‘Who’s controlling them?’ shouted Bob urgently.
‘Must be Roger,’ I screamed in reply above the noise of the howling jet engines. ‘He thought another casevac chopper was arriving and took the blue sarbe to direct it to the beach helipad. He must be controlling the jets with it.’ I broke off as the ammunition-box pyramid behind me rattled violently. I spun round to see the sweating face of Roger appearing over the lip of the sandbagged wall.
‘The Seventh Cavalry has arrived!’ he shouted triumphantly. ‘Here’s the sarbe; I’m going to help with the wounded on the ground floor.’ And with that he was gone again.
Bob grabbed the ground-to-air radio and settled down to control the jet strike. ‘Hello, Red Leader. This is Batt House. Enemy left and right of the fort. Over.’
‘Roger, Batt House. How long have they been going at you?’
‘Since dawn,’ Bob informed them.
The pilot gave away no sign of reaction to the feats of resistance taking place below him. ‘Roger, Batt House. They are like ants down there – I can see hundreds of them.’
The jets began wheeling and swooping like hungry gannets searching for prey. The enemy now ceased firing on the fort and the town and, throwing themselves behind the nearest cover, concentrated the firepower of their light machine guns on the flashing jets. Hot green tracer flurried upwards in a blizzard of burning steel across the sky. The first jet went into a vertical dive, spraying bullets and death around the perimeter wire to the left. The second jet, amidst a barrage of machinegun fire, stabbed two rockets into the wadi to the right. The wingtips of the aircraft seemed to brush the walls of the DG fort as they sped past. And then they pulled up violently, twisting and dodging, stretched to the limits of their capabilities, to escape back into the mist. Moments later they reappeared, plunging out of the cloud across Mirbat Bay. They streaked around the contours of Jebel Ali, with lines of HMG in hot pursuit and closing. Then they headed low-level back into the maelstrom to start their strafing run over again.
All along the wire, rockets and lead cascaded from the sky. The Strikemasters tracked each other. More bullets, more rockets, and then the jet on the right spawned a 500kg bomb. The large black object plummeted earthwards and buried itself among the enemy massing in a shallow wadi just east of the fort. The smoke-filled air was rent asunder by a blinding flash and a thunderous explosion. But disaster followed triumph. One of the jets caught a burst of HMG fire in the tail as it made an impossibly low pass at the enemy. It banked steeply and then, subdued as if ashamed of the jagged hole in its tail section, it drifted away to the north, limping into the cover of the mist. The remaining jet circled for a while, then swooped downwards into one last steep dive, hammering the Adoo along the perimeter wire. Finally, its ordnance totally expended, it followed its partner into the clouds on its way back to Salalah.
The pressure on the fort area had been momentarily relieved, but for how long? At this point a new and disturbing dimension crept into the battle. Heavy firing could be heard behind us, well over to the east. Scarcely able to withstand the enemy frontal assault, our nerves began to pulsate at crisis level with the realization that the Adoo had regrouped and were counter-attacking from the east. That meant only one thing: not only had our air support gone, but we were now completely surrounded.
The pilot of the first Huey 205 chopper with G Squadron reinforcements on board just glimpsed the rear half of a Strikemaster jet being swallowed up in the mist as he flew the 205 on a ground-assault mission, heading for the south side of town.
Crammed into the confined space behind him were Doug, Scouse, Ian, Dave, Dennis, Neil, Ian, Eric and Stonker. They carried with them a formidable array of weaponry: five GPMGs plus at least 1,000 rounds per gun; an M79 plus 100 bombs; and SLRs with 100 rounds of 7.62mm per man. As they broke through the mist, Doug looked through the window and saw five heavily armed Adoo dragging a body. Hell, Doug thought, they’re going to open up on the chopper! ‘Adoo! Adoo!’ He grabbed the pilot’s shoulder, shook him and screamed in his ear to make himself heard above the racket of the rotor blades, emphasizing his words with a pointed finger jabbing down at the figures on the ground. To his surprise, as the chopper banked and came down, the Adoo disappeared into the mist.
Once on the ground, the fighting patrol rapidly went into all-round defence 3,500 yards from the town to secure the LZ for the arrival of Alistair Morrison, the squadron commander – who in 1977 would make a name for himself during the hijack of Flight 181 at Mogadishu, advising the German GSG 9 commandos who stormed the jet – and Wilbur Watson, the troop corporal. Minutes later they arrived in the second chopper, bristling with firepower and carrying 10,000 rounds of back-up ammunition for the gimpies. With G Squadron reinforcements fully deployed, twenty-four men in all, Alistair assessed the situation and made an instant decision. Allocating one group to secure the LZ for the second wave of reinforcements, he directed Stonker and Doug’s group to move towards the east of the town to flank the fort and winkle out pockets of enemy resistance on the way. Just as they were moving off, four figures appeared out of the mist, calmly looked in their direction and walked over a rise no more than seventy metres away. Ian squinted at them through the powerful binoculars and shouted, ‘They’re Adoo, they’re Adoo! They’ve got AK-47s!’ They ran forward tactically to the top of the rise, engaged the four figures – who by now were running furiously in the direction of the Jebel – and downed them in a hail of machine-gun fire. The exchange attracted the attention of other Adoo east of Mirbat. Stonker and Doug’s group now came under sustained fire.
The walkie-talkie crackled into life and cut though our anxious thoughts. It was Mike again. For one trembling moment I thought it was more bad news. With relief I learned that Mike and Tak were still clinging onto their position by the fort. Mike was requesting mortar fire support. In calm, measured tones he asked Bob to put down a ranging bomb in the wadi, seventy-five metres to the right, and then he would make corrections. Bob did his mental arithmetic – a quick estimation of range and charge. He gave a long, low whistle. This was going to be tricky. He would have to do a line-of-sight shoot based on estimated range, charge and elevation. Bob shouted on his first fire mission to Fuzz, who by now was firing the mortar on his own. He watched anxiously as Fuzz pulled the bipod legs backwards, set the mortar at an extreme angle, bubbled up the sight and slid an HE bomb down the barrel. I watched the performance with growing frustration and alarm. The .50-calibre was causing big problems. I was down to single shots, and after each one I had to recock the firing mechanism myself. The breechblock and slide had become clogged with brass shavings, the result of firing the gun over a long period without a number two to feed the heavy belt.
Fuzz’s mortar bomb whooshed over the plain in a blurred crescent and exploded harmlessly 800 metres away on the far side of the fort. Mike’s correction crackled over the air and Bob relayed his estimated fire mission to Fuzz. Each correction after that brought the exploding mortar bombs closer and closer until Fuzz reached maximum elevation on the bipod. At the next correction from Bob, Fuzz hesitated for a moment, glanced at Bob as if he’d asked him to summon a heavenly army of angels from the clouds and then, with one determined movement, clasped the mortar barrel to his chest and raised it until the bipod legs dangled clear of the ground. ‘Frag them,’ roared Bob. Fuzz looked like some demonic dancer in a drunken two-step as he hugged the barrel as tightly as he could and sent bomb after bomb spilling down on the enemy position.