SAS Operation Storm

by Roger Cole

  Ahmed Said confirmed this and the British continued driving a wedge into the Front. The PsyOps teams did this through their propaganda and the SAS reinforced it with their everyday behaviour towards the men they fought alongside.

  So while the Communists – many from Yemen – tried to eradicate Islam, the SAS embraced it. The SAS were on the frontline with the firqat and given the close family and tribal links all the lads knew their behaviour was crucial. The insurgents took the Quran away and gave them the Little Red Book. The SAS gave the firqat an armed guard when they prayed. It was a small gesture, but more than anything it defined the difference between the two sides.

  The insurgents’ leaders starved their men of food as part of their obedience training. In contrast, the SAS shared their food and ate with the firqat, being especially fond of the fresh hot bread they would make when they were all out on patrol on the djebel.

  The British were brilliant at reinforcing a very clear message: if you join the insurgents you will stay hungry and the best you can hope for is to survive on the very edge of existence and when we find you, we will kill you. If you surrender and come over to the government, you will be well treated. You can keep your religion, you will be on the winning side and that means you will benefit from the cascade of reforms which are transforming the country.

  The SAS trained the firqat and were closer to them than anyone. The relationships were never easy. Some SAS and intelligence officers believed their influence in the war was only marginal. Others believed they were vital to winning the war and made a huge contribution. Inevitably, it came down to personal experience.

  The commander of B Squadron told his men, ‘You can never trust them. They always walk with their guns over their shoulders, holding their weapon by the barrel. You always know when there was going to be a contact because they will lower their guns down to the firing position.’

  Much as the SAS tried to keep each firqat composed of men from one tribe, this was not always possible. The Firqat Salah al-Din, who were based at Mirbat, were ripped apart by tribal and family differences, provoking the British military attaché in Muscat to write, ‘Perhaps too much was expected of them. They were proud, grasping, wayward tribesman with only inherited native ability and cunning to compensate for a cursory military training.’

  Others were even more jaundiced. An internal report by the Sultan’s Armed Forces described them as ‘completely unreliable and unpredictable. They argue over what to do, usually end up doing nothing and will use the slightest excuse such as rain, sickness, family trouble to avoid an operation.’

  Such judgments are commonplace in any war, with squadrons and regiments frequently denigrating each other.

  While some British officers found the firqat frustrating, many in the SAS loved fighting with them, Major General Tony Jeapes describing them as ‘magnificent fighting men’.

  From the firqat’s point of view, the world looked very different. For centuries they had managed a precarious existence, with each new generation no better off than the previous one. Then suddenly they heard tales of a better life with technologies they could not imagine. Men, who looked nothing like they had ever seen before, started arriving in their country with weapons that were completely foreign to them. Where previously the skies had been empty, they were now full of strange flying machines. They had to make a decision whether to fight with them or go with a different bunch of men from a different country who wanted them to give up their religion and embrace the teachings of a man from a country they had never heard of. Hardly surprising, then, that many hedged their bets and watched the ebb and flow of the war before committing.

  It was all about motive. The SAS soldiers, who realised the Dhofaris were proud warriors who could be led and inspired but never driven, got the best out of them. Some SAS soldiers took retirement and returned as contract officers in the Sultan’s forces to lead different firqat, working with men they loved and respected as great desert fighters. As the war progressed, the more influential the firqat became. The more often they went out on patrol with the SAS and the more they fought together, the more they trusted each other. The one thing the SAS experienced was that the firqat could suddenly burst into ferocious activity and take out the opposition. These actions were usually all about settling a tribal vendetta, rescuing a family member or stealing cattle. The wiser heads in the SAS knew this and decided the motive was unimportant. It was the result that mattered.

  There were two areas where the firqat excelled. As the SAS and the SAF cleared areas, they were very good at holding their own tribal areas, something the British and Brigadier Akehurst understood well. All the work by the Intelligence Corps in the early years of the war identifying the tribes was now invaluable. The policy was logical and positive. Once the firqat were returned to their tribal areas, better trained and more effective as fighters, they were a formidable force and too good for the insurgents to ever get back into the war. Just a few years before, the insurgents could knock over villages with ease. Now it was a very different war and what the locals had, they held.

  From the start, the intelligence war was always tricky. Like Yemen before, and like Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan now, the opposition was never a coherent, unified body. Rather it was a turbulent mass of alliances that shifted every day, with subtle undercurrents invisible to the eye and therefore extremely treacherous. The British and the Omanis were often confused, but the same applied to the insurgency leaders. They too failed to ever get a real grasp on their own soldiers, preferring to leave them to fight in small groups, like a franchise rather than a coherent unified army.

  The British relied on the traditional intelligence training which had worked since Sir Francis Walsingham, for many the greatest spymaster of them all, who outwitted the Spanish on behalf of Queen Elizabeth I.

  The two basic questions – then and now – are all about capabilities and intentions. What does the enemy have and what are they going to do with it? If an intelligence officer can supply the when and the where, then he has it made. Rapid promotion and the deep respect of his boss and his fellow soldiers will follow.

  Most of the intelligence came from the SEPs, from battlefield reports from the various Dhofar brigades and feedback from the pilots. However, much of this time-specific intelligence was of little value as the insurgents engaged and then moved, constantly using the terrain to their advantage. This tactic of hit and run was devastating. Half the SAS soldiers who went to Dhofar were wounded, twenty-eight British soldiers were killed, as well as dozens more fighting in the Sultan’s Armed Forces.

  Given the ever-shifting nature of the day-to-day conflict, the intelligence officers focused on what the soldiers in the front line needed to know. When each new SAS squadron arrived they were given a lengthy briefing to answer all the basic questions.

  What tactics are they using at the moment? What weapons do they have? What range do these weapons have? How are they being resupplied? Where are their logistics weak? Where are they getting food and water? What are the latest mines from Russia and China and which places, like sangars, waterholes and caves, are booby-trapped? This final point was a mantra constantly repeated – it was far too easy to make mistakes when soldiers were exhausted and dehydrated.

  Inevitably, there were many problems. The big challenge throughout the early stages of the war was the head of the Sultan’s intelligence service. As a spymaster he was as good as anyone. He ran a vast network of local spies and spoke several local Dhofari languages like a native. But he was a paranoid alcoholic, drinking a bottle of Scotch a day. And, as was endemic in intelligence services all over the world throughout history, he refused to share what he knew. Throughout the war, everyone moaned about the lack of intelligence coming from his office, but despite the chorus of complaints going back to Whitehall, nothing was ever done about it.

  This meant that two things happened. The SAS did what they always do. They set up their own intelligence service, running their own agents and building
strong relations with the locals. In Salalah, the Officers’ Mess was shared by soldiers and pilots alike and this became the intelligence hub.

  Above all, the Omani leadership, and the SAS in particular, understood that when you were dealing with complex tribal structures – and there were 450 tribes in a country with a population of significantly less than a million – then patience was more important than anything else.

  The Communists in Oman were cocky and overconfident, believing their creed of Arabic Marxism was highly contagious and their neighbours in Oman would embrace it overnight. The Sultan and his senior advisors, both British and Omani, knew better. Paradoxically, being patient produced a quick result. The war was over in five years – relatively short for this sort of conflict.

  Allied to patience was the understanding that this was not just a military conflict. The battle for the hearts and minds of the locals was holistic.

  The CATs – civil action teams – built roads throughout the war. With roads came clinics, mosques, houses and schools and all the trappings of a better life.

  Good practice brings good fortune. Every commander in military history knows that luck plays a huge role in every conflict. It was crucial throughout the Dhofar War and it always fell against the insurgents.

  Consider the Battle of Mirbat.

  There were only three days a year when the SAS squadron coming in to take over were all in one place. Any other day of the year and the SAS would not have been able to mount any serious support operation. G Squadron was only there by luck – the weather conditions were so bad the night before that the pilot only managed to land the transport plane carrying the squadron on the third attempt.

  Then, on the day of the battle, the cloud cover lifted just enough for the Strikemasters and the helicopters to get in. A freak rain storm at 0300 hrs soaked the rebels’ munitions, meaning that only one in three mortars exploded. The grenade that could have taken out the gun-pit failed to explode, as did the rocket which hit the gendarme’s fort. The bullets that struck the first Strikemaster and the first helicopter all missed the vital hydraulics and the pilots by inches.

  This was a battle decided on milliseconds and those dice all fell one way.

  26

  Class War

  Before they went to war in Dhofar, the SAS Colonel Johnny Watts warned his men that, ‘this is a secret war and so there won’t be any medals’. In the end, there were few given by the British, though the Sultan of Oman was much more generous, awarding many medals for acts of gallantry. As usual, the officers in the Ministry of Defence who dish out the awards looked after their own.

  Captain Mike Kealy, who ran from the BATT house to the 25-pounder gun, received the Distinguished Service Order, the highest medal available below the Victoria Cross. An exception was made in his case, as this medal was normally reserved for officers of the rank of Major or above and he was only a Captain at the time.

  Though this was a secret war, all medals still had to be announced in the London Gazette, the British government’s official journal of record. It is hard to imagine now, but back in the early 1970s the SAS was still a secret regiment, virtually unknown outside Hereford. To avoid any rips or tears in the cloak of official secrecy, SAS soldiers were generally only identified publicly by their parent regiments.

  It is the treatment of everyone else that rankles and upsets.

  After Mirbat, only those SAS soldiers who were members of infantry regiments received honours. Those whose parent regiments were non-infantry did not.

  So Sekonaia Takavesi (King’s Own Scottish Borderers) received the Distinguished Conduct Medal, the second highest honour for non-commissioned officers. Bob Bennett (the Devon and Dorset Regiment) received the Military Medal, while Laba (Royal Irish Rangers) was Mentioned in Despatches, the lowest honour available.

  The others, Tommy Tobin (Army Catering Corps), Fuzz Hussey (Royal Engineers), Pete Warne (Royal Engineers) and Roger Cole (Royal Army Ordnance Corps) all received nothing.

  Mike Kealy and Tak both received major battle honours for running 700 yards through enemy bullets to save the lives of their comrades. They both survived. Tommy Tobin, who made exactly the same run and lost his life, received nothing.

  In 2009, the survivors of Mirbat and 300 others gathered in the pouring rain at the National Arboretum. No senior SAS officer, serving or retired, turned up and neither did the Omani Military Attaché. Many there were deeply offended. The event itself, organised by the breakaway Allied Special Forces Association, was attended by the survivors of Mirbat, many of their families, friends and other SAS soldiers, both former and current, and the authors of this book. Despite the cold and the heavy rain, the whole day was dignified and very moving.

  The awarding of medals, who gets them and who does not really matters.

  At the time, this issue rankled senior officers in Dhofar.

  On 17 July 1971, Brigadier John Graham sat down at the Um- el-Ghawarif camp to compose a detailed report for his Commanding Officers back in the Ministry of Defence in London. He added a postscript in which he hoped that ‘recommendations for British awards which are put up from here to obtain recognition of the bravery, devotion to duty or unrelenting hard work and trying conditions will be given fair consideration and not discounted from lack of understanding by the superior authorities in England of the duties which we subordinates are asked to carry out in this country.’

  It was a vain hope.

  His plea was filed in the tray marked ‘Quietly Ignore’, along with the medal recommendations, and soon forgotten.

  The soldiers who take part in wars, their relatives and close friends get very upset by an honours and recognition system which is so obviously unfair. There has long been widespread fury at the injustice of the system, which until recently had separate honours for officers and for everyone else.

  The rationing of medals, both after Mirbat and in every other conflict, by the fearless corridor warriors inside the Ministry of Defence, remains a national disgrace. Even Mrs Thatcher as Prime Minister could not break the system. Going in to the Falklands War she summoned the Chiefs of Staff and told them that the usual system of medal rationing was to be abandoned. Even the threat of the Grantham handbag, complete with nuclear warhead, was not enough to change a habit engrained over centuries. Thatcher did not get her way and neither has any other British leader. Despite the efforts of successive monarchs, prime ministers and defence ministers, the sometimes callous behaviour of the British Army High Command towards the troops and their families is still a fixture of everyday life.

  Consider this, a bitter final twist to the story of one of the greatest ever battle victories in British military history.

  In 2009, the SAS decided to erect a statue to one soldier, a single man who above all defines the spirit of the regiment. Current and former members were polled and one name dominated all others.

  They did not select one of the illustrious founders of the regiment, Sir David Stirling, DSO, OBE or Paddy Mayne, DSO with three bars, but instead chose a man unknown outside SAS circles: Sergeant Talaiasi Labalaba, the Fijian affectionately known to all simply as Laba, who manned the 25-pound artillery gun on his own for over an hour. In the view of many in the SAS, especially the men who fought alongside him that day, he should have been awarded the Victoria Cross for his extraordinary heroism. At the time, only the Victoria Cross, the George Cross or a Mention in Despatches could be awarded posthumously. Walid bin Khamis el-Badri, the Omani gunner who fought with Laba and was badly wounded early on, was awarded the Sultan’s Gallantry Medal, the Omani equivalent of the Victoria Cross.

  The survivors of the battle were invited to SAS headquarters for the unveiling where they were met by Prince William. As usual with royalty visiting Hereford, there was a lot of good-natured banter from the lads. The officers know that their place is to grovel and be overly polite. The lads know their role is to be edgy and mix it up a bit, something Prince Charles has always loved in his visits to Hereford, whe
re he has often been the butt of some great practical jokes. So when his son went to Hereford he knew what to expect. As they gathered for the picture, Prince William asked the Mirbat survivors, ‘Where shall I stand?’

  A voice from over his shoulder reassured him, ‘You’re going to be King of England one day. You can stand where you like!’ The joke was greeted with smiles all round.

  After the pictures, they all started to leave, planning to take the prince to the beer tent with them, but the army photographer stopped him with a request to stay for more pictures.

  It started to rain and the lads told him to come on inside, but the prince replied, ‘No. I will stay here as long as it takes.’

  As they wandered off to the beer tent, a conveyor belt of senior officers, many with their wives in tow, lined up to have their pictures taken with him in front of Laba’s statue.

  None of them had been at Mirbat. Only a few had served in the Dhofar War.

  Absent from the queue of photographic subjects were General Peter de la Billière, the Colonel in charge of the regiment at the time, and Pete Warne, who manned the Browning and the radio throughout the battle. Both had been declared persona non grata, and not allowed into the camp, because they’d written books about their time in the SAS.

  As January 1971 came to a close, Brigadier John Graham, the Commander of the Sultan’s Armed Forces, received three pieces of intelligence, each one a day apart. On 28 January, he was told that the Front had received massive new consignments of ammunition. A day later, he received a detailed assessment of both forces which confirmed what many British officers already suspected: the junior officers were better trained and better armed than the soldiers under his command.