Deep Behind Enemy Lines
DEEP BEHIND ENEMY LINES
When Hunter Becomes Hunted
E J Caldwell
Copyright © 2018 E J Caldwell
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Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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In memory of my beloved wife June Audrey Betty
Contents
Historical Context
Author’s Note
About the Author
Part One
Blood on the Sand
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Part Two
Above the Call of Duty
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
The Chindits
A Brief History and Background
Beginnings
Burma
Post-battle analysis
Acknowledgements
Epilogue
Shifta War, Kenya (1963 to 1967)
The Borneo Confrontation (1963 to 1966) Konfrontasi
Historical Context
The Shifta War
Early 1960 to al-Shabaab today
This novel is drawn from the continuing confrontation between Somalia and Kenya, which began in early 1960. It focuses on Somalia attacks into Kenya’s Northern Frontier District (1963 to 1967), and the efforts of the Shifta Fundamentalist Islamic Insurgents to deter the Kenyan Government and its coalition forces from controlling the NFD and nomadic pastoral Somalis in that region. Much action was seen in the Kenyan geographical areas of Isiolo, Wajir, Mandera, Garissa, Daadab and Nairobi.
Al-Shabaab (real name Harakat-Al-Shabaab-al-Mujahidin) was formed in 1967, morphing from the original Shifta (then the NFDLA - Northern Frontier District Liberation Army) to the al-Shabaab of today.
Since 2007 al-Shabaab has carried out nearly 550 terrorist attacks. The fatalities have amounted to more than 1,600 people, and at least 2,000 have been injured. Many of the attacks have included suicide bombers.
The most lethal attack was when al-Qaeda/al-Shabaab targeted the US Embassy in Nairobi in August 1998, when a suicide truck bomb resulted in the death of more than 200 people, including twelve Americans, and more than 4,000 others were wounded. At the same time, a coordinated attack was made on the US Embassy at Dar es Salaam in Tanzania where eleven died and eighty-five people were wounded.
Somalia’s al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab has been responsible for attacks in Mombasa and other parts of Kenya, claiming they are retaliation for the East African Government sending troops into Somalia. Al-Shabaab was behind the attack on Nairobi’s Westgate Shopping Mall on 21st September 2013 in which sixty-seven people died. Yet another raid on Garissa University near the River Tana in the North-East District of the NFD on 2nd April 2015 saw a death toll of 148 and an injury count of more than seventy-nine. The insurgents also launched several attacks in 2014, which left more than one hundred dead in the Lamu County Region, close to the estuary of the River Tana.
And so, the war goes on without an acceptable settlement between Somalia and Kenya.
Author’s Note
It is considered the roots of al-Shabaab extend right back to the days of the Chindits.
This novel, whilst fictional, is based on many true facts, incidents and actual events and Part One of the book deals with ethnic tribal conflicts of the Shifta War 1962-1965 in the NFD (Northern Frontier District) and several similar and interrelated military activities. The action here is set in Kenya and covers specific Shifta incidents during this period. At the time, carefully chosen military personnel were seconded to a specialist section of the UK Foreign Office with a mandate for covert surveillance operations. The brief was to search for and locate cross-border terrorist and military insurgents on a global basis with specially trained personnel operating “Deep Behind Enemy Lines”. The author has used personal experience and research to write this novel.
Although the narrative does weave in several actual historical figures, many others are fictionalised to maintain essential anonymity and/or are the creation of the author. Whilst place names and geography are factual, some government buildings and locations such as those in Essex, Bristol and London are not. Thus, the novel is completely fictitious, the author using his research and creative ability to write the following story.
Disclaimer
It should be noted the views, statements and opinions expressed herein are those of the author alone and should not be taken to represent those of Her Majesty’s Government, MOD, HM Armed Forces any other Government agency or International Manufacturer. Furthermore, all characters and actual events in this publication, other than those clearly, in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A brief history and analogy to the Chindits’ campaigns during WWII and its relevance to this story and series is given at the end of the novel.
About the Author
Edward Caldwell is a former Warrant Officer (Yeoman of Signals) and past member of the Royal Corps of Signals. He joined the armed forces in 1956, and during some of the years spent in the military was assigned to both the Gurkha Signals in the Far East and seconded for a period of time to Global Wireless Services, a section of the UK Foreign Office, as a military attached signals specialist. Throughout the course of his many years of military service he was posted to several worldwide active theatres including Kenya, Malaysia, Borneo, South Africa, Botswana and Aden. After numerous years of globetrotting both as a soldier and civilian, he is now retired, spends much of his time writing historical military adventure and action novels and lives in Cornwall.
E J Caldwell is a Pseudonym
Part One
Blood on the Sand
Old Map of the NFD and River TANA in Kenya – East Africa
Prologue
In late August 1963 an indigenous chieftain of a local Northern Frontier District tribe, one Chief Hamala Orango, was returning with a party of his village warriors from a raid on an Orma nomadic pastoralist encampment west of Sakuye.
As the party approached their village, Chief Orango became aware of an ominous silence. Normally there would be the laughter and screeching of children at play, along with the noise and turmoil of everyday life. The acrid odour of smouldering straw, cow dung and the pervasive smell of dead flesh assaulted his nostrils. The silence was broken only by the continual buzz of flies. As the men entered the village they were confronted with carnage; dead bodies, burnt out huts and empty animal enclosures. These men were hardened, seasoned warriors and were, overall, immune to such horror. But this was deeply personal. Each man was confronted with loss, and some with the total annihilation of his family. Chief Orango himself had lost his wife to rape and murder, and two of his youngest children were also butchered. It was fortunate his two oldest sons were working away from the village at the time.
He stood paralysed with total shock and horror at the slaughter that surrounded him. Then the paralysis dissolved, replaced by an all-consuming rage. Even the few warriors he had left as guards had been overrun and killed. Someone would pay for this. He would find the perpetrators and vowed they would pay for it in like fashion.
As the rage subsided to a slow burn Orango straightened his back, donned his chieftain mantle and began organising his remaining men to search out any telltale signs of the perpetrators. There weren’t many indications, but from the few found he concluded it was the work of a roving band of Somali Shiftas; henchmen of Khalid al Gurreh. Revenge would be immediate, and al Gurreh and the Shifta would pay the price.
He set about the painful business of burying his family and the other murdered villagers, encouraging the rest of his people to get their homes into some semblance of habitable order and resume their daily lives as best as possible, even under such dire circumstances. Although not all members of the tribe had been killed, they were in awe at the sight of those who were.
In the meantime, Chief Orango, together with a few of those village elders who had escaped the carnage, planned the whole village should move to a more habitable location he already had in mind. He received full agreement and gave his instructions to relocate closer to the River Tana.
Chief Orango was no mean opponent. He had been born and raised in true warrior fashion and was no stranger to the vicissitudes of inter-tribal conflict. He was born in a Pokomo village in the region of north Isiolo in the NFD Eastern Territory and his father, long dead, was the previous chief who had a fearsome reputation as a warrior. He had taught his son well, and the vacant chieftainship settled on the son who was now about fifty.
Relocation having been decided, Chief Orango marshalled his remaining family members, villagers and the fit and strong young warriors who had been with him on the recent raid to Sakuye, together with what livestock was left to them. They were moving closer to better grazing land and a more accessible water supply from a nearby river. Their previous settlement had become dilapidated and quite beyond repair, rendered even worse after the recent Shifta raid. The bonus was the chosen land and settlement was not in dispute with other local tribes, since it had belonged to a distant relative of the Orango family.
The Pokomo villages of the region had suffered greatly at the hands of the Somali insurgents; the local Shifta group being based somewhere in the Sakuye region. This group reported directly to the infamous warlord Khalid al Gurreh. Chief Orango had been made aware the local insurgent warlord was one Ahmed Sharmar.
It was known through friendly tribal village intelligence, gathered from many of the affected villages in the River Tana geographical area and passed onto Chief Orango, that Shifta warlords covered six local regions of the Northern Frontier District. This assemblage came to be part of the Shifta Guerrilla Movement formation in 1963, when the Shifta war with Kenya commenced.
Orango’s big handicap and great regret was the lack of available funds to purchase weapons of which the insurgents had plenty. Nevertheless, he felt sure there would come a time and place when he could take revenge on behalf of his tribal people for the slaughter in his village and loss of life in other local villages. In whatever shape or form the opportunity presented itself, the elusive Khalid al Gurreh would regret his butchery.
Fortunately, the Pokomo people did have a good relationship with the Kenyan Government and white settlers. Indeed, two of Orango’s young braves – one of whom was his younger son Juma – were currently working and earning income at the Tana River Irrigation Company at Hola and bringing much needed shillings home to the village.
Orango’s next and highest priority was to find al Gurreh and his Shifta gangs, bring them down and secure justice. This was about to happen.
Chapter 1
1961
Bill dropped from the aircraft into the vastness of space, exhilarated by the intense rush of air. His breath was punched out of him during the seconds before the parachute deployed, and when equilibrium took over he experienced the extreme joy of sheer freedom.
On deployment, he felt the tug on his webbing indicating the parachute had successfully opened. The canopy looked good. No holes, tears or defects. Now he needed to locate the position of others nearby, especially above and below him. He couldn’t get over the uncanny silence and tranquillity of floating down to earth. Total focus on the exercise at hand kicked in, all his concerns and lack of confidence disappeared, and he was filled with a desire to get as much of this exciting activity as he could. However, he considered parachuting, compared to the other extreme sports he indulged in such as mountain climbing, sailing and hang gliding provided him with a very special exhilaration.
Working his lift web risers fore and aft with the limited ability to steer an X-type parachute, Bill spilled air from the canopy and utilised the restricted steering to reach his touchdown destination. He landed safely thankful not to have broken any limbs and detached the canopy from his webbing, folding it up ready to carry it to the waiting vehicle. Descending at the rate of 50 feet per minute he’d been in the air for about twenty minutes. There were five more drops to make before he completed his training; one of them being at night, and another carrying an equipment canister (used primarily with static line parachuting) having an all-up weight of 300 pounds used for storing weapons, ammunition, radio equi
pment, hand generators and necessary victualling. That was going to be interesting he thought.
Chapter 2
While Bill was undertaking his training in late 1961, senior staff from a Special Communications Headquarters was constantly scouting the training regiments for potential volunteers for secondment to further in-depth training. Bill was an eager and willing volunteer so on completion of his initial training, and passing out with exemplary high grades, it wasn’t long before he was recommended for and temporarily posted to 26 Special Communications Regimental Headquarters, a global communications unit based in College Square, Bristol.
There he underwent an interview with the Commanding Officer who invited him to be seated. This officer was well apprised of his background and exceptional course grades. Bill understood this further training was a stepping stone to one of the army’s global hot spots, so when he was offered a posting to a specialist unit based in Kenya, his interest and appetite for adventure were whetted; he had no hesitation in accepting the challenging assignment.
‘This unit’s responsibilities carry a mandatory positive vetting upgrade of security clearance on a strictly need-to-know basis. The security access level is tantamount to that of the Prime Minister, and in light of the classified and sensitive duties the unit are obviously to be engaged in is essential,’ the CO explained. He went on to give Bill a succinct outline on the Kenya unit’s operation, and who his OC would be; a Major James Brown.
It sounded as though there’d certainly be elements of danger and plenty of intrigue, and it was because of Bill’s personal qualities and track record he had been selected. Although the initial information was not as detailed as Bill would’ve liked, he nevertheless understood the restrictions and knew more would follow in due course.