Eastern Approaches (33 page)

To balance this there was one piece of good news. Two L.R.D.G. patrols from Faiyum under Jake Easonsmith had crossed the full extent of the Sand Sea and, emerging from its northern end, had made a devastating surprise attack on the airfield at Barce, fifty miles east of Benghazi, where they had put the fear of God into the garrison and destroyed thirty aircraft on the ground.

Meanwhile David Stirling was already, characteristically, full of fresh ideas for the future, turning over in his mind plans for more operations in the desert, operations in Europe, operations (should the Germans get as far) in Persia. Later that day he left by air for Cairo and Bill Cumper, Guardsman Duncan and I went too. With us, on
their stretchers, travelled Bob Melot and Corporal Laird, both of whom had borne the journey back with immense fortitude, and were now on their way to the comparative comfort of a general hospital.

We reached Cairo next day, having still not had time to remove our beards, change our shirts, or indeed indulge in more than the most perfunctory washing operations. The only means of transport we could find at the airport was a fifteen-hundredweight truck, and into the back of this we piled, a thoroughly disreputable-looking crowd. Someone wanted to be dropped at Shepheard’s Hotel, and there we drove, to find the terrace packed with a well-dressed throng. How little our own garb did us justice was forcibly brought home to us when we overheard someone asking indignantly ‘why there was no proper guard on that grubby-looking batch of German prisoners’?

Clearly it was high time we got ourselves a wash and brush up.

I
N
September 1942 one arm of the vast German pincer-movement which was threatening the whole Allied position in the Middle East had arrived at a point less than one hundred miles from Cairo and Alexandria. The other was reaching down through the Caucasus towards Persia. In Egypt the newly arrived Commander of Eighth Army, General Montgomery, was marshalling his forces for an assault on the enemy positions at El Alamein. In south Russia the Germans had attacked the town of Stalingrad and bitter fighting was in progress there.

If Eighth Army’s offensive failed and the Germans broke through to the Nile delta, there was a danger that they would continue their progress through Egypt and Palestine into Iraq and Persia. Likewise, it seemed probable that the fall of Stalingrad would shortly remove the last obstacle to a German advance into these same countries from the north.

Persia was the gate to India. It was the source of immensely important oil supplies. Through it ran the main Anglo-American supply line to the Soviet Union. It was occupied at this time by a small force of British and Soviet troops, whose timely arrival had forestalled Reza Shah’s plan of turning Persia into a Nazi base. But it seemed unlikely that they would be able to hold up the progress of a victorious German army, advancing either from the north or from the west.

It was against this general background that, on my return from Kufra, I was ordered to proceed to G.H.Q. Persia and Iraq Command at Baghdad to discuss with the Commander-in-Chief, General Maitland Wilson, the possibility of raising a small force on S.A.S. lines to operate on enemy-occupied territory in Persia in the event of a German break through.

There was no time to be lost. I hurried down to the Canal Zone, collected a new jeep, some maps and a week’s rations, some warm
clothes and Guardsman Duncan, and set out post haste for Baghdad and points east.

We had an uneventful journey across the Suez Canal and through the Sinai Desert to Gaza and Beersheba; through Palestine to the Lebanon and Syria and from Damascus across the desert to Baghdad. On the way we cooked our meals by the roadside and slept where night overtook us. In one way it seemed like a continuation of the drive back from Benghazi. But now we had plenty to eat and drink, we could sleep in peace at night, and we did not need to be perpetually scanning the skies for enemy aircraft.

On reaching Baghdad, I had a talk with General Wilson, who gave me authority to raise from the troops under his command a force of about 150 volunteers with a high proportion of officers and N.C.O.s, and told me to lose no time in making a reconnaissance of the areas in which we should be operating, if Persia fell into enemy hands.

A map was produced and together we studied it with a view to finding suitable bases from which irregulars might operate. The Commander-in-Chief was a massive man physically and it was not until we came to look at the map together that I realized that he combined a somewhat weighty manner with great alertness of intellect and an altogether remarkable eye for country.

The ‘A’ and ‘Q’ branches of G.H.Q. provided me with an agreeably elastic establishment and a lavish scale of arms and equipment. For operational purposes my private army, which was to be known as M Detachment S.A.S. Regiment, was to be directly responsible to G.H.Q. Persia and Iraq Command. The training programme was to include parachuting and any other methods of infiltration that might be called for.

Guardsman Duncan and I refilled the jeep with petrol and food and set out for Persia.

At the frontier at Khanikin, the baroque Customs House was still there, but this time Indian sentries had replaced the soldiers of the Shah. Thereafter we followed the same route that I had taken in 1938: Kermanshah, Hamadan, Kazvin, Teheran. I was glad to be back in Central Asia, with its clear light and pure dry air, its distant ranges of blue mountains, its arid plains and its little villages of flat-roofed mud houses clustering amid a grove of green poplars on the bare hillside.

I spent the next two or three weeks pleasantly enough touring British units in Persia, calling for volunteers and at the same time making a reconnaissance of those parts of the country which seemed most likely to furnish bases for irregular operations. Prolonged inactivity made our troops in Persia long for a change and there was an abundance of volunteers from which to make a choice. All were ready to give up rank and pay in return for the prospect of early action.

The results of my reconnaissance were no less encouraging. Everywhere the mountains provided ideal conditions for irregular operations. From Teheran I went north over the Elburz Range into the Soviet-occupied provinces of Gilan and Mazanderan on the shores of the Caspian where the semi-tropical jungle offered excellent cover for guerrillas. Then westwards into Luristan, a traditional hide-out for bandits. Then south into the Dasht-i-Kavir, the vast and largely unexplored Salt Desert stretching right across Central Persia, traversed only by occasional camel tracks and dotted with salt marshes and quicksands. Here there were clearly possibilities of reproducing the conditions under which we had operated in the Western Desert. Aircraft could land, supplies could be dropped. There were excellent facilities for camouflage and lying up. Most important of all, the railway line, the main roads and Teheran itself were all within striking distance. Indeed the possibilities of making things hot for an occupying force were everywhere so good that it seemed to me incredible that the Germans had not tried something of the sort.

Then, just as I was thinking of pitching my camp and starting to train the nucleus of my force, I received a signal instructing me to report at once to General Wilson’s Chief of Staff, General Baillon, who, the signal informed me, had just arrived in Teheran from Baghdad.

At Teheran, I found General Baillon at the British Legation in conference with the Minister, Sir Reader Bullard. They told me that they had a job for me. For some time past, they said, there had been signs that some kind of trouble was brewing in south Persia. The tribes, the Qashgai and the Bakhtiari, had German agents living amongst them and seemed likely to rise at any moment, just as they had in 1916 when
their rebellion had caused us a disproportionate amount of trouble. Were this to happen, our supply route to the Persian Gulf might be cut. There was also discontent in Isfahan and other towns, largely caused by the hoarding of grain by speculators, which we were unable to prevent. This discontent, might at any moment flare up into open rebellion. Worse still if there were trouble, the Persian troops in south Persia were likely to take the side of the rioters.

A sinister part was being played in all this by a certain General Zahidi, who was in command of the Persian forces in the Isfahan area. Zahidi was known to be one of the worst grain-hoarders in the country. But there was also good reason to believe that he was acting in cooperation with the tribal leaders and, finally, that he was in touch with the German agents who were living in the hills and, through them, with the German High Command in the Caucasus. Indeed, reports from secret sources showed that he was planning a general rising against the Allied occupation force, in which his troops and those of the Persian general in the Soviet-occupied northern zone would take part and which would coincide with a German airborne attack on Tenth Army, followed by a general German offensive on the Caucasus front. In short, General Zahidi appeared to be behind most of the trouble in south Persia.

The situation was a delicate one. The Allied forces of occupation in northern Persia had been reduced to a minimum, in order to meet demands from the fighting fronts; there were practically no Allied troops in south Persia at all. The nearest British troops to the seat of the trouble were at Qum, two hundred miles north of Isfahan. There was very real danger that any sudden movement of British troops in a southward direction might provoke a general rising which we should have serious difficulty in containing with the small forces at our disposal. On the other hand, if we allowed events to take their course, the results would be equally disastrous.

In short it was essential to nip the trouble in the bud, while avoiding a full-scale showdown. General Baillon and Sir Reader Bullard had decided that this could best be achieved by the removal of General Zahidi and it was this task that they had decided to entrust to me. How it was to be done they left me to work out for myself. Only two
conditions were made: I was to take him alive and I was to do so without creating a disturbance.

My first step was to go to Isfahan and see for myself how the land lay. That city’s mosques and palaces, unrivalled in the whole of Asia, provided an excellent pretext for visiting it. I let it be known in Teheran that I was going to spend a few days’ leave sight-seeing in the south, and set out.

I reached Isfahan the same night after driving all day across a bleak plateau fringed with distant snow-capped mountains. Finally the flickering lights of an isolated
chai-khana
shone out of the darkness, showing two or three dim figures squatting in the doorway, drinking their tea and smoking their long pipes; then a group of houses; then some shops; and then we were in the main street of Isfahan in a seething stream of carts, donkeys and camels, whose owners turned round to stare at the first jeep and the first British uniforms to make their appearance in Isfahan.

I drove to the British Consulate, where I was welcomed by the Consul, John Gault, with the same lavish hospitality that I have always met with at the hands of His Majesty’s Consular Representatives in Persia. Soon Duncan and I, in the time-honoured phrase of the British soldier, had ‘our knees under the table’, and were making good progress with a brace of the local brand of partridge, washed down by delicious wine from the town of Shiraz, which, according to some, disputes with Xeres the honour of being the birthplace of sherry.

Over dinner I disclosed to my host, a robust-looking young man who gave the impression of being equally alert both mentally and physically, the true purpose of my visit. He was delighted. General Zahidi, though pleasant to meet, was, he said, a really bad lot: a bitter enemy of the Allies, a man of unpleasant personal habits, and, by virtue of his grain-hoarding activities, a source of popular discontent and an obstacle to the efficient administration of south Persia. He, too, had heard that he was plotting with the Germans and with the tribal leaders. Indeed, according to information which had reached him, one of the opening moves in General Zahidi’s plot was to be the liquidation of the British Consul in Isfahan, a piece of news which completely outweighed all the General’s personal charm, as far as he was concerned.

I asked Gault where Zahidi lived. He said he would show me, and after dinner we strolled out of the Consulate, across a narrow many-arched bridge, and along a broad avenue of plane trees, until we came to a massive pair of gates, set in a high stone wall and flanked by a sentry box and guardroom. Outside, a Persian infantryman was marching up and down while others, all well armed, slouched at the door of the guardroom. We took a turn round the back premises, where the surrounding wall was pierced by another gate, guarded by another sentry. This was the General’s residence. Then we continued our stroll along the avenue under the trees. A few hundred yards further along we came to a large modern barracks, which according to Gault contained the greater part of the garrison of Isfahan, ready to rush to the assistance of their commander in case of trouble. It did not look as though a frontal attack by a small raiding party would have much chance of succeeding.

If Zahidi could not conveniently be winkled out of his place of residence, the obvious alternative was to ambush him when he was away from home, travelling from one point to another. I ascertained from Gault that at the same time every morning he crossed the bridge on his way to his headquarters. Would it not be possible to take advantage of the narrow bottleneck formed by this ancient monument to hold up his car, drag him out of it, and make off with him?

I gave this plan careful consideration, but there were two serious objections to it. In the first place Zahidi was reputed to go nowhere without a heavily armed bodyguard, whom it would be necessary to overcome by force. Secondly, even assuming that we managed to avoid a pitched battle with the bodyguard, we were unlikely to succeed in kidnapping a General in broad daylight in the middle of so populous a town as Isfahan without attracting a good deal of attention. The two of us driving peaceably along in the jeep had been a sufficiently novel spectacle to hold up the traffic in the main street of Isfahan; the same party with the addition of a struggling general and his bereaved bodyguard could scarcely fail to introduce into the proceedings that very element of uproar which my superiors were so anxious to avoid. I went to sleep that night with the feeling that the problem before me was not as simple as it had at first sight appeared.

Next day, after further thought and another talk with Gault, I came to the conclusion that, unless I was prepared to risk a serious incident which might have unforseeable repercussions, I should have to rely primarily on some kind of a ruse in order to get my man. In short, what was needed was a Trojan horse.

Once I had started thinking on these lines, it was not long before a plan began to shape itself in my mind, which seemed to offer a better chance of neatly and successfully eliminating the source of the trouble without setting light to the powder-magazine of South Persia. That afternoon I sent off a cipher telegram to Teheran giving my proposals for ‘Operation
PONGO
’, which was the code-name I had chosen for the abduction of the General.

The first thing was to find a pretext for introducing myself into Zahidi’s house. I suggested that I should be given authority to assume for the occasion a Brigadier’s badges of rank; that I should then ring up the house and announce myself as a senior staff officer from Baghdad who wished to pay his respects to the General. If the latter agreed, I would drive up in a staff car, accompanied by Duncan and one or two other resourceful characters, hold him up at the point of the pistol, hustle him into the car, and drive away with him out of Isfahan before the alarm could be given. I also asked for a platoon of British infantry to lend a hand in case anything went wrong. I undertook to work out some means of introducing these into Isfahan, in such a way as to attract as little attention as possible.