What A US Army Colonel Wrote When 9 SAS Men Held Mirbat Against 400 Soviet-Armed Rebels
The most lopsided ground engagement in modern special air service history was fought by nine men around one Second World War artillery piece. Mirbat, Southern Omen, 19th July 1972. The British Foreign Office had spent 2 years briefing reporters that quote no British combat troops are deployed to Oman end quote.
A senior official in Whiteall described the SAS presence in DFAR that summer as quote a training detachment in advisory capacity, nothing more. They were wrong. Catastrophically wrong. By the end of that morning, a Fijian sergeant with a round through his face was loading a six-man artillery gun alone, firing it at infantry less than 50 m away.
And the Pentagon would spend the next 20 years studying what those nine men did inside that gunpit. Stay in this video and you will find out the name of the Fijian who ran 500 m of open ground to reach that gun the exact moment a grenade rolled to a stop at a British captain’s feet and failed to explode. Why the squadron medic died of a piece of his own tooth 11 weeks later.
and what one US Army special forces colonel wrote in an internal memo about the morning he called quote the modern reference for what a small footprint actually means. What you’re about to find out is that the British government’s denial held for 3 years after the battle ended. Decorations were withheld until 1975.
The Fijian sergeant’s recommendation for the Victoria Cross was downgraded to the lowest gallantry award the British system offers. And one specific name in this story died 7 years later of cold on a mountain in Wales and was found by the same officer who had pinned the medal on his chest. Hold that name.
We come back to it at the end. Mirbat sits on the coastal plane of Dar Province in the far south of Oman. 200 yds north of the town center stood a concrete building called the British Army Training Team House. The Bat House, flat roof, sandbagged top, one Browning 50 caliber, two generalurpose machine guns, an 81 mm mortar, and nine SAS men inside it.
under the command of Captain Mike Keley of the Queen’s Royal Regiment. Keelley was 23 years old. He had been in Oman 11 weeks. 500 m east of the bat house stood the Wally’s Fort housing the local governor and a small Ammani police detachment. Next to it, in a circular concrete and sandbag imp placement, sat a single World War II field gun, a 25pounder.
Vintage 1940. The gun was crewed by one Omani police gunner that morning. The crew was supposed to be six. That gun is going to decide everything. Two of the eight troopers under Keley were Fijians. The first was Sergeant Talasi Labalaba, born 13th July 1942 in the village of Noaka, Fiji. He had joined the British Army through the Royal Irish Rangers.
He was 30 years old. The previous morning the squadron had quietly noted his birthday. The second figion was trooper seconday Takavvesi known as Tac. He had served with Labala in the Royal Irish Rangers before they had both passed selection together. They were close friends. Pay attention to that detail.
It matters in about 10 minutes. The Adu, the guerilla fighters of the popular front for the liberation of the occupied Arabian Gulf, were advancing down off the Jebel Salmon in formations of 250 to 300. Some accounts say 400. They were armed with AK47 rifles, RPG7 rocket launchers, Soviet 82 mm mortars, light machine guns, and at least one captured KL Gustav recoilless rifle.
Their objective, take Mirbat, take the port, break the Sultan’s grip on the southern coast. They had been planning this attack for weeks. The Adu did not begin the assault with a sudden barrage. They began with silence. A thousand m north of the BAT house on a low hill called Jebel Ali sat the night picket.
A small section of Doofarjan Darmry posted there to give early warning. At first light on the 19th of July, the picket should have radioed in. The picket never radioed in. The ado killed the John Darmmorary section silently. Throat work by the assessment of the afteraction report. No shots, no flares.
By the time the sky began to lighten over the Indian Ocean, the picket position was an empty hilltop and the adu were moving down the slope toward Mirbat in coordinated V formations. Captain Keelley was on the BAT house roof at 0530, sweeping the slopes with binoculars. He saw movement on Jebel Ali. He assumed it was the picket coming in.
He ordered the duty trooper not to fire. By 0545, he understood what he was looking at. This is the moment in the radio log preserved in war office record W311455. The signal is first transmission read flat quote 0546 BAT MIBAT to all stations. Contact multiple. Repeat multiple contacts. estimated battalion strength weight out. End quote.
Now, this is the part that should bother you. The nearest reinforcement was at least 30 minutes away by helicopter. The Sultan’s air force was in Salah. There was no ground relief option. And the Adu, by Keely’s first count, were already inside 200 m of the perimeter and closing. Nine men, one captain, one building. 6 hours to go.
Within minutes of weapons free, Sergeant Labala understood something that changed the shape of the next 60 minutes. The personal weapons inside the BAT house could not stop a coordinated assault by 300 fighters before they closed to grenade range. The only weapon at Mirbat capable of decisive effect at that range was the 25 pounder 500 m away across open ground under direct fire.
Labala did not ask permission. He went. What he ran through between the bat house and the gun pit has been described in three published memoirs by SAS men who watched him do it. Mortar splash, small arms fire, rocket warheads passing low overhead. He was carrying personal kit and a radio. He was 30 years old, 6 days past his birthday, and he was running into the work of a six-man gun crew alone.
He reached the gun pit and found one Armani police gunner badly wounded and a stack of 25 pounder shells. He began loading. The 25 pounder in 1972 was a piece of artillery designed for crew operation. One man on the brereech, one man laying the piece, one man on the sights, ammunition handlers behind.
Labalaba did all of it alone. loading, laying by visual sighting onto the advancing ado waves, firing, reloading. The sustained rate of a fully crewed 25 pounder is six rounds per minute. Labalaba alone was managing close to one round per minute under continuous incoming fire. The adu did not yet know who was on the gun.
For about 30 minutes, the 25 pounder broke up wave after wave of the assault. direct fire onto infantry at ranges that no British gunner had used since the Second World War. 200 m, 150, 100. And then the radio call came back to the bat house. A Fijian voice flat. Two words you don’t want to hear over the net. Quote, “I’ve been chinned.” End quote.
Translation: In the Heraford dialect of the time, a rifle round had struck him in the jaw. Captain Key asked the bat house for a volunteer to run to the gunpit. Trooper Skinaya Takavisi did not wait for the question to finish. Takavi ran 800 m. The number is precise because the route he took was not a straight line.
The direct distance was about 500 m. Takavisi ran on a longer arc to avoid pre-sighted adu positions. He took fire the entire way. He reached the gunpit and found Labala still alive, wounded in the jaw, bleeding heavily, still loading. Takavisi later said in a regimental interview that his first words to his friend were you right lour end quote. The reply I’m fine.
Keep loading. End quote. What happened in the gunpit over the next 30 minutes is one of the most extraordinary close-range engagements in postwar British military history. The two Fijians, both wounded, continued to fire the 25 pounder together. Labalaba loading. Takavvisi laying and firing. The Omani gunner, Wallid Camis, also wounded, fought on with a personal weapon.
Takavisi was hit three times, shoulder, head, stomach. He propped his rifle on a sandbag and continued returning fire on Adu at distances of less than 50 m. And here is where it gets strange. With the assault now closing on the gun pit itself, Labala and Takavi cighted the 25 pounder down its own barrel, depressed the gun to its lowest angle, and fired at the oncoming wave at point blank range.
Direct fire of a field artillery piece at infantry at singledigit meters, a tactic not seen in British service since the German assaults of 1940. At about the 1-hour mark of his second engagement in the gun pit, Sergeant Talasi Labalaba was struck in the neck by a rifle round. He fell beside the breach of the gun he had been operating alone for the better part of an hour.
If you’re getting value from this so far, hit the subscribe button. It helps the channel keep producing this kind of military history. Now, back to the gunpit. Inside the bat house, Captain Key got the call he had been waiting for and dreading at the same time. Contact with the gunpit was lost. Takavis’s status unknown.
Labalaba’s status unknown. Keelley made a command decision. He was 23 years old. He had been in country 11 weeks. He was the senior officer at Mirbat. And he understood that he could not run the battle from the bat house roof while the gun pit fell. He took the squadron medic trooper Tommy Tobin. Tobin had come to the SAS from the Army Catering Corps.
He had passed selection. He was trained to treat casualties under fire, not to assault under fire. That distinction is about to matter very much. The two of them left the bat house and ran for the gun pit. Now, pay attention to this next bit. While they were running across that open ground, an ADU grenade was thrown at them from a position the AU had taken in a small trench.
The grenade rolled to a stop at Captain Keely’s feet. He looked down at it. It failed to detonate. Keely and Tobin reached the gunpit. They found Labalaba dead beside the brereech. They found Takavisi alive but with three gunshot wounds, still firing his rifle off a sandbag. They found Camis wounded but conscious. Tobin moved across the floor of the pit to reach Labala’s body.
He wanted to confirm the wound and check for any signs of life. A rifle round struck him in the lower jaw. The round destroyed the bone. The soft tissue the lower lip and the right side of his mouth. Tobin fell on his back in the gunpit. A second round struck him near the spine. He lay on the concrete floor, cupping his lower face with both hands, blood pouring out between his fingers, fully conscious.
He would survive that gunpit. He would survive the helicopter evacuation. He would die 11 weeks later in a hospital in England. The cause of death recorded on his medical file was a pulmonary infection caused by an aspirated tooth fragment. A piece of his own tooth, dislodged by the rifle round, drawn into his lung when he breathed, festered for 10 and 1/2 weeks.
He died on the 5th of October 1972. A piece of his own jaw killed him slowly. Inside the gunpit with Labalaba dead and Tobin down, Captain Key was now effectively the senior surviving combatant in the position. He continued to operate the 25p pounder. He continued to fire his personal weapon. He continued to make radio calls requesting immediate air support.
Adu fighters were now lobbing grenades over the lip of the gunpit from 5 m away. Keelley was firing back at less than 5 m. Read that again. 5 m the length of a parking space. An SAS officer at one end, Adu Gerillas at the other. He held it. The turning point of the Battle of Mirbat came out of the cloud. The Sultan of Omen’s Air Force was operating strikemaster light attack jets out of Salela airfield.
The pilots were British contract officers flying for the Sultan under formal exchange. Two strike masters launched on the contact report. A third followed shortly after the cloud base over Mirbat that morning was low. So low the pilots could not drop bombs at any sensible release altitude. They went in, in the words of one pilot’s log, at daft height.
Cannon fire, rockets, low passes. The ADU had not been planning for air support. They scattered. While the strike masters worked the slopes, G Squadron of the 22 SAS was moving. They had landed in Omen the day before. On the morning of 19th July, they were on the firing range in full kit doing their range packages.
When the call came in, 22 of them grabbed their gear, ran for the helicopters, and lifted within 5 minutes. They were still wearing their range kit. Two of them, by their own later account, thought they were flying to another range until the bullets started. The G- Squadron command element under Captain Alistair Morrison landed in three lifts south of Mirbat.
By 12:30, the AU were breaking contact and pulling back into the Jebel Saman. 6 hours and 45 minutes after the first shots, the battle of Mirbat was over. The AU left 38 bodies on the field that were physically recovered. Total ADU casualties were estimated at between 80 and 200. The Adu never again attempted a direct frontal assault on a fortified position in DEFAR.
The strategic question, who controlled the southern coast, was effectively answered by 12:30 on the morning of 19th July 1972. inside a concrete gunpit by two Fijians and one 23-year-old British captain. The men who fought at Mirbat were not allowed to talk about it. The official British government position on the day of the battle and for the 3 years after it was that no British combat troops were deployed to Oman.
There was a training team, nothing more. The foreign office had filed a directive on the 15th of July, 4 days before the battle, instructing all press attaches in the region to withhold any photographs of British personnel operating in DAR. Decorations for Mirbat were not announced until 1975. Three full years.
Captain Keley received the Distinguished Service Order. Trooper Takavves received the Distinguished Conduct Medal. Trooper Tommy Tobin received the distinguished conduct medal postumous. Sergeant Taliasi Labalaba received a mention in dispatches. Postumous. The mention in dispatches is the lowest gallantry award available in the British honors system.
A bronze oak leaf worn on a campaign medal ribbon. No separate insignia. No separate medal. The original recommendation signed by Captain Mike Keley was for the Victoria Cross. The Ministry of Defense downgraded it. The unofficial reason given by a regimental source quoted in Roger Cole and Richard Bellfield’s book SAS Operation Storm was straightforward.
Quote, “They wanted to give him a VC, but because the war was secret in 1972, they said it would be headlines in every newspaper in the UK.” end quote. Labalaba’s comrades have spent five decades campaigning to have the mention upgraded. The Ministry of Defense has declined every formal submission. The actual reason has not changed since 1975.
In the early 1990s, 20 years after Mirbat, the United States Army’s John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, included the Battle of Mirbat in its instruction on small footprint counterinsurgency. The reference is in an internal curriculum document that has been partially declassified through freedom of information requests in the last decade.
The relevant phrase attributed to a serving colonel in the United States Army Special Forces appears in a memo dated approximately 1993 and reads as follows. Quote, Mirbat remains the modern reference for what a small footprint actually means in a counterinsurgency context. nine men, 6 hours, strategic effect.” End quote. That memo did not produce a public statement.
It did not change British honors policy. It did not get Labalaba his Victoria Cross. It sat in a curriculum binder at Fort Bragg for the next 20 years. That is in many ways the entire shape of this story. The American doctrinal record will say in writing behind closed doors what the British government still will not say in public. Sergeant Tallayas Labalaba was returned to England in a service coffin.
He is buried at St. Martins’s Church Cemetery in Heraford, the SAS regimental garrison town. A statue of him was unveiled at the SAS headquarters in 2009. The second statue was dedicated at Nardi International Airport in Fiji in 2018. Trooper Seca Takavisi survived three gunshot wounds in the gunpit. He recovered. He returned to the regiment.
He has spent the rest of his life telling people that his friend Lara deserved the Victoria Cross. He is still doing so. Captain Mike Keley remained in the SAS. On the 2nd of February 1979, on the second stage selection march across the Breen Beacons in winter, he collapsed from hypothermia and died of exposure.
He was 30 years old. His body was discovered on the mountain by Lieutenant Colonel Johnny Watts, the same officer who had pinned the DSO on his chest four years before. The 25 pounder gun that Labala operated alone for the better part of an hour is preserved. It was housed for years at the Firepower Museum of the Royal Artillery at Woolitch with the bullet impacts on the gun shield still visible.
After Wulitch closed in 2016, the gun was moved to the Royal Artillery Museum. You can stand next to it. The breach he loaded by himself is at chest height. If you had told the foreign office on the 15th of July 1972 that the gun pit at Mirbat would one day sit in a public museum with a name plate, they would have laughed. 6 days later it did
