A Fortunate Life (11 page)

A Royal Marines Commando unit consisted in those days of around six hundred men who were divided into five rifle troops, each commanded by a Major or a Captain and consisting of five sections and a support section armed with mortars and heavy machine-guns. Each section was commanded by a Sergeant. Each troop also had two junior subalterns (Lieutenants) whose job was to assist the Troop Commander and to command any sub-units formed from the Troop when operational circumstances required. I was assigned to be one of the junior subalterns in ‘X’ Troop of 42 Commando.

My colleagues and I considered ourselves most fortunate to be posted to 42 Commando, not just because it meant going to Singapore, but also because the Commando was, at the time, testing out new techniques for using helicopters for amphibious assaults from a specially converted
aircraft carrier, HMS
Bulwark
. We also had a specially dedicated Royal Navy helicopter unit, 848 Squadron, assigned to us. At the time the Senior Pilot of 848 Squadron was the legendary Lieutenant Commander ‘Digby’ Lickfold, an outstanding flyer who lived life as fast as he flew his aircraft. His pilots, following his lead, had a spirit of élan that would not have disgraced a Battle of Britain fighter squadron and an equivalent disregard for the rules if they interfered with getting the job done. They referred to all Marines as ‘grunts’, but the badinage between us was very much a two-way affair, and we loved them for their willingness to take risks, especially when it meant getting us out of trouble.

At that stage we were using Westland
Whirlwind
s, which were so inadequately powered for the job that the joke was that they could carry one Royal Marine, or his hat, but not both – in reality, in tropical conditions, they could lift up to four fully kitted Marines at a time. They also ran on the highly inflammable Avgas (high-octane petrol, rather than the kerosene that later became the standard aircraft fuel) and in the event of accident were lethal firebombs.

When we arrived in Singapore the Commando was away testing helicopters in Hong Kong. The Major in charge of the element of the Commando that had stayed behind in Singapore (under whose command we fell until the Unit returned) decided on our second day in Singapore, that we should fill in our time by doing a parachute jump. When one of us hopefully pointed out that we were not trained he replied, ‘I don’t give a fuck if you are trained or not. If any of you don’t make it, when the Commando comes back I shall just tell the Colonel that you never joined!’ (What we did not know at the time was that what was planned was a jump into the sea, so we would not need training in parachute landings.) My two colleagues, Tim Courtenay and Rupert van der Horst, seemed keen, so I felt I ought to be as well. To be honest, parachuting scared me to death then and has scared me to death ever since. (Although I later qualified for my parachute wings and did more than sixty jumps with the SBS, I never managed to bring myself to believe that it is a rational thing to throw yourself out of an aircraft travelling at 120 mph a thousand feet above the ground, on the basis that the pack on your back really contains a parachute and not just a collection of old socks someone has absent-mindedly left there by mistake.) In the event we all got down without mishap.

HMS
Bulwark
left on her next cruise with the Commando embarked in the early months of 1961. This time we were to test out our newly acquired helicopter techniques in East Africa. We were to sail to Mombasa, where the Commando would disembark and move to a nearby game reserve, which we would use as a training ground for helicopter assault.

On the journey across the Indian Ocean, I was appointed the Commando’s ‘Mess Deck Officer’, whose duties were to ensure that our Marines were properly accommodated and looked after on board. One of my heroes at the time was Nelson, who had been loved and respected by sailors throughout the Royal Navy not just for his ability as a commander but for his dedication to the welfare of ordinary sailors at a time when conditions on board were extremely harsh. He introduced a set of standards for sailors’ accommodation that included a minimum space, measured in cubic feet, to be provided for each man below decks. I discovered that the space allowed to each man on
Bulwark
, with a full Commando embarked, was actually below the limit set by Nelson in 1802 (albeit in
Bulwark
the space was airconditioned). I enjoyed the job enormously, made myself something of a thorn in the side of the ship’s authorities and once again discovered, somewhat to my surprise, that I really enjoyed getting involved in pastoral issues to do with welfare and well-being.

One of my duties as Mess Deck Officer was to give references as to character for Marines who had to appear at ‘Commander’s Table’, where shipboard discipline for relatively minor misdemeanours was dispensed. On one occasion I had to appear in this role for a Marine in my troop who had come aboard ship late at night very much the worse for wear and had been sick over the Duty Petty Officer, which was not a good thing to do. However, when he appeared before the Commander for punishment, none of the witnesses could be found, so no evidence was submitted beyond a bald statement of the facts on the charge sheet. I was then required to give my character evidence, which I did, saying that he was a Marine of good standing, etc., etc. After this the Commander passed judgement, in the best traditions of naval discipline at the time. ‘Marine X, you will have twenty-eight day’s stoppage of pay. And if there had been a shred of evidence against you, I would have put you inside!’

While the publicly stated purpose of our visit to Kenya, then still a British colony, was to train, there was a deeper purpose too. The Congo
conflict was just erupting at this time, and numerous atrocities were being committed, including against the white settlers. This had sent shock-waves through Africa, and there was a fear that the instability would spread to Kenya. We were there to provide for the contingency that extra forces would be needed to maintain order in the Colony. So the Commando had a warm welcome when we arrived, not least from wives and daughters who had been sent to Kenya for safety by their menfolk in the Congo. Some members of the Commando took their responsibilities to protect these unfortunate unaccompanied females further than, I suspect, husbands and fathers had intended when they sent them to ‘safety’ under the protection of British forces amongst the palm-fringed beaches of the Mombasa coastline.

Our next stop was in Aden, to try out our helicopters in desert conditions. Sand in the engines was the biggest hazard here, on some occasions causing complete engine seizure. I was in one aircraft flying above the Aden desert at maybe three thousand feet, when, instead of the deafening clatter of the rotors above my head, there was suddenly an eerie and disconcerting silence. Fortunately, helicopter rotors in such circumstances behave like sycamore seeds and slow the descent of the aircraft, a process called autorotation. Provided the pilot times the final manoeuvre for landing (called ‘flaring’) and there is a flat place to land, such a descent can be managed without major mishap. We were lucky and made it down without damage or injury, but it was nerve-wracking, nevertheless. One pilot during this time so mistimed his final ‘flare’ before landing that the rotors came down and chopped off the helicopter’s tail – causing some discomfort, but no injury to his passengers.

While we were in Aden, some of us hitched a lift up the desert to an isolated forward fort called Dhala, to spend a few days with the Marines of our sister unit 45 Commando, who were fighting the insurgents in the Radfan mountains of northern Aden, where we experienced for the first time what it is like to be shot at in anger. Although there were some quite sharp engagements during these operations in the Radfan, our experiences were of nothing more than sporadic firing at our base from a good distance away. There is a very distinct ‘crack and thump’ when a live bullet is fired at you – the ‘crack’ being the noise of the bullet breaking the sound barrier as it leaves the muzzle of the weapon, and the thump, which comes a few milliseconds later (depending on the range), the sound of its impact. We had been taught about this in training, but now for the first time we experienced it in practice.

This being the first time we had been ashore for some time, our nights off tended to be pretty boisterous affairs. I was with some Marines from my Troop in the local servicemen’s club one night when a fight developed with soldiers from an army regiment based in the Colony. The RAF police were called, and I tried to escape by retreating into the Gents and hiding in one of the cubicles. Here I was found by one of my Marines, who arrived in full RAF police uniform, complete with RAF guard dog. He explained that the policeman had tried to arrest him, but he had dealt with the situation (I didn’t ask how) and ‘borrowed’ his uniform and the dog. He then escorted me past the RAF police cordon as his ‘prisoner’, complete with dog, which we let go when we were well clear.

After Aden,
Bulwark
returned to Singapore, where we continued developing our helicopter techniques, this time in the jungle. But we hadn’t been in port for long before we were off once again for a second Indian Ocean tour. Our first call was at Karachi for a courtesy and refuelling visit. On our second day in port, I was in a bar with some friends when the Royal Marines Police came in and ordered us back on board the ship as quickly as possible. The Commando was scrambled back to
Bulwark
, which cast off in haste from Karachi dockside and thundered off at full power towards the Persian Gulf. All the unit officers were then called to a briefing. The Iraqi dictator of the time, General Abdul Qassim, we were informed, had amassed what were estimated to be 30,000 troops, including tanks, on his southern border and was preparing to invade Kuwait, which had just received its independence from the UK. Other British units were being mobilised to defend Kuwait, but they could not get there for days. We were the closest and would be first on the scene. Our objective was to take and hold the port and airport, until reinforcements arrived.

Poor old
Bulwark
! She was known colloquially as ‘The rusty B’, and we used to joke that her plates were so rotten that the only thing that held her together were the layers of paint covering up the rust. She didn’t need a torpedo to sink her – a can of paint remover would have been quite enough! She was, moreover, a dignified old lady and not used to rushing places any longer, let alone gallivanting off up the Gulf at a sustained and rivet-popping thirty-odd knots.

As she surged through the sparkling waters of the Persian Gulf, we prepared, as we thought, for action against a hugely numerically superior force. There was much checking of kit and weapons, much studying
of maps and old aerial photographs, much briefing and rebriefing for D-day and, amongst us younger officers at least, much nervousness. Our preparations varied between the meticulous and the bizarre.

My commander’s pre-D-day (known as D –1) preparations for what we all thought would be a heavily opposed landing the following day, fell clearly into the latter category. He was a much respected and admired, but slightly eccentric soldier. He called us young officers together and, as I remember it, briefed us as follows: ‘Now, when we have completed our assault and driven the enemy out, our next task will be to win these Arab johnnies’ hearts and minds. And I have decided that we shall do this by putting on a show of Scottish country dancing!’ And so, wearing army blankets for kilts, we paraded on the bucketing deck of HMS
Bulwark
in 45° centigrade, with action in prospect the following day, and were instructed in the intricacies of the eightsome reel – which remains, to this day, the only ballroom manoeuvre that I feel confident of being able to execute pretty well flawlessly.

Fortunately for us, when our helicopter-borne assault landed in the Kuwaiti port of Mina Al Ahmedi, in the middle of a sandstorm, the Iraqis were nowhere to be seen. The intelligence about the situation in Kuwait, however, was confusing. Some said the Iraqis were still on the Kuwaiti border, others that their forward elements had reached the strategic Mutlah Ridge above Kuwait city (thirty years later, during the first Gulf War, this was the site of the ‘Highway of Death’ – the infamous ‘turkey shoot’ in which a retreating Iraqi armoured column was decimated by US airpower in terrible scenes of carnage).