to warm them up. When the last had done the same, the rearmost Saladin followed suit and the column was ready to move. The Bedfords and the Saladin acting as ‘Tail-end Charlie’ followed the first armoured car out of the camp, throwing up a column of billowing dust as they headed out into the desert.
The route was through an area scattered with coconut and doum palms, acacias, tall ariatas and tamarisks, the latter looking prettily artificial with their feathery branches. They were, however, few and far between. For the most part, the Bedfords bounced and rattled over parched ground strewn with potholes and stones until, about half an hour later, they arrived at an area bounded by a horseshoe-shaped mountain range. The RCT drivers took the Bedfords up the lower slopes as far as they would go, then stopped to let the men out.
The soldiers were lowering their kit to the ground and clambering down when they saw for the first time that one of the Bedfords had brought up a collection of heavier support weapons, including a 7.62mm GPMG (general-purpose machine-gun), a 7.62mm LMG (light machine-gun) and two 51mm mortars.
‘Looks like we’re in for a pretty long day,’ Les muttered ominously.
‘No argument about that,’ Ken whispered back at him.
When the Bedfords had turned around and headed back the way they had come, Jimbo gathered his men around him. Dead-eye was standing beside him, holding his L42A1 bolt-action sniper rifle and looking as granite-faced as always.
‘The Bedfords,’ Jimbo said, ‘will come back just before last light. Until then we work.’ Pausing to let his words sink in, he waved his hands at the heavy weapons piled up to his left. ‘As you can see, we’ve brought along a nice collection of support weapons. We’re going to hike up to the summit of this hill and take that lot with us. I hope you’re all feeling fit.’ The men moaned and groaned melodramatically, but Jimbo, his crooked lip curling, waved them into silence. ‘For most of you,’ he said, ‘your previous practical experience was in jungle or swamp. A few of us have had experience in the African desert, but even that didn’t involve anything like these mountains. You are here, therefore, to adapt to a terrain of mountainous desert, with all that entails.’
‘What’s that, Sarge?’ Ben asked innocently.
‘Wind and sand. Potentially damaging dips and holes covered by sand, soil or shrubs. Loose gravel and wind-smoothed, slippery rocks. Ferocious heat. All in all, it calls for a wide variety of survival skills of the kind you haven’t so far acquired.’ He cast a quick grin at the impassive Dead-eye, then turned back to the men. ‘And the first lesson,’ he continued, nodding at the summit of the ridge, ‘is to get up there, carrying the support weapons and your own kit.’ Glancing up automatically, the men were not reassured by what they saw. ‘It’s pretty steep,’ Jimbo said. ‘It’s also covered with sharp and loose stones. Be careful you don’t break an ankle or trip and roll down. And watch out for snakes, scorpions and the like. Even when not poisonous, some of them can inflict a nasty bite…So, let’s get to it.’
He jabbed his finger at various groups, telling them which weapons and components they were to carry between them. Corporal Ken Brooke, Lance-Corporal Les Moody, and Troopers Ben Riley and Taff Thomas were assigned as the four-man GPMG team. Lance-Corporal Larry Johnson, already burdened with his extra medical kit, got off scot-free.
‘We picked the wrong specialist training,’ Les complained. ‘Johnson gets off with everything.’
‘It’s not just the fact that I’m our medical specialist,’ Larry replied, beaming smugly. ‘It’s because I have charm and personality. It comes natural, see.’
‘So does farting from your mouth,’ Ken shot back. ‘Come on, Les, let’s hump this thing.’
The four men tossed for it. Ken lost and became number two: the one who had to hump the GPMG onto his shoulders. Sighing, he unlocked the front legs of the 30lb steel tripod, swung them forward into the high-mount position and relocked them. Then, with Les’s assistance, he hauled the tripod up onto his shoulders with the front legs resting on his chest and the rear one trailing backwards over his equally heavy bergen. With the combined weight of the steel tripod, ammunition belts of 7.62mm rounds, and rucksack adding up to 130lb, Ken felt exhausted before he had even started.
‘You look like a bleedin’ elephant,’ Les informed him. ‘I just hope you’re as strong.’
‘Go fuck yourself,’ Ken barked back.
The four-way toss had made Les the gun controller, Ben the observer and Taff the number one, or trigger man. Between them, apart from personal gear, they had to carry two spare barrels weighing 6lb each, a spare return spring, a dial sight, marker pegs, two aiming posts, an aiming lamp, a recoil buffer, a tripod sighting bracket, a spare-parts wallet, and the gun itself.
‘This doesn’t look easy,’ Ben said, glancing nervously up the steep, rocky slope as Les distributed the separate parts of the GPMG.
‘It’s a fucking sight easier than humping that tripod,’ Les informed him, ‘so count yourself lucky.’
‘Move out!’ Jimbo bawled.
The whole squad moved out in single file, spread well apart as they would be on a real patrol, with the men who were carrying the support weapons leaning forward even more than the others. The climb was both backbreaking and dangerous, for each man was forced to navigate the steep slope while looking out for sharp or loose stones that could either break an ankle or roll from under his feet, sending him tumbling back down the mountain. In this, they were helped neither by the sheer intensity of the heat nor the growing swarms of buzzing flies and whining mosquitoes attracted by their copious sweat.
Almost driven mad by the mosquitoes, the men’s attempts to swat them away came as near to unbalancing them as did the loose, rolling stones. More than one man found himself suddenly twisting sideways, dragged down by his own kit or support weapon, after he had swung his hand too violently at his tormentors. Saved by the helping hand of the man coming up behind him, he might then find himself stepping on a loose stone, which would roll like a log beneath him, sending him violently forwards or backwards; or he would start slipping on loose gravel as it slid away underfoot.
By now the breathing of every man was agonized and not helped by the fact that the air was filled with the dust kicked up by their boots or the tumbling stones and sliding gravel. The dust hung around them in clouds, making them choke and cough, and limiting visibility to a dangerous degree, eventually reducing the brightening sunlight to a distant, silvery haze. To make matters worse, each man’s vision was even more blurred when his own stinging sweat ran into his eyes.
The climb of some 1500 feet took them two hellish hours but led eventually to the summit of the ridge. This had different, more exotic trees scattered here and there along its otherwise rocky, parched, relatively flat ground, and overlooked a vast plain of sand, silt and polished lava.
Throwing themselves gratefully to the ground, the men were about to open their water bottles when Jimbo stopped them. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Put those bottles away.’
‘But, Sarge…’ Taff began in disbelief.
‘Shut up and listen to me,’ Jimbo replied. ‘As you’ve all just discovered, the heat in the mountains can wring the last drop of sweat out of you much quicker than you can possibly imagine – no matter how fit you are. If you allow this to happen, you’ll soon be dehydrated, exhausted, and if you don’t get water in time, dead of thirst.’
‘So let us drink our water,’ Les said, shaking his bottle invitingly.
