by Roger Cole
In late 1970, the Popular Front crushed a local resistance from the tribes in the East. In short order, they went from being a small guerrilla army to a more conventional force. With uniforms and a clear command structure, they were now divided into groups of around forty men.
Tony Jeapes, at that time the Major in charge of D Squadron, was highly complimentary about the soldiers fighting on the other side. In a secret UK-eyes-only document he wrote, ‘they are aggressive soldiers and brave men; some of them very brave. Fighting in their own way, lightly equipped, fighting a fast-moving fluid battle. Their appreciation of the ground and speed of movement makes them formidable and more than a match for any British or SAF troops one has met.’
Despite the strength of the opposition, the SAS and the Sultan’s forces slowly started to reverse what had been – certainly in the early stages – a losing war. As well as winning the nose-to-nose confrontations, they started to chip away at the foundations of the revolt. As well as the SAS, Civil Action Teams (CATs) were brought in to drive deep holes down in the desert and build wells. With wells came a sudden improvement in the quality of life. Once British engineers had put fresh water into an area, the locals were much more likely to want to protect it from outsiders. With wells came more development, houses, schools and markets.
After their experience in Malaya and elsewhere, the British understood that ‘hearts and minds’ was about action, no matter how small, not promises. On the ground, that meant change had to be visible and immediate. The firqat recaptured the small village of Sudh on 23 February 1971. A civil action team arrived the very next day to start digging wells and delivering clean water. A day later, the local Front group surrendered and twenty-five former communist guerrillas came over to the Sultan’s side.
The propaganda message, that the Sultan would deliver, was there for all to see.
But reform could not be delivered overnight and it was now a race against time. The new Sultan had to produce visible reforms before the rebels seized what was left of his country and the Russians tipped the balance of global power by securing a base on the fringes of the Middle East oil fields.
In January 1971, the SAS established the first firqat unit at Mirbat and a month later they had their first victory, retaking the fishing village of Sadh, a joint operation with the Muscat Regiment and the Sultan’s newly established navy. This was a significant victory as the Front had held this for a year. The leader of the Mirbat firqat, Salim Mubarak, once again used his formidable rhetorical skills. He met the local Front leader, Ahmad Muhammad Salim Narawt, nicknamed Khartub. After the usual social pleasantries, some tea and a lot of hardnosed trading, Khartub agreed to take Mubarak to meet his troops, 140 soldiers camped in a nearby wadi. Mubarak went into overdrive. After another spectacular display of eloquence, many swapped sides. Thirty-five returned and joined the local firqat in Sadh.
The SAS had worked closely and effectively with the local firqat and had taken back a stronghold the Front had held since the beginning of the war. The Front tried to take it back a month later but were repulsed by the SAS using a GPMG (general purpose machine-gun) and by the combined fire-power of the local firqat and the ‘askaris – tribesmen who had guarded the Sultan’s representatives for generations. Another significant battle and another victory. It showed not only that the SAS and the locals could seize Front assets, but that they could hold them as well.
After a year in Dhofar, largely functioning as a training unit, Watts now knew he could take the war to the Front. At the end of that summer’s khareef, the annual monsoon, the first helicopters arrived. The SAS numbers were increased to two squadrons. This was the first time the SAS had operated at this level. Over 100 soldiers would be fighting in the same place, rather than the usual four-man teams. By late 1971, half the regiment were in Dhofar. The ever impatient Watts now had all he needed to mount a major assault. Watts, the ultimate warrior, wanted to hurt the Front so badly they would never recover. He wanted shock and awe – and that was what he got.
Operation JAGUAR took the war to the rebels and began to establish permanent positions up on the djebel, right in the heart of the eastern part of Dhofar. The aim was to pacify and then evict the Front, effectively securing a third of the country. A month later, the Sultan’s forces set up the Leopard Line, a long chain of pickets, with small groups of soldiers on watch, running south to north to try and stop the rebels re-supplying from Yemen.
The SAS were much tougher than the Sultan’s forces had been in the past. The Sultan’s forces, now led by a young generation of ambitious and resourceful officers, also upped their game. The Front responded. They instilled much higher levels of discipline in their troops with the help of the young commanders who had started to return from their training in Russia and China.
Key to holding the East was to clear the Front out of their stronghold in the Wadi Dharbat. Previously the SAF had gone up on to the djebel but retired after a single firefight. That was all about to change.
One of the first major battles for the SAS was Pork Chop Hill, three hills to the east of the Wadi Dharbat, the highest place for miles around. The SAS settled on top, but all they could build were shell scrapes, foot-deep fortifications made of stone, rubble and mud. If fortifications were measured on a scale of one to ten in usefulness, this was less than one.
The forty SAS men settled in on the first night, not really expecting any significant contact. They had not seen anyone during the day. Then suddenly they were in the biggest firefight that the British Army had seen since the Korean War. Out of nowhere, they were faced with dozens of rebel soldiers all firing away.
Never knowingly under armed, every third SAS man had a GPMG and fired back with equal intensity. The battle went on until well into the early hours of the morning. There was green tracer everywhere and their bullets were pinging off the tops of the shell scrape walls. None of the SAS men had ever experienced anything of this intensity before. Though the SAS returned fire, the rebels were well dug in and the British soldiers could not see them as they hid in the wadis, somewhere out on the desert.
That night, Roger Cole remembered that he had a tin of jam in his bergen and was already salivating as he dragged the rucksack back into the shell scrape. But, to his horror, when he opened it he saw that it was full of bullet holes and one of them had gone through his tin of jam, spreading it all over his one set of spare socks, shirt and trousers. Wearing them now would have turned him into the most attractive insect magnet on the djebel. Instead he scraped off the jam and ate it, one of the more unusual sandwiches he ever had in his life.
Welcome to Dhofar. Operation JAGUAR, the first big SAS operation was being blooded.
The next day was quiet and the half squadron went about their everyday activities, cleaning their weapons, cooking, eating and being re-supplied by helicopters from the Sultan of Oman’s Air Force (SOAF), who delivered many thousands more rounds of ammunition, plus a mortar.
In the early afternoon, they got a radio message that Steve Moores, a G Squadron Sergeant, had been shot in the stomach, leading from the front.
He was flown to the Field Surgical Team at Salalah, who operated on him.
While the surgeons were removing the bullet, the battle continued on and off for two days, with the big thrust coming at night. After three days of relentless battle, Sergeant SM had had enough. He was the number three, the spotter on the GPMG. The other two men on the GPMG were CJ and Roger Cole. After three nights of bullets coming from somewhere out in the dark and whizzing past his ears, he finally cracked and decided he needed some serious stress relief.
‘Roger. CJ. Hold the front legs of the tripod. On my shout I’m going to stand up and fire on those motherfuckers on the hill down below.’
The two men thought: ‘Is this man Audie Murphy in disguise or is he just completely insane?’ Audie Murphy was the most decorated American soldier of World War Two and was killed in a plane crash in 1971, just as the Oman war kicked off so he was a big name
to the SAS lads at the time.
Before they could complete the thought, SM shouted ‘Up!’ and the two men kneeled up, holding the gun while SM stood up, pointed the barrel down the slope and emptied one box of ammunition – 200 rounds – over the enemy below.
In the finest SAS tradition, he shouted, ‘Take that you motherfuckers!’ This was all about nervous tension. The enemy could not have heard him above the machine-gun. Even if they could, few, if any, of them would be able to understand what he was banging on about.
After three days and nights’ fighting, the men were joined by some of the other soldiers from G Squadron and marched up to a new base called White City. As they passed through local baits, villages, with the local firqat from that area, they were met with tentative smiles from the locals.
As they moved up to White City, Steve Moores was fighting for his life. The Field Surgical Team (FST) surgeons were limited in what they could do for him and so he was flown by Argosy plane back to Cyprus on the weekly shuttle. The plane met heavy turbulence, which opened up his wounds, and he died before reaching the hospital. He was the second SAS soldier to die in the war.
A few days later, the news was broken to the men up at White City. A young Captain, Mike Kealy, asked one of the veterans, Pete Scholey, how he coped with the news.
‘You wipe your eyes and get on with the job,’ he replied.
A couple of days later, Kealy sought him out and took him on one side, ‘I think I’ve now got the measure of you all,’ he said quietly to the veteran, ‘and I like the way you do things in the SAS.’ Today, Pete Scholey remembers Mike Kealy and this moment with great affection.
‘One of the nicest men I ever met,’ he says.
Mike Kealy was one of the most unusual looking SAS officers. With his John Lennon wire frame glasses he looked and sounded like a classics teacher in a public school, but this ‘niceness’ was the velvet glove on an iron fist. Within months he would lead his men at the Battle of Mirbat and show a toughness as great as any soldier in the regiment’s history.
Johnny Watts’ strategy in Operation JAGUAR was to take the war to the enemy. The clear message was: ‘We are here and we are here to stay!’
This meant building a substantial runway for the planes and helicopters to come in. The bigger rocks were blown out of the ground with C-4 explosive; everything else was moved by hand. This was primitive stuff. The men slept in sangars and the few tents they had were used for stores. There was no perimeter fence, and a village lay at the end of the runway, next to the kafuddle tree, where all serious conversations took place. Kafuddle was Dhofari for meeting – a brilliant word, which deserves wider use in the English language as it perfectly describes what happens when people get together to transact business.
Operation JAGUAR was a massive success, though the SAS lost two men and had nineteen wounded. The rebels had eighty-two killed with fifty-three surrendered and countless numbers of wounded. The Sultan’s forces had fourteen dead and fifty-eight wounded. Brigadier Graham noted that this reflected ‘the significance of the part played by members of 22 SAS in the fighting. Their skill, fortitude and patience have been remarkable and their contribution to our whole war effort in Dhofar has been indispensable.’
In February 1971, Mike Harvey was made Colonel in charge of the Sultan’s Armed Forces. As part of his briefing, Brigadier John Graham told him, ‘the enemy cause is now Chinese-inspired communism and it is in the eyes of many Dhofaris patently illegal and an affront to God. Thus the Sultan’s Armed Forces and the nation have an excellent cause to fight for. Indeed many now regard it as a religious duty to do so.’
Radio Dhofar picked up the theme with their slogan: Islam is our way. Freedom is our aim.
Back in Hereford in 1971, the women knew little of what was happening to their men. They waved goodbye to their loved ones, holding on for those last extra few seconds, never knowing where in the world they were going to disappear. They watched them leave white-skinned, short-haired, neat and smart, like traditional soldiers. All they could do was drop a letter into the post box at the entrance to the camp and trust that they would get one back. Many, like Tommy Tobin, Bob Bennett and Roger Cole, were newly married, with small babies at home. Their young wives formed spontaneous support groups, united in the hope that their children would still have fathers when they grew up.
They hardly recognised their men when they returned between tours. Their faces were burnt to brown shoe leather by a distant sun. They were heavily bearded, though their facial hair was quickly trimmed into fat moustaches and mutton chop sideburns. This facial style was mandatory for all SAS soldiers and dictated by a hugely popular British television series, Jason King, which became the model for the more modern Hollywood creation, Austin Powers.
Even today, Thomas Tobin’s sisters remember their brother lying in the casket, long-haired and heavily tanned, their mum fussing about her son not having a proper haircut.
All the wives hated the knock on the door as it could only ever mean one thing. An officer, usually a Major, had been sent round to offer the condolences of the regiment; after that their lives would never be the same. One young wife answered the door one morning to be told that her husband had been shot in the right ankle. She threw the messenger out, telling him to only come back if it was serious. Two weeks later another fresh-faced young officer knocked on her door to tell her that they had got the details wrong and that her husband had been shot in the left leg.
He was lucky to escape with his life. SAS wives are not to be messed with.
Back in Oman, the Sultan also had a tricky problem on the home front.
There was considerable friction between the Omanis in the North and the Dhofaris in the South.
Omanis in the North could not understand why they were bankrupting the country to secure a province which many had never visited, knew nothing about and cared about even less.
Many Dhofaris did not help their cause. The initial recruitment into the gendarmerie was very disappointing. As Brigadier Graham noted, ‘the Dhofari seems reluctant to volunteer for any service or employment whatsoever. He is considered by many to be the most selfish, idle and volatile creature we have ever encountered.’ Many British officers giggled when they were first told the Omani proverb that said that if you woke up in the middle of the night and found a snake and a Dhofari in your bed you should kill the Dhofari first.
In the early years of the war, the Sultan performed a very difficult balancing act.
The Omanis in the North had no understanding of what was needed to win the war. They wanted this to be a strictly nationalistic cause, but there were not enough Omanis interested in fighting for their country. The Omanis in the North resented the use of mercenaries from Baluchistan but at the same time were reluctant to join up into the Sultan’s Armed Forces themselves.
In August 1971, Omani recruits refused to go on parade at the Sultan’s headquarters at Bait al Falaj until the Baluchis had been removed. The British Intelligence take on this protest was that it had been fermented by agitators from the Front who had infiltrated the Sultan’s army. Whether this was the case or not, it reflected fundamental discomfort of many Omani’s at the use of foreign troops.
The reality in the south was that the SAS loved fighting with the Baluchis. They were exceptionally tough, battle hardened and brave. In the middle of 1971, the Sultan made a wise move. He agreed to raise a brigade of Baluchis provided they were kept in Dhofar, a secret between him and his British advisers.
6
The Great Texan Cattle Drive of 1971
Once the firqat settled in, they startled the British by doing what they knew best: cattle-rustling. For centuries they had stolen the odd animal here and there. Now, surrounded by the firepower of the Sultan’s Armed Forces and the SAS, the firqat seized their chance and turned cattle-rustling into a major operation.
The firqat knew their enemy and they knew how to really hurt them. One of the early militia, the FKW, was named after Kh
alid bin al-Walid, one of the greatest military commanders in Islamic history. He had fought at the time of the Prophet and was the first commander to unite a great swathe of the region, seizing Mesopotamia and parts of Syria and Arabia, in a blistering four-year campaign. The SAS wanted the firqat to identify with him as he was a master of innovative tactics. More importantly, he fought over 100 battles and was never defeated. What better role model for the local firqat, now fighting to clear their country of a rebel force?
Khalid bin al-Walid would have been proud of them. For months they rustled animals from the enemy, settling many tribal disputes along the way and starting many new ones. The base soon became cluttered with sheep and goats, so they decided to take them to Salalah, the capital of Dhofar, which had a market where they could sell them.The British officers in the SAF tried to dissuade them. They were about to have an early lesson in Dhofari obduracy. Once they decided on a course of action, nothing would deter them. The FKW was not to be denied and so they set off. Knowing that a firefight was inevitable, the SAF quickly mustered a half company from the Mirbat Regiment and a sub unit of Baluchi soldiers. Inevitably they were attacked by a force of about sixty and there was the inevitable intense firefight. The two British commanders, Vivian Robinson and David Schofield, could not see each other. In the dust and confusion they could not work out where either was in relation to the enemy. They talked on the radio, but could not find each other and so in the middle of battle they resorted to a more traditional means of communication. The conversation on the Brigade net went like this: