Warlords of Oman by P. S. Allfree

Author:P. S. Allfree [P. S. Allfree]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780719815348
Publisher: Robert Hale
Published: 2014-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

Mines were not our only worry. One day Anderson and I were sitting enjoying our breakfast—Rognons aux Champignons or something—when a splutter of distant musketry raised our eyebrows. Shortly afterwards a lorry slid to a panic-struck stop at the gate and a dusty and wide-eyed driver cried out that a convoy from Nizwa had been ambushed five miles up the road and was pinned down and being steadily shot to pieces—unable to move—escort running out of ammunition—all the vehicles immobilized—he had been tail-end truck and had managed to escape.

This was new. For the first time for many months the rebels had come down to challenge us by daylight. Nor was it any hit-and-run raid: the spasmodic gunfire was still crackling on.

I swallowed the last of my rognons and pulled a couple of sections and a mortar detachment out of their tents and drove off to see what I could do.

We came to a place where the road went over a dip and round a bare brown spur of the mountain. From just round the corner out of sight I could hear the sporadic crack of shot and a despairing trickle of Bren gun fire in reply. Even more alarming, out of the palm groves and mud tenements of Izki village nearby came piling a wolfish pack of armed Arabs, led by a white-turbaned man in dark glasses which made him look more like a Russian spy in fancy dress than anything else. However, he revealed himself as the Sultan’s governor in Izki, and his piratical companions as his gendarmerie. If I needed any help, he told me, I had only to ask. The wild array settled themselves conspicuously on top of a convenient ridge to pick their noses and watch the battle.

As soon as I poked my head round the spur and over the dip I could see that the convoy was at its last gasp. It sprawled brokenly all over an exposed plain, abjectly at the mercy of the sharp-shooters on the spur who maintained a regular round-a-minute to show that they were still there—they were on top of the salient, facing the other side, and owing to the slope of the hill I and my relieving column were out of sight and out of the line of fire. But the convoy was an Aunt Sally. Lorries lay about, tyres punctured and bodies perforated, and every minute or so another hole appeared in a bonnet or cab. Huddled miserably against the wheels on the lee side were little groups of soldiers, trying to make themselves as tiny as they could, while here and there a man with a reserve of courage or of ammunition poked a gun round the edge of his cover and jabbed off a few blind shots at the stony hill.

The first thing I did was mad. With the mortar on the back of my Land-Rover I drove over the dip and round the spur straight into the target zone and told the wide-eyed sergeant to set it up and start to make noises.

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