Heat

by Ranulph Fiennes

  Each of our tank squadrons had four troops of three tanks. Three of these troops had 50-ton Centurion tanks and the fourth crewed 70-ton Conquerors, which could only fire their great 120mm shells when halted. I was given a Conqueror troop and we referred to the Centurions as ‘bubble cars’.

  I grew to love my tanks, my crew members (the vast majority of whom were from Scotland) and the regiment as a whole.

  Since many of my fellow officers were avid polo players or drag-hunt fanatics, there were luckily few contenders for those army sports involving your feet rather than your horse, or, in the case of boxing, your hands (not head).

  I won the regimental heavyweight boxing class which, according to Tarry Shaw, the long-term Boxing Officer, had once been won by my father.

  I signed up for the Cross-Country Running Team, the Langlauf (cross-country) Skiing Team, and founded a Canoe Club by persuading wannabe canoeists to buy a quarter share in one of sixteen two-seater craft.

  For the next three years, every summer I spent two months teaching soldiers how to canoe. We travelled down various European rivers, including the Elbe, the Oste, the Weser, the Rhône, the Loire, the Rhine and the Danube, up to the border of neutral Austria. The hottest of those journeys, which averaged two weeks per river, was the descent of the Danube, especially when, in a heatwave, we reached the village of Donauesverschwunden (which translates as ‘Disappearance of the Danube’). At this point the river really did disappear, leaving a steaming hot, dry riverbed for some nine miles. Each two-man crew had to carry all their kit, their paddles and their heavy fibreglass touring canoes on their sunburnt shoulders. Horseflies descended on bare shoulders in their swarms and, with no spare hands to wave them off, there was a great deal of swearing (and glaring at me) as though I was personally responsible for the discomfort.

  On the banks of the Kiel Canal one night, I was in charge of some eighty Greys men, half of whom were my canoeists and the other half were two-man teams of trekkers. I had not actually received training permits from the Canal Authority for the simple reason that I knew all training activities on the canal were forbidden to British troops, so there was no point in applying for any permits. So we and our four 3-ton army lorries were over 100 miles from the Schlei River where I did have permission to train.

  Unfortunately one of my corporals, acting as ‘enemy’ on the canal’s southern bank, saw a canoe riding the wash of a huge Russian tanker gliding down the canal. So he fired off a Schermuly parachute illuminating flare which landed by mistake on the tanker’s deck. We later discovered that all the tanker’s crew had to wear special rubber-soled boots, due to the highly flammable nature of their cargo, in order to avoid creating any spark.

  Our flare hissed and burned away fiercely on the boat deck and in a short while the klaxon and red light system, which is installed along the Kiel Canal banks right across Europe, began to honk and flash as though World War Three was about to erupt. Loudspeakers crackled and a disembodied male voice spoke to us with British Rail-like lack of intelligibility. I understood only two words with crystal clarity: ‘Engländer Soldaten.’ A British-style beret or cap comforter must have been spotted on a canoeist.

  I radioed the lorry drivers and all the ‘enemy’ posts along the canal and ordered the immediate end of the exercise. Somehow, within two hours all but four of the men were assembled in one place. All grey berets were removed and mud was smeared on the vehicle number plates. Those soldiers who were temporarily with us from other regiments were told to keep their black berets on and to sit prominently beside the drivers.

  We sped north on our way back to our own training area, but the driver of my open jeep (or champ as they were known) grew sleepy, so I told him that we must change places. Officers were forbidden to drive MoD vehicles, but I felt sure that I was doing the right thing in order to avoid a possible crash. A short while later I woke from a drowsy trance to find myself driving straight towards a German pine tree. I jerked the steering wheel around, but it was too late. I sheered the off-front wheel clean from its axle, flung both my passengers into the dark undergrowth and generally redesigned the shape of the jeep. I seemed to be unhurt but for a bruised ribcage and forehead. The Jocks were bloody but healthily voluble.

  Back in Fallingbostel, I was ordered to report to the divisional commander, General Miles Fitzalan-Howard, shortly to become Duke of Norfolk. For my misdemeanour (the crash), I was fined £25 and given a stern warning. Luckily, there seemed to be no MoD central filing system which cross-checked the growing number of disciplinary incidents I had accrued, and, more fortunately, the Russian tanker mishap had not been blamed on the Greys.

  Telegrams had flown to all regimental commanders. My own had quite rightly protested innocence. It appeared that because of the flare, all canal traffic across Europe had stopped for five hours, which was an expensive delay. Six months later some busybody forester found a Grey’s beret by the canal and handed it to the polizei, who gave it to the local British Army liaison officer. Within twenty-four hours my CO had summoned me, and this time I saw a different general, received a heavier fine and a dozen extra orderly officer duties. Did I realize the possible consequences had the Soviet tanker exploded? I assured the general that I did, but that I had acted in innocence and with only the interests of training in mind. I persuaded myself that the matter would be forgotten and that I had as yet done nothing which might slow down my progress towards command of the regiment.

  That winter my short-service commission with the Greys was to end. I took and passed a lieutenant-to-captain promotion exam but was still, due to my Mons background, a second lieutenant, and my many months of adventure training rather than concentration on tank training had not improved my qualifications.

  I was about to apply for a one-year extension, the longest then allowed for someone in my position, when I spotted a three-line advertisement in regimental orders. ‘Officers wishing to apply for secondment to the 22nd Special Air Service should obtain the relevant form from the Orderly Office.’ Only a week before I had listened spellbound to a Mess story of SAS patrols in Borneo, the only war zone where the British Army was still in action. Here was an open invitation to a three-year secondment with this little-known but élite regiment, after which I could apply to extend my commission with the Greys.

  In November 1965 I was told to report to SAS headquarters the following January for a selection course in the Welsh mountains. This turned out to be extremely rigorous, and 90 per cent of the 136 entrants were eliminated over the next four weeks.

  One test involved a theoretical bank raid and, after completing a careful reconnaissance of the target bank in Hereford, I stupidly left in a restaurant my outline notes on how I would complete the raid.

  Two days later the national newspapers screamed ‘BIG BANK RAID MYSTERY’ and ‘MINISTRY ENQUIRY INTO BANK RAID SCARE’. These headlines were then followed by ‘ARMY INITIATION UPSETS POLICE’ in the Daily Mail.

  It turned out that a weekend-long security operation had stopped all police leave because every bank in Hereford had been surrounded, owing to the lack of a specific identification of the target in my plans.

  Future SAS selection courses no longer involved theoretical bank raids.

  In the winter of 1966 I was officially accepted into the hallowed ranks of the 22nd SAS Regiment as a captain, at that time being the youngest captain in the British Army.

  Continuation training then followed to teach us ‘students’ the gentle arts of demolition, CQB (close-quarter battle), resistance to interrogation, fast response shoot-to-kill, parachuting, field medicine, and field survival. Failure to pass subsequent tests on these topics was not permitted.

  I disliked the eye, stomach and artery operations we had to watch in surgeries as much as I enjoyed the demolition classes which were tutored by a diminutive Welsh sergeant with a squint and rock-steady hands. Under the gentle lilt of his quaint accent we learnt to demolish steel girders and pear trees with maximum economy of explosives. With
self-deprecating humour Taff-Bang (his nickname) labelled his work bags as Explosives. I became adept at ‘minimal usage’ and ended up with a good supply of detonators, plastic explosives and ancillaries. These should have been returned to the Stores, but I took them home at weekends.

  In June 1967 I was due to fly to Malaysia for intensive SAS jungle training, but an Old Etonian friend, by then a wine salesman, had inveigled me into helping him destroy the filmset of Twentieth Century Fox’s Doctor Dolittle, starring Rex Harrison, on the night before the film crew began production. My friend’s aim was to prevent lasting damage by the film-makers to the village of Castle Combe, recently voted by the British Travel Association as ‘the prettiest village in England’.

  Unfortunately, our operation was betrayed upfront by a journalist, the police pounced, and I spent a night in the local prison.

  A week later I was expelled from the SAS and demoted to second lieutenant. Back home, Ginny’s father telephoned my mother to say that he would call the police if I ever tried to see his daughter again.

  Subsequent Assizes found that my use of army explosives to destroy civilian property was ‘indefensible’, and I was heavily fined.

  The Army Council, satisfied that there was no criminal involvement with the Castle Combe incident, allowed me to rejoin the Royal Scots Greys in Germany. I spent another year there back in tanks, a year in which I learnt for sure that my long-term dream of commanding the regiment would never happen, since my own goal at Castle Combe might be forgiven but never, on my file, forgotten.

  Suspicious that Ginny had purloined the explosives that I had used from his chalk quarry works in Sussex, her father sent her away to stay with an American cousin who lived in Spain because that country had no extradition rights with the UK and he was convinced, despite Ginny’s protestations of innocence, that her arrest by the police was imminent.

  So, on my next home leave from Germany, I found myself Ginnyless and without the long-term army goal I had lived for all my life. My future was therefore a void, and determined to do something meaningful, I applied to MI6. The ensuing interview (carried out by a woman with no name somewhere in Earls Court) was quick, negative and mentioned Castle Combe.

  At that time a friendly major in the regiment sent me a letter postmarked the Sultanate of Oman, where he was serving on a two-year posting. He knew that I was looking for a change from tank exercises in Germany and suggested that I volunteer to join the Sultan’s Forces, just as he had.

  I learnt at that time from the barrister who had defended me at the Assizes that, due to IRA terrorists blowing up targets on mainland Britain, I would now have received a minimum sentence of seven years in prison for my Castle Combe offence. I had been extremely lucky.

  My application to join the Sultan’s Armed Forces was accepted and I said goodbye to my Scots Greys friends. For three months I learnt basic Arabic in a north London language school, together with seven other officers from various regiments. They all passed the course. I failed, but was still eligible for the two-year posting.

  Apart from learning Arabic, I would also need to know the basic facts of dealing with military activity in conditions of extreme heat. A manual, translated from French, summarized Foreign Legion advice thus:

  — To maintain mental alertness, avoid dehydration. Just before sunrise, wipe rocks with an absorbent cloth to collect dew.

  — On the move, avoid talking. Never shout. Breathe only through your nose. Keep your head and neck covered.

  — Observe animals and birds. They circle water and recent corpses. Doves and bats can lead you to well shafts.

  — Dig where animals have scratched or where flies crawl, as such places may recently have been damp. Signs of much camel dung may indicate a nearby water source. So too old campfire sites.

  — Cactus pulp can often be sucked.

  — Mix urine with sand and rub it on your skin to help keep cool.

  — Above all, remember in hot deserts the air can be so dry that your sweat evaporates at once so that a litre of water can be lost in a single hour. In such conditions you can die in a single day with no water.

  Despite ongoing opposition from her father, I had loved Ginny for twelve years and when I asked her to marry me, she nodded and I told her that I was as happy as a sandboy. ‘That,’ she said, ‘is exactly what you are about to be . . . an Arab sandboy.’

  I left for Arabia in June 1968.

  CHAPTER 3

  ‘Never come here by yourself without a gun’

  An RAF VC10 aircraft flew me and the seven other seconded officers via Rome to Bahrain. I had never been anywhere hotter than South Africa, and our arrival in mid-summer Arabia was a memorable experience. The wet heat was immediately exhausting, even during short outings from the air-conditioned cool of our hotel.

  Our onward flight connection to Muscat, the capital of Oman, was by British Overseas Airways Corporation and they decided to go on strike that week. So we were stranded for the next eight days, which proved an excellent way to start acclimatizing to these new and debilitating hothouse conditions.

  I met an air stewardess whose boyfriend, a medic in the local forces hospital, had told her of a British officer just arrived, badly wounded, from Muscat. This I soon discovered was the same officer, Major Richard John, whose initial letter a year before had given me the idea of joining the Sultan’s Army.

  I failed to make contact with Richard before his onward evacuation to hospital treatment back in Britain, but was told that a Marxist terrorist had shot him.

  Richard’s tales of sun and sand had enthused me to apply for my posting to Oman but now he was gone. He had promised to give me a thorough briefing on the Oman situation on my arrival. As it was and in his absence I studied the notes he had sent me some months before which summarized the short history of the Sultan’s Forces.

  The Sultan, my new boss, was hereditary leader of Muscat and Oman. In reality there had always been an Imam who was voted for by the populace and who ruled the interior of Oman, while the Muscat-based Sultan ruled the coastal fringe and handled Oman’s foreign relations and sea trade.

  For a while my boss had ousted the current Imam, one Ghalib bin Ali, and by 1957 was contentedly ruling from a beachfront palace in Dhofar, the southernmost province of Oman, well away from both the great heat of Muscat and the troublesome, fractious tribes of the Omani interior. Keeping a semblance of order up north was left to three small independent forces of the Muscat Infantry, the Batinah Force and the Oman Field Force. In March that year they were each turned into fully fledged regiments, respectively the Muscat Regiment, the Northern Frontier Regiment and the Oman Regiment. I would be joining the Muscat Regiment.

  In June 1957 with support from the Saudis, the Sultan’s chief enemy, the brother of Ghalib, the ex-Imam of Oman, Talib bin Ali, invaded with several hundred trained soldiers of his Oman Liberation Army (OLA) and reinstated Ghalib as Imam.

  In July the Sultan sent the Oman Regiment to fight against the Imamate force, but they were badly defeated and were later disbanded. The rebels had seized the Omani inland capital of Nizwa, so the Sultan had requested immediate assistance from his old Treaty friends, the British. There is an old saying, ‘He had them over a barrel’ (in this case an oil barrel) and Whitehall responded by sending basic military assistance quickly (but quietly in order to avoid international criticism, bearing in mind the Suez Crisis the previous year). That August a mixed force of soldiers from the Sultan’s Army, the Trucial Oman Scouts from the Gulf States and the Cameronians from the UK recaptured Nizwa and attempted unsuccessfully to dislodge the main rebel force from their stronghold on the 10,000-foot-high Jebel Akhdar (Green Mountain), considered by the Sultan’s British advisers to be impregnable by the forces available to the Sultan.

  That autumn rebel groups made constant sorties from the Jebel in order to lay mines and to attack Sultanate outposts. The British then sent further assistance, and in November a concerted attack was made on two sides of the Jebe
l. RAF Venom fighters, and later Shackleton bombers, bombed and rocketed known rebel hideouts on the upper slopes, but the rebels were adept at camouflage and easily defended the few vertiginous ascent routes to the upper plateaux.

  The attack was a failure and only served to increase rebel sorties. So many vehicles were blown up on the main access road to the Fahud oil sites that the oil company drivers refused to use it.

  Through the spring and summer of 1958 over a hundred powerful anti-tank mines were laid and over 80 per cent destroyed Sultanate or British armoured cars, Land Rovers and trucks. Sultanate camps were mortared and some of the rebel mines and hand grenades were found to be from American sources.

  That November the British sent detachments of Ferret armoured cars from regiments including the Life Guards and a squadron of the Special Air Service.

  One night in December the SAS spearheaded an attack on the Jebel using ropes to climb a difficult cliff in order to achieve surprise. They killed nine rebels and although they could not retain their hold on the cliff top, they had gained valuable knowhow for a future assault with more support.

  During the full-moon nights of late January 1959 a number of diversionary attacks and RAF strikes were made prior to the SAS scaling a cliff face or spur between two valleys on the south side of the Jebel. They reached the cliff top by dawn and consolidated there before the rebels realized that they had been duped. Victory for the Sultan’s forces soon followed and all rebel strongholds on the Jebel were taken.