First Into Action (14 page)
A fine example of one of the more bone-headed joint SBS/SAS tasks where the comedy matched the execution occurred when myself and an SAS lad named Paul set up an OP in a barn.
An empty weapons cache had been found by an army patrol in a lone barn, way up on a hill in a field, some distance from its parent farmhouse. The weapons cache was a tailor-made-for-the-job brick space nicely concealed in the brick floor under the muck and straw. It contained a weapon-cleaning cloth, an old tin of gun oil, but no weapons. The ruperts decided it looked fresh and could be used at any time, and since it was discovered using our own resources, and nothing better was coming down the pipe, we would plan and prepare it as a long-term operation.
The plan was a simple one, not well thought out and badly executed. The bales of hay, over a hundred of them, stacked nearly to the roof of the barn, were to be removed. A pre-fabricated wooden frame eight feet by four feet and four feet high would be placed on the floor of the barn and a video camera (hidden in the ceiling) would be attached via a cable to a monitor within the frame. Paul and I would climb into the frame along with all our OP gear, weapons, food and video equipment replacement batteries to last us several days, and the hay would be replaced to hide the frame. The displaced hay would be taken away and a reaction force installed nearby to wait for us to trigger when the boyos came to load the cache.
To prepare the hide in one night and in complete darkness was going to require a lot of manpower. About fifteen SBS and SAS operators, including Paul and myself, arrived in a civilian truck at the gate to the field where the barn was. We all traipsed a hundred yards through the muddy field up to the barn and began the first stage, which was to remove the hay. None of the SBS or SAS operatives looked as if they were taking it seriously except the rupert responsible for the idea (who was rumoured to be a Lord and nicknamed ‘Lord help us’) who walked around directing the show enthusiastically.
The technicians put in the video equipment while Paul and I made ourselves comfortable inside the frame, which was placed in a corner of the barn, and the blocks of hay were re-stacked around us. By the time the stack had been rebuilt dawn was approaching. But what to do with the other bales? As there was straw all over the barn anyway it was decided a little more would go unnoticed, and so a bale was broken up and evenly distributed. After that success it was decided to try another one. It was pure laziness and lack of interest that caused all the remaining bales to be broken up and distributed around the floor of what was a not very large building. Meanwhile Paul and I, oblivious to all this in our straw room, arranged our equipment, tested the video, which had a little movement and zoom, and tested communications. The hide had been placed tight against a rust-thin part of the outside wall which we could kick through in the event of an emergency. This was to be our home for several days.
As the others left and all fell silent we sat opposite each other in the stark glow from the monitor thinking the same thing.
‘Well, this is a right load of bollocks,’ Paul said.
We decided to eat as little as possible so as to limit the necessity to take a shit, an activity neither of us was looking forward to in this cramped, airless space. We only had sandwiches as we could not cook, for obvious reasons, which denied us our main OP leisure activity. In OPs, food is not usually troughed down just as a necessary fuel. Many operatives became mini-gourmets, often bringing along herbs and spices to add to the otherwise bland ration-pack meals. Recipe-swapping and tastings were a part of OP social life. We could not even read as the light from the monitor was too low, and the only thing on TV was the open entrance to a barn.
The SAS are always tight-lipped and introvert when in a group, the senior members always exerting a seemingly telepathic control over the others, ensuring they maintain the stern image. But get almost any of them alone and they soon become your normal squaddy – chatty, complaining and humorous, even in the most harsh conditions. Before long Paul and I were nattering away.
We talked in low voices and whiled away the hours discussing all kinds of things – where we came from, what we did before we joined up, family life, how we ended up in special forces. Paul told me about life in the SAS and I told him what little I knew about life in the SBS. I was surprised he didn’t know much about us. Between us we worked out, for instance, that when it came to anti-terrorist room-entry procedures, we spent a similar amount of time training, had similar procedures and demanded the same levels of proficiency. The SAS were the first to pioneer anti-terrorist and room-entry hostage drills and the first in the world to create a ‘killing house’, which is a training building designed so that the rooms can be altered to resemble civilian habitats, offices and aircraft cabins. After the SBS took what the SAS had learned in that department and built its own killing house, they adapted what they needed for maritime anti-terrorism and continued to improve on it in their own direction.
I took first watch while Paul got his head down. The monitor was the only indication that dawn was coming. I turned down the monitor’s sensitivity as the early light came in through the barn door and got brighter as it crept across the floor. I wondered if sitting and watching that screen for several days was going to do my eyes any good.
It was during my watch the following morning at about 6:00 a.m. that a man stopped in the entrance to the barn. The view of him was angled from above and he was featureless because of the strong back light. I squeezed Paul’s boot to wake him and we watched the man, who was slightly stooped, wore a flat cap and had a walking stick, as he looked around. It was the farmer who owned the barn. His family had run the farm for several generations and he had stacked the hay that summer with his two sons. It was quite obvious to him that someone had dismantled his haystack then put it all back together, and untidily too, and that a dozen or so extra bales had been broken up and spread on the floor. He looked around outside and obviously wondered, as the ground was churned by footprints, just how many people must have been involved in this odd exercise. He went to the top of his field and saw the fresh track, sprinkled with hay, leading down to his gate by the road.
He came back into the barn and we watched him as he started searching around, poking the hay and pushing his stick between the bales. It was clear we were going to be blown and so, on a nod, we kicked out the emergency escape hatch and, with our weapons at the ready, divided up and ran around the barn to confront him.
The poor old fellow was in mild shock at first, but soon calmed down. In fact he looked relieved when he realised we were British soldiers. He thought it was the work of robbers or gypsies who had hidden something like a car under his hay. He assumed we were from the local Army unit. We would not have told him who we were anyway, and were content to let him blame them for the amateurish OP.
After we radioed in to get picked up, we questioned the old man on what he might know about weapons being hidden anywhere in the area. He swore he knew nothing, but the subject jogged his memory.
‘You boys’ll appreciate this,’ he said and smiled as he led us directly to the concealed cache in the floor of the barn.
‘It’s something of a talking piece around here. A little bit of history,’ he added.
He showed us the cache we had gone to all this trouble to observe. It had been used during troubles in the 1920s and not since, obviously, as everyone for miles knew about it.
‘There’s even an old oily rag and oil tin from those days,’ he pointed out.
Then he asked what we were doing in the barn. We declined to discuss it.
Paul was another SAS trooper who later came down to play with the SBS on some of our exercises. He was also one of the eighteen SAS lads lost in the Falklands when their helicopter crashed into the sea after engine failure.
Although we were experienced at being wet and cold for long periods, that didn’t mean we looked forward to it. Any fool can be uncomfortable. Many of the operations, such as my first ambush, required standing off during the day and moving in to the target at night. This was because either the target was extremely vigilant and the immediate area was searched during the day by the enemy, or there was not enough close cover from view to insert an OP.
If the weather was constantly bad over a period of time it could drain the hardiest soldier. We had to be able to react instantly and effectively to any developing situation or threat, but our efficiency would be seriously impaired if we were cold or soaked through to the skin and suffering from hypothermia.
Early on in the tour, the quartermaster put in a request for some experimental waterproof suits. When the first batch arrived, four of them were dished out to myself and three SAS troopers prior to going out one particularly foul night on a stand-off operation.
One of the SAS lads in the team was a giant Kiwi. He was six-foot-six and built like a rugby forward with long, black straggly hair on a head the size of a pumpkin, dark eyes and a thick, black hombre moustache (standard SAS issue) that covered his top lip and curved down to his chin. Because of the need for manoeuvrability, and to house the extra clothing needed to keep warm, the suits were designed to be extra baggy. Kiwi, naturally, received an extra, extra large one. The suits were black and one piece and zipped up from crotch to neck. The feet were massive to fit over heavy-duty field boots and ties were fixed at intervals around the torso and limbs to take in the slack. It was claimed the suits were watertight to the neck with large patches of Gore-Tex to make them breathable and so that we could stand in a river for hours in them without getting wet (or cold, if you wore enough underneath).
In my caravan I donned my suit over heavy thermals. After loosening the straps I pulled on my webbing, which contained emergency supplies and spare magazines, buckled my 9mm in its holster to my right hip and picked up my M16. Now I looked like a troll. I was sweating within minutes and happy to get outside, where it was pissing down and blowing a gale. When Kiwi appeared I could only stare at him and think, ‘My God.’
Kiwi did not like the cold and had taken full advantage of the spacious suit by wearing plenty of extra clothing underneath. His feet looked like those of Frankenstein’s monster and the ties along his arms and legs gave him a mummified appearance. He wore his hood up over a woolly hat and it was fully tied up so that only his eyes, big nose and mouth were visible. He looked eight feet tall and if I hadn’t known him I would have guessed he weighed some 400 pounds. All he needed to complete the look was a bolt through his neck. To finish it all off, his favourite primary field weapon was a heavy 7.62mm general purpose machine-gun (GPMG), suspended horizontally across his waist by its carrying strap with an extra-long ammunition belt that curled from its breech and over his shoulder.
Our job that night was to watch a farm suspected of being used as a safe house by an IRA fugitive. The four of us left the drop-off point a mile away and walked at an easy pace in the howling rainstorm along hedgerows and through muddy fields towards the farm. We took our time walking to avoid overheating and eventually stopped at the top of a field where we could look down on the well-lit farm a hundred yards away as the wind and rain pelted us. The suits were everything they promised to be. I felt nothing of the harsh elements and the rain that ran down my face was, if anything, refreshing. We sat down on the muddy ground without a care and leaned back and observed. The suits were a little noisy, which is why they would have been impractical on something like the O’Sally ambush, but for a stand-off they were fine. We gave a radio check to inform ops of our arrival on target and they got back to us minutes later requesting us to move straight in and flush the main house ASAP. They had received information that several wanted members of the Provisional IRA might be inside.
We quickly formed a plan to cover all four sides of the house in case anyone tried to escape through a door or window while Kiwi went to the front door alone. Each operative was responsible for one side of the house. Around each corner was another man’s field of fire so each man had to stay his side of the building or risk being shot by an oppo. When we were all in position Kiwi stepped out of the shadows of an outbuilding and walked across the floodlit concrete yard towards the front of the house.
He banged hard on the door several times, then gripped his heavy machine-gun, aimed the thick, black barrel at the door and let the belt trail over his arm like a python. I stood at my corner and levelled my weapon along my side of the building, waiting for someone to come out of a window. Whoever climbed out, if they had a gun, they died, and if they did not have a weapon I would convince them not to run – I was not about to chase anyone the way I was dressed unless I wanted to give myself a heart attack.
The front door was opened by the owner of the house, who was an old IRA militiaman and veteran of past campaigns. Kiwi’s huge figure filled the door-frame and was back-lit by the floodlights. The old man shuddered as he took in the size of the monstrous, black, dripping thing that faced him with its awesome weapon aimed at his face. God only knows what the old man thought had come to pay him a visit. He had an instant heart attack and collapsed and died there in the hallway. The RUC were not impressed but no legal action was taken.
By the end of that four-month tour I’d had enough of Northern Ireland. After that visit, the SBS tapered off their involvement in the province and went on to other things, although they continued to provide small teams for joint ops with the SAS as well as individuals for undercover duties. If I ever had to go back I hoped it would be in that latter capacity and no other. I was to get my wish.
5
A Royal Marine commando unit or Para regiment could have done most of the jobs the SAS and SBS teams were tasked to do in Northern Ireland, to the same standard we were doing them. Our shortcomings stemmed from the limited time we spent over there. It felt to us like we rushed in, scurried about doing anything we could fit in, and then hopped back to the mainland. The RUC were also getting tired of the short-term cycles of hard-hitting special forces trundling through the province, ill equipped for long-term intelligence-gathering and trying to win the war in their four-month tours. What was needed was a specialised, long-term unit committed solely to the conflict that could provide the delicate touch and patience required to take on an enemy also committed to a long-term struggle. There was such a team: it was highly clandestine in its activities, subtle, well equipped for the job, and patient – all the things we were lacking – and it was growing in effectiveness each year. It would eventually nudge the ill-fitting conventional special forces into a more secondary role.