apart from their customary M16s, with a range of sniper rifles, including the 7.62mm LeeEnfield bolt-action and the SLR semi-automatic, which, in the furnace of the firing range, they were required to repeatedly disassemble, clean of dust and sand, oil and reassemble– sometimes blindfolded. However, as close contact with the adoo was likely, they were also issued with Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns and practised firing them from the sitting, kneeling and standing positions, in single shots, three-round bursts, and on fully automatic. They were also trained with the MP5K, a shorter version of the MP5, utilizing a fifteenround magazine and used as a semi-automatic replacement for the pistol; and with the MP5SD, also a short-barrelled model, but including a visual sight with a ‘tell-tale’ red dot indicating the mean point of impact, or MPI.
More ominous was the instructors’ insistence that they endlessly practice the various methods of firing their standard-issue Browning High Power handguns. The fact that this insistence was combined with the sudden appearance of the Heckler & Koch MP5 range of SMGs – which were, in effect, automatic pistols – only made them realize that more than ordinarily close contact with the enemy (possibly CQB or hand-to-hand fighting) was anticipated by their superiors. Certainly they were retrained in the one-handed, two-handed and alert positions for the 9-Milly: standing, kneeling and prone. They also practised breathing and precise release-trigger hand pressure while adjusting their aim in the middle of firing.
As usual, these lessons were carried out in the blazing sunshine, when the heat was at its worst and the air filled with dust. The fact that a couple of the men collapsed in the heat during this retraining did nothing to deter their instructors, who pointed out that they would have to endure similar, and possibly worse, conditions during the assault on the jebel.
Indeed, for this very reason, even while the remaining men were boiling in the heat and choking in the dust, they were severely restricted in their use of water, this being their instructors’ way of teaching them to discipline themselves against chronic thirst for long periods of time. Also, as they sat there ‘resting’ between firing lessons or drills– which, in reality, meant being tortured further in the heat and dust– they were forced to listen to lectures on ways of combating dehydration, sunstroke, sunburn and, of course, lack of water. Naturally, while listening to such lectures, some of the men started suffering from dehydration, others came close to sunstroke and sunburn, and all of them nearly went mad with the need for a drink.
While in Arzat, they slept at nights on the ground, shocked by how cold it was after the day’s scorching heat. Yet even in the cold they had to shake out their kit, invariably finding scorpions, centipedes or camel spiders in the canvas sheets. Also, though it was cold, the night was still filled with whining mosquitoes, divebombing hornets, flying beetles and fat flies, none of which ever seemed to sleep, all of which were ravenous for human sweat and blood. The nights were therefore filled with the sounds of soft cursing and hands slapping bare skin.
Finally returned in the Bedfords to the base at Um al Gwarif, sunburnt, covered in filth, badly bitten, sleepless, with eyes sore from constantly squinting against the dazzling sunlight, they were given time for only a quick shower and meal, then ordered to the ‘Hotel’ for a briefing about the assault on the jebel, due to take place the following day.
Once in the big marquee, they were split into teams and sat around a couple of standard British Army sixfoot trestle tables with their individual maps of Dhofar spread out in front of them. The Intelligence Corps officer arrived shortly after, shook the hand of B Squadron’s commander, Lieutenant Barkwell, and was then introduced as Captain Pearson. A larger map of Dhofar was pinned to a board behind and above the table.
‘Tomorrow’s operation,’ Pea rson began, ‘codenamed Jaguar, has been designed to secure us our first firm base on the enemy-held jebel around the village of Jibjat. The starting point is a former Sultan’s Air Force base on the plain known as Lympne. The mixed assault force, consisting of SAS, SAF and firqat, will be split into two. The majority of B Squadron and G Squadron SAS, with the Firqat Al Asifat, the Firqat Salahadeen, and the Baluch Askars, will assault the airfield at Lympne on foot. The remainder of the force will be choppered in after a firm base has been established.’
Using a pointer to show the various locations, Pearson continued: ‘At first light we leave the SAF staging post of Midway, located north of the Negd plain. From there, we drive south-east until we reach the foothills of the jebel and the entrance to this major wadi.’ He pointed to the beginning of the jebel. ‘We follow the bed of the wadi until we run out of motorable track. We then debus and move on foot to the Mahazair Pools, where already we have a small base camp. As the monsoon season has just finished, there should be plenty of water there, which is why we’re making it our rest area.’
As if to remind them all that the adoo were still up there on the mountain, waiting for them, the them, the pounders boomed from just outside the perimeter. A lot of the men glanced at one another, some grinning nervously.
‘The actual operation against the airfield will be mounted the following night,’ Pearson continued. ‘The climb into the hills will almost certainly involve a running battle with the adoo. No matter the difficulties, we have to keep advancing until we reach the airstrips and water holes on the high plain, where most of the adoo are entrenched. Our task is to get them out for good and take command of the area. Are there any questions?’
‘Yes, boss,’ Marty said. ‘What kind of resistance is expected?’
‘We’re anticipating that a diversionary attack to the south will draw the adoo away long enough for our main assault force to encircle Lympne without resistance. Once the adoo return, however, a battle lasting weeks, or even months, is expected. It won’t be an easy fight. The adoo have state-of-the-art Soviet and Chinese automatic weapons, including Kalashnikov AK forty-sevens, Simonev semi-automatics, RPG sevens, RPD light machine guns, GPMGs, and eighty-two millimetre mortars. The battle will, however, be followed by the surrender of the adoo before the next monsoon season, b
eginning in June. Nobody’s ever stayed on the jebel throughout the monsoon season, so it should beover by then. Any more questions?’
With no more questions to ask, the men left the ‘Hotel’ to prepare their kit, a task that took up most of the remainder of the evening. Late that night, still feeling exhilarated that he had a real war to wage, Marty shook out the sheets on his camp bed, checked for scorpions and centipedes, then tried to catch the last remotely decent sleep he would have for a long time.
Chapter Thirteen
They were up at first light, but did not leave immediately. Instead, after they had dressed in olivegreen fatigues and jungle hats, they had a long morning of personal kit and weapons inspection, conducted personally by Marty. Though moaning and groaning, the men did as he told them, bolting down their breakfast and hurrying out of the mess tent to gather by the Bedfords parked outside the armoury. Though already heavily burdened with their standard-issue rifles, packed Bergens and personal kit, they were burdened even more at the armoury with Lee-Enfield sniper rifles, two types of Heckler & Koch submachine gun, GPMGs, light anti-tank weapons, mortars and portable radio systems with generators and rechargeable batteries.
‘If the mountain doesn’t kill us, all this crap will,’ Tommy Taylor said.
‘It will if you let it,’ Marty retorted, ‘but you’re not
going to let it, are you, Corporal?’
‘Absolutely not, boss!’
It took a good half hour to hump the kit up into the
trucks, but eventually the job was done and the men
were driven out of Um al Gwarif for the short, rough
journey to RAF Salalah. After being waved through the
main gates by an armed SAF soldier, under the watchful
eyes of two RAF guards in sangars, the Bedfords
parked by the dispersal bays for the Skyvan cargo
planes. Corporal Wellman from 55 Air Despatch Squadron of the RCT was there with other pilots and RAF loadmasters, most of them stripped to the waist, gleaming with sweat, and covered in the dust that billowed up from the ground every time they moved a crate of supplies to slide it into the cargo bay in the rear