Shaun Clarke - Secret War in Arabia

‘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.