Secret War in Arabia

‘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.

‘Real exotic,’ Gumboot said.

‘It’s not all that bad when you get used to it. I’ve been in worse holes.’

‘Who else is here?’ Ricketts asked.

‘Spooks, Signals, BATT, Ordnance, REME, Catering Corps, Royal Corps of Transport, Engineers.’

‘Spooks, meaning “green slime”,’ Ricketts said.

‘Yes. You’re SAS, right?’

‘Right.’

‘They’ll keep you busy here.’

‘I hope so,’ Andrew said. ‘I wouldn’t want to be bored in this hole. Time would stretch on for ever.’

‘At least we’ve got outdoor movies,’ Pete said, puffing clouds of smoke from his pipe. ‘They’re shown in the SAF camp. English movies one night, Indian ones the next. Just take a chair along with a bottle of beer and have yourself a good time. Me, I’m a movie buff.’

‘I like books,’ Andrew said. ‘I write poetry, see? I always carry a little notebook with me and jot down my thoughts as they come to mind.’

‘What thoughts?’ Gumboot asked.

Andrew shrugged. ‘Thoughts inspired by what I see and hear around me. I rewrite them in my head and jot them down.’

‘You’ve got me in your notebook, have you?’ Jock asked. ‘All my brilliant remarks.’

‘Ask no questions and I’ll tell you no lies,’ Andrew replied with a big grin. ‘It’s just poetry, man.’

‘I didn’t think you could spell,’ Gumboot said, ‘but maybe that doesn’t matter.’

‘Say, man,’ Andrew said, taking a swipe at a dive-bombing hornet trying to get at his beer, ‘how come there’s so many frogs in this desert?’

‘Don’t know,’ Pete said. ‘But there’s certainly a lot of ’em. Frogs, giant crickets, flying beetles, hornets, red and black ants, centipedes, camel spiders and scorpions – you name it, we’ve got it.’

‘Jesus,’ Tom said. ‘Are any of those bastards poisonous?’

‘The centipedes and scorpions can give you a pretty serious sting, so I’d recommend you shake out anything loose before picking it up. Those things like sheltering beneath clothes. They like to hide in boots and shoes. So never pick anything up without shaking it out first.’

‘What about the spiders?’ Bill asked, looking uneasy.

‘They look pretty horrible, but they don’t bite. One has a small body and long legs, the other short legs and a big, fat body. You’ll find them all over the bloody place, including under your bedclothes – another reason for shaking everything out.’

Bill shivered at the very thought of the monsters. ‘I hate spiders!’ he said.

The thunder of 25-pounder guns suddenly shook the tent, taking everyone by surprise.

‘Christ!’ Jock exclaimed. ‘Are we being attacked?’

‘No,’ Pete said. ‘It’s just the SAF firing on the Jebel from the gun emplacements just outside the wire. You’ll get that at regular intervals during the day and even throughout the night, disturbing your sleep. It’s our way of deterring the adoo hiding in the wadis from coming down off the Jebel. It takes some getting used to, but eventually you will get used to it – that and the croaking of the bloody frogs, which also goes on all night.’

‘Time for our briefing,’ Ricketts said. ‘Drink up and let’s go, lads.’ They all downed their beer, thanked Pete, and left the tent. Once outside, Ricketts looked beyond the wire and saw one of the big guns firing from inside its protective ring of 40-gallon drums, located about a hundred yards outside the fence. The noise was tremendous, with smoke and flame belching out of the long barrel. The backblast made dust billow up around the Omani gunners, who had covered their ears with their hands to keep out the noise.

‘That’s one hell of a racket to get used to,’ Jock said.

‘Plug your ears,’ Gumboot told him.

The briefing took place in the corner of the marquee known as the ‘hotel’, where Sergeant Lampton was waiting for them, standing beside another man who, like Lampton, was wearing only a plain shirt, shorts and slippers.

‘Welcome to Um al Gwarif,’ he said. ‘I’m Captain Ralph Banks of SAS Intelligence and I don’t like to hear the term “green slime”.’ When the laughter had died down, he continued: ‘You may have noticed that I’m not wearing my green beret or insignia. You may also have noticed that everyone else around here is like me – no beret, no insignia. There’s a good reason for it. While we’re all here at the Sultan’s invitation, there are those, both here and in Great Britain, who would disapprove of our presence here, so to avoid identification we don’t wear cap badges, identification discs, badges of rank or formation signs. This also means that the adoo won’t know who we are if they capture us, dead or alive. Of course, if they capture you alive, they may try some friendly persuasion, in which case we trust that your interrogation training will stand you in good stead.’

The men glanced at one another, some grinning sheepishly, then returned their attention to the ‘Head Shed’, as senior officers were known.

‘I believe you were briefed in Hereford,’ he said, ‘about the general situation here in Oman.’

‘Yes, boss,’ some of the men replied.

‘Good. What I would like to fill you in on is what you’ll be doing for the next few days, before we make the assault on the Jebel Dhofar and start ousting the adoo.’ Banks turned to the map behind him. ‘As you’ve already been informed, everything that happens here must be seen to be the doing of the Omanis. With our help, the Sultan’s Armed Forces have established bases all around this area. At Taqa,’ he said, pointing the names out on the map, ‘Mirbat and Sudh, all on the coast, and also here in the western area at Akoot, Rayzut, where a new harbour is being built, at Thamrait, or Midway, on the edge of the Empty Quarter, and even on the Jebel itself, at the Mahazair Pools, which will be your first RV when the assault begins.’ He turned back to face them. ‘While the next military objective is the assault on the Jebel, it’s imperative that you men first learn about the workings of the BATT, who assist the SAF with training, advice and community welfare. Also, before you make the assault on the Jebel you’ll have to learn how to deal with the firqats, who can be a prickly, unpredictable bunch.’

He nodded at Sergeant Lampton, who took over the briefing. ‘The firqats are irregular troops formed into small bands led by us. Many of them are former adoo who sided with Sultan Qaboos when he deposed his father and started his reforms. As they know the adoo camps and bases, those particular firqats are very useful, but they aren’t overly fond of the Sultan’s regular army and, as Captain Banks said, they can be very difficult to deal with. For this reason, part of the work of the BATT teams is to be seen doing good deeds, as it were, in the countryside, thus impressing the firqats with our general worthiness and strengthening their support for the Sultan. So it’s imperative that you learn exactly what the BATT teams are doing and how they go about doing it. Therefore, for your first week here, you’ll be split up into small teams, each led by a BATT man, including myself, and given a guided tour of the area, plus special training relating to warfare in this particular environment. At the end of that week, the assault on the Jebel will commence. Any questions?’

There was a brief silence, broken only when Ricketts asked: ‘When do we start?’

‘Tomorrow morning. You have the rest of the day off. As the sun is due to sink shortly, it won’t be a long day. Any more questions?’

As there were no further questions, the group was disbanded and went off to the open mess tent to have dinner at the trestle tables. Afterwards they returned to the NAAFI tent to put in a solid evening’s drinking, returning at midnight, drunk and exhausted, to their bivouac tent. After nervously shaking out their kit to check for scorpions and centipedes, they wriggled into their sleeping bags for what was to prove a restless night punctuated by croaking frogs, irregular blasts from the 25-pounders and attacks by thirsty mosquitoes and dive-bombing hornets. Few of the men felt up to much the next day, but they still had their work to do.

4

For the next five days, Ricketts, Andrew and Gumboot were driven around the area in Lampton’s Land Rover, with Ricketts driving, the sergeant beside him and the other two in the back with strict instructions to keep their eyes peeled at all times. To ensure that they did not dehydrate, they had brought along a plentiful supply of water bottles and chajugles, small canvas sacks, rather like goatskins, that could be filled with water and hung outside the vehicle to stay cool. Just as the Bedfords had done the first day, Ricketts always drove alongside the roads, rather than on them, to minimize the risk from land-mines laid by the adoo.

The heat was usually fierce, from a sky that often seemed white, but they gradually got used to it, or at least learned to accept it, and they frequently found relief when they drove along the beaches, by the rushing surf and white waves of the turquoise sea. The beaches, they soon discovered, were covered with crabs and lined with wind-blown palm trees. Beyond the trees, soaring up to the white-blue sky, was the towering gravel plateau of the Jebel Dhofar, a constant reminder that soon they would have to climb it – a daunting thought for even the hardiest.

As they drove through the main gates that first morning, the big guns in the hedgehogs just outside the perimeter fired on the Jebel, creating an almighty row, streams of grey smoke and billowing clouds of dust. Just ahead of their Land Rover, a Saladin armoured car was setting out across the dusty plain, right into the clouds of dust.

‘The adoo often mount small raids against us,’ Lampton explained. They also come down from the Jebel during the night to plant mines around the base or dig themselves in for a bit of sniping. That Saladin goes out every morning at this time to sweep the surrounding tracks, clear any mines left and keep an eye out for newly arrived adoo snipers. The same procedure takes place at RAF Salalah, which is where we’re going right now.’

Reversing the same three-mile journey they had made the day before, when they first arrived, with the Land Rover bouncing constantly over the rough gravel-and-sand terrain beside the dirt track, they soon passed the guarded perimeter of RAF Salalah, then came to the main gate by the single-storey SOAF HQ. Their papers were checked by an Omani soldier wearing the red beret of the Muscat Regiment and armed with a 7.62mm FN rifle. Satisfied, he let them drive through the gates and on to where the Strikemaster jets and Skyvan cargo planes were being serviced in the dispersal bays encircled by empty oil drums.

‘Stop right by that open Skyvan,’ Lampton said. When Ricketts had done so, they all climbed down. Lampton introduced them to a dark-haired man wearing only shorts and slippers, whose broad chest and muscular arms were covered in sweat. Though he was wearing no shirt, he carried a Browning 9mm high-power handgun in a holster at his hip. He was supervising the loading of heavy resup bundles into the cargo bay in the rear of the Skyvan. The heavy work was being done by other RAF loadmasters, all of whom were also stripped to the waist and gleaming with sweat.

‘Hi, Whistler,’ Lampton said. ‘How are things?’

‘No sweat,’ Whistler replied.

‘You’re covered in bloody sweat!’

Whistler grinned. ‘No sweat otherwise.’ He glanced at the men standing around Lampton.

‘These bullshit artists have just been badged,’ Lampton said, by way of introduction, ‘and are starting their year’s probationary with us. Men, this is Corporal Harry Whistler of 55 Air Despatch Squadron, Royal Corps of Transport. Though he’s normally based on Thorney Island and was recently on a three-month tour of detachment to the army camp in Muharraq, he’s here to give us resup support. As his surname’s “Whistler” and he actually whistles a lot, we just call him…’

‘Whistler,’ Andrew said.

‘What a bright boy you are.’

Everyone said hello to Whistler. ‘Welcome to the dustbowl,’ he replied ‘I’m sure you’ll have a great time here.’

‘A real holiday,’ Gumboot said.

‘You won’t be seeing too much of Whistler,’ Lampton told them, ‘because he’ll usually be in the sky directly above you, dropping supplies from his trusty Skyvan.’

Grinning, Whistler glanced up at the semi-naked loadmasters, who were now inside the cargo hold, lashing the bundles to the floor with webbing freight straps and 1200lb-breaking-strain cords.

‘What’s in the bundles?’ Rickets asked.

‘Eighty-one-millimetre mortar bombs, HE phosphorus and smoke grenades, 7.62mm ball and belt ammo, compo rations, water in jerrycans – four to a bundle. Those are for the drops to our troopers at places like Simba, Akoot and Jibjat, but we also have food resup for the firqats out in the field, since those bastards are quick to go on strike if they think we’re ignoring them.’ Whistler pointed to some bundles wrapped in plastic parachute bags for extra protection. ‘Tins of curried mutton or fish, rice, flour, spices, dates, and the bloody oil used for the cooking, carried in tins that always burst – hence the parachute bags. As well as all that, we drop the propaganda leaflets that are part of the hearts-and-minds campaign. It’s like being a flying library for the illiterate.’

‘Whistler will also be helping out now and then with a few bombing raids,’ Lampton informed them, ‘though not with your regular weapons, since those are left to the Strikemaster jets.’

‘Right,’ Whistler said. ‘We’re already preparing for the assault on the Jebel.’ He pointed to the six 40-gallon drums lined up on the perimeter track by the runway. ‘We’re going to drop those on the Jebel this afternoon, hopefully on some dumbstruck adoo, as a trial run.’

‘What are they?’ Ricketts asked.

‘Our home-made incendiary bombs. We call them Burmail bombs.’

‘They look like ordinary drums of aviation oil.’

‘That’s just what they are – drums of Avtur. But we dissolve polyurethane in the Avtur to thicken it up a bit; then we seal the drums, fix Schermuly flares to each side of them, fit them with cruciform harnesses and roll them out the back of the Skyvan. They cause a hell of an explosion, lads. Lots of fire and smoke. We use them mainly for burning fields that look like they’ve been cultivated by the adoo. However, if help is required by you lads on the ground, but not available from the Strikemasters, we use the Burmail bombs against the adoo themselves.’