SAS Operation Storm

by Roger Cole

  Meanwhile, the two SAS soldiers ducked, dived and scrambled across the desert. Somehow they managed to dodge every bullet that screamed past their heads or bounced off the rocks, zinging, pinging and whining past their chests and their legs as they raced to get to their wounded comrades.

  Back on the beach, Roger Cole lay behind the Burmoil, trying to catch his breath. Above his head he heard the unmistakable sound of metal cutting through metal as the machine-gun bullets ripped through the thin rusty shell of the oil drum. As he looked up, bright holes appeared above his head, little buttons of light just inches from his face.

  There was nothing for it. He crouched and ran, seventy-five yards across the sand, keeping his body as low as he could without falling over. As he ran, his heart pounding, the machine-gunner opened up again, hoping to tickle him enough to knock him over. If he got the SAS man on the ground it would be easy enough to finish the job.

  Seventy yards.

  Sixty yards.

  Fifty yards.

  Forty yards.

  He was halfway there, halfway to being safe and secure. But still the sand bounced and danced on either side of him. A line of little sand dunes rose and fell as the bullets crashed down all around him.

  Thirty yards.

  Twenty yards.

  It would be terrible to get slotted this close to safety. The hounds of hell still barked, nibbling and snarling round his ankles.

  Ten yards.

  Five yards.

  And then silence. Suddenly, there were no more bullets whistling and whining round his head.

  He was suddenly beyond the wall of the end house and into safety. Roger Cole looked down. He was covered in sand but amazingly not a single bullet had hit him. He dusted himself down, took a deep breath and began to make his way back through the town. Cautiously, he checked every corner, remembering how the rebels had fired at them from the town.

  And then he saw something that warmed his heart. Ninety minutes before he had allowed himself a smile when he saw the men with beards on the roof of the Wali’s fort. Now he smiled for a second time. There, on the roof of one of the mud-built houses, were an old man and woman. In the man’s hand was a .303 Lee-Enfield and he was firing away at the Front who were trying to break into the town from the south-east.

  ‘Fantastic,’ he thought. ‘The locals are fighting with us!’

  Over on the north-east of the town, Boss Kealy and Tommy Tobin were now just yards from the gun-pit, pepper-potting like mad. Pepper-potting, where you fire and move, covering your mates, is an exercise every British soldier is taught. It becomes instinctive.

  Two men now moved as one.

  Two men, from completely different social backgrounds, sharing one aim.

  Boss Kealy, a public school boy from a posh military family; Tommy Tobin, the son of poor Irish immigrants, brought up in the slums of London. These two men now carried the hopes of a nation. If they failed to save the gun, the battle would be over and the Front would be on their way to winning the war.

  When they reached their fallen comrades, the scene was one of horror, raw and unadulterated. The floor of the gun-pit was full of empty shell cases covered in drying blood, already growing furry from the dust and sand. One of the giants of the regiment, Talaiasi Labalaba, known to everyone as Laba, was lying with his jaw and face smashed by incoming rounds. Laba’s closest friend and fellow Fijian, Sekonaia Takavesi, was propped up on the edge of the gun-pit, still firing his rifle. Tommy could see a red gash across his head where an incoming round had skidded across his skull. From the blood pouring out of his shirt, it was clear that not all the bullets had missed him. He was carrying a lot of lead. Through the mess of dirt, gun powder residue, sweat and dried blood, Tak managed a smile, before looking away and pulling the trigger yet again on his SLR rifle. The man was granite; indestructible.

  Maybe, just maybe, this bullet will hold the enemy back for a few more precious minutes.

  At the back of the pit, Tommy saw Walid Khamis, one of the Omani gunners who was there fighting shoulder to shoulder with the SAS. Walid was a good friend, the guy they all loved for his optimism, his unquenchable desire to learn and his ready smile. But now he was doubled up, clutching his waist, desperately trying to stop his intestines slithering out onto the ground through the hole where his stomach wall used to be.

  Tommy Tobin did exactly what he had been taught to do in secret sessions in teaching hospitals all over Britain.

  But that was the theory. This was now the practice.

  Right here.

  Right now in the midst of the hot, fevered pulse of battle.

  It was now all about the next few moments. This exact moment in time when everything went silent and he dug deep into himself to make those decisions that would decide who lived and who died. This was battlefield medicine as it was first invented by Baron Dominique Jean Larrey, Napoleon’s physician.

  Now it was all about triage, assessing who had the best chances of survival and treating them first. No sentiment, no emotions, no place for special favours. Just pure, uncluttered, logical thought. Save the ones that can be saved.

  Tommy quickly checked Laba, but there were no vital signs. The Fijian was already dead. There was nothing he could do for him now. In the bottom of the gun-pit was another body. Tommy squatted down next to him. It was the Omani policeman, who had joined in the battle on the front line.

  Jesus! I didn’t even know he was here, but he’s dead now.

  Tommy calculated that Tak would survive and Walid would have a fighting chance of surviving if only he could get a drip into him.

  He started rooting through his medical pack.

  Out of range of the Shpagin, Neville Baker was now well on his way towards the nearest point of safety, the BATT house at Taqah, west along the coast from Mirbat and halfway back to Salalah.

  With the chopper gone, Roger Cole ran back to the BATT house. He was shocked by what he found. There, sitting all the way up the stairs and crumpled against the walls, were the wounded. There were women and men from the town, some ‘askaris and wounded rebel soldiers who the locals had brought in for treatment. The other two SAS medics had their hands full. Fuzz was still dropping mortars on the advancing rebels, his eyes blazing and his hands just a swirl of action.

  And as for Tommy, well, Roger had his fingers crossed that he’d have patched up the other lads by now.

  Over at the gun-pit, as Tommy Tobin moved to try and get a drip into Walid Khamis, a round from a Kalashnikov AK-47 somehow crept through a gap in the protective walls and smashed into his head.

  For Tommy Tobin, the Battle of Mirbat, 19 July 1972, was now over.

  17

  'Where's the Chopper Now?'

  Before deciding what to do next, Roger Cole did a split-second assessment of the casualties. The BATT house already looked like the inside of an abattoir, with wounded from both sides scattered everywhere. But no one looked like they were going to die in the next few minutes without medical help, so he went to look after Fuzz, who was now running out of mortar rounds. He dashed into the BATT house, grabbed as many mortars as he could, threw them into the pit and ran back in, past the wounded and up the steps, to brief Bob Bennett on what had happened on the beach.

  ‘I tried to get the casevac chopper in but they hit it with machine-guns.’

  ‘Where’s the chopper now?’

  Roger shook his head. ‘Fuck knows! But there’s lots of casualties downstairs – some very serious. I’m going to look after them.’

  Bob nodded and then carried on directing the mortar, still trying to find the elusive Front positions hidden somewhere up on the Djebel Ali.

  Roger shouted up to Jeff Taylor that he should stay on the GPMG, then ran back down the stairs to deal with the casualties. Here were soldiers from both sides, sitting next to each other, full of each other’s bullets. The soldiers from the Front were broken men, dejected and hoping not to die. The ‘askaris were deeply suspicious. Less than an hour ago these
rebels had been firing at them and now they were sitting just feet away, pleading for medical attention. The ‘askaris all had similar wounds – ‘greasers’, from bullets that had skimmed across the tops of their skulls, leaving a trail of burnt skin. Roger quickly splashed their heads with iodine. It must have hurt like hell, but they took the pain stoically, the purple dye was a very visual badge of courage for everyone to see for days. He then gave them more .303 rounds for their Lee-Enfield rifles and told them to go back to their fort to carry on fighting. The elderly gentlemen picked up their World War One rifles and went back to the fight.

  The soldiers from the Front had much worse wounds. Two had been shot in the back, one had a bullet in the stomach and one was suffering badly with a serious wound to his chest. All the rest had flesh wounds to their legs and arms, which just needed patching. One of the rebels had taken a bullet to the throat. It had gone in and out and missed his carotid artery and his voice box – a very lucky break. The townspeople had captured him and, rather than killing him on the spot, had taken him to the BATT house to be repaired. The hole in his throat was large but not life-threatening and the locals took huge delight in giving him a cigarette and watching the smoke come out of his neck.

  The ‘askaris returned to their fort leaving the locals to guard the prisoners. This precaution was not necessary. For these insurgents, the battle – and the war – was now over. There was no fight left in them. All they could do now was trust in the British medics and hope that the Sultan showed them some mercy once it was all over.

  Over at the 25-pounder, Captain Kealy was on one side of the pit and Tak on the other. Kealy opened up the TOKAI radio and called Bob Bennett to give him the grim news. Laba was dead. Tommy Tobin was lying on the floor badly wounded. Next to him was the drip he had been about to put into Walid Khamis. An image of heart-breaking poignancy. Now both men were barely clinging on to life, with the battle going on round them.

  Suddenly, the odds had changed dramatically in their favour. Many of the Front soldiers were now less than twenty-five yards away, closing in for the kill. Tak had already taken several bullets but was still functioning, propped up against the side wall, firing at the rebel soldiers as soon as any of them came within sight. Two soldiers came round the corner but Kealy surprised them, taking them cleanly with shots from his SLR. Otherwise, it was now far too quiet round the gun-pit. It was just a few yards outside the gendarme’s fort and they sent a signal back to Um-el-Ghawarif telling them again that they thought the gun had run out of ammunition.

  As soon as he got the message from his boss, Bob told Pete Warne, who knew exactly what to do.

  It was now around 0705.

  From having ten fit men, nine SAS plus Walid Khamis, the British were now down to six. Laba was dead. Tak, Tommy Tobin and Walid Khamis were all in the gun-pit, but too badly wounded to mount any sort of meaningful resistance.

  Pete Warne ran as fast as he had ever moved in his life, flying across the roof and down the steps. The radio room was now clogged with a thick cloud of dust. He crashed through the debris, his desert boots kicking lumps of fallen masonry across the room as he reached for the 316 radio set and tapped out the most desperate message he had ever sent, one that still chills the blood.

  Zero Alpha. This is 82. Zero Alpha. This is 82. Laba dead. Tak VSI. Tommy VSI. Urgent casevac needed. Over. Out.

  VSI was shorthand for ‘very seriously injured’, a cold three-letter acronym to describe three men who were now fighting for their lives.

  Kealy realised that he and Tak needed support, but Walid and Tommy were both too badly injured to do anything other than use every last resource to stay alive. There was a dead gendarme at the bottom of the pit and another young policeman, just gibbering with fear. He was only a young man, one of many who had joined up in the hope that the job would offer him some security and a better life. He was a policeman, not a battle-hardened soldier, and was simply overcome with the horror of what was going on around him. Every time he looked up, there was the body of one of his fellow officers, dead where just a few hours earlier he had been alive.

  Kealy made a snap, and really smart, decision. He guessed that the young man would cope better if he was given a routine physical task – a kind of occupational therapy. There were two boxes of ammunition in the gun-pit, so Kealy grabbed the gendarme, snapped him back to reality and told him to start the simple, but vital, task of filling magazines with bullets so that he and Tak could keep the rebels at bay. It made a small but significant difference. Life and death round the gun-pit was now measured in milliseconds and having a constantly loaded rifle helped improve all their survival odds.

  Back at Um-el-Ghawarif, Duke Pirie was in a bad way. A passionate man, he was now beyond anxious, worrying about his men. They should be on their way back to base, ready for a joyful return to the UK, not fighting for their lives.

  He grabbed Lofty Wiseman. ‘Get me to RAF Salalah!’

  Both men leapt into a Land Rover and set off for RAF Salalah to go and see the SOAF Operations Officer. Lofty had always been obsessed with fast cars and his speed-driving skills – which were not learned on any British Army or Special Forces course – were now stretched to the limit. It normally took about fifteen minutes to drive from Um-el-Ghawarif to RAF Salalah. Lofty did it in ten.

  While Lofty and the Duke were powering along the dusty roads, Neville Baker managed to reach the BATT house at Taqah.

  It was now around 0710.

  He had been shot at and hit many times before, but this time was far too close for comfort. When he and his crew got out, they realised the bullets had missed them all by inches. As they walked to the local BATT house, a young SAS captain, Sam Houston, met the crew and gave them a cup of tea.

  Neville Baker got a signal through to his base at RAF Salalah, which was immediately picked up in the SAF Operations room. Meanwhile the BATT men at Taqah also talked to their headquarters at Um-el-Ghawarif.

  As the pilot drank his tea, Sam Houston and the other SAS soldiers got long bamboo sticks and poked them through the holes to see where the bullets had entered and left. This was not just curiosity, or a desire to play at ballistics analysis. They counted eight bullets in all and wanted to check that none of them had hit any vital parts. This would help them decide whether the chopper was safe to fly home.

  For once, Neville Baker was badly shaken, and he had still not got any detailed intelligence to pass on. All he had managed to do was fly into the fringes of the battle, with all the action concealed by the cloud cover. All he knew was that there was something big going down.

  As soon as he got the signal from Taqah, the SAF Operations Officer, David Venn, immediately contacted his opposite number, the Ops Officer from SOAF, the Sultan of Oman’s Air Force and the man who controlled all the aircraft that day. Venn asked him to scramble two Strikemaster jets. The standard operating procedure was that all pilots had to be in the cockpit ready to go within five minutes. In reality, it never took more than three, and this day was no exception. The cloud base was ridiculously low, less than 300 feet. In any other circumstances the pilots would not have flown, but now they knew their comrades were in trouble. This was a young man’s war and any barometer they had to calculate personal risk was set to zero.

  The Strikemaster pilots worked in twos and so there was always at least one pair ready to go twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The SOAF Operations Officer summoned them as soon as he got the message. Three minutes later they were ready to fly.

  At the time, the back-up radios used across the djebel were called SARBEs (search and rescue beacon equipment). Originally designed as a locator beacon, a bit like a modern GPS, the SARBE gave out a signal, so whoever was carrying it could be easily located. It had one other great advantage. It had a voice channel, so it could be used for two-way conversations. That was the upside. The downside was that the battery did not last long. This was 1972, long before solar panel technology or lightweight generators, so SARBEs were o
nly ever switched on in emergency. On a good day their range was about ten miles. If the weather was bad or the battery weak, then it was considerably less.

  The SOAF Operations Officer gave the two pilots a very quick briefing, telling them what little he knew. The BATT at Mirbat were under heavy fire. They had taken casualties. A SOAF helicopter had tried to get in but been repulsed by heavy fire. And, er, that was the sum total of his intelligence.

  He told them to get there, make contact with the BATT and do whatever they could. It was the sort of operation they had done many times before, arriving during a battle and attacking the soldiers on the other side. The normal pattern was to dive down – if possible, out of the sun – from about 800 feet, strafe the enemy, make as much noise as possible and then climb steeply out of reach of the enemy machine-guns. This was shock and awe as it was practised in 1972. The Strikemasters carried cannon, rockets and, if specially loaded, two bombs, each 540 pounds. Suddenly appearing on the battlefield, very low and very noisy, they had a double impact. They scared the Front and their soldiers often fled, fearful of a second attack. Their arrival out of the sky also had a dramatic, positive effect on the morale of the Sultan’s forces below. The jets had attacked the rebels from the air at Mirbat before – and they were about to do it again.

  The Front had no aerial power, only Shpagin machine-guns, which could be spun round and upwards to become anti-aircraft guns. Otherwise, every soldier would fire upwards with his AK-47, hoping that he might just get lucky and hit a vital piece of the plane’s hydraulics.