by Geoff Wolak
‘Ways in?’ Moran asked.
‘Helo para drop, as per Mauritania,’ I said. ‘And some luck. First we wear then down and make an assessment.’
‘Seems workable,’ Bob said, a look at the faces, an invite for people to have their say.
‘Straight forwards,’ the Major said. ‘Step by step. In and acclimatize, set piece moves and ambushes, make an assessment. A long line of men with broken ankles and minor wounds and we re-assess.’
Moran said, ‘Either we wear them down or we leave, and ambushes are the key to that process, so we pick our ground, not have it dictated to us. We put the bait where we want it.’
‘French might not like that,’ Bob noted.
‘It’s no different to now,’ I said. ‘They move in and out all the time as far as I can see.’
‘What about local intel?’ Moran asked Bob.
‘Sketchy, but we will have signals to hand, and they can tell you were active radios are located, so some use. Human intel is next to useless. French claim to have trusted informants -’
‘Yet they’ve made no progress,’ I cut in with.
‘True,’ Bob agreed.
‘And the fifth column?’ Hamble asked.
‘A problem from time to time,’ a nice lady captain answered. ‘I was there for three months, on the coast, a joint signals intel operation. A barracks was shot at one time, a grenade thrown another time.’
‘Sanitary conditions?’ I asked her with a smile.
‘Not great, everyone was sick, the food is questionable.’
I faced Bob. ‘Hercules re-supply, rations and ... tins of meat from Tescos, pallet drop once a week.’
He made a note.
‘Don’t forget the toilet paper,’ Moran told him, faces smiling. ‘Sunday Times for me.’
‘So we’re happy to proceed then?’ Bob asked the group.
‘Happy to proceed step by step,’ I said. ‘And we do what we can, re-assess as we go. French have six Pumas in the area, so that should do for us, have chutes made available, ropes to slide down, gloves - helos can’t land on the rocks.’
‘RAF have been tasked with Chinooks for you -’
‘Too big, and no use to us,’ I cut in with. ‘Pumas, two or three, plus mobile refuelling for the forward base. I suggest that we have a rear base on the coast, safe, a forward-ish base, safe-ish with the RAF Regiment and French there, but that base will be away from rockets and mortars. Then we have the French very-forward base, in harm’s way, men and equipment dropped by Puma, but the Pumas don’t linger.’
Bob made a note. ‘I’ll have to change that quickly. There’ll be a Hercules on Cyprus for the supply run, could use Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean. RAF Medics?’
‘At the very forward base, since we’d want them quickly. But Bob, if those Chinooks have been tasked already ... keep two in the game, because distances are long here, and men and kit can be transported, even a jeep, just that they’re not much good in the hills unless we have a wide smooth landing zone.’
‘So ... Chinooks for supply, French Pumas for the hills?’ he clarified, and I nodded.
I faced Hamble. ‘Your men will need GPMGs, and sniper rifles, it’s all about the distance here, rebels with RPGs six hundred yards out taking pot shots at you.’
He nodded. ‘Our primary task?’
‘Bait,’ I said with a smile. ‘You’d be at the French forward base. They’ll sneak up and try and kill you, so your task ... is to shoot them first. Maybe a few patrols, and few ambushes, a real lack of sleep as mortars and rockets come in at random.’
His eyes widened and he exchanged a look with the Major.
‘SBS and 2 Squadron?’ Bob asked.
‘Same, they hold that forward base in rotation. I won’t send the 2 Squadron lads out on patrol, but the SBS can go out, maybe with a French lad or two along. But that forward base will not be kept in use for more than two weeks, then we relocate or advance, depends on the score card. But, if they keep coming to us, then fine, we keep killing them till they run out of warm bodies.’
The lady captain put in, ‘The French at that forward base were attacked six times a day, every day, for six months.’
I faced Hamble. ‘There you go, only six times a day. Easy, gives you four hours in between for some food and some kip, a little sunbathing, a paperback to read...’
They laughed, Hamble not impressed.
‘Joint training before then?’ Bob asked.
‘Little point doing that here in the cold and wet, wrong kind of acclimatisation.’
‘Cyprus?’ Bob asked.
‘Good choice,’ I commended. ‘The teams meet there five days before we fly down the Red Sea. Any longer and they’ll get drunk and start fighting.’
Bob nodded. ‘French 1st Brigade Paras could meet you there, they’re in Mauritania as we speak, so I guess they’re already acclimatised. Say ... fly down next Monday?’ He took in the faces.
‘My busy social calendar says I’m free,’ I told him. ‘And my men don’t have social lives, so they’ll all be ready.’ I faced Hamble. ‘Anything interest going on at the Officers Mess?’
He shot me a look. ‘I’m ready, sure the volunteers will be too.’
‘Monday then,’ Bob said finally.
I told Bob, ‘I have some ... odd bits of kit for you to get for us to take, starting with two sets of Christmas lights, some long cables, a small petrol generator, a small fridge that will run off said generator, nine volt and car batteries.’
He made a note with a frown.
‘And a good supply of flares, and flare pistols.’
‘Christmas lights?’ Hamble queried.
‘Try and figure it out,’ I told him.
‘I figured it out,’ Moran said with a grin. I took him to one side and he whispered in my ear. Back at the table, grinning, I said, ‘Captain Moran figured it out. Rest of you ... answers on a postcard please.’
‘That’s going to annoy me all day now,’ the Major said. ‘Christmas lights..?’
Training stepped up a pace, all told to lose weight ready for the heat and to get in an hour a day, twice, morning and evening, Tomo taunting Rocko about his weight. Rocko was not overweight, just built a bit like me, and his weight hardly varied. He was just naturally heavy.
I used the running machines in the mornings, so did Moran and Smitty - the early birds, but regular troopers often hogged the machines during the day. For the next week my detachment took priority, or else. Mouri and the “Salties” ran near their mansion.
On the Wednesday I called up those sergeants and officers of 2 Squadron and the SBS who would be going, and with my lads they gathered around the ping pong table, a drawing made by Moran, quite detailed and almost three dimensional.
‘OK, gentlemen, this is the plan,’ I began. ‘We have a rear operating base, ROB, on the coast, safe enough, the odd grenade thrown over the wire. We then have a forwards operating base, FOB, inland and about fifty miles short of the very forwards operating base, VFOB - for those who like short names.
‘Captain Moran, kindly work out what our lads would use in one week - rations, ammo and bog roll, water especially - multiply it by five and we’ll have that pallet dropped once a week by Hercules or Chinook at the very forward base.’ He made a note.
‘OK, what you see on this drawing is the ... fuck it, let’s call it High Point, because it’s up high.’
‘There’s a name on the map,’ Moran pointed out. ‘It says ... Ali Badu.’
‘Great, very forward base is Badu,’ I acknowledged. ‘Camp Badu, or Camp Bad for short. OK, this is the camp, one hundred metres across, between two rocky outcrops, road access at the rear, if you could call that a road, goat trails at the front.
‘Camp faces north, and is at an altitude of six thousand feet, so the air is cold at night, sun is hot during the day, no natural water. In front of it are two steep gorges dropping down to a road, and that road is in regular use by both civilians and rebels.’
> ‘How’d we know the difference?’ the RAF Flying Officer from 2 Squadron, Haines, asked.
‘The rebels will shoot at you as they pass,’ I told him. ‘Or launch a mortar.’
‘Marvellous,’ he quipped.
‘In the middle you can see an outcrop, with a precarious footpath across to an OP, a sheer drop the other side of some two hundred metres to the road. If you’re there in the OP, don’t step out for a piss.’ They laughed.
‘Four hundred yards left and right of the OP are cliffs, goat trails in the cliffs, and out beyond five hundred metres the mountains become plateaus, roads the other side and trails. So, the rebels drive up, unload their mortars, pop off a few rounds then fuck off.’
‘And our job?’ the Flying Officer asked.
‘Bait. You’ll need to duck a lot,’ I told him as he stared back. I faced the lads. ‘Our job will be to set ambushes for the mortar crews. Those who man the camp ... you’ll need to snipe at anyone shooting at you, and they sometimes sneak around the sides, so it’s a fun spot to be. French reported six attacks a day for six months.’
‘Six attacks a day?’ the SBS queried, wide-eyed.
I nodded. ‘But that’s six attacks a day assuming that my team is not where the bad boys are, shooting them full of holes. If we do our jobs properly then it shouldn’t be six attacks a day, should it.
‘OK, SBS will send out patrols along the edges now and then in daylight, denial of area, stretch your legs, and the chances of coming face to face with the local militia is high. Since you’re all highly trained, and they’re part-timers with no training, I expect you to do well.’
‘And us?’ the Flying Officer asked.
‘You patrol the rear area from time to time, and the rest of your lads will protect the various air bases.’
‘And patrols forwards?’ he pressed.
‘Ask me that again after ... your first few casualties, ask your lads to volunteer to patrol forwards after they’ve been there a week.’ I held my stare on him. ‘Don’t be in a hurry, this is not an exercise.’
I faced the lads. ‘OK, first part of the mission is to ambush them and to wear them down, and to make as assessment of their numbers, their strengths and weaknesses. If ... things go well, we patrol out further and further. And if we think it’s doable, we para drop into the heart of enemy held territory and go for the hostages, but ... they’re being held in an old stone fort nestled into a cliff, and fucking hard to get to without being seen.
‘That fort has a hundred plus men, RPGs, fifty cal, some determined men that don’t drink or do drugs. There are also lots of civilians in the area of the fort, a large village, so lots of dogs at night.
‘Have a look at the drawing, have a think about what you’ll need, and that need should be probably ... four men on, four men off, GPMGs ready, sniper rifles ready, rations and water in your fox hole or sandbag position, binoculars. There’ll be a medical team with us, and French Paras - the same French lads that were with us in Angola.
‘We’ll have supplies dropped in by parachute pallet or Chinook, all officers pitching in to work out supplies, a command and control fox hole set-up with comms on rotation. All men could be rotated out once a week or so for a few days, it’s not all bad. If anyone has any light brown cammo netting, take it.
‘You’ll need sleeping bags, it gets cold at night, no camp beds, no tents except for the medical team, and I’ve requested a shit load of empty sandbags – no shortage of sand. We’ll need shovels, lots of them, but I think the French will have some in-country.
‘Stores will need to be distributed, because an incoming mortar might hit them, so no central stores area. OK, look at the drawing.’ I held up a pointer. ‘This pointer represents five hundred yards.’ I drew a red line forwards of the camp. ‘Anyone inside that area could hit you, further out with a fifty cal. But if they can hit you, you should be able to hit them, at least keep their heads down with GPMG.
‘On the plus side, we can get wounded out via the helicopters, or jeeps at the rear, and we’ll have medics with us. OK, questions?’
‘Will we have mortars?’ Rocko asked.
‘French might have some, but we’d be hard pressed to spot the rebel mortar positions in the rocks a mile away.’
‘Flares at night?’ Slider asked.
‘Yes, we’ll be able to light up the valleys.’
‘The nearest enemy marshalling area?’ Swifty asked.
‘Good question, and we’ll go find it on foot and take a look. There are good roads just down the cliffs.’
‘Those roads patrolled by the French?’ Elkin asked.
‘Now and then, but they take casualties from ambush. Remember, the ambushers have the advantage - roads in steep valleys.’
‘So we do what we did in Western Sahara,’ Moran told Elkin. ‘We ambush from above.’
‘And if they don’t like what we do ... and all come out to play?’ Swifty posed.
‘Then we’d have a scrap on our hands, but that base can only be accessed along goat trails, so no sudden rush attack. Besides, there are a few hundred French soldiers down the hill. They could be with us in a few hours.’
‘And an attack at the rear?’ Swifty posed. ‘Up the supply road.’
‘Be more than just a scrap,’ I told him. ‘But those in the base will have plenty of GPMG. And, if they all come out to play, good – because we want to thin them out.’
The lads studied the drawing and the maps and debated points as usual as I chatted to the officers about logistics, my concern about the RAF officer growing; he was both keen to be involved yet afraid at the same time.
Sunday we were all in, checking kit and packing the metal crates, everything double checked, and I had bought some brown cloth on the Saturday at a garden centre in Hereford. It was used to keep birds off crops, was easy to tear, and was very cheap. I had some given to each man in the detachment, to be rolled up inside his poncho, and we had just enough brown ponchos.
Monday came around quickly, and I was up early, soon closing the door on my apartment again, double checking kit and maps, compasses and binoculars. I had bought myself a pair of small brown binoculars with a good focal length, and they would hang around my neck for the patrols.
The lads were all in and heads were counted at 8am, soon in the coaches and off to Brize Norton in the rain with our police escort, a Tristar flight down to Cyprus with our kit for Alpha Troop, Bravo having lost a toss of a coin, they got a Hercules, Bob still keen that we not fly together.
The SBS would be in the Tristar with the RAF Regiment and RAF support staff, the RAF medics to arrive sometime in the week.
We made it to Cyprus in good time, just over four hours, and we landed in the sunshine at a familiar RAF Akrotiri, beaches glimpsed as we came into land. Huts had been allocated to us, buses and drivers, and we soon settled, one hut per troop, the SBS next door, the RAF Regiment with their colleagues across the vast airfield.
I grabbed Moran, and we ventured and found the RAF Regiment officer in charge of base security. He would allocate us time on the base range, and had men who could show us a running track route around the large airfield. He was also tasked with providing coaches to the training grounds in the west, which offered us a very similar landscape to that of Djibouti and could be used for live firing, but I was conscious of broken ankles prior to the job itself.
I was handed a book of officers mess chits and had to puzzle them, Moran smiling and explaining them. He would have to hold my hand, I told him; I had yet to use the small officers mess at the base in Hereford. After a wash, little in the way of uniform suitable for the officers mess, we had a lift over to that mess, both of us without headgear, the allocated driving puzzling that. We stepped down at the large officers mess, a fine old stone building, soon glanced at by passing officers.
Up the steps, and a colonel stopped, taking exception to us.
‘Sir,’ I began. ‘We’re SAS, and no one is supposed to report our presence or our me
n, but we could get a cold sandwich from the NAAFI if you object.’
‘No, no, I ... quite understand the restrictions placed on you, but you’re hardly dressed. Perhaps the bar, they do the same meals more or less.’
‘That would be fine, sir,’ I told him. ‘Thank you.’
We found the bar, collecting a few looks as we progressed, and ordered cold beers, glancing at the menu. I ordered the steak, and asked if I could use my mess chits, which I could – up to a certain value. Mess chits were not for the bar.
‘Bloody nonsense,’ I told a smirking Moran as we sat with our beers.
A major, sat reading a newspaper, turned his head towards us and looked us up and down, shaking his head. ‘Standards don’t cost anything, but they make all the difference.’
‘Bollocks,’ I said, and Moran almost choked on his beer.
‘I beg your pardon?’ the major asked, lowering his paper. ‘What regiment are you?’
‘Name is Wilco, SAS.’
‘What? Oh. So you’re him.’
‘Yes, sir, and my standards are set in battle, and recognised by the Prime Minister, so I’m sure you can allow us a little leeway.’
‘Indeed. Are you ... off to the Middle East?’
‘We’re not at liberty to say, sir,’ Moran told him. ‘Sorry.’
‘No, no, I quite understand.’
We eased back and sipped our beers, and when the steak came it was good, and quite filling.
A colonel then stepped in an approached the bar, the bar now quite busy. He side-glanced at me, and I remembered him from Riyadh. ‘Wilco!’ he loudly announced, heads turning, and he bound over.
I stood. ‘Hello again, sir.’
‘What you doing here?’ he asked as we shook.
‘On our way south, sir, some trouble to cause.’
‘Let me get you a drink, where are my manners,’ and off he went as Moran and I exchanged looks. Back from the bar he sat, waving over his colleague, another colonel.
‘Ted, this is the infamous Wilco, SAS,’ and his friend sat. He faced me, ‘When did you get a commission?’