Down Among the Weeds

by Harry Beaves

  With bodies lying everywhere, amid peals of laughter one of the PTIs, an Army Judo champion, came to see how I was.

  ‘You OK, sir?’

  ‘Yes, staff.’ I attempted a smile, pushed the top section of the box off my chest and tried to get to my feet.

  ‘Well done, sir. I thought you threw that box superbly!’

  On other occasions a forty-five-minute gym period would consist of an indoor assault course made up from the various pieces of gym apparatus. All quite straightforward, except that we would go round again and again and again, never told what would be the last lap, until we were absolutely shattered. Then we would play a game called ‘It pays to be a winner’ where we would race round the course and the first one in would go to the changing room and so on until we were down to the last five. These were quite obviously ‘the wasters’ and were finally sent in together in complete contempt.

  Probably the thing people most remember about ‘P’ Company is milling. Milling is similar to boxing except neither winning, losing, nor skill are prerequisites. Instead, candidates are scored on their courage and determination, blocking, ducking and weaving result in points deducted. A ring was formed from gym benches and we were paired off and given sixty seconds to demonstrate ‘controlled physical aggression’ in a milling contest wearing 6oz boxing gloves.

  Most people found themselves against a person of similar weight, but at the top end of the scale weights varied significantly. S/Sgt ‘Mac’ MacQueenie looked at me and said. ‘Looks like you’ve got Gascoigne, sir. Bit heavier than you, but you won’t mind that will you?’

  At 12st 4lbs I was the fourth heaviest on the course, Gascoigne was the next up at 13st plus, taller and a stone heavier than me. I adopted what I thought was an air of nonchalance and nodded. My father and grandfather had both been great fight fans and I remember as a boy tuning in the big old valve-driven radio that my father had given me for my bedroom at three in the morning to listen live when Floyd Patterson boxed Ingemar Johansson and to many other great fights. I boxed quite a bit at school, but I never kept it up as I felt I wasn’t particularly good as I was too heavy for my height!

  Junior L/Bdr ‘Bamber’ Gascoigne was from the Junior Leaders Regiment RA, one of a number of units that in those days took lads straight from school at 15½ and trained them as soldiers. At 17½ they would ‘muster’ and be sent to join regular Army units. ‘Bamber’ Gascoigne was hoping to join 7 Parachute Regiment Royal Horse Artillery (7RHA). At seventeen he was quiet and cautious, but was big, strong, very fit and one of the stars of the course. MacQueenie was from 7RHA so he took a particular interest in Gascoigne as well as the other Gunners going through ‘P’ Company, as he might subsequently have found himself serving with them.

  I was obviously in for a hard time and MacQueenie was going to make the most of it. Gascoigne looked surprisingly nervous in his corner, but MacQueenie put his face by his ear and growled. ‘Right, lad, now’s your big chance and all the boys are all relying on you. See that over there eh? That’s an officer, that is. Look at ’im eh? Wha’ d’ya think? This is gonna be the one time in all your Army life that you’ll get a chance to snot an officer, eh? So don’t waste it. Get out there and give it some wellie and make sure you don’t let the lads down.’

  In the other corner I struggled to maintain my nonchalant air as my legs had turned to jelly. I remembered the advice my father had once given me. ‘If you’re ever faced by a bigger opponent or insurmountable odds, make sure you land the first punch, then if you subsequently get pasted you should have the satisfaction of having done some damage.’

  The bell sounded and with my father’s words in mind I took two strides across the ring and swung an almighty haymaker. It caught the unsuspecting Bamber right on the nose before he had a chance to get his gloves up. What happened afterwards was like something from the Incredible Hulk as Bamber was transformed into a raging monster, arms raining hammer blows from all directions. For what seem like the longest sixty seconds in my life I could do little more than keep swinging my arms pointlessly and picking myself up off the floor. Bamber Gascoigne didn’t let the lads down, but as my father predicted I had the minor satisfaction of landing one terrific blow.

  Bamber spent twenty-two years in 7RHA rising to the rank of S/Sgt and was one of the most popular characters in the Regiment. I met him and Mac MacQueenie on a number of occasions over the years, usually with glass in hand, and we always had a great time together. Great friendships are forged in adversity! Milling still features in today’s ‘P’ Company, but fighters must now wear head guards and gum shields – say no more.

  On the final day the course assembled in a hangar. I sat next to Richard Bethell (now Lord Westbury), a Scots Guards officer who had become a particular friend. ‘How do you think you’ve done?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t really know. I hope I’ve done enough. I don’t think I could have done better, but I’ll tell you what. I’d never want to put myself through all that again.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  The results were declared with typical ‘P’ Company directness. The Company Commander called your name, you stood up and he simply said ‘Pass’ or ‘Fail’.

  ‘Smith’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Pass.’

  ‘Jones.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Fail.’

  ‘Beaves.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Pass.’ Whoopee! I couldn’t believe it. I was relieved and delighted – beyond belief.

  Now all I had to do was jump out of an aircraft, easy enough. Or was it? Parachute accidents only happen to one in how many millions? With my relationship with Murphy and his ‘law’ could there be problems?

  Chapter 25

  Oman

  148 Battery is based at the Royal Marines camp at Hamworthy in Poole, and at that time was co-located with the Special Boat Squadron (SBS) and four other company sized RN and RM units. Providing Naval Gunfire Support (NGS) involved parties from 148 Battery deploying behind enemy lines as part of the advance force before the main amphibious force had landed and could only be done by soldiers who were all very bright, well-motivated and professionally very capable. Of necessity, there was a very high emphasis on physical fitness and exercises were always very realistic and physically demanding. This was real soldiering, right down among the weeds, absolutely what I had been looking for and I just loved it.

  I had intensely disliked parachuting when I did a Free Fall course as an Officer Cadet so I was quite looking forward to getting my jumps course over and out of the way. Unfortunately, before I became a qualified parachutist the Battery had something else in store for me, active service in Oman.

  For several years, 148 Battery had a standing commitment to provide an Observation Party on a four-month operational tour of duty to Cracker Battery which was part of the British element supporting the Sultan of Oman’s Armed Forces in their struggle against Communist insurgency in Dhofar.

  The origins of the conflict stem from the early sixties when Oman was a very backward state ruled in an almost feudal manner by Sultan Said bin Taimur. It was ripe for rebellion and between 1962 and 1976 the Omani government fought a war against Marxist infiltrators, known as the Adoo, who were trained in China and Russia and came mainly from the Yemen. If the Communists could take the sparsely populated country of Oman they would then control all the land between the Red Sea and the Straits of Hormuz, an area past which a large part of the world’s oil was transported. In 1970 the old Sultan was deposed by his son, Qaboos bin Said who, alongside the military campaign, immediately began a programme of social and educational reform. In 1970, Oman, a country with a million people, had only 500 children at school. Within a year this had increased to 15,000. In 1970 there were seventy-five hospital beds, but by 1971 there were a thousand beds. In 1970 there were five miles of tarmac roads, and by the end of 1971 this had increased to 300 miles.

  Britain had long had close ties with this part of the world,
with a history of secondment of British military personnel to units like the Trucial Oman Scouts and, latterly, the Sultan’s Armed Forces (SAF). For most of the Dhofar War the senior appointments in SAF were filled by officers seconded from the British Armed Forces. The Oman campaign is often quoted as a successful example of how to conduct counter-insurgency operations and is well documented in General Sir John Akehurst’s book We Won a War. The British Government gave considerable support to SAF. In particular SAS teams trained local fighters while the RAF had a large base at Salalah which stood on the Dhofar Plain, a large expanse of sand and gravel extending for several miles from the Dhofar Jebel to the sea.

  In the early days the Adoo would come out from the cover of the jebel and fire mortars and rockets at the RAF base. The RAF Regiment would reply with mortar fire from within the camp perimeter. In time the RAF mortars were moved to a defensive line of fortified positions known as the ‘Hedgehogs’, about a mile outside the camp. The Adoo could still use their weapons effectively from the edge of the Jebel so an Artillery unit, known as ‘Cracker Battery’ was formed and deployed to one of the hedgehogs with Artillery observers occupying five hill top positions, known as the ‘Dianas’, about a mile into the jebel.

  Bdr Joe Doole and L/Bdr Spike Spicer and I were the 148 Battery element that were part of ‘Cracker 13’. We all assembled at a cold and frosty RSA Larkhill in early December to undergo a fortnight’s training together prior to the deployment. On 14th December 1974 there was a hard frost as we embarked in a Hercules C130 to begin a cramped and noisy fourteen-hour journey. The C130 is primarily a cargo aircraft so we sat along the sides of the fuselage in nylon canvas seats, with the Battery’s freight down the centre in a massive pile, secured with cargo nets. Mercifully we had a two-hour stopover in Cyprus before we landed at RAF Salalah at about 1030 in the morning in ninety degrees of dry heat. We shook out, found our kit and were given a briefing, then, at 1630, we were lifted out to our first position, Diana Two. Blinking in the warm sunlight, as the helicopter departed I looked at Bdr Joe Doole, my Observation Post Assistant, and wondered quite what we were in for.

  Each ‘Diana’ was about the size of a football pitch and was ringed with barbed wire and anti-personnel mines. The Observation Parties (OPs) consisted of a British officer and junior NCO with a platoon of SAF infantry to protect them. We all lived in sangars, known as beits (the Arabic word for houses), made from sandbags and corrugated iron. Ammunition, water and a mixture of compo and fresh rations were lifted in by helicopter once a week. We stayed on a Diana for three to six weeks at a time, then came down to RAF Salalah for a couple of days before re-deploying to another Diana.

  Cracker Battery was equipped with four ancient Twenty-Five Pounders and a 5.5-inch Howitzer. The senior appointments were filled by about thirty British officers and NCOs, drawn from across the Royal Artillery, who spent four months on operational duty in Oman.

  Omani soldiers manned all the guns with one exception, the Number One on the 5.5, who was a Sergeant seconded from Balochistan. Artillery weapons rely on hydraulic mechanisms to make the elevation and depression of the barrel smooth and easy, but the guns of Cracker Battery were well worn and the hydraulics of the 5.5 were slow to react when depressing the barrel. Omanis are very small and slight; Balochis tend to be a tall and physically impressive race. One of the amusing sights on the gun position was when the 5.5 had to be depressed and the huge, bearded Balochi No. 1 ordered two of his little Omani gunners to hang from the end of the barrel to help the hydraulics bring it down more quickly!

  Life on the jebel soon became very routine and often boring, but learning to live with the Omani platoon, who were there to defend the position, was always interesting. We had been issued with little phrase book called Patrol Arabic and spent many hours cross-legged, drinking sweet tea and trying to converse.

  The war was nearing its end and there was little Adoo activity in our area, but a few days in we were bumped by three or four men firing small arms. The rounds pinged off the sangars and fizzed rather than cracked overhead which suggested that the bullets were losing their velocity because the gunmen were too far way. There was a flurry of activity on the position with Joe Doole and me trying to locate the Adoo position and bring down artillery fire on it, while the Omanis returned fire with rifles and machine guns. All around they were shouting ‘Wayne signal. Wayne signal.’ Until at last the signaller emerged from his beit with the radio and began babbling away to Company HQ.

  The contact quickly petered out and Joe and I sat back and took stock. It was pretty minor and there was no damage, but we had learnt something new. We were getting to know the names of the Omani platoon and we knew the Sergeant was called Talib and the Corporal was Rachid and we had deduced from the contact that the signaller must be called ‘Wayne’. So whenever we met him it became ‘Salaam aleikum, Wayne, etc.’

  My shooting map from Oman. The maps were in black and white so it was not always easy to spot a valley from a hill feature. With hours of time the solution was to colour the contours myself. The triangle at D2 was our position on Diana Two. The crosses are targets that we had recorded with the guns on prominent features. The arc around the position, graduated in mils gave a quick bearing to a target.

  Some days later I was browsing through Patrol Arabic and I came across a piece concerning the use of the Arabic word wain meaning ‘where is?’ In a lightbulb moment I realised that, rather than calling his name, when the platoon had been shouting ‘Wain signal’ they had actually been saying. ‘Where’s the signaller, where’s the signaller, WHERE THE HELL’S THE SIGNALLER!’ rather in the same way as we might. They must have been baffled by our European eccentricity when we decided to give the signaller the name ‘Wayne’.

  We had been on Diana Two for about ten days and Christmas was approaching. When the Omanis’ resupply helicopter arrived we were amused to see their Christmas dinner, in the shape of two live goats, walk off the aircraft and begin to much the dry grass, seemingly oblivious to their fate. We were expecting some sort of fresh Christmas rations ourselves, but, to our great disappointment, our resupply helicopter was cancelled ‘for urgent operational reasons’. We dripped and moaned to Battery HQ on the radio as we were running short of ‘Daddies Sauce’, but a replacement flight the following day was cancelled for the same reason. The effect of a minor thing like this on our morale was immense. We felt we were in danger, we were bored and out on a limb and, like spoilt children, we wanted to know we had not been forgotten.

  We understood that the Omanis celebrated 24th December rather than the Christian festival, but we had no idea what to expect. Shortly after breakfast Talib, the Platoon Sergeant, came into our beit and greeted us warmly, shaking us by the hand. He was followed by others who did the same. All were washed, shaven and wearing their cleanest and best uniforms. Talib had even used some sweet smelling oil on his carefully combed hair. Our response was t’fuddle, sweet tea and a manly chat in broken English.

  Joe Doole and I dressed in our best, ready, so we thought, for whatever might happen. At about 1100 one of the Omanis came back to us and invited us to eat with them. This was their ‘Christmas Dinner’ and was obviously a great honour, so we sat cross-legged respectfully waiting for events to unfold. A huge bowl of rice was placed in the middle of the group and a steaming pot of goat’s meat was emptied on top of it. This was the first time we had eaten with the Muslim SAF soldiers and we were only vaguely aware of the protocols. I cautiously slid my ‘unclean’ left hand under my left thigh so that I wasn’t tempted to use it. A few yards away, behind one of the SAF beits, I could see the start of a long pool of blood from where the two goats had been ritually slaughtered. The food was not unpleasant and we got used to the technique of eating Omani style: first tear a piece of meat from the leg or shoulder, then squeeze a lump of rice with it and load it into your mouth, all done with the right hand. It was impossible to do elegantly so there was no feeling of self-consciousness. After the meal we thanked
our hosts profusely and walked back to our beit where we sat outside enjoying the sunshine, relieved that we had survived what could have been an ordeal.

  An hour later we were visited again and invited back for another round. Another huge bowl of rice was placed in the centre, but this time a mess tin containing the liver and kidneys in a highly spiced sauce was emptied on top. This was more challenging than the last meal, but with grim determination we saw it through, though I had discovered you could surreptitiously avoid eating too much by dropping large quantities as you pushed it into your mouth. Once again it was profuse thanks and back to our beit hoping above hope that all was done.

  Christmas Dinner with Talib and ‘Wain’ Signal

  But, sure enough, an hour later we were invited back, this time for the pièce de résistance. The skull was emptied on to the top of the rice with other small bits of meat and we were invited to tear stringy pieces of flesh off the cheeks. By this stage I was just about able to hang on to my stomach, but it wasn’t over. One of the soldiers took the skull, placed it on a stone and cracked it with a rock, emptying the walnut-sized brain onto the dish of rice. This was the greatest delicacy and, to my horror, as the honoured guest, it was offered to me. So with a huge fumbling movement I broke off a tiny piece of the brain, squeezed it into a huge ball of rice and swallowed hard. Then, with as much European politeness as I could muster, I generously gestured to Talib and the others to share the remainder. This time when we returned to our beit there were no further invitations, to our great relief.

  The following day was Christmas Day so we decided to return the compliment, but, because of the cancelled resupply flight, we had no Christmas fare. The closest we could get to turkey was compo chicken curry so we carefully heated the contents of several cans along with the compo rice that went with it and some pineapple chunks from another can. We held the meal in a similar style to the previous day, the sole concession to the fact that it was our home fixture was the use of normal cutlery rather than fingers. The Omanis were delighted and seemed to love our compo, which few had tasted before. Compared with the eye wateringly hot meals they normally ate it was very bland and sweet, so was very different.