Operation Mayhem Read online

  Steve Heaney captures the confusion, black humour, raw courage, jargon and sheer exhilaration of combat brilliantly in this compelling and simply written book. In my judgement it is the best account of low-level tactical soldiering since Fred Majda-laney’s classic Patrol, a World War 2 account of a fighting patrol. But Sergeant Heaney tells a broader tale that has also rarely been captured so well. What makes an elite unit like the Pathfinders so powerful, so special? One that commanders like me loved to have under them. One that their enemies fervently wished was not opposite them. What sort of people join such a unit? What binds them together so closely that they can stay cohesive under the most stressful of conditions? What training do they go through to reach such heights of professionalism? What is the role of humour in keeping morale high when most would succumb to fear and fatigue? This classic book reveals all this and much more. I commend it to the professional soldier and layman alike.

  It was people like Sergeant Heaney MC that I was thinking of when I said at my retirement parade on Horse Guards in London ‘if I have seen further than most, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants’. If you don’t know what I mean, read this book and you soon will.

  General Sir David Richards GCB CBE DSO

  PROLOGUE: MAN HUNT

  Ahead of me I saw Steve B come to a silent halt.

  He dropped onto one knee, his assault rifle covering the arc of fire to the front of us. I went down into a similar stance, my weapon sweeping the arc of fire from Steve’s shoulder through 180 degrees around to the operator at my rear.

  He in turn did likewise, covering the arc on the opposite side of the patrol, and so it cascaded down the line, such that all areas to either side of us were being watched by a pair of unblinking eyes and menaced by a weapon’s gaping barrel. We were a twelve-man seek-and-destroy patrol, hunting a vicious and bloodthirsty enemy – one that outnumbered us a hundred to one.

  And right now we were ready for anything.

  After weeks of living in the jungle, our unwashed bodies and unshaven faces made us appear like a band of desperadoes. But grimy, soiled uniforms blend in better with the wild terrain, as do layers of dark stubble and beards. We’d smeared thick lines of camouflage cream onto any exposed skin, to better hide ourselves. The whole effect made us practically invisible, but any sudden movement, or any sound at all from our side risked giving our position away.

  When hunting an adversary in the bush and the jungle, you have to presume he is out there somewhere, hunting you or waiting in a hidden ambush position. Visibility is limited by the dense vegetation plus the impenetrable shadows. You can rarely see more than a few dozen yards. It makes spotting your adversary ever more challenging. Plus we were acutely aware that an enemy is at his most dangerous when he is injured, bleeding and badly mauled – which is what we reckoned any number of the rebels were right now.

  Steve B placed one hand on his head, while the other grasped the pistol-grip of his weapon. It was the signal for me to move up to his shoulder. He raised two fingers and practically jabbed them into his eyes – the hand signal for ‘look where I indicate’ – then pointed to our left front. Less than a dozen yards away I could see ranks of razor-sharp points poking out from the bush. They continued onwards for a good thirty yards or so towards the ragged fringe of jungle.

  It was one of our fields of punji sticks – sharpened bamboo stakes we’d got the local villagers to cut and shape and plant all around our positions, to ensnare the enemy. For a second I wondered why Steve B had pointed them out to me: there were punji pits all around us, so what was so special about this one? But as I studied those vicious bamboo blades more closely I noticed that many were splattered with a sickly red.

  Rebel blood.

  It had to be.

  Steve B swept his hand north, pointing out the ground to the front of the punji field. The terrain was churned into a mishmash of decaying leaf matter, rotten sticks and dark, loamy soil. I could just imagine panicked feet and hands desperately trying to scrabble their way out of the punji field, rebel minds clouded with pain and agony. But it was the thick, gloopy trails of blood running from there towards the forest that really drew my eye.

  That marked the way the rebels had retreated.

  The path for us to track and to follow.

  A wild animal is never more dangerous than when it is badly hurt. From all we’d seen over the past few weeks, the rebels here were worse than wild animals. Ahead of us danger, red in tooth and claw, lurked behind every tree and in the hidden shadows.

  No words needed to be spoken between Steve B and me, the patrol commander. Clearly, our plan had worked a treat. Just as we’d suspected, the rebels had charged forward in human waves to attack us, guns blazing. Instead, they’d stumbled into the punji traps. As they’d fought to drag themselves clear of the vicious fields of sharpened stakes, a good many of them had ripped themselves to pieces.

  The amount of blood alone was testament to that.

  I gave Steve B the nod to push onwards.

  As we set off I signalled to the operator behind me to take a good look at the blood-soaked ground, and to pass it down the line. Moving like a silent, stealthy snake we threaded our way through the bush, until the wall of thick forest was right before us – dark, brooding and hostile.

  This was the rebels’ domain. The Kingdom of the Bad Guys. This was their country, their backyard, the safe haven from which they launched their brutal sorties.

  But this was also very much our kind of territory. We’re trained to favour those areas that normal mortals shun. Bug-infested swamps, sun-blasted desert, snow-whipped mountains and impenetrable jungle – those are the areas where we expect to find little human presence, which makes them ideal for operators like us to move through unseen and undetected, into the heart of enemy territory.

  Right now, we were well behind the rebels’ lines. We were moving into terrain that they’d ruled for a decade or more with an iron grip of fear, brute violence and hatred. But I knew for sure that every man on my patrol – each one an elite warrior highly trained at operating in the jungle – felt quite at home here, and ready.

  We were taking the fight to the enemy where they least expected it. We’d smashed them in a long and vicious firefight during the hours of darkness. Now, we were going after them in their supposed sanctuary. We’d hit them at night in the open as they tried to rush our positions, and now we aimed to hit them in the hours of daylight, in the heart of the jungle. This way, we’d keep them on the back foot – the repeated blows sending them reeling.

  Or maybe not.

  Maybe it had all been a feint and a trap.

  Maybe the rebels knew we were coming, and were poised to unleash a scything burst of fire as we stepped into the jungle, wiping out our entire patrol.

  Only one way to find out.

  Push onwards into the shadows.

  Steve B took a step into the eerie and claustrophobic forest interior, practically disappearing from my view as the vegetation sucked him in. I followed, each step chosen so as to avoid any detritus that might break or crack underfoot. The humidity beneath the jungle canopy was thick and it hit me like a wall. I could feel the sweat trickling down my back in rivulets, my clammy uniform sticking to the sores and welts that weeks of not washing had caused to erupt on my skin.

  Steve paused for an instant, balanced delicately on the balls of his feet. He had his eyes glued to the sun-dappled jungle floor, tracing the thick, congealed strings of red goo that had been left by the rebel injured. In theory, all we had to do was track the enemy through the trees via their blood trails, and we’d have them.

  I gave the hand signal for all to double their watchfulness. My adrenaline was pumping in bucket-loads, my heart pounding like a drum. Badly injured men can only move slowly through such dense terrain, so slowing the movement of the entire body of fighters.

  The rebels could only be minutes ahead of us now.

  1

  The day had begun just like
any other. We’d started with our customary early morning run around the perimeter of the base. As usual I’d set the pace, leading from the front.

  Each day we’d vary the kit we ran in. One morning it would be shorts, T-shirts and trainers; the next, boots, combat trousers and smocks. Day three we’d be kitted out the same, but carrying a 40-pound Bergen on our backs. Each of the guys had three different rucksacks permanently packed and secured: a desert pack, a jungle pack and one for more temperate climes – mountains, snow and ice.

  That way, we were ready for anything.

  Always.

  We’d mix and match the early morning runs with gym work and sessions in the pool, doing circuit training as a cardiovascular workout and rope-climbs for upper body strength, plus a daily swim to build stamina and endurance.

  At thirty-one years of age I was the seasoned platoon sergeant, and each year I led the murderous forced marches and the Endurance stages of Selection. Word was that if you wanted to pass Selection and make it into our tiny, elite unit – the Pathfinders – you needed to stick with Smoggy.

  Ever since I can remember, that’s been my nickname – Smoggy. I hail from Middlesbrough, a nondescript, grey industrial town in northeast England. A permanent smog seems to hang over the dark landscape, hence the nickname of those born there – ‘Smoggies’.

  Pathfinder Selection is similar to that undertaken by the SAS (Special Air Service), only it’s shorter – five weeks, as opposed to three months. Many claim that it’s more intense, so more punishing. Others say that’s bullshit: the shorter duration lowers the attrition rate. I didn’t particularly care either way. Pathfinder Selection is Pathfinder Selection: it does what it says on the tin.

  It begins with a pre-selection period – days of fierce punishment to weed out the weak and feeble. We’d gather the raw recruits at the Aldershot Training Area and push them through a beasting session similar to the Parachute Regiment’s P Company – the fitness and endurance test required to enter the Parachute Regiment. We’d start with an 8-mile run carrying a 55-pound pack, and raise it to a 10-miler – pass time one hour forty minutes maximum. We’d intersperse that with murder runs in full kit – helmet, webbing and weapon.

  If you couldn’t make it through that first week in Aldershot there was no point going for the real man test – five weeks of hell in the Brecon Beacons, the rain-lashed hills in South Wales where all British elite forces’ Selection takes place. Selection proper would start with Walkabout – three days hefting a massive pack across all types of terrain, to test whether individual soldiers knew how to navigate and survive on the hills.

  We’d combine the brutal testing with a judicious amount of instruction, as we didn’t want blokes getting killed out there – imparting such pearls of wisdom as ‘Go low, stay slow; go high, stay dry’. At the end of Walkabout we knew who was capable of going on to the next stages – the Fan Dance, Point-to-Point, Iron Man, Elan Valley – heading out onto the unforgiving terrain alone and for far longer periods of time.

  Selection culminates in the killer – Endurance, a 64-kilometre forced march over the highest peaks, under a 55-pound pack (minus food and water) and carrying your weapon.

  Endurance has to be completed in under twenty hours.

  Needless to say, it has broken many a man.

  Both at Aldershot and the Brecons I was the rabbit in all of this. I set the pace, leading the runs and the tabs. I was hyper-fit and I enjoyed the physical challenge – always have – so it made sense to make me lead man. Hence the saying: If you want to pass Pathfinder Selection, you need to stick with Smoggy.

  That morning – as with every other ‘normal’ day at the Pathfinders’ Wattisham, Norfolk, base – I’d put a call through to the control tower around 0645 hours. Our base was set in a secure area to one end of an Army Air Corps Apache attack helicopter facility. I’d sought clearance to run the perimeter of the airbase, after which the forty-odd lads of the Pathfinders had gathered for the off.

  Oh yeah – plus the one dog.

  Ben was a gorgeous chocolate Labrador. I’d had him for a year or so, and every morning he’d join us on the 6.5-mile run. We’d move off as a tight squad – all apart from Ben, who’d be away chasing pheasants and having a ball. For most of the time we wouldn’t even see him. Then he’d pop his head out of a patch of bush, give me the look – You coming, or what? – and be off again, tracking the scent of a deer.

  For the last couple of miles we’d hit open terrain, leaving behind the thick forest and scrub that surrounds the base and heading along the grass fringes of the runway. Ben would complete the last leg by my side every step of the way. First things first, when I got back to base I’d fetch him a bowl of water, then head for the showers.

  Together with some of the other old and bold, I’d try to use up all the hot water, so that Grant – Captain Grant Harris, the Second-in-Command of our unit – would be forced to have a cold shower. No matter how many times we did it, it never ceased to amuse us, and Grant – God bless his cotton socks – had the strength of character to see that it was just another ragging from ‘the blokes’ and to go with it.

  The officers who didn’t get ragged were the ones we didn’t rate.

  You only needled the good guys.

  But more of that later.

  After five months of running the base perimeter Ben was a four-legged hunk of rock-hard muscle and sinew. At times he looked more like a chocolate Rottweiler than a Lab. He’d grown so strong that he’d broken the metal chain that I used to put him on. I’d left him sunning himself one lunchtime, only to get a call from one of the aircrew. They’d found my dog curled up fast asleep in one of the helicopters.

  From then on I’d left Ben pretty much free to roam the Pathfinders’ part of the base. It was hyper-secure, ringed with razor wire and guards – a fortress within a fortress – so he couldn’t get into too much trouble. He’d spend his time lounging with the blokes in the Pathfinders’ Interest Room – our clubroom for want of a better analogy – snoozing on top of the grassed-over ammo bunkers, or hanging out with those working on the vehicles in the hangar.

  As a unit we were constantly pushing ourselves, but the endless physical training wasn’t anything about looking chiselled or Gucci. It was about ensuring we were physically robust enough to take the kind of punishment required of the insertion methods that we specialise in. Get it wrong, and the kind of means we use to get behind enemy lines could seriously injure or even kill you – and that’s before you ever put a foot on hostile soil.

  During that morning’s run I’d been thinking about one particular jump I’d been on recently. We’d paid a visit to China Lake, the vast, one-million-acre Naval Air Weapons Station set amidst the wilderness of America’s Western Mojave Desert. With 19,600 square miles of restricted airspace for us to play in, China Lake far surpasses any similar facility in the UK, providing an ace proving ground for the kind of techniques we were pioneering.

  We’d been out there working with DEVGRU – America’s elite counter-terrorism unit, otherwise known as SEAL Team Six – developing an ultra-high-altitude air-insertion technique, one designed to get a small body of men dropped behind enemy lines in 100 per cent secrecy.

  The British military had pretty much pioneered HALO – high altitude low opening – and HAHO – high altitude high opening – parachute jumps. In the former you’d pile out of a Hercules at above 25,000 feet, plummet to earth in freefall and open your chute at around 5000 feet, so getting you fast and direct onto the ground. In HAHO, you’d jump on a static line – your chute opening automatically as you exited the aircraft – then drift for up to seventy kilometres, the idea being that you could ‘fly’ across an enemy’s border and penetrate their airspace undetected.

  But those at the helm of Special Forces had decided that a third technique was needed – one that set the ‘stealth-level’ even higher. This new means and technology had been labelled HAPLSS – the High Altitude Parachutist Life Support System. We wer
e out in China Lake doing what the Pathfinders do best, putting the theory of the concept and the kit to the test of harsh reality.

  When jumping at extreme high altitude the air is so thin you have to breathe from an air bottle. But unless the right type of gas is breathed at all the right stages of the jump, you can suffer from Altitude Decompression Sickeness (ADS), more commonly known as ‘the bends’. So above 25,000 feet the jump becomes a medical issue as much as a set of physical challenges.

  We’d pretty much mastered it for HALO and HAHO, but with HAPLSS we were going even higher and for a very specific set of reasons. Civilian airliners cruise at a much higher altitude, and HAPLSS was a system designed to enable us to jump from that kind of extreme height and survive the devastating cold, G-forces and atmospheric conditions encountered. If we could master all of that, we’d be able to penetrate the airspace of a target country in an aircraft masquerading as a civilian airliner, then jump and drift to earth with no one being any the wiser that we’d ever been there.

  In theory we could even pile out of a genuine civvie airliner, leaving unseen from the cargo bay. Or if it was a combat situation, we could catch a lift on a US Air Force B-1B heavy bomber and exit the bomb bay directly after the payload was dropped – so masking our jump as a bombing run. Either would get us onto target totally undetected. But for either means to be workable we had to master jumping from the very roof of the world. That meant taking what the boffins had designed – the space-age HAPLSS survival suit, oxygen mask and protective helmet – and trialling it for real.

  With HAPLSS you have to breathe a ‘forced air’ mixture – so the oxygen is pressurised and pumped into your lungs, as opposed to breathing on demand. You have to start breathing the pure oxygen a good hour before takeoff, to reduce the dangers of getting ADS. The standard British Hercules transport aircraft, the C-130K model, can only depressurise – open the ramp to let you jump – at 25,000 feet or less. At China Lake we’d be jumping at more than 10,000 feet above that altitude, and if we tried it in a standard Hercules it would fall apart in midair.