Hail a true SAS hero
QUESTION A former SAS soldier I knew told me: ‘The ethos of the SAS is enshrined in the story of Labalaba and Mirbat.’ What did he mean by this?
In 1963, civil war broke out in oman, with the Popular Front for the liberation of the occupied arabian Gulf (also referred to as the adoo) fighting the sultan of oman in Dhofar. It continued until 1976 when the rebels were defeated.
Britain agreed to provide military support for the sultan between 1970 and 1976. The sas and other military elements of this were known as the British army Training Team (BATT).
Early on July 19, 1972, a force of 200 to 300 adoo attacked the building housing men guarding the port city of mirba, which included nine sas soldiers, other troops and some British military intelligence personnel.
at first the commanding officer, Captain mike Kealy, ordered his troops not to fire, thinking the attackers were the ‘night picket’, a force of loyal omanis returning from their forward observation post. But they’d all been killed and he let the adoo get dangerously close.
While the adoo were still out of range of the sas’s 7.62 mm rifles, staff sergeant Talaiasi labalaba, of 22 Regiment sas, ran to the unit’s 25-pounder artillery piece outside a small fort 800 metres from the sas’s building and manned by soldiers of the omani special Forces, who remained inside the fort.
operating the weapon normally took six men, but labalaba managed it himself, keeping up a rate of fire of about one round per minute. His action diverted attention from the BATT house, but resulted in him being seriously wounded.
Trooper sekonaia Takavesi went to his aid and ran from the BATT house under intense fire. The omani soldiers inside the fort engaged the adoo with small arms fire. He and labalaba continued to fire, despite both being wounded.
Kealy and Trooper Tommy Tobin also went to help them. Tobin was wounded and later died in hospital. Three BAC strikemaster of the sultan’s air Force (soaF) arrived to provide air support until more sas from G squadron drove off the remaining rebels. By the end of the battle, around 80 adoo had been killed and an unknown number wounded.
labalaba, a Fijian serving in the British army, was finally killed crawling across open ground in an attempt to reach a 60mm mortar position. He was awarded a posthumous mention In Dispatches, the 3rd-highest award for bravery after the VC and GC. There is a campaign for him to be awarded a VC.
Kealy died on February 1, 1979, on a training exercise in the Brecon Beacons. The 25-pounder gun used at mirbat is now housed in the museum at the former Woolwich arsenal.
no news reports were made as, officially, we were in oman purely for ‘training’ purposes. In 1991, a fictional account of the Battle of mirbat, entitled The Feather men, was published by sir Ranulph Fiennes. It remains a strong sas tradition that former members don’t discuss their experiences.
Bob Cubitt, Northampton.
QUESTION Why are apartments called that when they’re all stuck together?
THE word apartment was first used in English in the 1640s with the meaning ‘private rooms for the use of one person or family within a house’. It was derived from the French appartement with the same meaning, and from the Italian word appartimento, literally ‘a separated place’. It’s ultimately derived from the latin root partem which means ‘a piece, a part’. other English words from this root are ‘ part’, ‘partial’, ‘apart’, and even ‘parse’ (for splitting a file into its pieces). We still use the word apartment in its original sense when referring to an individual’s suite in a large mansion or a stately residence. For example, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge live in their apartments in Kensington Palace.
U.s.-style apartments are called flats in Britain, the word flat derived from the old English flett ‘a dwelling; floor, ground’ and referred to a storey of a house.
The first U. s. apartments in 19th-century Boston were advertised as ‘French flats’. Influenced by the French culture, developers started using the English equivalent for the French term, ‘apartment’. The americanisation of English in Britain has recently seen us adopt apartment in its U.s. sense.
Si Young, Colchester, Essex.
QUESTION Tom Cruise broke his ankle, but have any actors been seriously injured or killed on a film set?
FURTHER to the earlier answer, Eric Fleming was the lead actor, playing the role of the trail boss, Gil Favor, in the highly successful TV Western series Rawhide, which ran from 1958 to 1965.
But for the last series, co- star Clint Eastwood assumed top billing because Fleming had drowned while filming High Jungle in Peru. He was seen apparently diving into ‘white-water’ from his kayak, but it wasn’t known for certain whether his entering the water at that point was deliberate or accidental. It was three days before his body was discovered.
like most of my teenage mates, I was a big fan of Eastwood’s character, ramrod ‘Rowdy’ Yates — but my auntie Win and her friends were distraught at the loss of Fleming, whose scarred face from an industrial accident gave authority to his character.
Tex Waite, Trowbridge, Wilts.