‘Sixty miles to our forward base at Thumier, to be exact. And we’re going in those Bedfords parked over there.’
‘Sixty miles?’ Ben asked, as if he hadn’t heard the sergeant correctly. ‘You mean now?
‘That’s right, Trooper. Now.’
‘Without a break?’
‘Naturally, Trooper.’
‘I think what he means, Sergeant,’ the other recently badged trooper, Taff Thomas, put in timidly, aware that the temperature here could sometimes rise to 150 degrees Fahrenheit, ‘is that a two-week period is normally allowed for acclimatization to this kind of heat.’
Ken and Larry laughed simultaneously.
‘That’s for the bleedin’ greens,’ Les explained, referring to the green-uniformed regular Army. ‘Not for the SAS. We don’t expect two weeks’ paid leave. We just get up and go.’
‘Happy, Troopers?’ Jimbo asked. Both men nodded, keen to do the right thing. ‘Right, then, get up in those Bedfords.’
The men did as they were told and soon four three-tonners were leaving the RAF base. They were guarded front and rear by British Army 6×6-drive Saladin armoured cars, each with a 76mm QF (quick-firing) gun and a Browning .30-inch machine-gun. The convoy trundled along a road that was lined with coconut palms and ran as straight as an arrow through a flat desert plain covered with scattered clumps of aloe and cactus-like euphorbia.
As the Bedfords headed towards the heat-hazed, purplish mountains that broke up the horizon, the coconut palms gradually disappeared and the land became more arid, but with a surprisingly wide variety of trees – acacias, tamarisks, jujube and doum palms – breaking up the desert’s monotony.
Once they were well away from Aden, out on the open plain, the heat became even worse and was made bearable only by the wind created by the lorries. This wind, however, churned up dense clouds of dust that made most of the men choke and, in some cases, vomit over the rattling tailgates.
‘Heave it up over the back,’ Jimbo helpfully instructed Ben as he tried to hold his stomach’s contents in with pursed lips and bulging cheeks. ‘If you do it over the side and that wind blows it back in, over us, you’ll have to lick us clean with your furry tongue. So do it over the rear, lad.’
His cheeks deathly white and still bulging, the trooper nodded and threw himself to the back of the vehicle, hanging over the tailgate and vomiting unrestrainedly into the cloud of dust being churned up by the wheels. He was soon followed by his fellow trooper, Taff Thomas, who picked the exact same spot to empty his tortured stomach, while the more experienced men covered their faces with scarves and either practised deep, even breathing or amused themselves with some traditional bullshit.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Ken said to Taff as the latter wiped his mucky lips clean with a handkerchief and tried to control his heavy breathing. ‘You’ll feel better after you’ve had a good nosh at Thumier. Great grub they do there. Raw liver, tripe, runny eggs, oysters, octopus, snails that look like snot, green pea soup…’
Taff groaned and went to throw up again over the back of the bouncing, rattling Bedford, into boiling, choking clouds of sand.
‘Bet you’ve never eaten a snail in your life,’ Larry said, more loudly than was strictly necessary. ‘That’s nosh for refined folk.’
‘Refined?’ Ken replied, glancing sideways as Taff continued heaving over the tailgate. ‘What’s so refined about pulling a piece of snot out of a shell and letting it slither down your throat? That’s puke-making – not refined.’
‘Ah, God!’ Ben groaned, then covered his mouth with his soiled handkerchief as he shuddered visibly.
‘Throw up in that,’ Jimbo warned him, ‘and I’ll make you wipe your face with it. Go and join your friend there.’
Shuddering even more violently, Ben dived for the tailgate, hanging over it beside his heaving friend.
‘A little vomit goes a long way,’ Ken said. ‘Across half of this bloody desert, in fact. I never knew those two had it in ’em. It just goes to show.’
Men in the other Bedfords were suffering in the same way, but the column continued across the desert to where the lower slopes of the mountains, covered in lava, with a mixture of limestone and sand, made for an even rougher, slower ride. Here there were no trees, so no protection from the sun, and when the lorries slowed to practically a crawl – which they had to do repeatedly to navigate the rocky terrain – they filled up immediately with swarms of buzzing flies and whining, biting mosquitoes.
‘Shit!’ Les complained, swiping frantically at the frantic insects. ‘I’m being eaten alive here!’
‘Malaria’s next on the list,’ Ken added. ‘That bloody Paludrine’s useless.’
‘Why the hell doesn’t this driver go faster?’ Larry asked as he too swatted uselessly at the attacking insects. ‘At this rate, we might as well get out and walk.’
‘It’s the mountains,’ Ben explained, feeling better for having emptied his stomach and seemingly oblivious to the insects. ‘This road’s running across their lower slopes, which are rocky and full of holes.’
‘How observant!’ Ken exclaimed.
‘A bright lad!’ Les added.
‘Real officer material,’ Larry chimed in. ‘These bleedin’ insects only go for red blood, so his must be blue.’
‘I’m never bothered by insects,’ Ben confirmed. ‘It’s odd, but it’s true.’
‘How’s your stomach?’ Ken asked the trooper.
‘Feeling sick again?’ queried Les.
‘I can still smell his vomit from an hour ago,’ Larry said, ‘and it’s probably what attracted these bloody insects. They’re after his puke.’
Ben and Taff dived simultaneously for the rear of the lorry and started heaving yet again while the others, feeling superior once more, kept swatting at and cursing the insects. This went on until the Bedford bounced down off the slopes and headed across another relatively flat plain of limestone, sandstone and lava fields. They had now been on the Dhala road for two hours, but it seemed longer than that.
Mercifully, after another hour of hellish heat and dust, with the sun even higher in a silvery-white sky, they arrived at the SAS forward base at Thumier, located near the Habilayn airstrip, sixty miles from Aden and just thirty miles from the hostile Yemeni border.
‘We could have been flown here!’ Ben complained.
‘That would have been too easy,’ Ken explained. ‘For us, nothing’s made easy.’
In reality the camp was little more than an uninviting collection of tents pitched in a sandy area surrounded by high, rocky ridges where half a dozen SAS observation posts, hidden from view and swept constantly by dust, recced the landscape for enemy troop movements. There were no guards at the camp entrance because there were no gates; nor was there a perimeter fence. However, the base was surrounded by sandbagged gun emplacements raised an equal distance apart in a loose
