by Roger Cole
What is your location?
In the scrubs on the west side of the wadi?
I can’t see you.
At the edge of the wadi.
Sorry, still can’t see a thing.
I’ll move about a bit, see if that will help.
Sorry not got you yet.
Wait. I’ll stand up and wave a handkerchief.
Thanks. Ok, got you now!
British sang froid won through, an inspiration for everyone on the Sultan’s side. The use of the handkerchief as a communications aid was a timely reminder that in every area this war was fought on a tiny budget and improvisation was key.
The FKW, under a new leader, got the animals to Salalah, a huge insult to the Front. The firqat everywhere were thrilled and now had a huge appetite for cattle-rustling. The local population gave the Sultan credit and it was one of the many small factors that began to tip the balance against the rebels. They retaliated by dropping some mortar rounds into RAF Salalah, but the damage had been done. Taylor Woodrow, a British building company who were contracted by the Sultan, did what they did best. They built some heavy earthworks at the edge of the runway to stop incoming rounds and the rebels were thwarted.
Seeing how devastating cattle-rustling could be, the SAS took it to a new level.
Madinat Al-Haq, code name White City, was a small village north of Taqah, high up on the djebel. It was one of the first SAS bases, established when Colonel Johnny Watts first led his men to take the fight to the insurgents. It was the template for how the SAS fought the war. Alongside the SAS was one company of firqat and another one of contract soldiers from Baluchistan, giving enough mass to create a menacing presence in what was previously the rebel backyard.
Here the SAS set up their first medical clinic, where Pete Scholey, one of the funniest men in the regiment, and the other specialist medics started to mend the locals. He had done it very successfully before in South-East Asia and it was something he loved doing, saying, ‘I have always hated guns. I never liked going on the range particularly. I always did far more good, won more hearts and minds and got better intel, with my medical kit than I ever did with my rifle.’
Within days of establishing themselves, the SAS reached out to the community. A steady procession of locals came in to the clinic and left feeling a lot better, taking the word back out onto the djebel. The SAS were good men who genuinely cared about the locals. The other word out on the djebel was that they were here to stay and there would be no retreat.
The SAS went out on patrol every day with the Baluchis and the local firqat. Every day there was at least one contact with the insurgents, on some days three or four skirmishes. The insurgents were very well trained and adept at hiding for hours in wait before ambushing the patrol and then disappearing back in to the djebel. These were skills the SAS was also well trained in, so there was a certain grudging admiration for them as soldiers. The men knew they had a worthy opposition.
War is all about dealing with the unexpected, changing plans, coming up with new strategies and using every skill you have in order to make them happen. The SAS excels at fluid thinking, which was just as well as something happened next that no one anticipated: a small operation that had devastating consequences for the rebels.
Though the SAS trained with them every day, went out on patrol with them and talked to them all the time, neither the SAS nor the Intelligence Corps soldiers ever really got a grip on the firqat. It was all about motive. The firqat always marched to their own drum, a silent beat only they could hear. If it did not suit them, usually because it was something that crossed tribal or family boundaries, then they would not fight. But when it suited their agenda then they were devastating.
After their first success, earlier in the year, cattle-rustling became part of everyday firqat operations. By the end of October 1971, there were 1,400 goats and 600 cattle at Jibjat, a base about seven miles north of White City. The numbers were growing steadily as the firqat enjoyed the sanctuary of the base and plundered the local tribes, often settling vendettas that went back over many generations.
The problem was that every day the SAS, with some firqat and Baluchis, had to take the animals to the waterhole, making them an obvious target for rebel snipers. Every day there was the inevitable firefight. The insurgents knew the SAS were going to come there so all they needed to do was wait. More to the point, they wanted their animals back.
It became too dangerous to take the animals to the waterholes every day, so the firqat decided to move them down the Wadi Dharbat to Taqah on the coast, a distance of about seven miles. There was a market at Taqah where the rustlers could sell them on for a great profit.
The Wadi Dharbat is a long high-sided ravine, emerald green and lush during the khareef monsoon, with a river running through it. It is as beautiful as any river valley anywhere in the world. If it hadn’t been the focal point for a civil war, with soldiers from both sides using the trees as cover, it would have been a magical spot.
But it was the only way to move the cattle and the SAS knew that however they did it, it would be hairy.
The plan was to use a full company of Baluchis, around thirty men, plus a similar-sized company of firqat, plus every member of B Squadron SAS who was available – a formidable display of strength and fire-power in such a small area.
The SAS set off two hours before the Baluchis and the firqat and set up action group positions all the way along the hilltops to give cover to the soldiers beneath. It was pitch dark, with little moonlight when they set off. So that they could see where they were going they used an IWS, an early prototype of an image-intensifying night sight.
When they reached the beginning of the high ground, two action groups – one a platoon of firqat and the other a small group of SAS, led by Mel Parry – went ahead to scope out the route. The Wadi Dharbat was a rebel stronghold and the men soon ran into very heavy fire.
In the middle of the battle, the men were shocked to see their Colonel, the man in charge of the whole of the SAS. Johnny Watts suddenly appeared in the dark and the mist, shaking and shivering, wrapped in a blanket and full of pleurisy.
‘What the fuck are you doing here, Boss? You’re not well!’
‘Thought you might need these,’ he said. Draped round his shoulders were belts of GPMG ammunition.
Three Baluchis and some firqat were injured. Connie Francis, a very popular SAS trooper, was shot in the back and was soon bleeding very heavily.
The SAS medics got to him quickly and started to patch up his wounds with shell dressings, but he was out in the open. They had no stretchers and were very vulnerable. Now it was all about improvisation. Pete Scholey remembered he had a sleeping bag in his bergen and went off to get it. Six of the men then carried Connie Francis a quarter of a mile to some caves, hidden behind rocks.
For weeks, his mates in B Squadron had put Connie’s picture up in the Squad Room, which he loved, as he thought this was because of the deep affection and high regard they had for him. The reality was that he was notoriously spotty and they all used to put half a crown (twelve-and-a-half pence in decimal coinage) into a weekly sweepstake, the winner being the person who got closest to the location of his latest pimple. It was ‘spot the spot’, rather than ‘spot the ball’, a newspaper competition that was very popular at the time.
But that was an age away. Now he was surrounded by anxious medics fighting to save his life.
Bob Lawson, one of the SAS platoon medics, stayed up with him all night, holding his hand, stroking his head, talking to him – anything to stop him drifting off into that place where they could no longer reach him.
After a night in agony, Connie Francis was finally convinced he was about to die. He looked up at Bob Lawson and said, ‘I’m going now, Bob. I’m going.’
‘Aye you’re right enough, Connie,’ the deep booming Scottish voice of Bob Lawson replied. ‘You’re going in this fucking chopper down to Salalah.’
There in the dawn light was
a Jet Ranger, flown by one of the Royal Navy pilots on secondment. It came in and scooped Connie up, along with the injured Baluchis. The pilot did not hang about. The light was poor and the rebels would have heard the chopper come in. From landing to take-off it was just a few minutes. That was how everyone on the Sultan’s side liked it.
The cattle drive continued and the animals arrived in Taqah the next morning. The SAS men could not believe what they were seeing. It looked like a scene from Bonanza, a popular cowboy TV series at the time, and it sent a very clear signal to everyone, friend and foe alike. Life on the djebel was all about animals. To lose this number of cattle in one operation was a greater blow to the rebels than losing a major battle. Above all, it was a major humiliation. In the words of one of the British intelligence officers, ‘there was now one simple message going out across the djebel – don’t fuck with us! If you do, you will get hurt!’
The SAS was here to stay and so were their allies, the firqat, who they had recruited from the same tribes as the rebels. The Dhofaris fighting on the Sultan’s side also had a great warrior tradition and the rebels no longer controlled the heartland.
Stung and humiliated by the Great Texan Cattle Drives of 1971, the Front High Command met in urgent session. Their commanders were brutally honest with themselves and their men. Just months before they had been winning, but now the war was sliding away from them. Their policy of using People’s Courts to punish any locals who would not join them had backfired badly.
The ideological element of the Front’s training also ultimately worked against them. Once the young Dhofari men had been trained in Beijing or Odessa, they were indoctrinated to forget the value of local traditions.
This had serious and unforeseen consequences when the recruits returned to Dhofar. The Front forgot that the ties of blood, land, tribe and religion were far stronger than any ideology, no matter how alluring or seductive its message.
In 1971, some of the Bedouin sent their wives down onto the plains on spying missions to see whether the Sultan was delivering what he was promising on the radio. They returned and reported back favourably on the progress being made. Once the news went round the village, some of the families tried to leave but were killed by the Chinese-trained Front leaders. This violated the fundamental Muslim tradition that women trapped in conflict are neutral parties. As Brigadier Graham noted, ‘the Communists have fouled their own nests.’
Their cruelty towards the local tribes continued.
In a secret intelligence document it was reported that the local bedu were terrified of reprisals and would not even sell a goat to anyone connected with the Sultan’s forces knowing that they would be killed if they did so.
For centuries, the Dhofaris had been a proud people.
They could be led, not driven. By mid 1971, 271 former members of the Front had come across to the Sultan’s side. The Communists knew they were losing the hearts and minds of the locals.
Morale was less buoyant. The Front was beginning to take heavy casualties, five for each one on the Sultan’s side. The Sultan’s forces had much better medical provisions, which meant that casualties who had been fighting for the government tended to survive. Any soldier fighting for the Front who sustained a serious injury was likely to die on the djebel. The SAS was now fighting alongside five firqat squadrons. There were, inevitably, shouting matches with them about money and the weapons they received, but the British officers learned quickly. They saw that firqat loyalty, especially in the early days of joining up, was a fragile thing, so they were careful to treat them with respect. Now that the five firqat squadrons and the SAF were much better organised and trained, the British-led Sultanate forces began to spread out across the djebel and started to harass the Front and cut off their supply chains back to Yemen.
This was, at its core, a war of attrition, and the Sultan’s forces were now starting to turn the screw.
Despite this, by July 1971 the question of the local militia was in the balance. They had their supporters who used the argument that at least if they were fighting with the British they were not fighting on the other side. Many, however, loathed them.
Brigadier Graham summed it up well. ‘Some have, on occasions, operated brilliantly with outstanding courage and zeal. All are, however, unreliable. They operate not as ordered but as their interests dictate. Thus no firm military plan can be made to which their participation is indispensable as they devote a disproportionate time to the welfare of themselves and their families and their cattle rather than killing the enemy.’ There was also deep suspicion about their attitude to the conflict. ‘It is said by some who know these firqats well that as they now have a status and, for the first time in their lives, secure wages, they have a vested interest in postponing the end of the war.’
The British briefed the Sultan about the problem and in July 1971 he summoned a cross section of firqat leaders and in a brilliant tour de force gave them a sound bollocking combined with expressions of encouragement and gratitude.
As Brigadier Graham noted, ‘I was not present but I understand His Majesty did his stuff excellently.’ Things improved dramatically after this and many firqat leaders accepted SAS authority over them. The firqat was now a much more effective fighting force. There was a big increase in the number of defectors from the rebels and so the Sultan asked for a more SAS operation to train them. This would greatly increase the effectiveness of these local militia, help secure the bases that had been built all over the djebel, release the Sultan’s Armed Forces infantry for offensive operations and protect the civil action teams along the coast as they tried to construct a safe foothold on the djebel.
Sensing that the war might be tilting in his favour, the Sultan had asked for – and got – a second squadron of SAS from September to Christmas 1971, which was then extended, as these things often do, into the spring. The Sultan wanted the gloves off. The restrictions on the political activities of the SAS were removed and a PsyOps Unit was sent out to Oman, one of the key components of Johnny Watts’ original five-part plan.
The Front did have one huge advantage. They had heavily penetrated the Sultan’s intelligence operation. This meant they knew what his troops, and those fighting alongside, were going to do next – often before the Sultan’s men knew themselves. So as 1971 was coming to a close, they knew that the Sultan’s forces were getting better organised. They knew from their own experience that the arrival of helicopters had made a huge difference. Instead of being limited to staying on the djebel for just three days before their water ran out, the Sultan’s forces could now set up permanent bases. They did not know how long the SAS was going to stay at double squadron strength and that was a huge worry. They needed a decisive victory to get themselves back into the war – and it had to be soon. At the end of January 1971, the Front received massive new supplies of ammunition. A group of young junior field leaders returned fresh from training in Beijing, better trained and better armed. The war was now exquisitely balanced.
This view was mirrored on the other side of the barbed wire fence.
By mid 1972, the general British foreign policy objective of withdrawing troops from east of Suez put huge pressure on the British officers commanding the Sultan’s Armed Forces, the SAS and the Sultan himself. As so often in military conflicts, there is what is happening on the ground and then there is the fantasy shared by senior officers and bureaucrats back home.
Brigadier Graham was a vastly experienced soldier who genuinely cared for his men – far more than he did for his political masters, thousands of miles away.
On 17 July 1971, he sent a detailed report home with a very bad-tempered postscript, which noted that withdrawal from the Gulf meant that the conflict was now being scrutinised from a distant headquarters by officers who had no understanding of the war that was actually being fought.
Ignorance of the conditions of British soldiers abroad had never really troubled the fearless corridor warriors in the Ministry of Defence back in London �
�� and this small war in the Middle East was certainly not going to break the bad habits formed over decades.
On 30 November 1971 there was a secret conference at Army headquarters in Dhofar.
The commander of the Sultan’s Armed Forces was reminded that for political, economic and military reasons he and his troops had to win the war by the beginning of the next monsoon. That was July 1972.
At this stage of the war, the outcome was finely balanced. The Sultan needed a substantial increase in British help. As a matter of extreme urgency, he needed planes, troops, more firqat (and that meant more SAS) as well as a rapid improvement in the living conditions of the soldiers fighting under his command. Most importantly of all, he needed money to continue the civil action work. There was no point in liberating an area but then not giving the locals anything to improve the quality of their lives.
From the other end of the telescope, in Whitehall, it all looked very different.
At the same time as telling the British commanders they had to win the war in seven months, they also cut the budget by two million pounds. The SAS was the force accelerator making the difference but now they were told they could not fight in the west of the country, near the Yemeni border, even though this was where the Front was strongest and where they were bringing new men and supplies in. As part of the Whitehall master plan, the SAS was also told they would have to leave Dhofar by the end of March and hand over all work with the civil action teams before Christmas.
In the history of stupid military plans, this was certainly one of the dumbest.
Despite the idiocy of their masters back home, many British officers remained optimistic, though they all knew that war could easily be lost.
But for three events the following year in 1972 – none of which could have been predicted – the war would have been lost. Had the British withdrawn in the spring and summer, victory would have gone to the Front. The Russians and the Chinese would have walked in through an open door.
Thankfully, by the spring of 1972 the war had acquired a momentum all of its own and the withdrawal never happened.