‘There it is!’ screamed Jimmy and Lou in unison. Jimmy rattled off a fire-control order. ‘Range 400 metres. Go right 100 metres from the rocky outcrop. Heavy machine-gun concealed in the tree-line. Lay.’
My eyes were drawn to the area indicated. It looked like a fire in the tree-line, streams of bluish smoke rising from the top branches of the thorn bushes. It was the HMG. It must have just recently been dragged out of the arms cache, the preservation grease and oil burning as the weapon grew hotter. It was a mistake, a real giveaway. I was once more thankful for the thoroughness of our own preparations.
‘Rapid fire!’ screamed Jimmy. Sean squeezed the trigger and hammered out the burst of thirty rounds to ensure a close pattern of shots in the target zone.
I watched the stream of reddish-orange tracer as it overshot the target. We were all right for line, but firing high. ‘Fire another long burst and I’ll turn it down on the elevation drum,’ I shouted. I unlocked the elevation drum and gave it a quick tweak downwards. Sean fired a long burst, and, with another small turn on the elevation drum, I watched with satisfaction as the tracer descended into the area of the smoke.
As I locked off the elevation drum, Jimmy screamed, ‘On!’ I clipped a fresh belt of 200 rounds onto the old belt and began feeding the beast. Stream after stream of tracer zapped into the area of the heavy machine gun, the sound of the GPMG drumming in my ears. The mortars had now begun firing, adding to the din of battle, the phosphorus rounds exploding in cascades of white flashes among the thick thorn bushes.
The battle raged on. The Adoo HMG had stopped firing, but the crackle of small-arms fire came from all directions. The mortars kept up a steady bombardment, setting fire to the tree-line. The mixed-fruit pudding was cooking up nicely. Sean was doing a traversing shoot along the high ground above the waterhole, the tracer ricocheting skywards.
Suddenly the radio crackled into life – ‘Valdez is hit’; and Jimmy relayed the ominous words, ‘Ambush party, high ground to the right, watch my tracer.’ He dropped the radio receiver, grabbed his SLR and fired off about a dozen tracer rounds into the high ground on the right flank, indicating the Adoo firing position. Sean swung the gun round, laid the sight on, and sent a stream of tracer hammering into the ambush area, blasting the ambush party to eternity.
At last, under the sheer weight of SAS firepower, the Adoo attack began to slacken off until only the odd round cracked over the position. It had not gone as planned. Valdez had been seriously wounded and the action groups had had first-hand experience of a reluctant Firqat. On the plus side, it appeared that the Adoo had broken contact and we had acquired a new piece of real estate. I felt strangely elated; I was still on an adrenaline high. It could have been a lot worse, we could have taken more casualties. I heard Jimmy talking over the radio. He finished the message and placed the receiver on the ground. ‘The casevac chopper is on its way,’ he said quickly.
I looked down into the bowl. Green smoke swirled upwards from a smoke grenade, identifying the location of the casualty-evacuation point. The chopper suddenly swooped in low and landed in the area of the smoke. All binocs were anxiously trained on the high ground, but there was no sign of the Adoo. They had melted away into the adjacent Wadi Dharbat. After a few minutes, the tempo of the helicopter blades suddenly increased as the chopper lifted off, and Valdez was away towards RAF Salalah and the field surgical theatre.
Late afternoon found us on the high ground above the waterhole. We had moved across once the FKW and the action groups had secured the area. The evidence of battle was everywhere: piles of 7.62mm short empty cases, blood trails, pieces of flesh and bits of clothing – but no bodies. They had been dragged away. They had even dragged away the Guryunov HMG that we had blasted earlier on. The distinct smell of phosphorus hung in the air, filling my nostrils as I got down to the serious business of making a brew. Water was short: I emptied my last bottle into the mess tin, then opened up the jaws of the hexamine stove and balanced the tin on them. I was down to three blocks of hexamine from the last packet of eight. I picked one out and broke it into pieces to make the flames hotter and boil the water more quickly. All in all it was much better than the old Bengazi burner.
As the flames licked around the bottom of the tin, my concentration was disturbed by a suntanned figure approaching the sangar.
‘Look at that,’ said Henry, a wiry Scot from Lanarkshire. In his hand he held his tin mug. It was stained with blood. ‘When we lifted Valdez onto the chopper, the flap must have been open on my waterbottle carrier, and the blood from his smashed femur must have dripped through.’ He stared at the blood for a moment, then asked for a brew.
‘I’ve no spare water for cleaning,’ I said, looking at my now-empty water bottle.
‘We’re the same, it was hot down there.’
As he looked towards the waterhole in the distance, I grasped the mess tin of hot tea and poured it onto Valdez’s congealing blood.
‘I suppose I’ll have a change of personality at the next full moon,’ Henry said mischievously as he lifted the bloodstained mug to his lips.
‘You’ll end up looking like a toby jug,’ I said, roaring with laughter. This was a standing joke in the Regiment about the Fijians. Fit and swarthy when young, in later years they often lost their muscles to comfortable fat as a result of eating too many fish curries. ‘What happened to Valdez down there?’ I asked, on a more serious note.
‘A classic come-on, a real shit storm,’ replied Henry, with a slight tremor in his voice. ‘The Adoo opened fire from the high ground to our front with AK-47s and RPDs. Valdez and the Honk made a splitsecond decision to swing off to the right flank and get on the high ground just below the tree-line.’
Henry paused and took a swig of his strange-coloured cocktail. ‘As they got about halfway up, the Adoo hiding in the tree-line opened fire. An AK-47 round hit Valdez in the thigh, just above the knee, shattering his femur. The Honk came up and sprayed the area with his gimpy. Apparently Valdez wasn’t too pleased with this, as it was attracting enemy fire and he couldn’t move into cover. He was screaming, “Stop firing, for Christ’s sake, stop firing.” The Honk stopped firing and pumped a syrette of morphine into his left thigh, then dragged him away into dead ground.’ Henry finished talking and once again put the bloodstained mug to his lips.
‘How did the casevac go?’ I enquired.
‘Smooth as snake shit,’ replied Henry. ‘The chopper happened by chance to be flying over the area on its way to Jibjat. So we redirected him by sarbe onto the casualty. It did cause a problem with the Firqat, though, because the casevac was immediate. They thought we were getting preferential treatment. Apparently a Firk was seriously injured the other day and he had a wait before the casevac chopper came. I don’t think pure coincidence is in the FKW book.’
We now moved into a dangerous phase of the operation. By 12 October, the FKW, B Squadron and G Squadron 22 SAS and one company of SAF had advanced approximately twenty-five kilometres into Communist-held territory. We had built a defensive position, with all arcs covered by reinforced sangars, at a location known as White City. Now we had to move out and dominate the surrounding area. With the main Adoo stronghold in the east only eight kilometres away, in the Wadi Dharbat, it was going to be no picnic.