Soldier C: Secret War in Arabia Read online

  ‘Is this purely an SAS operation?’ Andrew asked, realizing that this was a typical SAS ‘Chinese parliament’, or open discussion.

  ‘No. In all matters relating to Oman, the SAF and firqats must be seen to be their own men. For this reason, B Squadron and G Squadron will be supporting two companies of the SAF, Dhofari firqats and a platoon of Baluch Askars – tough little buggers from Baluchistan. Nearly 800 fighting men in all.’

  ‘Are the SAF and the firqats dependable?’ Gumboot asked, gaining the confidence to speak out like the others.

  ‘Not always. The main problem lies with the firqats, who are volatile by nature and also bound by Islamic restrictions, such as the holy week of Ramadan, when they require a special dispensation to fight. But they have, on occasion, been known to ignore even that. When they fight, they can be ferocious, but they’ll stop at any time for the most trivial reasons – usually arguments over who does what or gets what, or perhaps some imagined insult. So, no, they’re not always dependable.’

  ‘What about the adoo?’ Ricketts asked.

  ‘Fierce, committed fighters and legendary marksmen. They can pick a target off at 400 yards and virtually melt back into the mountainside or desert. A formidable enemy.’

  ‘When does the assault on this Jebel what’s-its-name begin?’ Bill asked, nervously clearing his throat, but determined to be part of this Chinese parliament.

  ‘About a month from now,’ Greenaway informed him. ‘After you’ve all had a few weeks of training in local customs, language and general diplomacy, including seeing what previous SAS teams have been up to with schools, hospitals and so forth. It’s anticipated that the assault on the …’ – the major looked directly at Trooper Raglan with a tight little smile before pronouncing the name with theatrical precision – ‘Jebel Dhofar will begin on 1 October. The Khareef monsoon, which covers the plateau with cloud and mist from June to September, will be finished by then, which will make the climb easier. Also, according to our intelligence, there’ll be no moon that night, which should help to keep your presence unknown to the adoo.’

  ‘Who, of course, have the eyes of night owls,’ said Worthington, who had been standing silently behind them throughout the whole briefing. Only when Major Greenaway burst out laughing did the men realize that the RSM was joking. Still not quite used to SAS informality, some of them grinned sheepishly. Worthington managed to wipe the smiles from their faces by adding sadistically: ‘Rumour has it that there are over 2000 adoo on the Jebel. That means the combined SAF and SAS forces will be outnumbered approximately three to one. Should any of you lads think those odds too high, I suggest you hand in your badges right now. Any takers?’ No one said a word, though some shook their heads. ‘Good,’ said the RSM, before turning his attention to Major Greenaway. ‘Anything else, boss?’

  ‘I think not, Sergeant-Major. This seems to be a healthy bunch of lads and I’m sure they’ll stand firm’

  ‘I’m sure they will, boss.’ The RSM looked grimly at the probationers. ‘Go back to the spider and prepare your kit. We fly out tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, boss!’ they all sang, practically in unison, then filed out of the office like excited schoolboys.

  Chapter 3

  The four-engined Hercules C-130 took off the following afternoon from RAF Lyneham, refuelled at RAF Akroterion in Cyprus, then flew on to RAF Salalah in Dhofar, where the men disembarked by marching down the tailgate, from the gloom of the aircraft into the blinding, burning furnace of the Arabian sun.

  On the runway of RAF Salalah stood Skymaster jets, each in its own sandbagged emplacement and covered by camouflage nets. Three large defensive trenches – encircled by 40-gallon drums and bristling with 25lb guns and 5.5 Howitzers, and therefore known as ‘hedgehogs’ – were laid out to the front and side of the airstrip. Overlooking all was an immense, sun-bleached mountain, its sheer sides rising dramatically to a plateau from the flat desert plain.

  ‘That must be the Jebel Dhofar,’ Ricketts said to Andrew.

  ‘It is,’ a blond-haired young man confirmed as he clambered down from the Land Rover that had just driven up to the tailgate. ‘And it’s crawling with heavily-armed adoo. I’m Sergeant Frank Lampton, from one of the BATT teams. ‘I’m here to guide you probationers through your first few days.’ He grinned and glanced back over his shoulder at the towering slopes of the Jebel Dhofar, the summit of which was hazy with the heat. ‘How’d you like to cross-grain the bukits of that?’ he asked, turning back and grinning. ‘Some challenge, eh?’

  ‘It’d dwarf even the Pen-y-fan,’ Andrew admitted. ‘That’s some mother, man.’

  ‘Right,’ Lampton said. Slim and of medium height, the sergeant was dressed in shorts, boots with rolled-down socks and a loose, flapping shirt, all of which were covered in the dust that was already starting to cover the new arrivals. A Browning 9mm high-power handgun was holstered on his hip. Squinting against the brilliant sunlight, he pointed to the convoy of armour-plated Bedfords lined up on the edge of the runway. ‘Stretch your legs,’ he told the men, ‘and get used to the heat. When the QM has completed the unloading, pile into those trucks and you’ll be driven to the base at Um al Gwarif. It’s not very far.’

  While the men gratefully did stretching exercises, walked about a bit or just sat on their bergens smoking, the Quartermaster Sergeant, a flamboyant Irishman with the lungs of a drill instructor, organized the unloading and sorting of all the squadron’s kit by bawling good-natured abuse at his Omani helpers, all of whom wore shemaghs and the loose robes known as jellabas. The new arrivals watched them with interest.

  ‘Fucked if I’d like to hump that stuff in this heat,’ Gumboot finally said, breaking the silence.

  ‘You soon will be,’ Lampton replied with a grin, puffing smoke as he lit a cigarette. ‘You’ll be humping it up that bloody mountain, all the way to the top. That’s why you’d better get used to the heat.’ He inhaled and blew another cloud of smoke, then smiled wryly at Ricketts. ‘Now these Omanis,’ he said, indicating the men unloading the kit and humping it across to the Bedfords, ‘they’d probably down tools if you asked them to do that. That’s why they call the SAS “donkey soldiers” or majnoons – Arabic for “mad ones”. Are they right or wrong, lads?’

  ‘Anything you say, boss,’ Bill said, ‘is OK by me.’

  ‘An obedient trooper,’ Lampton replied, flicking ash to the ground. ‘That’s what I like to hear. Which one of you is Trooper Ricketts?’ Ricketts put his hand in the air. ‘I was informed by the RSM that you’re the oldest of the probationers,’ Lampton said.

  ‘I didn’t know that, boss.’

  ‘You’re the oldest by one day, I was told, with Trooper McGregor coming right up your backside. That being the case, you’ll be my second-in-command for the next few days. I trust you’ll be able to shoulder this great responsibility.’

  Lampton, though a sergeant, was hardly much older than Ricketts, who, feeling confident with him, returned his cocky grin. ‘I’ll do my best, boss.’

  ‘I’m sure you will, Trooper. The RSM also said you put up a good show at the briefing. Fearless in the presence of your Squadron Commander. Right out front with the questions and so forth. That, also, is why you’ll be in nominal charge of your fellow probationers while you’re under my wing.’

  ‘This sounds suspiciously like punishment, boss.’

  ‘It isn’t punishment and it isn’t promotion – it’s a mere convenience. Do you want to beg off?’

  ‘No, boss.’

  ‘You gave the correct answer, Trooper Ricketts. You’re a man who’ll go far.’ Glancing towards the Bedfords, Lampton saw that Major Greenaway and RSM Worthington were already allocating the other members of B Squadron to their respective Bedfords. ‘The unloading must be nearly completed,’ Lampton said, dropping his cigarette butt to the tarmac and grinding it out with his heel. ‘OK, Ricketts, collect the other probationers together and follow me to that truck.’

  Ricketts did as he had been tol
d, calling in his small group and then following Lampton across to one of the Bedfords parked on the edge of the airstrip. When they were in the rear, cramped together on the hard benches, already covered in a film of dust and being tormented by mosquitoes and fat flies, Lampton joined them, telling another soldier to drive his Land Rover back to base. The Bedford coughed into life, lurched forward, then headed away from the airstrip to a wired-off area containing a single-storey building guarded by local soldiers wearing red berets. The Bedford stopped there.

  ‘SOAF HQ,’ Lampton explained, meaning the Sultan of Oman’s Air Force. Removing a fistful of documents from the belt of his shorts, he climbed down from the Bedford and went inside.

  Forced to wait in the open rear of the crowded Bedford, Ricketts passed the time by examining the area beyond the SOAF HQ. He saw a lot of Strikemaster jet fighters and Skyvan cargo planes in dispersal bays made from empty oil drums. The Strikemasters, he knew from his reading, were armed with Sura rockets, 500lb bombs and machine-guns. The Skyvan cargo planes would be used to resupply, or resup, the SAF and SAS forces when they were up on the plateau, which Ricketts could see in all its forbidding majesty, rising high above the plain of Salalah, spreading out from the camp’s barbed-wire perimeter. The flat, sandy plain was constantly covered in gently drifting clouds of wind-blown dust.

  Returning five minutes later with clearance to leave the air base, Lampton climbed back into the Bedford and told the driver to take off. After passing through gates guarded by RAF policemen armed with sub-machine-guns, the truck turned into the road, crossed and bounced off it, then headed along the adjoining rough terrain.

  ‘What the matter with this clown of a driver?’ Jock McGregor asked. ‘The blind bastard’s right off the road.’

  ‘It’s deliberate,’ Lampton explained. ‘Most of the roads in Dhofar have been mined by the adoo, so this is the safest way to drive, preferably following previous tyre tracks in case mines have been planted off the road as well. Of course, even that’s no guarantee of safety. Knowing we do this, the adoo often disguise a mine by rolling an old tyre over it to make it look like the tracks of a previous truck. Smart cookies, the adoo.’

  All eyes turned automatically towards the road, where the Bedford’s wheels were churning up clouds of dust and leaving clear tracks.

  ‘Great,’ Gumboot said. ‘You take one step outside your tent and get your fucking legs blown off.’

  ‘As long as it leaves your balls,’ Andrew said, ‘you shouldn’t complain, man.’

  ‘Leave my balls out of this,’ Gumboot said. ‘You’ll just put a curse on them.’

  ‘Any other advice for us?’ Ricketts asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Lampton replied. ‘Never forget for a minute that the adoo are crack shots. They’re also adept at keeping out of sight. The fact that you can’t see them doesn’t mean they’re not there, and you won’t find better snipers anywhere. You look across a flat piece of desert and think it’s completely empty, then – pop! – suddenly a shot will ring out, compliments of an adoo sniper who’s blended in with the scenery. They can make themselves invisible in this terrain – and they’re bold as brass when it comes to infiltrating us. So never think you’re safe because you’re in your own territory. The truth is that you’re never safe here. You’ve got to assume that adoo snipers are in the vicinity and keep your eyes peeled all the time.’

  Again, they glanced automatically at the land they were passing through, seeing only the clouds of dust billowing up behind them, obscuring the sun-scorched flat plain and the immense, soaring sides of the Jebel Dhofar. The sky was a white sheet.

  ‘Welcome to Oman,’ Tom said sardonically. ‘Land of sunshine and happy, smiling people. Paradise on earth.’

  After turning off the road to Salalah, the truck bounced and rattled along the ground beside a dirt track skirting the airfield. About three miles farther on, it came to a large camp surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, with watch-towers placed at regular intervals around its perimeter. Each tower held a couple of armed SAF soldiers, a machine-gun and a searchlight. There were stone-built protective walls, or sangars, manned by RAF guards, on both sides of the main gate.

  ‘This is Um al Gwarif, the HQ of the SAF,’ Sergeant Lampton explained as the truck halted at the main gate. A local soldier wearing a green shemagh and armed with a 7.62mm FN rifle checked the driver’s papers and then waved the Bedford through. The truck passed another watch-tower as it entered the camp. ‘Home, sweet home, lads.’

  Had it not been for the exotic old whitewashed fort, complete with ramparts and slitted windows, located near the centre of the enclosure and flying the triangular red-and-green Omani flag from its highest turret, the place might have been a concentration camp.

  ‘That’s the Wali’s fort,’ Lampton explained like a tour guide. ‘That’s W-A-L-I. Not wally as you know it. Here, a Wali isn’t an idiot. He’s the Governor of the province. So that’s the Governor’s fort, the camp’s command post. And that,’ he continued, pointing to an old pump house and well just inside the main gate, beyond one of the sangars, ‘is where our running water comes from. Don’t drink it unless you’ve taken your Paludrine. There, behind the well, to the right of those palm trees, is the officers’ mess and accommodations.’ He pointed to the lines of prefabricated huts located near the Wali’s fort. ‘Those are the barracks for the SAF forces. However, you lads, being of greater substance, are relegated to tents.’

  He grinned broadly when the men let out loud moans.

  As the Bedford headed for the eastern corner of the camp, Ricketts saw that many of the SAF men were gathering outside their barracks, most wearing the same uniform, but with a mixture of red, green, sand and grey berets.

  ‘The SAF consists of four regiments,’ Lampton explained. ‘The Muscat Regiment, the Northern Frontier Regiment, the Desert Regiment and the Jebel Regiment. That, incidentally, is their order of superiority. While in the barracks, they can be distinguished from each other by their regimental beret. However, in the field they all wear a green, black and maroon patterned head-dress, known as a shemagh. As it’s made of loose cloth and wraps around the face to protect the nose and mouth from dust, you’ll all be given one to wear when you tackle the plateau.’

  ‘We’ll look like bloody Arabs,’ Bill complained.

  ‘No bad thing,’ Lampton said. ‘Incidentally, though there are a few Arab SAF officers, most of them are British – either seconded officers on loan from the British Army or contract officers.’

  ‘You mean mercenaries,’ Andrew objected.

  ‘They prefer the term “contract officers” and don’t you forget it.’

  The Bedford came to a halt in a dusty clearing the size of a football pitch, containing two buildings: an armoury and a radio operations room. Everything else was in tents, shaded by palm trees and separated by defensive slit trenches. One of them was a large British Army marquee, used as the SAS basha, and off to the side were a number of bivouac tents.

  The rest of the Bedfords had already arrived and were being unloaded as Ricketts and the others climbed out into fierce heat, drifting dust and buzzing clouds of flies and mosquitoes. Once the all-important radio equipment had been stored in the radio ops room, they picked up their bergens and kit belts and selected one of the large bivouac tents, which contained, as they saw when they entered, only rows of camp-beds covered in mosquito netting and resting on the hard desert floor. After picking a spot, each man unrolled his sleeping bag, using his kit belt as a makeshift pillow. Already bitten repeatedly by mosquitoes, all the men were now also covered in what seemed to be a permanent film of dust.

  Even as Ricketts was settling down between Andrew and Gumboot, Lampton came in to tell them that they only had thirty minutes for a rest. ‘Then,’ he said as they groaned melodramatically, ‘you’re to report to the British Army marquee, known here as the “hotel”, for a briefing from the “green slime”.’ This mention of the Intelligence Corps provoked another bout of groans. When it
had died down, Lampton added, grinning: ‘And don’t forget to take your Paludrine.’

  ‘I hear those anti-malaria tablets actually give you malaria,’ Bill said.

  ‘Take them anyway,’ Lampton said, then left them to their brief rest.

  ‘What a fucking dump,’ Gumboot said, lying back on his camp bed and waving the flies away from his face. ‘Dust, flies and mosquitoes.’

  ‘It’s all experience,’ Andrew said, tugging his boots off and massaging his toes. ‘Think of it as an exotic adventure. When you’re old and grey, you’ll be telling your kids about it, saying how great it was.’

  ‘Exaggerating wildly,’ Jock said from the other side of the tent. ‘A big fish getting bigger.’

  Ricketts popped a Paludrine tablet into his mouth and washed it down with a drink from his water bottle. Then, feeling restless, he stood up. ‘No point in lying down for a miserable thirty minutes,’ he said. ‘It’ll just make us more tired than we are now. Half an hour is long enough to get a beer. Who’s coming with me?’

  ‘Good idea,’ Andrew said, heaving his massive bulk off his camp-bed.

  ‘Me, too,’ Gumboot said.

  The rest followed suit and they all left the tent, walking the short distance to the large NAAFI tent and surprised to see a lot of frogs jumping about the dry, dusty ground. The NAAFI tent had a front wall of polyurethane cartons, originally the packing for weapons. Inside, there were a lot of six-foot tables and benches, at which some men were drinking beer, either from pint mugs or straight from the bottle. A shirtless young man smoking a pipe and sitting near the refrigerator introduced himself as Pete and said he was in charge of the canteen. He told them to help themselves, write their names and what they had had on the piece of paper on top of the fridge, and expect to be billed at the end of each month. All of them had a Tiger beer and sat at one of the tables.

  ‘So what do you think of the place?’ Pete asked them.