SAS' SECRET DESERT WAR

On July 19, 1972 nine SAS men stood up against 400 rebels at the Battle of Mirbat. This year was the 40^th anniversary of the battle and Lord Ashcroft written a book “Heroes of the Sky” about it to mark this heroic but not widely known battle.

He also sponsored the Battle of Mirbat Memorial at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.

At dawn on the 19 July, 1972 the Adoo tried to seize the port of Mirbat on the Arabian Sea. The Adoo were highly trained and well armed communist guerrillas. They had several setbacks and were looking a great victory.

The SAS allies were only in Oman as advisers.  It was the monsoon season with slight drizzle and low cloud the guerrillas’ plans were to use it as cover, move in and slit their throats of the eight gendarmes who were at a post on the edge of the port.

The nine SAS were staying at a British Army training house. They heard gun fires. The gendarmes and militia were not very experienced fighters.

Captain Mike Kealy, the commander of the SAS team at the time of the attack, saw the great number of enemy rebels coming and barked orders to his men.

Seargent Talaiasi Labalaba, 30, nicknamed “Laba” run 500 yard to a gun-pit to fire a 25-pounder gun single-handed. This gun normally needs at least five mean to operate.

Labalaba realised if this gun got into the Adoo's hands the port would be lost. Labalaba kept up the barrage. When the enemy came closer they eventually shot him and he was seriously wounded with a round from a Kalashnikov rifle.

His jaw was smashed but he still reach for his walkie-talkie and said: “I’ve been chinned but I am OK.”

  

After hearing it, his friend Trooper Sekonaia Takavesi, a fellow Fijian, took his self-loading rifle and ran to the gun-pit. He faced a hail of fire. His was nicknamed “Tak” or “Sek” and both men held off the advancing Adoo guerrillas for several minutes. He realised they needed more help and ran back to the fort. An Omani gunner Walid Khamis came back with him.

Khamis was hit in the stomach and Takavesi in the shoulder. Now there were two seriously injured men trying to hold off the enemy.

They were almost out of ammunition and Labalaba reach for the 60mm mortar. He was shot fatally in the neck. When Kealy and a volunteer, trooper Tommy Tobin, realised the 25-pounder was silence they knew something desperate happened. They ran under hail of bullets to the gun-pit. Tobin attended the wounded and was shot in the face and later on died of it.

At the very moment when everything looked hopeless, the SAS were lucky. The sky opened up and two jets from the Sultan’s air force came flying in and sprayed the guerrillas with cannon fire.

The other stroke of luck came from a SAS unit stationed nearby. Kealy and his men were not aware of it. This unit was at UM al-Quarif and were ordered to travel 35 miles to Mirbat to assist their comrades. The SAS unit were flown in by helicopter and the guerrillas started to retreat.

The battle lasted four hours of ferocious fighting and the enemy was defeated. They lost 40 men either dead or wounded and the SAS lost two men. Takavesi survived and received the Distinguished Conduct Medal. Kealy received the Distinguished Service Order and Bob Bennett the Military Medal.

Labalaba was never mentioned in the reports and the bravery of many others, including Tobin was never officially recognised.

The explanation to this was that the SAS was involved in a secret war and for the Army to award posthumous VCs would have drawn unwanted attention to their activities. It is a point but was the real point?

The Battle of Mirbat is recognised as the turning point. Although the conflict went on for four more years but Adoo never recovered from that defeat.

For the authorities not handing out the medals for the exceptional braveries of Labalaba and Tobin still angers all SAS servicemen up to today.

Commander Mike Kealy was later promoted to major. He survived the fighting but died later on from exposure during a SAS training exercise on the Brecon Beacons in 1979. This shows how hard the training is in the “The Regiment”.