Authors: Peter Ratcliffe
Unfortunately, the Deputy Director was as different from DLB, who was worshipped throughout the SAS, as chalk is from cheese. He had commanded the Regiment some years earlier, during which time he had sacked all four squadron sergeant-majors and his adjutant. He was not a man to be messed with; indeed, I can remember only one other squadron sergeant-major being sacked during the rest of my twenty-five years with the Regiment.
I was to get a first-hand view of the Deputy Director’s setup when our commanding officer arrived and sent me to Riyadh. He was planning to get us to our forward operating base (FOB) at Al Jouf in north-western Saudi Arabia, 200 kilometres south of the border with Iraq. I was asked to meet up with two RAF staff officers and work out with them just how long it would take us to move 600 men with equipment and vehicles from Victor to Al Jouf, a distance of some 1,700 kilometres as the crow flies. A and D Squadrons were to be broken up into half-squadron units of about thirty men apiece. Each unit would have eight long-wheelbase Land Rover 110s, a Unimog (roughly equivalent to a Bedford 3-ton truck) and whatever motorcycles they required. B Squadron would be split into one half-squadron subdivided into four eightman units, with sufficient Land Rovers, trucks and motorcycles for their needs. The other half of B Squadron would remain in Victor as an anti-terrorist unit, there being considerable, and justified, fears of terrorist attacks on British targets, notably embassies, in other Gulf states that had joined the Coalition. All this, together with weapons, stores, personal equipment and backup staff, had to be shifted just over a thousand miles north-westwards.
On the way to Riyadh the aircraft I was flying in stopped off at Dhahran on Saudi Arabia’s Gulf coast, the principal base for the Coalition air forces. There, for the first time, I realized the sheer power of the forces ranged against Saddam. If I had needed any evidence to convince me that the Americans were taking this war seriously, it was to be found at Dhahran. On that vast airfield there were rows of helicopters and military aircraft stretching literally for miles. Many of the helicopters were still coated in grease beneath a protective layer of brown paper.
Meanwhile, there we were at Victor with four RAF Chinook twin-rotor helicopters, one Army Air Corps Gazelle light helicopter, and the use of three RAF C-130 transports. By contrast, the firepower the Coalition had at Dhahran was unbelievable, and there were waves of fresh aircraft coming in all the time. Schwarzkopf had said he saw this as an air war. He clearly meant what he said.
In Riyadh, the British and US headquarters had been established in an office tower block cleared by the Saudi Arabians for the Allies’ exclusive use. Adequate for its purpose, though certainly not luxurious, it stood in the bustling centre of the city. At the entrance US Marines and British military police checked everyone in and out. I was cleared through and located the people I needed to see on one of the upper floors. That place became my home for the next two days while we worked out the best way to split up the loads. In the end it was decided that each flight would carry three vehicles and the men who would use them, with all their kit, and that we would try to keep the three C-130s operating in a continuous rollover movement. This, of course, had to fit in with the RAF pilots flying within their time frame, for I discovered that they were not permitted to fly for more than eight hours without taking the required rest period in between – even in wartime.
I told the air force planners that I thought this was completely unreasonable; after all, our guys had to go without any sleep, sometimes for days on end, while harassing the enemy deep behind his lines. That, I was told by one RAF wit, was our problem. ‘Next time round work a bit harder at school and pass your exams, and then you can join the RAF instead,’ was his only advice.
‘If that’s the level of humour that goes with the job, I’ll stay where I am,’ I replied. ‘At least we get to laugh, even if it’s only at you glorified taxi drivers.’ But it was all good natured, and I found the two staff officers very helpful and extremely professional.
With less than a week to go before our jump-off date to our forward operating base, the CO asked me to fly down to the Regiment’s desert-training camp and run an eye over A Squadron. They had been the duty SP team during the three-month run-up to our move to the Gulf, and as a result had not had an opportunity, unlike the other three squadrons, to undergo special desert training. They had been among the first to leave Hereford on 27 December, however, and on arrival in Abu Dhabi had been transferred directly to the training camp.
The camp was a forty-minute helicopter ride from Victor. The Gazelle has little more seating capacity than a sports car. Besides its pilot, it can take four people without kit, or just two men kitted out. None of which mattered to me that particular day, since I was the only passenger, and therefore riding in rare comfort.
A Squadron was nearing the end of its training period and the guys were prepping their vehicles in anticipation of pulling out – possibly for immediate insertion into Iraq. Morale seemed high and the men were in peak condition. It was clear that the squadron was now a highly trained and highly motivated desert fighting force. In anticipation of coming operations, it had already been split into two half-squadrons, each divided into two sub-units: Alpha One Zero and Two Zero, and Alpha Three Zero and Four Zero. The squadron’s four troops, Mountain, Boat, Mobility and Air, had been split between the two main units. Two Zero had half of Mobility and Air Troops and all of Mountain Troop, while Four Zero had the other halves of Mobility and Air and all of Boat Troop.
That afternoon the CO flew in to the training camp with the Deputy Director from Riyadh. When he asked if I had unearthed any problems I was able to tell him, ‘No. Everybody seems fine. There are no problems at all that I can see.’ It was true – I couldn’t see any problems. At least, not then; not until we met the men who were to command the two half-squadrons in the field and arranged a private briefing with them later that day.
Alpha Three Zero and Four Zero – codenamed Alpha Three Zero – were commanded by the squadron sergeant-major, because the two troop commanders were fairly new officers and didn’t have the experience to be given overall command. To a certain extent, therefore, they were going along in a learning capacity. It is a unique feature of the SAS that units will often be commanded on operations by an NCO, even though there may be an officer present. It is a system that has been proved time and again, partly because the man in command will discuss matters with, and take advice from, other members of his patrol.
The setup for Alpha Three Zero and Four Zero was excellent. It was the command of Alpha One and Two Zero – codenamed Alpha One Zero – which caused immediate misgivings. The squadron commander was a Royal Marine major who had come to us on a two-year secondment from the Special Boat Service. He had already served with the Regiment for a year, but this was the first time he had been charged with anything more difficult than a routine exercise. He didn’t seem to relish the prospect of leading his unit into the dangers lurking in Saddam Hussein’s unwelcoming back yard. During the briefing, in which the two commanders explained in turn their concepts of the operations to come, it soon became apparent that the OC of A Squadron was not at all happy. He seemed hesitant, apologetic, even timid, and appeared to lack any confidence in what he was supposed to be doing.
When we arrived back at Victor that evening, the CO asked me to join him for a cup of tea and a chat. He seemed very ill at ease, and I didn’t need to be a clairvoyant to work out what he wanted to talk about. As always, he came straight to the point.
‘OK Billy,’ he said, ‘the Deputy Director has severe misgivings about OC A Squadron, and to a certain extent so do I. What do you think we can do about it? The balance is all wrong. Alpha Three Zero and Four Zero have most of the senior ranks with the experience and the strength of character to cope. Looking at the other half-squadron, there’s a serious imbalance.’
I had already come to a similar conclusion, but I had also come up with a possible solution. I explained to the CO that while in Riyadh I had met up with an officer, an ex-Guardsman named Jeremy who was a member of the Regiment’s headquarters staff, who not only appeared to have the right stuff, but had asked me if I could try to get him into the field in the coming fight. A captain in his late twenties, he was due to take over as officer commanding G Squadron in December.
‘Perhaps he’s the answer,’ I said. ‘We could put him in as second-in-command of Alpha One Zero, which would give the squadron OC some really positive support.’ The CO agreed that this was not a bad idea.
‘Well, there’s your chance,’ I said. ‘Put Jeremy in and say it’s because you want him to have experience of active service before he takes over his command.’
‘Mmmmm,’ the CO mused, staring into his half-empty mug of tea, ‘I like that. But I’m going to sleep on it.’
When we met again the following morning, however, he told me, ‘I’ve thought about it and I’m going to let them run. We’ll make no changes.’
‘Okay, Boss, that’s fine by me,’ I said. He was the CO. He knew the facts and he’d taken his decision, based on those facts. For me personally, that decision was to mean that eventually I would be catapulted from the sidelines into the sharp end of the war against Iraq. At the time, however, there were a hundred other things to occupy me. Matters that required more urgent attention and involved countless instant decisions, and most of them to do with our move to Saudi Arabia.
In the event it took just under four days for the Regiment to complete the move from Victor to Al Jouf. On our jumping-off night, 16 January, the Deputy Director and half a dozen members of his staff turned up. For the life of me I couldn’t work out what the hell they thought they were doing there. Everything that could have been arranged by that stage was already well in hand. Furthermore, they were no better informed than we were. It turned out that they didn’t even know that the night we had chosen to move up to the front was also the night that General Schwarzkopf had chosen to launch his air war – and they had just come from his HQ in Riyadh.
Between midnight on 16 January and dawn on the 17th, a total of 671 Allied sorties, involving God only knows how many thousands of aircraft and cruise missiles, were launched against Iraq. Somewhere in among them were three RAF C-130s lumbering north-westwards at 350 miles per hour, carrying some of our men and their gear. Aircrew and SAS alike marvelled at the number of F-117 Nighthawks – the so-called ‘Stealth fighter’ – zipping past them just overhead. They had come from Khamis Mushait airbase, in the far south-west of Saudi Arabia, and were on their way to hit Saddam where it hurt – right in his own back yard.
At Victor, the first that we and, I’m sure, the Deputy Director’s party knew of the start of the Gulf War was when we heard it announced on the BBC World Service the next morning. One result of the launching of the air bombardment of Iraq was that only one of our C-130s got back that morning. Its pilot said that during the return flight from Al Jouf all three aircraft had been ordered to land at Dhahran because of the number of Allied attack planes in the sky. He had refused and had continued on to Victor, but the other two C-130s were at Dhahran, waiting for clearance to fly again.
They arrived back that afternoon, and were immediately reloaded and, each with a fresh flight crew, were quickly on their way back to Al Jouf. By midnight on the 17th the Allies had flown 2,107 sorties and the SAS had moved a quarter of its force to the front line. Yet the air war already seemed to be going the way Schwarzkopf had predicted. Who needed Special Forces?
Al Jouf, like Victor, was a brand-new airfield which had never been used, although it was intended for civil use. It was about the same size as Luton airport, and had a runway long enough to take jumbo jets. As each SAS group arrived the mobile fighting patrols unloaded their vehicles and moved directly to a point south of their start line, which was approximately a hundred miles north-west of Al Jouf. They were to wait there until the order to cross the boarder into Iraq should be given.
The rest of us – signallers, intelligence and other headquarters staff, regimental personnel, the quarter-master and storemen, logistics personnel, and support staff from 7 Squadron, RAF, who were there to look after the Chinook helicopters – about a hundred people in all, remained at Al Jouf, where we were located under canvas around the terminal building. Most of our administration offices were to be in the luggage-collection hall inside the terminal, with some of our desks actually positioned on the luggage conveyor belt, but that was still being organized when we arrived. The CO and I moved up to Al Jouf on 18 January.
The whole regiment was now on ration packs. There was no fresh food to be had, only the boil-in-the-bag field rations. You simply placed the tinfoil pack into a mess tin full of water and boiled it. Then you used the water to make your tea. The meals served a need, but that was all. The RAF, however, who were camped next door to us, had a proper mess and proper food. The air force’s powers that be had decreed that pilots could only be expected to carry out their jobs if they had decent chefs preparing decent meals.
For once, the CO and I were all in favour of this junior-service favouritism, because we used to sneak into their mess without telling any of our boys where we were going and enjoy a first-class breakfast of eggs and bacon with toast and butter. The RAF put up with us, but swore us to secrecy; ‘We can’t accommodate any more of you poor, half-starved characters,’ we were told. That was fine by us. We would stroll back to our area, pretending we had just been eating our boil-in-the-bag rations. Being in charge had its distinct advantages. Perhaps it’s true, and there’s no point in having power if you don’t occasionally abuse it. To be fair, among the rest of the Regiment, apart from a few regular whingers who would have moaned whatever food they had, there were no complaints about the rations. They went with the job.