Barrel of a Gun

by Al Venter

  The battle in which young Christian died extended over a 20-mile radius. Still worse, both he and I, together with two more of his colleagues had – truth be told – actually been responsible for the bloody sequence of events that had begun a few hours before his death, ultimately causing Beirut’s Green Line to erupt along its length. It was a most horrific experience.

  It started on the night of Saturday, 21 May 1981. Some Syrian soldiers had been killed by the Christian Lebanese Force Command following a surprise attack that had been launched – at a whim, mark you – by none other than Christian and his two compadres. Clearly, the trio could never have envisaged the terrible consequences that were to follow. How were they to know that in a single rocket strike, they would end up killing half a dozen Syrian troops hunkered down on a first-floor balcony on the Green Line?

  In any event, I was the media guy they were trying to impress and if nothing else, they were appallingly successful.

  Christian forces in Lebanon sported a variety of American-built vehicles, such as these M113 armoured personnel carriers. They performed well among the rolling hills of South Lebanon. (Author’s collection)

  It was the classic, after-dark kind of operation that involved us quietly penetrating towards the edge of the defensive perimeter along the Green Line. Our mission, with almost no planning in place – usually a recipe for disaster – was to hit hard at a previously selected target and quickly withdraw. The entire operation would last perhaps ten minutes; a tidy, surgical rocket strike within the close confines of some of the tall buildings that fringed Christian defences.

  The attack, when it happened, went off like clockwork. Together our little party had finished the six-pack that I’d brought off the boat, which was when Christian turned to me.

  ‘I’ve got something for you’, he had said. ‘Our guys have got word of a Syrian lookout post. It was abandoned before, but been manned again. As the crow flies it can’t be more than 100 yards or so from here… right on the Line. It’s a bastard of a position… caused us a lot of trouble in the past couple of months.’ The question he posed was whether I wanted to go in with his team and knock it out?

  ‘When?’ I asked.

  ‘When we’re finished here… in a few minutes’ he replied, smiling. Always game for the unexpected, I acquiesced.

  With that we dipped our unleavened pitta bread into the communal bowl of hummus soured with lemon juice, just as the Lebanese like it, and shortly afterwards four of us set off through the pitch-black warren of fortifications that had been strengthened by Christian’s people a few years before. One of the soldiers of the Lebanese Force Command who knew the building had been detached from his unit and led the way.

  I was aware that our immediate problem was going through a warren of black tunnels with only a torch to guide us. This was risky because the week before a Palestinian commando group had managed to penetrate that self-same structure. They’d used grappling irons and ropes to climb up to a balcony on the second floor and once there, set up an ambush in the dark. When one of the other side’s patrols came by, they attacked.

  ‘They killed one… two more wounded. So tonight we’re going to settle that score’, Christian had called quietly over his shoulder as he headed for the rear exit of the makeshift restaurant where we’d all come together.

  It took a while to get to our objective. Slowly, deliberately, we felt and prodded our way along innumerable corridors and stairwells. The place was musty, almost stifling. Finally, we reached a balcony that obliquely overlooked the Syrian position.

  Member of one of the Christian militias armed with an LMG on patrol along Beirut’s Green Line. (Author’s collection)

  Indeed, it was a novel experience. I was able to observe from up close that much of the Christian side of the Green Line was only a few paces from similar Syrian and Palestinian positions. In fact, as subsequent visitors pointed out, the two armies could have thrown stones at each other had they chosen to do so. Christian had already cursorily explained that we were heading for a position that had been used as an observation post several times in the past.

  ‘We’ll see them from there’, he stated, adding that the enemy wouldn’t be more than 50 yards away. Like the others, I’d already blackened my face and taken off the white T-shirt I’d been wearing. In its place, I was handed a camo jacket.

  The Lebanese were armed with the usual array of infantry section weapons, with one difference. We had with us a Yugoslav 64mm M80 LAW rocket-launcher, nothing big, but with a three-pound, high explosive warhead that promised results.

  After carefully examining his options, Christian told us in whispers that we’d hit them at an angle of about 45 degrees. Having been involved in similar attacks in the past, he understood the implications. But first we’d have to prepare ourselves, he warned.

  ‘…mustn’t show our faces… night-vision equipment. The Syrians have the best infra-red goggles… Soviet’, he’d ruminated earlier. If they spotted anything amiss, they’d let fly.

  The idea was that two of us would launch the attack from the balcony. The other two would take up defensive positions behind and inside the building ‘in case we get a visitor or three’. I’d been told that I would stand immediately to Christian’s left, since the rear had to be perfectly clear of all obstructions; a five-yard tongue of flame would shoot out from the back of the launcher and incinerate everything in its path. It would also sear the walls of the room behind us. There were no windows to concern us they had long since been blown away.

  ‘I’ll give the signal… you cover your ears… the blast is deafening… like a bomb going off.’ It was interesting that he didn’t bother to protect his own hearing.

  Then, almost like he’d done this sort of thing every week, Christian popped his head over the parapet to judge angle and distance. That much done, he took cover again. With a jerk of the head he invited me to have a look. ‘Be quick… you never know…’

  The Syrian strongpoint was on a balcony very much like our own, but on the other side of the road. I was sure that they anticipated nothing so I took a little longer than I’d intended. I could spot a dim light, possibly 50 or 60 yards away, and I could hear Arab music, probably Radio Damascus and barely audible. The troops on the other side were talking in quiet tones, oblivious of being scrutinized.

  ‘How many?’ I asked.

  ‘About six, perhaps more. If we’re lucky we’ll get them all’, were his final words on the subject.

  Two minutes later Christian fired the LAW and we didn’t chose to hang about to admire our handiwork. The explosion, so close to where I was huddled on the far side of the balcony, was thumping, even through my cupped hands. For a second or two it lit up the entire street outside. The job completed, we ducked back through a wall of smoke into the corridors behind us even before the echoes had stopped reverberating. We heard screams but there was nothing retaliatory. Nobody even fired a shot.

  Moments later, an almost palpable wall of silence enveloped the place. Once back at the little restaurant, we stayed a short while to report to the officer in charge, had a quick coffee and then headed outside for one of the mortar-spotting posts at Sodico, half-a-mile up the Line.

  The inappropriately named ‘Green Line’ stretched through the length of Beirut and the only ‘green’ to be found was the slime that collected in festering pools in hollows and shell holes between the structures. Opposing forces were often ‘just across the road’ and within a whisper of each other. It was in a such a position that our attack on the Syrian observation post took place. (Author’s collection).

  Christian then said something that was to echo in my mind for a long time afterwards: ‘Enemy reaction is always in direct proportion to the amount of damage you cause.’ It made sense.

  Once the job was over and obviously successful, Christian and his buddies were warmly congratulated by the officer in charge. My regret at the time was that there hadn’t been enough light to take photographs.

  C
learly, everybody was ebullient about the outcome. We’d gone in, struck at a specific strongpoint and successfully extricated ourselves. We were also aware – judging by the screams that followed the attack – that there had been casualties. In the ten seconds or so that we listened for a reaction after the attack, there was no mistaking the cries of the wounded.

  To Christian and his friends it mattered little that they had taken lives. As they were always telling me, they hated Muslims. Their rancour came from somewhere deep inside, the same kind of venom that Jews and Palestinian Arabs hold for one another just across the southern border.

  Questioned about the unmitigated bile for his adversaries the previous day, Christian told me that there could never be any possibility of compromise. ‘Not with those savages’, were his words.

  It took the Syrians a while to react. By now we’d reached a tall, partly finished skyscraper that was being used by the Lebanese Force Command to observe both their own targets as well the placement of hostile mortars firing from across the Line.

  The building overlooked the battleground for miles along that ruinous border. After reporting in, we took an old builder’s lift up to the 17th floor, little more than a metal frame and open on three sides of four. I couldn’t help but get the impression that the other side might have been watching our progress, but it was quite dark and the lights of Beirut opened up before us as we ascended.

  Getting to the top was an eerie experience and something I’ll always remember. The upper half of the building had only a central reinforced concrete core that was completely exposed since just the lower ten floors had walls. What this improvised eagle’s lair did provide was a splendid view of what was happening in much of the city below. Beirut lay spread-eagled like a giant illuminated carpet: so much for blackout procedures…

  From 200 yards up, Beirut looked different from any other city that I’d visited. Paris at night from the top of the Eiffel Tower is ablaze, as is Manhattan. In Beirut, by contrast, the illuminations were intermittent, as if some parts of the city had no electric power, which they probably didn’t. Smoke hung in patches in a few of the distant valleys, while halfa-dozen ships lay at anchor well away from the coast, their navigation beams hardly visible. Like mariners everywhere, they were the most cautious of the lot.

  Christian pointed out where we’d just emerged from, the entire suburb having taken on a subdued, cloudy hue, with parts almost entirely in darkness. There were enemy dead out there somewhere, I couldn’t help thinking: more mothers’ sons.

  Then, as if by unified command, the entire front erupted, almost like a succession of explosions at a firework display. We were suddenly enveloped in a thousand blasts, with guns firing everywhere. It was a spectacle that stunned, a son et lumiere that reeked of cordite. A great series of cannonades came from dozens of different positions and all we could do on our lofty pinnacle was watch and pray and hope to hell that nobody turned their muzzles in our direction.

  Katyushas screamed past to the left and then again towards the right. A shower of ZSU shells – clustered in a huge ball of fire about 100 yards across – hurtled past almost within touching distance from where we crouched. How else to describe it but as horrific? If the gunner had aimed half a degree to the left, it would have all been over.

  The ZSU, like anti-personnel mines being deployed in the hills around Beirut, were constant subjects for discussion among Christian forces at the time. Both were new innovations in the war and were making sometimes horrific inroads into their defences. The multibarrelled ZSU had the additional distinction of being one of the most destructive weapons devised by man, It has since become the ultimate killing machine in scores of wars across the globe, Iraq and Afghanistan included.

  Originally of Soviet origin – with four barrels and a liquid cooling system to allow for sustained fire – there were few Syrian strongpoints in Beirut that didn’t have them, each one capable of pushing out 4,000 rounds of high-explosive ordnance a minute.

  It is worth mentioning that the first time I heard a ZSU deployed in anger – in bursts of about two or three seconds at a time – it sounded like a bulldozer revving its engines.

  Add to that, clusters of rockets exploding way out towards the Christian sectors of the city, and still more missiles which roared into the hills behind us and in the direction of Jounieh. Somewhere near the foothills to our left, artillery batteries of the Lebanese Force Command responded.

  Meanwhile, mortar teams deployed by the Christian forces below had opened up, with Jamal, a slight man with three days’ beard growth, providing the sector with coordinates over his radio. A veteran of eight years of war and the commander of the observation post on which we were precariously perched, he was apparently brilliant at what he did.

  How did he distinguish between his own and enemy fire? Long experience, was his retort. Anyway, he seemed to have no difficulty.

  More Katyushas and more ZSU salvoes from across the Line followed, each time a little closer. We had to be hit sooner or later, and I said so. At about this point, I’d seen enough and, being no hero, suggested to Christian that we go down. I suddenly felt quite vulnerable.

  A loud crack on the floor below, which was only half-finished, shook the structure around us. Probably a rocket-grenade, Jamal reckoned. If so, he added, we were up shit creek because somebody was aiming straight up at us. Even I knew that RPGs aren’t fired at random; you select your target, you aim and you fire.

  The prospect of our Muslim opponents using night-vision equipment suddenly entered the equation. Another blast rocked our landing, and then one more. From the corner of my eye as I crouched low, I spotted Christian moving backwards towards the incomplete elevator shaft in all probability, looking for more adequate cover.

  What happened next was anyone’s guess, except that another huge explosion shook our ledge. One of our mortar-spotters threw himself headlong away from the narrow parapet on which he’d been standing while I quickly got down low behind a narrow ledge.

  Then there was another blast, followed by a scream. It was Christian, his cry unmistakable over the echoes of mortar and machinegun clatter. It came just as Jamal was telling the rest of his men to get themselves down to ground level and to use the stairs, not the elevator.

  It didn’t register at the time, but I was told afterwards that Christian screamed again before he hit the bottom of the shaft. A thud followed, which never penetrated to our level because of the noise.

  After that, only the sounds of intermittent firing reached us, together with the rattle of artillery from across the way as the firing picked up again. The young man’s shriek of terror had been heard by some of the Phalangist soldiers manning guns and mortars on the ground way below us and Jamal was already on his radio talking to them.

  We didn’t know immediately what had happened. Only later did we work out that when the last shell rocked us, Christian had probably taken a big step backwards, into the unguarded elevator shaft. The young man dropped into a chasm of nothingness as he plummeted down the same shaft we’d earlier used to get to the mortar spotting position on the roof. We all had our theories about the accident, for that is what it was; he wasn’t hit either by a bullet or by shrapnel. At the same time, he must have been conscious until he hit bottom.

  The shock of losing one of your own in such an unusually tragic manner was unsettling, and it stayed that way for a long time afterwards. In fact, it was much worse than taking a hit. All that I could think of just then was that if I hadn’t been there, he’d probably not have been on top of that derelict half-finished building at Sodico. Had I not come to Lebanon, the youthful Christian would probably still be alive.

  When they lifted him out of the pit at the bottom of the shaft – cumbersome, and unwieldy – they had to manoeuvre it so as to pull his torso out through a narrow opening, which was difficult in such a confined space. Anybody who has manhandled a lifeless body will understand the meaning of ‘dead weight’.

  I’d already made
my way down all 17 floors by then and stood by as they extricated Christian’s body, the men working carefully, almost gently at the task in hand. The back of his head had touched his heels at one point and it seemed as if his vertebrae had turned to paste. One of his eyes had been forced out by the impact and it was hideous. Those impressions and the scream that followed his toppling will remain with me for the rest of my life.

  When it was learnt that Christian was dead, Rocky, the commander of the mortar post, decided that if it was anybody’s fault it was mine. I was the only stranger there. Christian had been escorting me. Ergo, I must be an enemy agent and, therefore, I had hurled him down the elevator shaft!

  Rocky was actually on his way up the stairs as we were heading down. We met halfway and though I didn’t yet know it, he was set on throwing me to my death. A big, powerful man with wrap-around combat boots and a 9mm pistol in a shoulder holster, he could easily have done so.

  ‘If you had resisted I would have shot you’, he said seriously when we had a drink at a little bistro within sight of that same building at Sodico a year later. He had menacing dark eyes but he was a good man to have at your back if there was trouble. I’d brought him one of Richard Davis’ Second Chance body armour vests.

  Rocky: ‘I was actually stopped from killing you by Jamal coming down those stairs with you’, he told me. ‘I asked him why you were still alive. It took him a minute or two to convince me that the moment Christian stepped backwards, you were already taking cover behind the same ledge as he was. If you’d headed down those stairs alone, we wouldn’t be having this drink tonight.’