Kisses From Nimbus Page 8

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  On the evening of the twenty-first of May we were told that an eight man SAS patrol was lost somewhere on the island of Tierra del Fuego, and that Brummie and I should use the Chilean Airforce helicopter to help in the search for them. We were also warned that the area was likely to be teeming with enemy troops. We had no idea at the time what the patrol had been up to, but it later transpired, that they were part of Operation Plum Duff and had been tasked to carry out a reconnaissance of the airbase at Rio Grande which B Squadron, led by their newly appointed Commander were planning to attack within the next few days. We both reckoned that searching for the patrol would be futile, especially if they were in Argentina. As soon as the experienced troopers heard the very recognisable thwack of the Huey rotor blades they would, almost certainly, assume that we were the enemy and immediately go to ground and we would be likely to see nothing. If we did happen to spot them and subsequently fly towards them they would almost certainly consider us to be the enemy and try to shoot us down. We would, of course, bear the lost patrol in mind as we overflew the area, but we would, primarily, be concentrating on our real aim of getting as close to the airfield as possible and taking a few snaps of the place.

  The weather forecast was not good, low cloud and freezing rain showers across the whole of our planned route. Freezing rain is extremely dangerous for a helicopter, so not only would we be trying to avoid the anti-aircraft defences and the snow-capped hills, but we would also need to dodge around any showers we might encounter.

  Shortly after take-off, we descended to ultra-low level, generally flying in the valleys, well below the tops of the hilly terrain, but never more than fifty feet above the surface to keep below the defensive radar coverage. As we crossed into enemy territory navigation became extremely difficult. Rather than simply maintaining a steady heading, as we normally would, we constantly steered off course to the left or right, sometimes by as much as sixty degrees, to tack towards our target like a yacht approaching a harbour into a headwind. But Brummie’s map reading proved to be outstanding and I could concentrate on looking ahead for perilous obstacles or wires strung across the valleys. If at any stage, we became uncertain of our position then our plan was to head south until we picked up the river and re-orientate ourselves.

  “Ok, mate,” I said as we got to within about ten miles of our goal. “Get ready to kiss your arse goodbye, we need to pop up to take a look.”

  I pulled back on the cyclic control and climbed quickly above the surrounding hills. We both scanned the horizon towards the east but the poor visibility revealed nothing but grey. Less than three seconds later we had dived back down into the relative safety of the valley. The poor visibility proved to be a double-edged sword, giving us some protection from being spotted by the mark-one eyeball on the ground, but also meaning that we would have to push our luck and get a lot closer before we would be able to see the airfield, and get pictures that would be of any use whatsoever. The only way we could hope to avoid being shot out of the sky was to pop up for very short periods of time in unpredictable locations and keep the number of times we exposed ourselves to an absolute minimum. At a range of fewer than two miles, we found ourselves in a valley running north to south with the airbase due east of use. A blast of arctic air surged into the cockpit as Brummie opened his side window ready to start shooting. Heading south, with the collective lever in my left hand, pulled up to maximum to gain as much speed as possible, I climbed up and out of the valley. There it was. The Rio Grande Airbase. It had to be the briefest of glimpses. Holding my breath in anticipation of the clatter of small arms fire smashing into the soft skin of the aircraft I rammed the cyclic control forward and dived at high speed back behind cover.

  “Never felt a thing. Let’s have another go,” I shouted as we popped up for another three-second exposure. And again, we got down unscathed.

  “Once more for luck,” I – just about – heard Brummie shout over the sound of the wind rushing across his microphone.

  “There you go, mate. That’s your lot,” I said, diving back into the valley. “Now shut that fucking window before we freeze to death, and let’s get the hell out of here.”

  As I saw the river valley ahead of us I did a steep turn to the right, staying low and fast we headed generally west and back towards safety. Interestingly we spotted not one of the enemy troops that were said to be ‘teeming across the area’.

  We eventually met up with the lost patrol and I was given the job of getting their weapons back to the UK. I was issued with the documentation appointing me as a ‘Queen’s Messenger’ thereby allowing me to carry anything in the form of diplomatic baggage throughout my journey without it leaving my sight. Diplomatic bags are free from any scrutiny by customs officers or any other officials. I was booked into the first-class cabin of the British Caledonian flight from Santiago to London and allocated not one, not two, but three seats. The two spare seats were needed for the very large black bags that were not allowed to leave my side. The large black bags containing a small arsenal of specialist weaponry.

  After landing I was instructed to remain in my seat until all the other passengers had disembarked. Two bodyguard-like characters came on board to meet me and staggered under the weight of my baggage as they carried it down the aircraft steps and into the waiting vehicle. I was then driven, without any entry formalities, straight out of the airport and into our Group Headquarters on the Kings Road in Chelsea.

  As I was unloading the bags and laying the weapons neatly out onto a table, Trevor Harley, a captain from 22 SAS in Hereford, came into the room.

  “Hi, Red. Nice to see you, but what the hell are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I just brought these weapons back from down south,” I replied.

  “You should never have been given that job. Anyone could have done it,” he continued angrily. “Stay where you are till I sort this out.”

  He certainly didn’t seem to be at all happy as he went out of the room and left me unpacking. I was also left wondering whether I was soon to be on my way home, or back to the airport, with another eight-thousand-mile journey ahead of me.

  The airport it was. Trevor, not normally a grumpy sort, had stuffed a ticket, a few hundred dollars and the name of a hotel in Santiago into my hand and told me to get my arse back there as quickly as possible. As a soldier, mine was not to reason why. Mine was just to do or die. And so, I set off back to the war zone.

  I was too late for that day’s flight but the following morning I was once more, strapping myself into the, now familiar, first-class cabin.

  “Hello, again Mister Riley. What a nice surprise,” said the stewardess cheerily, as she handed me a glass of champagne. “You going back already? I must say, you don’t look at all like the normal Queen’s Messengers we have flying with us.”

  “No. Well… I’m just new to the job,” I mumbled as I picked up the in-flight magazine with the clear intention of showing her that the conversation was over.

  As soon as I got through passport control I made straight for the big yellow ‘M’ for MacDonald’s. I was starving, having spent the complete flight pretending to be asleep to avoid any further chat with the inquisitive air hostess.

  I spent the next few days in the Hilton Garden Inn, close to the airport.

  The fourteenth of June was my birthday and I had just finished celebrating it, by sitting at the hotel bar on my own, when the barman came in from the back room clapping his hands.

  “Malvinas guerra terminado,” or words to that effect, he said with a beaming smile on his face.

  I looked at him with a gormless expression and a forced smile. Then, after thinking for a few seconds, he did his best to make me understand.

  “Fucklands combat finish,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Si, si comprende,” I replied. “Fucklands war is over.”

  I laughed as I went to bed.

  A day, or so, later I returned to Hereford after being debriefed in
London. I never did find out why I had been sent back to Chile by Mister Grumpy, but for me, and everyone else I suppose, the Fucklands war was definitely over.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  In those days, the standard ‘tour of duty’, in other words, the length of time one could expect to remain in a particular job, was three years. My time as the SAS Flight Commander was, very sadly, about to come to an end. I certainly didn’t relish the thought of going back to an appointment away from the Special Forces. Or, even worse, getting involved in training or instruction. But I had little choice. By that time, I had completed seventeen of the twenty-two years I needed to serve to qualify for a full Army pension.

  The newly installed fax machine pinged and spewed out a form entitled ‘Preference of Posting’ with a note attached asking me to complete it and fax it back. I completed the form and made it clear that the preference for my next posting should be easy to satisfy. I asked to be sent to anywhere in the world other than Detmold in Germany. That done I stuffed the form back into the new-fangled machine and whisked it back to the Ministry of Defence in London, expecting to be informed of where my future would lie within a month or two.

  I was surprised to say the least, when, the following day, I received notice that, not only was I posted to Detmold, but I was posted almost immediately and should expect to end my career there!

  The department at the MOD which then dealt with postings and promotions within the Army Air Corps was known as AG-14, which was run by a colonel with the support of a warrant officer acting as his chief clerk.

  Thinking that I had been the subject of a joke set up by the warrant officer, who I remembered vaguely from my days at Middle Wallop, I was straight on the phone to AG-14. I asked the chief clerk to confirm that he had issued the posting order as a prank emphasised by the fact that it had been promulgated so quickly. His attitude was particularly unfriendly and I was taken aback when he reasserted that the order was absolutely correct. He tried to convince me that, with new technology (by which I presume he meant the, recently introduced, fax machine), rapid responses were set to become the norm, and that the colonel and himself were simply being efficient and therefore there was nothing more to discuss.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, “that’s a load of old bollocks. I demand to have a personal interview with the Colonel and since he is so fucking efficient, let’s make it tomorrow morning”.

  There was a rather long silence broken only by some distant voices and then the sound of footsteps returning to the phone.

  “The colonel will see you tomorrow at eleven hundred hours,” said the Chief Sodding Clerk. “Do not be late.”

  ‘Oh, I won’t be late. You can rest assured’ I said. And slammed the phone down.

  Early the next morning I jumped into a ‘cab’, as helicopters are, invariably, referred to in the Army Air Corps, and flew myself down to Battersea Heliport.

  Barbara seemed to be most impressed when I turned up be-suited, rather than wearing my normal jeans, desert boots and a tatty old denim shirt with holes in it.

  After a brief peck on the cheek I was off in a different kind of ‘cab’ – this one was a London taxi and I was on my way around to my appointment with the eminent ‘Oberst Fuhrer’, in charge of posting and promotions.

  I arrived at the sour-faced chief clerk’s office a good ten minutes before my appointment time and sat in silence as I waited to be summoned. Normally, if two soldiers of similar rank were sat in the same room for more than a minute or two, a good old chat would ensue, but today there was nothing but silence and tranquillity in the air.

  On the stroke of eleven, I made a very deliberate and obvious glance at my G10 watch. A G10 watch was a basic and standard timepiece issued to most soldiers from, what was known as, the G10 store. As a pilot, I was, of course, entitled to be issued with the far more prestigious ‘Air Crew Chronometer’, but the extra dials, knobs and sweep hands just did nothing for me so I preferred to stick with something that would simply tell me the time.

  The silence continued. The minutes ticked away and the ‘Fuhrer’s’ door remained closed.

  At exactly fifteen minutes past eleven, I jumped to my feet, picked up my bag and declared. “Right, I’m off.”

  The chief clerk looked at me in astonishment and blustered, “You can’t just leave. The colonel is expecting to see you.”

  “Just watch me mate. You can tell him that I expect to be treated with some respect. He didn’t even have the decency to apologise for keeping me waiting, so you can also tell him to stick his posting up his arse,” I said as I slammed the door behind me.

  Flying back towards Hereford I had time to ponder the consequences of my actions in the corridors of power in Whitehall. It was a pretty safe bet that by the time I got back, the Fuhrer and his untermensch would be compiling a list of charges, no doubt, including insubordination towards a senior officer. A charge which was, considered to be, a serious offence throughout the Armed Forces at that time.

  As a highly qualified pilot, I felt confident that I would have little difficulty in finding a well-paid flying job in ‘civvy street’ and I therefore decided, I wasn’t going to go to Detmold and that my best option would be to leave the Army as soon as possible. Leaving before completing my contracted period of twenty-two years would mean that I would have to forego any pension, but I was determined and willing to accept the fact.

  I did feel very sad. The Army had been my life since I was seventeen and, since the age of fifteen, it had really been the only thing I had ever wanted to do. As a civilian, I would probably have to accept a job flying back and forth to the North Sea oil rigs based in Aberdeen, in the far north of Scotland. It would mean leaving our family home in Hereford and taking our three children out of the schools they were now happily ensconced in. But I felt strongly that I was being unfairly treated by the Army Air Corps and I was unwilling to acquiesce to their demands simply to retain my pension, which I would qualify for after another three years’ service.

  As I closed down the engine on the square in Sterling Lines I was met by Pete Guthrey, one of the flight ‘Blackies’. The word ‘Blackie’, incidentally, is not intended to be racist, in any way. It is merely a traditional term used to describe an Aircraft Engineer specialising in airframes and engines. A ‘Greenie’, on the other hand, is an engineer specialising in Aircraft Avionics.

  Pete the ‘Blackie’ strode towards me with an oily rag in one hand and an enormous spanner in the other. “Sounds like you’re in the shit again, mate,” he said with a smile. “Bob Noxious wants to see you in his office straight away.”

  We didn’t call the new adjutant ‘Bob Noxious’ for nothing. Bob sat behind his desk with his face looking like a slapped arse, just as it always did. He had a notoriously abrasive manner and rarely cracked a smile. But he had a wicked sense of humour which appealed to me enormously. I liked and respected him very much – still do, come to think of it. “What the fuck have you been up to now?” he hissed. “Some irate colonel from the M.O.D. has been having a right go at the boss about you. Reckons you should be thrown in jail and left to rot for the way you gobbed off at him and his mate. And then you had the cheek to leave the poor sod with no one to talk to.”

  I explained what had happened, admitting that I, probably had, been insubordinate. Looking back, I suppose I must have become used to being respected as an equal by everyone in the Special Forces Group, regardless of rank. Being considered to be an underling, who should do no more than obey orders, rubbed against the grain with me, and I felt I was unwilling to be treated that way.

  The adjutant didn’t smile – at least not externally. But I knew he sympathised with me, and I got the feeling that he would have reacted in pretty much the same way as I had.

  “Wait there, Red,” said Bob as he disappeared into the office next door.

  A few minutes later the door opened and I was invited in to talk with the C.O.

  The boss was the first to speak. “Well, Red, Bob has
explained the reasoning behind your reputed insubordination and I think we should just put that behind us. You are obviously not happy with your future prospects in the Army Air Corps, so we have a proposal for you.” He glanced across at the straight-faced Bob. “Why don’t you come and join us?”

  ‘Come and join you? If you mean transfer to the regiment Boss, can I remind you that I am thirty-six years old – the selection course would probably kill me,” I replied.

  “We are fairly sure you will survive despite your advancing years. Just let Bob know if you decide to give it a go, and he will get you on the next course starting in January. Let’s face it your prospects are not looking too good at the moment, so you may as well give it your best shot,” said the C.O. As he closed his diary, as if to indicate that the interview was over.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  SAS SELECTION

  There were over a hundred of us, SAS wannabes, lined up in three ranks outside Training Wing offices at six-thirty on a cold morning in January. We had been told to turn up on this, the first day of the selection course, dressed in ‘clean fatigues’ and PT vest, ready for a short warm-up run before breakfast. ‘Clean fatigues’ is a form of dress in the Army, best described as ‘normal’ working dress, which would consist of boots, trousers and a red or white, army issue, T-shirt.

  Major Paddy Baxter was the Officer Commanding Training Wing, the department responsible for running the Regiment’s, twice yearly, selection courses. Most courses started with around a hundred candidates and were expected to produce about ten ‘badged’ soldiers at the end of the course.

  The O.C. training wing stood before us looking a little perplexed. He kept checking his watch and looking around as if he were waiting for someone, while we stood there gradually freezing our nuts off.