by Shaun Clarke
of the Skyvan.
The hundred-odd SAS men were divvied up and
ordered on board the half-dozen Skyvans. Even with
that number, the pilots would have to make quite a few
flights to get the whole complement of men and
equipment to the SAF staging post of Midway.
Therefore, when they were in groups of suitable size,
the RSM, Sergeant-Major Mike Patterson, allocated
certain of the groups to individual Skyvans and told the
rest to wait in the minimal shade offered by the walls of
forty-gallon drums. These men let out melodramatic
groans of misery, but the CO solved the problem by
arranging for the waiting men to be flown out in the
RAF’s three Hueys and the Sikorsky Whirlwind. Suddenly, the whole area turned into a hive of
activity, with restraining blocks being pulled away from
wheels, Skyvan cargo-hold doors being closed, spinning
helicopter rotors creating clouds of swirling dust, the
Bedfords whining noisily as they reversed and turned
away empty, the line men, or marshallers, with eardefenders driving out in jeeps to guide the aircraft with
hand signals to the holding point on the runway. Knowing that the LZ was not far away, Marty was
content to sit back and relax, despite the already
suffocating heat, as the Skyvan’s twin engines roared
into life, the props started spinning, and the aircraft
shuddered violently before moving out of its dispersal
bay and heading for the airfield. Within minutes it was
racing along the runway and lifting off, following the
other aircraft and choppers into the dazzling sky above
the vast, dust-wreathed Salalah plain.
In less than half an hour they landed at the SAF
staging post of Midway. A disused oil exploration camp
located about ninety kilometres north of the jebel, it
consisted of a number of Twynam huts scattered around
an old airstrip in the desolate wasteland of the Negd
plain and guarded by SAF troops with 7.62mm FN
rifles. A lot of Bedfords had been brought in already
and were lined up along the runway near some of the
huts. The troopers just lifted in by the choppers were
milling about the same huts, stretching their legs,
smoking and drinking water. As the aircraft were taking
off, creating a hell of swirling dust and sand, the men
picked up what kit they didn’t have on them and hurried
away from the slipstream, stopping by the Bedfords at
the edge of the runway.
The CO and RSM Patterson were near the old huts,
shaking hands with the SAF commander who, like the
rest of his men, was wearing a dark green shemagh.
Looking in the opposite direction, Marty saw one
Skyvan after another take off and disappear into the
darkening late afternoon sky. Eventually, the CO
gathered his men around him near the Bedford trucks. ‘Since it’s going to take all day for the Skyvans and
choppers to bring in the remainder of the assault force,’
he told them, ‘we’ll spend the rest of the afternoon and
all night here, then move out at first light. In the
meantime, you can basha down on that strip of waste
ground near the SAF barracks’ – he pointed to the dusty
old huts – ‘and boil up a brew. Don’t plan on a rest as
you’ll be needed to help with the unloading, which
should take half the night. All right, men, that’s it.’ ‘That’s enough,’ Tommy Taylor murmured. When the CO and RSM Patterson walked off with
the SAF commander, the SAS troopers scattered to find a place on the waste ground to the right of the SAF barracks. After carefully checking their chosen basha space for scorpions, centipedes, spiders and snakes, they rolled out their sleeping bags and brewed up, boiling water in mess tins heated on lightweight hexamine stoves. It was a short, welcome break, but it didn’t last long, since the first of the Skyvans arrived back an hour later when the evening light was turning to darkness, bringing with it the cold. The first Skyvan was soon followed by another, then another, all disgorging more supplies and SAF soldiers and firqats,
the latter looking as fierce as ever.
‘A bunch of fucking Omani brigands,’ Tommy
whispered. ‘They’d cut your throat as soon as look at
you.’
‘Good men,’Taff said dreamily.
Luckily, the firqats were marched off to bed down
for the night on another strip of waste ground at the far
side of the runway, while the SAF soldiers, despised by
the firqats, were given beds or floor space in their own
barracks. Meanwhile, the extra supplies kept coming in
on plane after plane, to be unloaded by the exhausted
SAS troopers and transported to the Bedfords lined up
by the runway. Though the unloading did not take all
night as some had thought it would, it was certainly
well after midnight before the last of the Skyvans had
been and gone, letting a merciful silence descend with
the settling dust.
Reprieved at last, most of the men left the airstrip,
leaving an unlucky few to stand guard on the loaded-up
Bedfords. With the lucky majority, Marty made his way
back to the waste ground, where he shook everything
out and then, still wearing his OGs, wriggled gratefully
into his sleeping bag. Every bone in his body was
aching and he felt like an old man.
For a few minutes, as he lay there, eyes closed, he
visualized Diane in bed beside him and felt flickering
tendrils of sexual heat, but they didn’t last long. Like
the flames in a fire that’s been burning too long, they
burned down and died away, leaving only a smoky
darkness. Marty sank gratefully into that darkness and
was soon sound asleep.
At first light the following morning, the 250 men, including SAS, SAF and firqats, were driven out of the staging post in Bedfords, following a Saladin armoured car that had taken the lead position to give them some protection from landmines. For added insurance, the lengthy convoy drove parallel to the road.
The journey took them across a sun-scorched moonscape interlaced with dried-up stream beds, each of which caused the trucks to lurch wildly, nearly toppling over in some cases. In the rear of his Bedford, squashed between Taff and Tommy, Marty was repeatedly thrown into the others, their weapons and water bottles banging loudly against each other. The Bedfords were open-topped, which at least meant they had air, but as the sun rose in the sky, casting a silvery light on the desert, Marty began to feel the heat and knew, without a shadow of doubt, that it was going to get much worse.
Surprisingly, even in the wind created by the movement of the truck, flies and mosquitoes were still present in abundance, buzzing and diving ever more frantically as the men sweated more. Also, as the journey progressed, the gravel plain became rougher, filling up with patches of sand, and the bucking of the trucks increased, adding to the general torture of the passengers.
By noon, the convoy was still on the move, with the Arabian sun blazing relentlessly on the desert to turn it into a featureless white haze. Heat waves shimmered up from the dusty plain, distorting the land beyond, and the trucks front and rear, when visible through the swirling sand, appeared to contract and expand as if only a mirage.
Marty felt just as unreal, consumed by heat, suffocating, assailed by flies and mosquitoes, sometimes by
stinging hornets, while being forced repeatedly to wipe sweat from his face or sand from his parched lips and watery eyes, his OGs soaked with his sweat, his weapons almost too hot to touch. With the sand came the dust, drifting everywhere, rising from the floorboards, blown in from the billowing clouds being churned up by the wheels of the Bedfords. The dust and sand, mixed with the sweat, made the other men look a mess. Marty knew that he must look the same and he grinned at the thought.
Even worse was the heat, now a veritable furnace, making even the slipstream of the trucks suffocatingly warm. Though men continued being ill along the whole length of the column, the drivers kept going without a break, reaching the wadi by later afternoon. By that time the fierce white sun had cooled to a more mellow golden light that brought detail back to the landscape and made it look real again.
Glancing along the wadi, with its sheer granite slopes casting stark black shadows on the sun-bleached gravel of the valley floor– a barren, silent, almost eerie terrain – Marty thought of the dark side of the moon.
Entering the wadi, heading straight for the towering jebel, the lengthy column of trucks soon left the sandfilled Negd behind and drove over a smoother surface of tightly packed gravel and small stones. Blessedly, the shadows cast over the convoy by the high rock faces on both sides brought the men further protection from the sun and wind. Eventually the sun sank in the west, cooling them even more.
Now protected from the wind and dust by the sloping sides of the wadi, the men were removing the magazines from their weapons to clean them again, working the cocking handles to ensure they were back in good order. Some were still hurrying to finish this task when the convoy ground to a halt where the wadi had narrowed so much that they would have to go the rest of the way by foot.
Standing on the gravel floor of the wadi as the other SAS, SAF and firqat troops also jumped down, rapidly filling up the formerly empty, silent area, Marty saw Taff staring at the firqats, obviously admiring their deadly nature, probably unaware that with his bandoliers, weapons and knives, and with his fluttering shemagh covering his face, he looked as fearsome as they did.
The equipment was unloaded and divided among the men. As number two of the GPMG sustained-fire team, Marty would be humping a steel tripod, weighing over thirteen kilograms, plus heavy ammunition belts, both wrapped around his body and in the Bergen, and four twenty-round SLR magazines. He also had his Browning High Power handgun, belt kit with smoke and fragmentation grenades, rations, first-aid kit and three full water bottles. Also in his team were Tommy Taylor as gun controller, Taff as observer, and a new man, Trooper Larry Purvis, as number one, or trigger man. Between them, apart from personal kit, they had to hump the tripod, two spare barrels weighing nearly three kilograms each, a tripod sighting bracket, the spare-parts wallet, and the gun itself, weighing over ten kilograms. Burdened with all this, they would have to climb out of the wadi, up onto the flat open area of the Mahazair Pools, which was their chosen basha spot, or staging post.
In preparation for the climb, Marty, already feeling drained and trying not to show it, unlocked the front leg-clamp levers of the GPMG tripod, swung them forward into the high-mount position and relocked them. Then, with Purvis’ help, he humped the tripod up onto his shoulders, with the front legs resting on his chest and the rear leg trailing backwards over his Bergen. His total burden now weighed a crippling sixty kilograms and he was carrying his SLR with his free hand. He was sweating profusely.
All along the wadi, in the dimming afternoon light, the other men were also preparing, making a hell of a racket– 250 in all, spread out over about four hundred metres, between and around the parked Bedfords. Eventually they moved out, falling instinctively into a long, irregular file formation, spreading ever farther apart until the line was a good kilometre long, snaking back from the slopes of the wadi to the Bedfords below.
Within minutes, the metal of the tripod cradle was digging viciously into the back of Marty’s neck, letting him know that it was going to hurt. He tried to solve the problem by turning his head left and right, but this only rubbed the skin of his neck against the steel leg, causing it to hurt even more. In less than an hour the pain was worse, shooting down through his shoulder-blades, and the sweat was popping out of his forehead to drip into his eyes.
Glancing at those nearest to him, he saw that they were suffering the same– if not with a tripod, certainly with other gear – and sweating every bit as much as he was. No one spoke. They needed to save their breath. To make the hike more tortuous, they were assailed as usual, by flies, mosquitoes and the occasional hornet, but this time they couldn’t slap them away, as their hands were otherwise engaged.
Now the tripod was hurting Marty more than ever, sending darting pains through his shoulders – and those pains, combined with his increasing exhaustion, made him wonder if he could actually withstand the stress.
His fears were in no way eased when some troopers, one after the other, vomited from the strain and were pulled out of the column and ordered, in the RSM’s words, to ‘rest up, then catch up’. This brought no respite to the others, since the column continued advancing. However, it stopped shortly afterwards, the men banging into one another, as voices called down the line for the medics. When those voices faded away, a series of hand signals came down the line, indicating that the men were to rest up until further notice. Gratefully, the men around Marty all sank to the ground.
‘What’s up?’ Marty asked. ‘I don’t know,’ Sergeant Crowley replied, ‘but I’m going to find out.’
They fell silent after that, trying to get their breath back, not wanting Crowley to return and make them get up again. Unfortunately, he did so five minutes later.
‘Someone collapsed,’ he said. ‘A radio corporal. His radio got stuck between some rocks and he almost had a seizure trying to free himself. He’s conscious again, but he’s going to have to be carried on a stretcher to the RV, then casevacked back to base.’
‘Lucky sod,’ someone said.
After a few minutes, the arduous hike began again. Thankfully, they were nearing the end of their journey. They had been marching for two hours and the sun was going down. After another forty-five minutes the slopes became less steep, indicating that they were nearly out of the wadi. Eventually, as the sun sank, a breeze blowing down from level ground cooled the sweat on their foreheads.
Marty was just beginning to believe that he was on his last legs – stabbing pains in his shoulder-blades, his neck aching, his lungs on fire– when they emerged from the wadi and headed across an open area where, in the shadow of the mighty Jebel Dhofar, pale moonlight was reflected off the water in the Mahazair Pools. They could rest up at last.
The rest, however, lasted only a few minutes. At last light, with the eerie wailing of the mullah rending the silence, the firqat fighters, faces half hidden by shemaghs, knelt in circles and bowed their heads to pray while holding their rifles between their knees. Knowing that the firqats were not allowed to fight during the holy month of Ramadan, due to begin later in the month, Marty wondered how they could be depended upon. Right now, he knew, their praying was an indication that Operation Jaguar was about to begin.
‘We’ll be moving on soon,’ he said to Taff. ‘When those buggers stop praying.’
Glancing at the firqats kneeling in prayer, their rounded shoulders bathed in the moonlight when they bowed their covered heads, Tommy Taylor sighed and said, ‘We’re making the climb under cover of darkness? Is that what you’re telling me?’
‘Yes,’ Marty replied.
‘God help us,’ Tommy said.
Realizing that they were going to have to get up and go, the men drank more mugs of tea, cleaned and oiled their weapons, filled magazines and water bottles, and stared curiously at the still-praying firqats. Beyond them, near one of the pools, was the collection of tents and lean-tos of the SAS base camp that had been established here a few weeks ago. Some of the troopers were outside their tents, having a supper of cold rat
ions, not allowed to light up their portable hexamine stoves.
Glancing up at the vast, imposing jebel plateau, now almost jet black and ringed with stars in the gathering darkness, Marty was reminded of his last night on the Pen-y-Fan in Wales, during Sickener 2, and had a good idea of the tortures awaiting him. The thought was disturbing, but also undeniably exciting, a contradiction of emotions that he had long since learned to live with. He was a soldier and proud to be so. That was all there was to it.
It was now completely dark, with no sign of the moon, and the sudden sound of equipment being moved in the firqats’ area indicated that the operation was commencing.
Clambering to his feet with the others, Marty checked his kit and weapons, then let Taff help him hump the heavy GPMG tripod onto his shoulders. Instantly, the rear leg bit into his neck, reminding him of what he was going to suffer, though he was absolutely determined to endure it, no matter the cost.
The firqat guides led off in the darkness, heading south-east, and the rest of the assault force, including the SAF, now all wearing shemaghs instead of berets, followed in a single file that gradually stretched out to form an immense human chain, snaking up the lower slopes of the jebel.
At first, the slopes were gentle, presenting no real challenge, but soon they rose more steeply, sometimes almost vertically, turning the hike into a mountain climb that tortured body and mind. The steeper gradients were often smooth, making the men slip and slide, and often, where the gradients were less steep, loose gravel led to the same problem. A lot of cursing passed along the line. Men fell and rolled downhill. The climb was made no easier by the moonless darkness, which hid dangerous outcroppings and crevices. Nevertheless, the column continued snaking upwards, making slow, painful progress.
‘Take five’ were the words passed down the line an hour later when most of the men were sweating, out of breath and aching all over.
Removing the tripod, Marty slumped to the ground with the others and, like them, gratefully gulped water from one of his three rapidly emptying bottles. Five minutes later, they were on the move again, killing themselves as they slogged up the ever steeper gradients of the jebel, slipping and sliding in loose gravel or smooth stones, getting their feet caught in fissures, banging their heads or elbows against outcroppings hidden in darkness, always sweating and gasping.