Non.Fiction.03.Seven.Troop.2008 by McNab Andy

Author:McNab, Andy [McNab, Andy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bantam Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

53

April 1985

Oman

We landed at Seeb International, just outside the capital, Muscat. I was excited about the three months that lay ahead. The whole squadron was going to practise desert warfare, and the Ice Cream Boys would be working beneath clear sunny skies. There was a lot of operational stuff like HALO (high altitude, low opening) to be done, but Nish was generally talking up the fast glide, the freefall part of the trip.

Most of the squadron had been to the Middle East before, whether on operations, team jobs, or training someone else's army. They were at home here, and I was finally feeling at home with them. I saw a lot of Nish's friends.

We stood around on the tarmac waiting for our transport and trying out our new sunglasses. You don't get country briefs when you go away: you're expected to have done your own homework. I'd found out that Qaboos bin Said al-Said had overthrown his father in 1970 with a bit of British help, and had ruled as sultan ever since. The population was about three million, and the borders stretched over a thousand kilometres. It was a big old place.

Oman was bordered by the United Arab Emirates to the north, Saudi Arabia to the west, and Yemen to the south. The Arabian Sea lay on its eastern coastline, which faced India and part of Iran. The northern coast beyond Muscat, the Musandam peninsula, dominated the Strait of Hormuz, a major political and economic flashpoint in the Arabian Gulf. It was through here that the bulk of Middle Eastern oil flowed daily to run the free world's economy. Capture the Strait of Hormuz, and you could hold the Western world to ransom.

Up north were the vast, rugged mountain ranges of the hot, parched interior, but down in the south, between the sand seas, we were on the same longitude as Bangalore. They even had a monsoon season.

It hadn't taken much to discover the big things here were oil and natural gas, for which the leading customer was Japan. Or that it was a totally Muslim country, although the sultan was liberal. Alcohol was for sale, and in the cities women were allowed to wear Western clothes.

The Regiment had been founded in the deserts of North Africa in the Second World War and operating in Oman for years. Technology might have come on in leaps and bounds, but the principles of desert warfare hadn't. There was this stuff called satnav knocking around, but nobody really trusted it. The military had been using it since the late seventies, but the equipment was bulky and needed lots of power; great if you were on a warship, but not so handy on foot or in a wagon. Smaller satnavs were being developed for Special Forces, but they were still the size of house bricks. Their batteries ran out far too quickly, and the equipment constantly malfunctioned. It wasn't soldier-proof so got regularly smashed. It would never catch on. The best navigation aids

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