Westlake, Donald E - NF 01 (26 page)

The frigate
Minerva
, 2,860
tons, steamed northward through the sultry night, approaching her rendezvous
with destiny. At her side moved her sister ship in
Great
Britain
's Royal Navy, the anti-submarine
frigate
Rothesay,
2,600 tons.

The date was
March 19, 1969
. Belowdecks within the two ships
waited the sleepless troops, checking their weapons, their buttons, their
cigarettes, covering their insignia with black tape. In addition to the twenty
Royal Marines normally carried by each frigate there were now 315 Red Devils
aboard, men of the Second Parachute Battalion of the Sixteenth Parachute Brigade
of the Parachute Regiment. They would enter battle today not by parachute but
by rubber boats.

All British paratroops are called
Red Devils because they wear red berets. Or perhaps they wear red berets
because they're called Red Devils.

These particular Red Devils were
normally stationed in barracks at
Aldershot
, near
London
,
but a group of them had been moved, day before yesterday, to transit barracks
at Devizes. From Devizes yesterday morning, before dawn, they had been loaded
onto four Army trucks on which all markings had been masked over with black
tape. They still looked like Army trucks, but no one could be sure
which
Army trucks. They had been driven via roundabout country lanes to the
troop-ferrying center at the airfield at Lyneham. Tight military security was
maintained by flood
lighting the airport and chasing
reporters away with guard dogs and jeeps; taking a page from the St. Kitts
Secrecy Manual, apparently. The troops boarded two transport planes of the
Royal Air Force Support Command, one Britannia and one Hercules.

Meanwhile, their places back at
Aldershot
had been partially taken by some forty-odd
London
policemen from Scotland Yard's Special Patrol Group, commanded by
Assistant
Commissioner Andrew Way
. Way had originally been
an officer in the mounted police, but as his weight had risen above three
hundred pounds it was thought best he not ride horses anymore. He and his forty
constables, three sergeants, two inspectors and one superintendent had arrived
at
Aldershot
the night before to be given kit bags and
military clothing suitable for the tropics. Unfortunately they didn't have
anything in
Commissioner Way
's
size, so he had to go along in blue serge.

Now these policemen, plus the rest
of the Red Devil invasion force, were also on the move. Riding in two private
fifty-seat buses marked "Wilts & Dorset," they were driven at
ostentatiously high speed to the RAF airfield at Brize Norton and on through
the ostentatiously heavily guarded Gate Number 2. What later that day the
London
Evening News
was to call "
Britain
's
worst-kept security secret," what the military authorities had designated
"Operation Sheepskin," had begun to unroll. (The tightness of the
security can be judged by a headline in the London
Daily Express
a day
and a half before the actual landing on the island: "
Invasion Plan:
Frigates to Land Paratroops
and London Bobbies on Island." )

Unfortunately, a slight hitch now
developed; it was too foggy at both airfields for the planes to take off. The
two at Lyneham and the five at Brize Norton, filled with Red Devils,
London
bobbies, guns, jeeps, leaflets, trucks, radios, bullets, medical supplies,
clothing, forms to be filled out, parachutes, gasoline, loud-hailers and all,
sat on the taxiways and waited for the fog to lift. When at last it did, so did
they.

Ten hours later, the whole farrago
landed again in
Antigua
. The Premier of Antigua was a
man named Vere Bird, whose background was similar to Robert Bradshaw's—labor
organizer, union leader, and now Premier with working-class backing. The
British, stumbling around in the Caribbean like a—well, it
was
like a
bull in a china shop—merely stopped off in Antigua on their way to
"help" Robert Bradshaw but in so doing bumped into Vere Bird and
helped knock him off his shelf. Most ordinary Antiguan citizens had taken the
Anguillan side in the dispute and were annoyed with Bird for helping the
British. Bird had been in political trouble anyway, but every little bit helps;
in his next bid for re-election, he was defeated.

Having helped bump Bird, the troops
and policemen and equipment traveled by truck from the airport to the deepwater
harbor at
St. John
's, the Antiguan
capital city. Along the way they passed unfriendly natives who shouted
"Shame!" and political slogans, none of which made too much sense to
the men in the trucks, who really didn't know what was going on. All they knew
was what they read in the papers.

"There are about 6000 people
on the island. Most of them are believed to have guns."

Minerva
and
Rothesay
were waiting in the harbor, and the men and equipment boarded at once.

Now the two-frigate fleet, under
the command of Commodore Martin N. Lucey, the Senior British Naval Officer for
the West Indies (the same SNOWI to whom William Whitlock had written the week
before), steamed north to do battle with an enemy so clever and shifty that
nobody even knew exactly who he was. The enemy might be the Mafia, formerly
Sicilian but more recently American, armed with machine guns, possibly in
violin cases. Or the enemy might be the Black Panthers, also American in
origin, armed with God alone knew what—possibly blackjacks. Or the enemy might
simply be bloodthirsty Wogs indigenous to the
Caribbean
.
Or all three, combined together.

The
firepower of the rebels—who may have been joined by American gangsters and
Black Panthers, the trigger-happy wing of the Black Power movement—is unknown.

London
Daily Mail
,
March
18, 1969
.

But the firepower of the Red Devils
was definitely known. They were armed with automatic rifles—Sterlings and
Belgian-made SLR's—and machine guns. The frigates were armed with their naval
guns and had a pair of
Wessex
helicopters. They also carried leaflets that they would drop on the island and
that said, in part, "Our purpose is to end intimidation . .

And they had, finally, their
leader, Lieutenant Colonel Richard Dawnay, who had flown out to
Antigua
four days earlier, on the fifteenth, for a "reconnaissance and
appreciation." After reconnoitering and appreciating from
Antigua
,
112 miles south oi
Anguilla
, and after discussions with
a few Englishmen, Lieutenant Colonel Dawnay worked up a tactical plan for the
military operation and cabled it to
London
.
The plan was modest at that stage, but somebody in
London
decided this was a good opportunity to give the boys of the Parachute Brigade
some practice at military maneuvers. So the plan was blown up to make it
possible for more of the troops to play.

The engorged plan had as its first
objectives the crossroads in the center of the island, the jetty area at
Road
Bay
, the airport, and the road from
Crocus
Bay
to Forest Point. Following the securing of these objectives, the plan called
for the troops to disarm the local inhabitants of all ages, to detain known
ringleaders, and to search the island for caches of arms.

At one point the plan had also
included the presence of William Whitlock, by his own request. He canceled his
appointments and got ready to leave, but when the word filtered upward about
his intentions he was told to forget it. Stay home, stay home.

Now the plan was going into
operation.
Minerva
and
Rothesay
, sailing north-northwest through
the sultry night, steamed past the tiny sleeping Leeward Islands—Nevis and St.
Kitts off to the left, Barbuda off to the right; then St. Eusta-tius and Saba
to the left and St. Barthelemy to the right; then the U.S. Virgin Islands far
away to the left and St. Martin close by on the right; and finally the Gunpoint
Island itself, off the starboard bow.

The frigates steamed past the
western tip of the island, turned right, and at last dropped anchor off the
northwest coast, between
Road
Bay
and
Crocus
Bay
.
Ahead, in the predawn darkness, stretched from left to right the low profile of
Anguilla
.

It was
5:16
a.m
.
when the troops landed. Paratroops and Marines from
Rothesay
touched
ground at
Crocus
Bay
,
where the Anguillans had routed the first French invasion of their island in
1745. More paratroopers from
Minerva
landed at
Road
Bay
, near the salt pond. The
troops, ducking and weaving, dashed from the open boats across bare stretches
of white beach, their automatic rifles held at the ready. They ducked behind
bushes and upturned fishing boats before moving again, cautiously, into the
interior. Meanwhile, Royal Navy helicopter R424 was landing four Red Devils
inland at the all-important crossroads by the famous mahogany tree.

Aboard
Minerva
and
Rothesay,
gunnery control officers tensed as they saw sudden white lights
streaming across the island in the darkness—automobile headlights moving toward
the beachheads and the landing parties. The automobiles stopped. The gunners
waited, hands gripping their gun mounts. Up on the bridge, Lieutenant Colonel
Dawnay watched through binoculars. Suddenly on the beaches there was a barrage
of flashes.

"I fear the worst," said
Colonel Dawnay.

It was photographers' flashbulbs.

'Twas brillig, and the
slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And
the mome raths outgrabe.

—Lewis Carroll,
Through the Loo king-Glass

"
'Shotgun' Said The Sergeant . . . [
London
Evening Standard,
March 19, 1969
]."

Ronald Webster was taking a bath
when the troops landed. He didn't know about the invasion until a reporter went
to his house to ask his reaction.

Most other Anguillans were still
asleep. With all the security leaks in the British and American press about the
oncoming invasion, the islanders had had plenty of time to reconsider the
notion of having a war with
Great Britain
.
So they had carried all their guns over to
St. Martin
and buried them. They're still there.

The troops were very nervous and jumpy.
Later on it was going to be a joke, but right now they kept waiting for the war
to start. As sleepy Anguillans emerged from their houses, troops carrying
machine guns shoved them against walls, searched them, questioned them. Troops
mounted machine guns on building roofs, made tense little comments back and
forth on their walkie-talkies, and kept waiting for the goddamn war to start.
They were here for a war, they were dressed for a war, they were primed for a
war, they'd stayed up all night thinking about war. Where the hell was the war?

The
boy, not more than 15, spun around a corner and his motor-cycle backfired.

"Right—a
shotgun: Get him," a sergeant shouted.

London
Daily Mail
,
March
20, 1969

The British reporters were heartily
disliked by both sides, though only yesterday everybody had thought they
were nice fellows. But today here they were strolling
around in shirts open at the neck, taking pictures, interviewing soldiers who
were trying to keep their minds on the war, and generally making the troops
self-conscious, which the troops didn't much care for. As to the Anguillans,
they'd just been invaded by
Great Britain
;
for the moment they didn't like
any
Englishmen.

The Randalls did. Vera Randall told
a reporter, "I grabbed a flag and it was an American one, ran out with it
and waved like mad and cheered the helicopters."

The Anguillan flag had been flying
over the
Administrative
Building
,
but when the Red Devils captured the building —it was one of the high points in
their tactical plan—they took it down. They were assisted in this by a cheerful
young local citizen, very helpful; but when it turned out he was the prisoner
still waiting to be tried for murder in the death of his girl friend, the
troops shooed him back to his cell.

Lieutenant Colonel Dawnay and his
troops commandeered some cars; that is, they took people's cars away from them.
With these they were able to spread out more quickly and capture the entire
island. They set up roadblocks and searched every car that came along without
troops in it. When they asked one Anguillan, "Whose car is this?" he
said, "Well, it's not the Queen's, that's for damn sure."

Cars containing reporters were also
searched. The
Daily Mail's
Andrew McEwen wrote, "Troops stopped my
car at cross-roads. 'Get out and sit down over there,' a sergeant ordered.
Twenty minutes later, after having it searched, he let me return. We had to
make sure there was not a bomb in it,' he said."

This seriousness was occasionally
matched by the Anguillans. A woman came out of her house and watched a group of
paratroopers walk by in the dawn light. Very indignant, she called, "Does
the Queen know you're here?"

One
loud BANG sent some of the paras leaping into defensive positions. It was only
a backfire from the motor-cycle ridden by a smartly dressed schoolboy on his
way to morning lessons.

London
Daily Express
,
March
20, 1969

There were no lessons at The Valley
School that day. The paratroopers had taken it over as their supply dump and
command post.

The helicopters had awakened most
of the population by now, but there was nothing to do but stand around and
admire the precision of the soldiers. Or not admire it; as one helicopter
landed in a cloud of dust and a rush of wind and a roar of noise, a farmer
said, "Look at all that filthy mess. It is going to upset my cow."

Evening Standard
reporter
Jean Campbell was in Ronald Webster's Park when a helicopter landed there and
four Red Devils leaped out. She described what happened next.

Old
William Harley from the Agricultural Station, with his yellow crash helmet on,
stood gaping by his bicycle. "Miss, Miss, what manner, what class of
people are these?"

I
could not answer "Red Devils." So I grinned and said, "Friendly
English soldiers, they are just practising."

"Uncle
William," screamed a 16-year-old. "Why are they running toward
us?"

Uncle
William shook his head. "I just cannot tell what class of people these
are, son."

Four
fresh-faced Red Devils from Beckenham,
Nottingham
and the North came rushing toward us. Silence.

"Good
morning," I said hopefully as the young lieutenant arranged his machine
gun. We looked a motley bunch, Old William with his bike and a little group of
Anguillan teenagers.

Still
there was silence.

"Are
you from
London
?" I asked politely.

"Beckenham,"
came the answer with a broad grin. "But you can't have my name, not on
your life."

And Ian Ball of the
Telegraph
reported a Scotland Yard inspector in blue wool uniform sweltering amid the
troops, but he wouldn't give his name either.

Also sweltering in blue serge was
Commissioner
Way
, another early arrival with the troops.
Apparently he'd found some tropical wear to fit after all, because he explained
his discomfort by saying, "I blame the Navy for this. They dropped my case
with my light clothes in it out of one of their helicopters."

One
sharp report sent the parachute troops leaping into defensive positions—until
they found that it came from a backfiring motor cycle being ridden by a young
islander.

London
Times
,
March 20, 1969

One American lady on the island
told Jean Campbell, "Imagine ... I slept in my brassiere to be ready for
this invasion. Never did that before in my life."

Reporter Bill Bruns wrote, in
Life
magazine, "At a strategic bend in the road one soldier had dug a
foxhole, but the only creature to challenge him was a cow grazing 20 feet away.
His buddy sat nearby cradling his rifle. I didn't see any ammunition clips, so
I asked him if his rifle was loaded. 'No, but don't tell anybody.'"

Thousands of leaflets were being
dropped from helicopters shushle-shushling back and forth. They were headed
"Message to the people of
Anguilla
from the British
government," and they started by telling the Anguillans they hadn't been
very nice to Mr. Whitlock. They then went on, in boldfaced lettering, "It
is not our purpose to force you to return to an Administration you do not
want."

But if the troops weren't there to
force the Anguillans to do something they didn't want to do, why were they
there?

The leaflets attempted an
explanation: "Our purpose is to end intimidation so that you can live in
peace and express your opinions without fear." A purpose attained with
machine guns.

The leaflets next said that Tony
Lee was coming in with the troops to be the Commissioner in charge of the
island: "He comes as your friend." But very few friends come visiting
in quite that fashion.

Finally the leaflets requested
cooperation, and ended with a platitude: "The quicker law and order is
restored, the sooner you can resume a normal and peaceful life."

Before the invasion had started, it
had been announced that Colonel Dawnay had been given by the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office a list of forty "baddies," to use the newspaper
word, who would be "rounded up" once the war had been won and the
island secured. The war was won and the island secured so fast that by
six-thirty, an hour after the landings, SNOWI could cable
London
,
"
operation
sheepskin has been a success
." (Actually it had been a failure,
since it had given
Anguilla
everything it wanted.)

And the roundup began. The
London
Times
reported, "Many of the people caught in the first roundup by
troops were reporters and press photographers, already ashore to cover the
landings." So they let the reporters and photographers go and started
again.

By now, the official word was that
there were only twenty names on the list of baddies, but of these only five
names were ever made public, and they were all Americans: Jack Holcomb, Lewis
Haskins, Raymond Haskins, Sherman Haskins, and the Reverend Freeman Goodge.

Reverend Goodge started his day in
an irreverend manner, screaming at Andrew McEwen of the
Daily Mail
,
"You British bastards. You are no reporter—you're a Scotland Yard man sent
here to spy on us." He was shortly introduced to real Scotland Yard men,
for comparison. Ten Red Devils went to his house and rounded up the Reverend
Freeman Goodge and his wife and his three children. They searched the house,
and Goodge later described it this way: "They went through the chicken
coop, even searched my wife's underwear and went through a new Bible leaf by
leaf." He was then taken away to be questioned by Scotland Yard men, but
when it turned out he wasn't a Mafia chaplain they let him go.

One down out of the forty; or the
twenty; or the five.

Lewis Haskins was arrested and
questioned and his premises searched, but he too failed to live up to the
advance billing and was released. His sons Raymond (20) and Sherman (22) had
fled to
St. Martin
the night before.

Four down, leaving thirty-six; or
sixteen; or one.

Jack Holcomb.

Holcomb had been staying at Jerry
Gumbs's Rendezvous Hotel. That's where two Red Devils carrying automatic rifles
picked him up. He was taken to the schoolhouse, now being used as invasion
headquarters, where Detective Inspector Harry Nicholls of Scotland Yard greeted
him with "Good morning, Mr. Holcomb. I am a police officer."

Holcomb was then taken out to the
Minerva
and questioned for two hours. The British had spent something over
a million dollars to save the Anguillans from Mafia terrorism, and Jack Holcomb
was their last possible hope to prove that the money hadn't been a total waste.
Holcomb
looked
good. He was, in the first place, from
Florida
,
and everybody knows that everybody from
Florida
is in the Mafia. He talked a lot about mysterious big-money backers, and
everybody knows that mysterious big-money backers are always Mafia men with
dirty
money
to invest. He had turned Ronald Webster against
Britain
—so
unfairly, so unfairly—and why would he have done a thing like that unless he
was in the Mafia?

After two hours Holcomb was
returned to the island and deported. Nobody said anything about the Mafia. In
fact, the British pretended they never had said anything about the Mafia. The
deportation order gave no particulars, outlined no charges against Holcomb,
made no specific points of any kind. No reasons were suggested other than that
the British didn't like him, that they had to show
something
for their
morning's work, and that he was unwelcome.

Holcomb asked permission to get his
things from the hotel. He was told he could go, with military escort, but not
in a military vehicle. He had to take a cab. They drove out to Rendezvous,
Holcomb packed, and then he paid his bill. The last act of this conspirator in
the great plot to take over
Anguilla
and run it by
mobster fear was to write a check for his hotel bill and hand it to Jerry
Gumbs's sister, Aunt B.

"Right—a
shotgun: Get him," a sergeant shouted. Three
Sterling
sub-machineguns were pointed at the boy . . .

London
Daily Mail
,
March
20, 1969

Back home in
London
,
a BBC announcer reported the invasion of
Anguilla
in a
somewhat awed voice: "British troops have landed," he said. "It
is a phrase we thought we would never hear again."

Only one shot was fired in the
course of the invasion; appropriately enough, it was fired at reporters. A
charter plane was bringing in a group of British correspondents, and when it
came inadvertently close to a Hercules transport airdropping equipment, a
warning shot was fired in its direction. Other than that, it was a very
peaceful war.

British
paratroops leaped to defensive positions as a sharp report rang out after they
had landed on
Anguilla
. "Shotgun," shouted a sergeant. His men
swung their guns round—to cover a sheepish young Anguillan riding up on a
backfiring motorcycle.