Crouching behind rocks in the rugged mountains that rose abruptly out of the Yemen desert, were three British soldiers, former members of the SAS, together with their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Johnny Cooper.
They had lain in wait, machine guns at the ready, all through the cold desert night. At 9am the first Egyptian soldiers advanced into the wadi (gully), their infantry packed shoulder to shoulder, followed by tanks and artillery.
Behind the rocks, nobody moved. The success of the ambush depended on surprise. Then, as the enemy reached a small plain that Cooper had designated as the ‘killing ground,’ he gave the signal.
A rattle of machine gun fire cut through the wadi, bullets sending geysers of sand into the air, amid screams of pain and terror.
The Egyptians’ front ranks tumbled, Cooper remembered: ‘Like ninepins. Panic broke out in the ranks behind and then their tanks opened fire. Their shells were exploding . . . among their own men.’
In the ten-minute firefight that ensued, many of the Egyptian casualties were from their own guns. All day they fired on Cooper’s positions. But he and his men, with their Yemeni comrades, were dug well into their ‘funk holes’. As night fell the Egyptian force withdrew back to their base in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a, leaving 85 bodies behind.
t was a rout, the first of many successful engagements that over the next four years would see a small force of British soldiers fight fiercely in a desert war of which most of their countrymen were unaware.
Wearing Arab dress, like latter-day Lawrences of Arabia, the men, mostly ex-SAS, fought in a savage, dirty war of poison bombs, secret airdrops and desert shoot-outs.
It was an operation that began with a deal made over gin and tonics in a Mayfair gentlemen’s club and progressed into arms smuggling, ambushes and the existence of a private army, directed from a one-room basement headquarters in Chelsea by a debonair former Army officer and his sidekick, a beautiful former debutante.
Although successive governments denied any involvement in the conflict, the rumours have swirled for years. Was it an SAS operation secretly directed by the British government? Were they acting on behalf of Israel? Or were they mercenaries, Dogs of War, fighting for money rather than patriotism?
Now, for the first time in 40 years, the men who fought in the Yemen have broken their silence in a new book to reveal the truth about The War That Never Was and how a small band of courageous men, facing overwhelming odds struggled to turn the tide and to determine the future of the Middle East.
The war began in September 1962 when the Yemeni royal family was deposed in a coup by republicans, engineered by Gamal Abdel Nasser, the president of nearby Egypt.
Nasser installed a puppet ruler in the capital and poured Egyptian troops into the country to secure the ‘revolution’.
The deposed Imam Al-Badr fled into the mountains where he began gathering a large resistance movement. While some members of the British government wanted Britain to stay clear of the conflict, others feared that if Yemen was allowed to fall to Nasser then neighbouring Aden — Britain’s prized colony and vital port — might be next.
Source
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1357826/How-rag-tag-team-SAS-veterans-changed-history-secret-war-Britain-STILL-wont-admit.html
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