It was a relief to enter the air-conditioned room after the heat of the runway. I made my way to the hotplate and started to pile food onto my plate. I’d got used to the lavish fare at Bradbury Lines. It was my unlucky day; I must have picked the cook going through the male menopause. As I lifted an extra sausage, he swiped my knuckles with a ladle. I couldn’t believe it – the cook was trying to rip me off for a reputation. I knew the answer: grab his wrists and glue his hands to the hotplate. I wasn’t quick enough and he retired to the safety of the whitetiled wall at the rear of the serving area. I was about to jump the hotplate when the master chef appeared. His face was a ghoulish mask, scarred by a thousand fry-ups.
‘This hotplate is for rissoles not arseholes,’ I said, pointing at the sullen cook.
The master chef launched into his plea of mitigation. ‘The lad’s been away from his wife for five weeks,’ he spluttered.
‘Poor bastard,’ I sneered as I carried my scoff to the nearest table.
Leaving the tensions of the RAF cookhouse far behind, the C-130 reached cruising height. I took a sip from one of the cardboard cups of orange juice passed down the plane by the loadmaster and began to address the problems of the immediate future. The night of 1 October was going to be some night. At Otterburn I had been designated a member of the GPMG sustained-fire team. Because I was a new boy, I ended up number two. This meant I would have to carry a GPMG tripod, weighing over 30lb, plus 1,000 rounds of GPMG link ammunition – 500 wrapped around the body and 500 in the bergen. This was before the rations, water, belt kit and personal weapon, a 7.62mm SLR, were taken into consideration. And all in the heat of an Arabian night. It was going to be some sweat. It was no wonder the SAS became known as the ‘donkey soldiers’ by the Firqats. I thought of the other members of the gun team: Jimmy, the gun controller; Lou, the observer; and number one, Sean, a Parachute Regiment corporal, the trigger man. They had all been in action before. I was the odd man out, but it gave me confidence to think I was surrounded by such seasoned soldiers.
The thump of the Hercules landing gear hitting the tarmac at RAF Salalah brought me back to the present. I looked out of the window. The first thing that caught my attention were the Strikemaster jets, secured in their own individual sandbagged emplacements, covered by camouflage nets. It was a reassuring sight. Air support was going to be at a premium. This was a prophetic thought; I little realized that the intervention of the Strikemasters would later save my life.
As the Hercules swung round into the taxi bay I caught my first view of the Jebel.
‘There she is lads, there’s the monster!’ Geordie’s words at the first sight of Pen-y-fan in the Brecon Beacons all those months ago came echoing back as if it had been yesterday. If I hadn’t realized it at the time, the rigours of selection, the painful point-to-point over Pen-y-fan and the ruthless red-lining certainly made sense now as I gazed out of the window at this new challenge that awaited us. More bergenhumping, more blister-cursing – but this time it would be for real. Tim’s endeavours to forge a chain with no weak links would soon be put to the test. Our mettle was about to be put under severe stress in the pitiless furnace of the Arabian sun.
Compared to the awesome ramparts of the Jebel Massif, Pen-y-fan was like a nipple on a 42-inch bust. The sight before us was stunning. Out of the totally flat area known as the Salalah plain suddenly rose the sheer sides of this huge great plateau. It reminded me of pictures I’d seen of Ayers Rock in Australia. But it was far vaster, an Ayers Rock spreading out in all directions. Once on the summit of this high ground in a few days’ time, we would be heading into the unknown – that was, if we were able to get to the top in the first place.
As the four powerful Allison turboprop engines of the C-130 shut down and the tailgate lowered with a slow mechanical whine, a shockwave of heat rolled down the inside of the plane’s fuselage, passing through and hitting us before we had even eased ourselves out of our cramped sitting positions. We stumbled down the tailgate into the full glare of the sun. It felt like walking into the middle of a nuclear explosion, so fierce was the heat, so intense the glare. Christ, I thought, as my eyes began to water, I hope we don’t have long to wait. We didn’t. A convoy of armour-plated Bedfords suddenly swung onto the tarmac and came to a halt just short of the tailgate. ‘Get those Firkins working, hey,’ shouted the squadron quartermaster sergeant, a flamboyant Irishman called Paddy, flailing his arms around like an out-of-control puppet as he swung down from the cab of the first Bedford. He set to work organizing the unloading and sorting of all the squadron kit.
At long last all the gear was packed into every available bit of space on the Bedfords. We then clambered on top of our huge pile of bergens, ammunition boxes and equipment and tried to find a comfortable spot.
‘Best place to sit, this,’ said Fuzz, smiling serenely from the top of the biggest bergen.
‘Why’s that?’ I asked, shifting my position uncomfortably.
‘Because if we go up on a mine we’ve got insulation from the blast,’ he answered, adjusting his hands cupped between his legs.
This was no idle joke. What few roads there were in Dhofar were all known to be mined, so uncomfortable travel over rough terrain parallel to the roads was the only option. But even this was not foolproof. The Adoo were known to seek out the regularly used diversions and lay mines on them, too. They would cunningly conceal the presence of a mine by rolling an old tyre over the area to make the existing tyre-tracks look continuous. We set off with a last flourish of ‘Move your loins, hey!’ from Paddy. He finished all his orders with ‘hey’, and when he was really excited, ‘hey, hey!’
The first leg of our journey took us to the SAS base at Um al Gwarif, a sandblown dump in the middle of nowhere. Next to it stood the hutted camp of the Sultan’s Armed Forces, a base camp for the resident battalion serving in the area. As the convoy of armoured Bedfords swung through the camp perimeter, the first thing that caught my eye was an old whitewashed fort complete with ramparts and slitted windows. A triangular red and green flag flew stiffly from a pole attached to the topmost turret. I felt as though I was back in the Crusades. Indeed, one of the Firqats had even taken the name of Saladin, that great Muslim warrior who clashed with Richard the Lionheart. From Saracen swords to guerrilla grenades; from Jerusalem to the Jebel Massif; from Saladin to the Salalah plain.
The lead Bedford swung round and came to a halt at midday on what looked like a volleyball court. A layer of fine sand settled on everything. I tried to dust myself down but didn’t make much impact on the light-brown film which covered me. I jumped down from the Bedford and looked around. There were only two buildings – an armoury and a radio-operations room. Everything else was tented. Over to my left was a large British Army marquee, and off to the side a number of bivouac tents. There’s the hotel, I thought.
‘Let’s get moving, hey, hey!’ shouted Paddy, standing on one leg like a Masai warrior, and thrashing his arms about like a combine harvester to emphasize the urgency. We began the task of unloading the Bedfords.
It was late afternoon by the time the kit and equipment were sorted out. With the radio equipment finally stored away in the signals shack, we picked up our bergens and belt kits and headed towards the hotel. I grabbed the first empty bivouac tent and looked inside. Nothing, just the hard desert floor. I opened my bergen and removed my sleeping bag. I pushed the bergen to the far end of the bivouac and placed my belt kit in front. This would make a good pillow. Then I unrolled my sleeping bag and laid it out the full length of the tent. After a final attempt at dusting down my OGs – in shit order by this time – and already bitten by mosquitoes, I laid my head on the belt kit and fell into an exhausted sleep.