SAS Operation Storm Read online

  Finally, in the summer of 2009 a memorial was unveiled at the National Arboretum in Lichfield, Staffordshire. After a series of phone calls from the Ministry of Defence, no one from the Omani Embassy in London turned up and no senior SAS officer, past or present, was there. One man, Colonel Bryan Ray, a vastly experienced British Army officer who, at the time of Mirbat, commanded the Northern Frontier Regiment in the Sultan of Oman’s Army, came along and joined the crowd of 300 as they walked from the reception tent to the Special Forces Grove. At the head of the procession, a single Scottish piper was followed by a pinkie – an open-topped Land Rover converted for desert use by the SAS.

  Bolt upright, the icy rain lashing his double-breasted pin stripe suit, he spoke eloquently and movingly about the exceptional bravery of the men who fought in the Battle of Mirbat. The day after, he had debriefed some of the survivors, and told the crowd that what had impressed him most was that everyone talked of the bravery of everyone else but no one mentioned their own.

  The relatives and friends, wives and girlfriends, now huddled under umbrellas, dabbed away their tears, everyone deeply moved by the power of his words.

  This book is the story of that day, the Battle of Mirbat.

  Mirbat was the tipping point in Operation STORM, the SAS’s war to secure Dhofar, the southern province of Oman. This conflict, which continued from the mid 1960s through to 1976, involved a small British force of soldiers and pilots, never more than a few hundred strong, standing shoulder to shoulder with the young Sultan of Oman.

  This book is dedicated to those men.

  1

  Cutters and Choppers

  The story of Operation STORM starts, like all the best SAS tales, in a remote clearing in a sweaty jungle on the far side of the world. In the great tradition of SAS legends, it was in a country few people had ever heard about, at the time or since.

  The location was the Orinoco, one of the great rivers of South America. Way up in the Guyana highlands, a small group of SAS soldiers from B Squadron was training local paramilitary police. It was routine work, dull and unexciting, but all SAS soldiers do it throughout their careers, in jungles, tropical rainforests and deserts all over the world. It has always provided a steady income for the regiment and helps cultivate those international relationships that remain the invisible tentacles of British power.

  The date was late December 1969. With Christmas just a few days away, they were wrapping up the operation, keen to get back to regimental headquarters at Hereford. They were all single men and, after six weeks in the jungle, Christmas back home meant girls, parties, the pub and their families. It was also the best of regimental times, when they could just chill and catch up on the craic with their mates.

  Without warning, a helicopter landed and out of it leapt a crumpled but much loved figure. The men knew instantly that something was up. Then, as now, routine communications were encrypted and sent by radio. But when it came to secret briefings, they were, if possible, delivered face to face. Striding through the thick jungle undergrowth was Johnny Watts, the man known to all of them simply as ‘The Boss’. He was the Colonel running the whole regiment and they were a small bunch of guys on a routine, non-combat mission in South America. They were all thrilled to see him. If he was here, it could only mean one thing. Something exciting was going down somewhere. Everyone’s pulse rate cranked up a few notches.

  Soldiers in the SAS have few heroes. It’s not their style. But Johnny Watts was the one man they would follow anywhere. Traditionally, Hollywood heroes are all cut from the same mould, tall, good-looking and clean cut. Johnny Watts was the opposite. He was everything a Hollywood hero was not. He was short, always scruffy and smoked roll-up cigarettes. His trousers were never ironed and his face was as battered as his clothes. If he had been in American Special Forces, they would’ve said he had a face like a catcher’s mitt.

  Despite his appearance, he was much loved by his men and that love was unconditional. He was a soldier’s soldier, the stand-out officer of his time. Out of all the Commanding Officers this generation of SAS men served under, he was the greatest any of them would ever know.

  He was a legend to them all after standing up and addressing them in the regimental theatre, rolling a cigarette while telling them that if anyone said they put the Army, Queen or country ahead of their family, he would throw them out of the SAS.

  In 1969, Britain led the world in music and fashion. For anyone, anywhere on the planet, who thought of themselves as hip and cool, London was the centre of the known universe. British designers like Mary Quant, Barbara Hulanicki and Zandra Rhodes dictated how the rest of the Western world dressed. The Beatles dwarfed all other rock stars, dominating popular music on both sides of the Atlantic. The Rolling Stones strutted their groovy stuff at Hyde Park in London, giving a huge free concert and setting the tone for Woodstock, which followed a month later. British fashion photographers like David Bailey defined the look that everyone wanted. Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton, the world’s first supermodels, were the style icons for an entire generation of young women. Concorde, the world’s first supersonic jet liner and one of the great design icons of the twentieth century, made its maiden voyage, and British scientists captured the world’s front pages with the first ever test-tube baby. Carnaby Street, in the West End of London, was Mecca for a global generation of fashionistas. The Swinging Sixties were coming to an end – a decade defined by all things British.

  Abroad, it was a very different story. Where British swagger once painted the world map pink, there was now only a grey and tired empire. Throughout the developing world, nationalist forces were kicking off the colonial shackles. 1969 saw the Cold War in deep freeze, fought by proxy in jungles and deserts all over South-East Asia, Africa and South America. The terrain and the local customs were different in every country, but standing behind every insurgent movement were the Russians and the Chinese, fomenting what they saw as the global struggle against colonialism and imperialism. Opposing them everywhere were the Americans and the British. Fronting up for the Americans was the CIA, with huge covert armies, navies and air forces under their operational control. For the British, it was the SAS and other Special Forces, with the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, better known as MI6) lurking, as always, somewhere deep in the shadows. As ever, the American operations were big-budget, big-ticket affairs, buoyed by the belief that throwing millions of dollars and the latest technology at the problem would make it go away. Then, as now, the British relied on guile, cunning and experience. They had to. British covert operations have always been run on a shoestring budget. That was the case then and it is still the case now.

  This war was no exception.

  By the time he took the plane to brief B Squadron in Guyana in 1969, Johnny Watts was already a veteran of many of these colonial wars, having served in Malaysia, Indonesia, Borneo and Aden. This was the man who knew his COIN, the counter-insurgency handbook, better than anyone. So once he turned up in South America everyone knew he was not there to top up his tan or share the joys of snake curry.

  Standing in front of him in the jungle that day were four SAS men. None of them knew they were about to write themselves into legend, becoming key figures in what many now regard as the greatest SAS battle ever. But here, in the clinging, mind-drenching sweat, crotch rot, skin rips and insect bites of the tropical jungle, all that was still many months away.

  They were trying to look relaxed, but underneath the dried jungle sweat and the sort of exotic facial hair banned everywhere else in the British Army, they were all quietly excited.

  The four SAS soldiers were Roger Cole, Bob Bennett, Sekonaia Takavesi – known to everyone as Tak – and Austin Hussey, nicknamed Fuzz.

  The SAS has always celebrated diversity among its soldiers. Many men flourish here who would otherwise struggle in other regiments where they would be shackled by more rigid cultures. The four in the jungle could not be more different, but together they made a formidable fighting unit.

/>   Before joining the SAS, Roger Cole had started his life in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, the regiment nicknamed ‘the blanket stackers’. From here he was attached to 2 Para in Aden, where he worked in the Heavy Drop Company delivering equipment and major supplies to battlefields all over the world. This made him an ‘airborne blanket stacker’. Once he joined the SAS, he then reached the highest accolade available in the British Army. His mates who knew his past called him a ‘super airborne blanket stacker’. Brought up in Knowle West, the toughest council estate in Bristol, he knew that if he had not joined the army or the police he would probably now be in prison, crime being the only other route out of one of the most deprived areas of an already desperately poor city.

  Classically handsome, Bob Bennett from Devon was quietly spoken. If you met him in the pub you would think he was a sixth-form English teacher, but he was one of the best shots in the SAS. Tell him to put a bullet in a head target at 800 yards and he would ask, ‘Which eye do you want?’ He was the thinking man’s Corporal, the soldier every SAS man wanted in their patrol. Whatever the problem, he would come up with a solution. And best of all, he was always calm, treating everything with a wry smile.

  Tak, a Fijian, had come to the SAS via the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and was a legend in his own cooking pot. Everyone loved serving with the Fijians. The SAS would arrive in some remote part of the world and sort out their camp. By the time they had dug the latrines and decided which tree was the best for their hammock, there was already a banging fish curry on the way. If there was no fish, then several members of the local snake population – or any other animal foolish enough to be within half a mile of the camp – would soon find themselves decapitated, skinned and stewed. His nickname was Take It Easy Takavesi. A great big teddy bear of a man, he was the ultimate wheeler dealer, loved by everyone who crossed his path. Tak was the perfect man for a clandestine war, a guy who could charm the snakes out of the trees.

  Fuzz was a twinkler, the confirmed bachelor in the group and the scourge of barmaids all over Hereford. Very dapper, he should have been a model. He was really a hippy at heart. Back in Hereford he wore flower-power shirts, and when the guys were out in Brunei he persuaded everyone to go out on patrol wearing ‘Ban the Bomb’ badges, which they bought in the local market. The guys loved to tease him because he was short and an ugly sod, but none of them could understand his relentless success with women everywhere. He put it down to Brut aftershave, but despite smelling like the waiting room in a cheap brothel he was as tough as anyone in the regiment and one of the great mortar men of his generation. Very short, he made his mortar look big, but he was deadly to anyone or anything within range. He was an outstanding radio man and could read a book while he was sending Morse code. He was also a gifted patrol medic, the sort of guy every SAS man wanted to be out with.

  All four had taken a drop in pay and rank to join Britain’s Special Forces. Though they were among the most elite soldiers in the British Army, none of them was paid more than twenty pounds a week, less than a third of the average wage in Britain. Many SAS men had to take extra jobs when they got back home to Hereford, working in the local timber yard or putting up television aerials to earn a few extra quid so they could take a short holiday with their girlfriends or buy presents for their families.

  But that was life at home, now they were in their natural habitat, the jungle.

  As always Johnny Watts got straight to the point.

  ‘Well boys, you’re going off to fight a little war, somewhere in the Middle East. It’s top secret. So there’ll be no medals, no parades, no recognition. You can’t talk about it to anyone, not even your families, but you know all that already. So I’m here to ask you – what do you need?’

  That was one of the many reasons why his men loved him. Although he was The Boss, the Colonel and the one in command of the regiment day to day, he respected the first-hand experience of his soldiers and always put them first. His whole philosophy was to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with his troops, always asking questions, always caring and always open to new ideas. It didn’t matter if the best idea came from the lowliest Trooper in the regiment or the most senior officer. If it was the right course of action, then that was the one he would go with – and he always gave credit where it was due, unlike many other officers.

  Straight up, the lads were clear.

  ‘We want a proper cutting shop, Boss.’

  A ‘cutting shop’ was the SAS term for a mobile field hospital. Officially, the British Army called them FSTs, Field Surgical Teams. The Americans nicknamed them MASH, Mobile Army Surgical Hospital units.

  For the men in the front line, the presence of a good field hospital was the difference between life and death.

  Watts reassured them. ‘You’ve got it. I’ve booked a team of surgeons, top-class cutters who know what they’re doing.’

  ‘That’s great Boss, but what about getting there?’

  ‘Contract pilots, with Hueys. They’ll have you on the table in thirty minutes.’

  That was what the men wanted to hear. They all knew that, after being wounded, the first sixty minutes is the most crucial.

  The medics call that time the ‘golden hour’. If they can get you from the battlefield to the operating table within that hour, you’re in with a fighting chance. Every minute over the sixty is a minute closer to death. For every soldier, this is the brutal mathematics of survival.

  The helicopters, Hueys, gave everyone huge comfort. At the time, they were the workhorse used by the Americans in the Vietnam War, much loved by soldiers everywhere as they defied gravity and kept flying even with a fuselage full of machine-gun bullets. The distinctive whoopf whoopf whoopf of the Huey rotors meant help was only a few heartbeats away.

  The choice of pilots was good news too. SAS men were used to fighting alongside contract pilots all over the world. It was an internal regiment secret, but in their experience contract pilots were the best, always ready to fly into the middle of a firefight where the RAF would sometimes stand back.

  Contract chopper pilots have always been a breed apart. Usually you could count on having lots of Americans, South Africans and a German. For some reason, there was always a German. But regardless of where they were from, they had one thing in common. They were all crazy, prepared to fly into the middle of the heaviest firefight, scoop up the casualties and get them to hospital. If that meant breaking all the rules of safe flying and coming in just feet from the deck, then they would do it.

  The SAS knew this and some of them were still fresh from a bad experience in Yemen where an RAF helicopter pilot had refused to fly into a firefight, demanding a 1,000 yard clearance, when the SAS men on the ground had a man down and were just yards away from the enemy. As he flew away, his radio crackled and he heard the SAS Sergeant cursing him and saying, ‘If you were in range, I’d shoot you out the fucking sky myself!’ A contract pilot then flew in and they got their man to safety.

  After The Boss had gone, the guys talked among themselves. Now they were happy. They were off to fight a real war against a top-class guerrilla army, the sort of hide-for-days, fight-and-disappear, sneaky-beaky war where the SAS has always excelled. They were going to get a quality cutting shop, reliable choppers and a bunch of crazy-ass, daredevil pilots who would risk their own lives to get them to a surgeon. The guys were already wrapped in a clinging layer of sweat and dirt from the jungle, but now they had a warm feeling inside as well.

  Guyana had been fun, a bit of light relief, but clandestine wars were what they were all about. It defined them as a regiment, as soldiers and as men. It was what they lived for and what they were prepared to die for, not training paramilitary police officers in a remote jungle.

  But now there was one big problem – getting home for Christmas. There were thick snowstorms up the Eastern seaboard of the United States and no standard commercial flights back to the UK. But there is no army in the world that can stop a troop of SAS men getting back to Hereford fo
r Christmas leave. Ever resourceful, they hit the phone, the radio and the telex machine. Within hours, a flight was fixed, courtesy of the Special Forces C-130 Hercules, the transport plane of choice for air forces all over the world. The Americans have always loved to help the SAS, and they agreed to refuel the plane at their base in the Azores before it flew on to RAF Lyneham.

  The SAS often works closely with the Americans. While they were refuelling at the American base in the Azores, the lads all went to eat in the US canteen. They knew the food would be great. It always is on American bases. As they stood in the food queue, one of the cooks asked, ‘Do you wanna waffle?’

  This was a time when no one outside America had ever heard of a waffle, so the SAS man replied, ‘Yeah, what do you wanna talk about?’

  Blank stares all round. Two allied armies divided by a common language.

  Using Hereford logic, the waffle soldier was nicknamed Frenchy. He was very dapper so what else could he be called? Frenchy was renowned for mangling the English language. Processed peas became ‘possessed peas’ and once, as the SAS flew back from South America over the Caribbean, he looked down and said, ‘Look lads, that’s the carabineer!’

  Not surprisingly, his mates hung on his every word.

  Back home in Britain, pub regulars in the early 1970s suffered both from an economy in collapse and jukeboxes cluttered with sentimental rubbish. In Hereford, as always, the SAS defined their own culture.

  Elsewhere in the country, drinkers had to listen to Clive Dunn, the actor who had made his name as Corporal Jones in the BBC comedy classic Dad’s Army, singing a sentimental ballad called ‘Grandad’. While he treacled on about penny farthings, bows and hoops and spinning tops, the jukebox in The Grapes, the SAS pub, revealed a very different take on life. After their trip to Guyana, Roger Cole and Valdez donated a local two-sided calypso hit 45 to Tony, The Grapes’ landlord.