The Mountains of the Moon: The Gulf War of 1964 - Part 2 (Timeline 10/27/62 Book 8)

by James Philip

  ‘Cards on the table time, chaps,’ Frank Waters had declared. ‘I might be new at this presenting lark but I do know my stuff when it comes to finding places where there are likely to be stories.’

  Brian Harris was still not sure how Frank Waters had talked the sentries into allowing them to drive across the Karun River pontoon bridge onto Iranian soil, and then to motor unmolested into the southern outskirts of the damaged town. By then the other members of the crew had realised the error of their ways and were panicking.

  The former SAS man had driven them back to within a few hundred yards of where they had witnessed the long-range duel between Soviet tanks and Iranian anti-tank gunners the previous day.

  “Steady on, chaps,” Frank Waters rebuffed the complaints. “I’ve been given to believe that the general idea is to catch the Russians in the open to the north of the town. We’re perfectly safe here. Safe as houses, in fact.”

  Given that most of the surrounding ‘houses’ looked, even in the dark, like burned out shells this was hardly reassuring. Initially, Frank Waters had been disappointed that so little appeared to be ‘going on’.

  The Red Army kept on tossing shells over the top of Khorramshahr, other clusters of shells thumped down into the desert to the north and the east but not much was actually happening until a little before midnight there was the sound of equipment clanking, and boots tramping in the street.

  “Who the Devil are you?” Growled a subaltern with the badge of the Royal Tank Corps on his battledress as a torch was shone from face to face.

  “BBC, old man,” Frank Waters retorted insouciantly, standing and extending his hand in welcome. He introduced himself with casual bonhomie and the young officer straightened. “I’m Frank Waters of the British Broadcasting Corporation.”

  “Colonel Waters, sir,” the much younger tanker apologised. Momentarily, he paused to allow his brain a chance to assess the situation. “You really can’t stay here, sir. If things go according to plan this will be pretty much the worse place to be for miles around!”

  The activity the BBC men could hear in the nearby streets was the bringing forward and emplacing of L2 BAT – Battalion Anti-Tank – 120-millimetre recoilless anti-tank rifles adjacent to pre-positioned hidden ammunition caches. Elsewhere in and around Khorramshahr a battery of eight twenty-five pounder guns was similarly being brought forward. Further forward several Centurion tanks lurked, screened from the north by the ruins, hull down, invisible.

  “I think the idea is to funnel the Soviet armour down towards us,” the Royal Tank Regiment officer explained. “Obviously Iranian artillery will be firing on the enemy flank from the east while this is going on. If the enemy over runs or bypasses the town, then we are to attempt to pull back across the Karun – hopefully before the bridges are blown up – and fill in any gaps in the line.”

  Brian Harris rolled his eyes in the gloom.

  He had been labouring under the misapprehension that Waters had given him his word to ‘keep the chaps safe’ the previous day.

  “Frank,” he suggested, “we ought to get out of here while we can.”

  “Get out of here? Not on your life, matey!”

  “I’m really not sure you should be this far forward, sir,” the subaltern added helpfully.

  “General Carver said I could go wherever I want,” Frank Waters told him sharply. His tone was magisterial, threatening that if there was any more of this nonsense about skulking about miles behind the front he would personally take the matter to his good friend, the Commander-in-Chief. “And that is exactly what I propose to do. The people at home have a right to know the story of the Battle of Abadan and I bloody well intend to be the one telling it to them!”

  Chapter 57

  00:53 Hours

  Friday 3rd July, 1964

  Abadan, Iran

  Lieutenant-General Michael Carver had moved up to the forward headquarters of the 4th Infantry Brigade. ‘Brigade’ was something of a misnomer; the formation was essentially a two thousand-strong all-arms ‘battle group’ tasked with guarding the northern flank of Abadan Island. Although it had the muddy breadth of the slow-flowing Karun River between it and Khorramshahr, if the Red Army broke through in force the coming battle, the brigade’s role was not so much to attempt to stop the enemy in his tracks but to withdraw in good order, slowing down and mauling the Soviet juggernaut as it drove towards the more substantial ‘redoubts’ protecting the island’s one, now evacuated air base.

  The last operational aircraft had flown out of RAF Abadan before the Soviet gunners found their range. The seven serviceable Hawker Hunter fighters and both the surviving Canberra bombers would join the aircraft in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Aircraft from HMS Centaur ought to have been loitering over Abadan; but these had not materialised as yet.

  Michael Carver would not have been human if he had not had doubts, horrible doubts, about how the ruses and stratagems so carefully, agonisingly calculated in the last few days and weeks would actually play out in practice. Whatever he did, however he analysed the ‘facts on the ground’ the enemy had three or four times as many tanks, at least three times as many guns, and seven or eight times as many combat ‘effectives’.

  On paper Hasan al-Mamaleki’s Third Imperial Armoured Division had well over two hundred and fifty main battle tanks, including forty Mark II Centurions with L7 105-millimetre L/52 rifles but only one hundred-and-thirty of these tanks were actually ‘ready to roll’, and in the last fortnight as many as forty of his Mark I Centurions and M-48 Pattons had had to be deployed in the eastern desert, and since become locked in a low intensity attritional campaign with units of the Iranian Army still loyal to the post-Shah Provisional Government faction in Isfahan. Intelligence gained from interrogating deserters indicated that the Provisional Government, headed by a distant relative of the Shah who had been living in the United States until the destruction of Tehran, had recently ordered ‘punitive action to be taken against the traitor al-Mamaleki’. Having counted on a force of two hundred tanks to counter the oncoming flood of Soviet armour, al-Mamaleki currently had around ninety to hand.

  Carver had sent a troop of 4th Royal Tank Regiment Centurions, six of his precious Mark IIs over the Karun River to Khorramshahr to release ten of his Iranian friend’s M-48s, and concentrated his most potent anti-tank units, equipped with lethal L2 BAT 120-millimetre recoilless anti-tank rifles in the ruins of the town and dug in around the derelict station directly in the path of the most likely enemy route of advance.

  At dusk Carver had ordered forward all eight of his sixty-three ton FV 214 Conqueror heavy tanks to take up hull down positions watching over the ‘Karun Line’ on the southern Abadan shore. Initially designed as the 1945 war was ending in response to the hugely superior German panzers that British tanks had faced during that war, and the Stalin IS-3 monsters of the victorious Red Army, the Conqueror mounted a giant 120-millimetre rifled cannon capable of ‘killing’ anything that came, literally, within miles of it. Safe in prepared revetments with fields of fire that dominated the northern bank of the Karun River, the Conquerors might not stop the whole of 2nd Siberian Mechanised Army in its tracks but they would wreak fearful carnage before they were overwhelmed, or driven back.

  Carver had held the remainder of his tanks – eighteen Centurion Mark IIs – back in two mobile groups of nine, each supported by armoured cars, and improvised ‘grenadier’ companies, men drawn from 3rd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, mounted in armoured personnel carriers and, for want of other transport, Land Rovers, Jeeps and every kind of thin-skinned vehicle that could be found, in reserve. If and when the ‘Airfield Line’ was broken these two sub battle groups of the 4th Royal Tank Brigade would plug the breech. Or that at least, was the plan. Minefields had been laid all around Khorramshahr, and here and there on Abadan Island where the enemy would be forced ‘off road’ by zeroed-in seventeen and twenty-five pounder batteries ‘hidden’ within the deactivated refinery sprawl to the east of the abandone
d air base.

  Carver stood on a firing step in one of the trenches radiating out from the access road up to the one still-intact pontoon bridge connecting Khorramshahr to Abadan Island, raised his binoculars to his eyes and peered into the gloom.

  He had once dreamed of a second Cannae in the marshes above Basra; what he had got was a desperate defensive battle in which he had no choice other than to hurl every asset at his command into the fire in a single spasm of violence. And when he had expended his ‘last throw of the dice’ – his exact words to Field Marshall Sir Richard Hull, the Chief of the Defence Staff – if the enemy still remained on the field of battle, everything would be lost.

  He had dreamed of a tactically elegant, crushing manoeuvre.

  What he had eventually ended up with was a scheme with so many inter-related critically dependent elements that anything could go wrong at any time and bring the whole castle crashing down around his ears. Such was the razor-sharp knife edge that he was walking that if, for a single moment, the enemy realised what he was attempting to do his ‘last throw of the dice’ would be for nothing.

  He had not seen the distant lightning in the northern sky but his communications staff had informed him that ‘test equipment’ had been ‘partially disabled’ by EMPs at around the anticipated hour.

  The fires of Umm Qasr were clearly visible in the west.

  They flickered and pulsed on the rim of the horizon, reflected off the clouds and pillars of rising smoke in the night.

  The RAF had pummelled Umm Qasr and the surrounding ‘laager areas’ on schedule, although as yet he had no idea what losses the bomber force had suffered.

  There had been no news from Rear Admiral Nick Davey’s ABNZ gun line; but neither had there been flashes of gunfire from the supposedly Red Army-occupied western bank of the Shatt al-Arab. In fact the darkened Faw Peninsula gave every appearance of being deserted, neutral.

  Nick Davey’s ships would be on station south of the bend of the Arvand River opposite the village of Al Seeba on the Abadan side of the main channel when the time came. Davey had given him his word and that was good enough for Michael Carver.

  As for the question of whether or not the United States Navy would, when push came to shove, come to the party well...

  He would wait and see.

  In the meantime he did not intend to hold his breath.

  The entire northern horizon beyond Khorramshahr suddenly blazed with fire.

  00:58 hours.

  Hundreds of Katyusha rockets were climbing skywards, and the muzzle flashes of countless of guns rippled like diamonds shining momentarily in the fierce light flooding out of an open furnace door.

  “INCOMING! INCOMING! INCOMING!”

  Michael Carver watched the searing trails of the Katyushas proscribing a great arch of fire across the canvass of the desert night, arching towards their distant targets like a storm of modern fiery arrows.

  Not that much had really changed since English longbow men had been the masters of the European battlefield. Gunpowder, cordite, various flavours of high explosive had enhanced the range and killing power of weapons; but in the end it all amounted to the same thing. Blood and shit and pain beyond measure, such was the test of the profession of arms.

  The great trial of his life had commenced.

  He watched a moment longer, then, with a sigh, stepped down below the parapet.

  Chapter 58

  22:03 Hours (GMT – 3 hours behind Gulf time)

  Thursday 2nd July, 1964

  The Prime Minister’s Rooms, Hertford College, Oxford, England

  The President of the United States of America’s voice was angry, worried and a little afraid. All this Margaret Thatcher heard in his first words.

  “Thank you for taking my call, Prime Minister.”

  The transatlantic line was periodically very nearly blocked with bursts of static, the rest of the time it was just ‘clicky’, prone to the customary vexing attenuations of tone and volume.

  While Tom Harding-Grayson, the Foreign Secretary and his wife Patricia had come over to Hertford College to offer their moral support, William Whitelaw, the Secretary of State for Defence and Sir Richard Hull, the Chief of the Defence Staff were present for strictly ‘operational reasons’. Two days ago the Prime Minister and her Deputy, James Callaghan, had agreed that the latter – and a ‘backup operations team’ led by the Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Christopher Hartley - would base himself in the Chilmark Emergency Command and Control bunker in Wiltshire, just ‘in case the worst happens’. Airey Neave and Alison Munroe, whose departments were responsible for the Intelligence Services, and Supply, Transportation and Energy respectively, had already joined Callaghan in the bunker. On the night of the October War there had been nobody in authority in a ‘safe place’; consequently, when the ‘worst’ had happened it had taken several weeks – disastrous weeks in terms of civil disorder and the alleviation of the distress of the sick and injured – to restore ‘national order’. Whatever happened tonight that was never going to be allowed to happen again.

  Tom Harding-Grayson held a second handset to his head and Willie Whitelaw was leaning close enough to hear most of what was said at the Philadelphia end of the line.

  “I am always happy to take the President’s call,” Margaret Thatcher replied coolly. Since taking the decision to authorise Arc Light strikes forty-eight hours ago – albeit a licence hedged around with caveats that had driven the Chiefs of Staff to distraction – she had felt physically sick most of the time. Her mal de mere had had nothing to do with the fact that once the strikes took place it was inevitable that Jack Kennedy and she would have to have this conversation; it was wholly to do with having let the thermonuclear genie out of the bottle again.

  The Chiefs of Staff had come to her and in soberly chilling terms made their case. What it amounted to was simple. If they were to play David to the Soviet Union’s Goliath; Goliath must first be blinded so that he might be brought crashing to the ground and God-willing, be beaten until he surrendered or expired from his wounds.

  ‘If we fail to inhibit the enemy’s ability to co-ordinate his greatly superior forces against us at the critical moment,’ Sir Richard Hull had concluded, “we will suffer a defeat so total that our ability in future to exert influence on the global stage will be at an end.’

  “My people,” Jack Kennedy prefaced, “are telling me that the electro-magnetic pulses of two medium sized nuclear devices have been detected over Iraq in the last ninety minutes?”

  “They are correct in that assumption. RAF V-Bombers conducted strikes some sixty miles to the west of Baghdad over sparsely populated areas,” Margaret Thatcher retorted. “What of it, Mister President?”

  The Secretary of Defence flinched.

  Tom Harding-Grayson’s expression remained inscrutable.

  “What of it...”

  The Prime Minister cut through the hissing background static.

  “I trust and pray that you are not going to ask me why I did not give you forewarning of the activation of Arc Light protocols, Jack?”

  Jack Kennedy had been about to ask her exactly that.

  “Margaret, we moved the Kitty Hawk into the Persian Gulf specifically to deter the Soviets reaching for the nuclear trigger,” he responded. He honestly did not believe he was having this conversation with the woman who had talked him out of retaliating against the Red Dawn strikes back in February. “Now if the Soviets ‘go nuclear’ we’ll all be dragged into this thing.”

  The woman tried not to groan out aloud.

  “Mister President,” she said between clenched teeth. “The reason RAF V-Bombers attacked Chelyabinsk eight days ago was to ensure that the Soviet High Command could have no doubt, no doubt whatsoever, that we are fully prepared to complete the work General LeMay’s boys left unfinished in October 1962. If the Soviets retaliate with nuclear weapons we will do likewise.”

  “Margaret, you can’t...”

  “Further,” Margaret Tha
tcher added, a hectoring note rising stridently in her voice, “if the worst come to the worst I will not hesitate to bomb the Red Army all the way back to Baghdad!”

  Understandably, this prompted a shocked silence.

  “Are you still there, Jack,” the woman asked peremptorily after a gap of about ten seconds.

  “Er, yes...” The President regained his composure, his voice hardened. “I will be no part of that,” he declared. “In fact I must tell you now that I have already broadcast a message to the Soviet leadership disassociating myself from British actions. Via the good offices of former Ambassador Dobrynin, whom you may know elected to remain in the United States after the Cuban Missiles War, we have been in communication with the Troika, the collective leadership of the Soviet Union in recent days energetically endeavouring to defuse tensions arising from the sinking of the USS Providence in the Arabian Sea...”

  Even Tom Harding-Grayson’s eyes widened at this revelation.

  Next to him the Secretary of State for Defence made a choking noise.

  Across the room the Foreign Secretary’s wife’s face had turned ashen.

  Margaret Thatcher lowered the telephone handset from her face and covered the mouthpiece with her left hand.