Ray Kane

Coup D'etat Oman (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

What do experts think of Coup D'état Oman?

"Ray Kane's memoir of his time in the Army is a hugely evocative and often very funny read, full of colourful details and memorable anecdotes. From Oman to Cyprus, Kane saw Britain's retreat from Empire at first hand and more than played his part in a story we seldom really appreciate. What was more, he even carried out the only coup in living memory led by British military officers. It's a great story, told with wit, gusto and a storyteller's flair. I enjoyed it enormously."

Dominic Sandbrook

"For sheer brio, few of the many works published on the Dhofar campaign can match Ray Kane's riveting account. Written with admirable candour by a man who truly experienced the sharp end of that most bitter of insurgencies, this book will be essential reading for all those interested in Anglo-Omani relations, and in particular, how the longevity of the al-Bu-Said dynasty was really secured."

Professor Clive Jones, Durham University

Prologue

LIKE slow moving lava, viscous, dark red venous blood seeped from beneath buttocks and legs. On the wall behind, the heavy 7.62 mm bullets passing through the unknown man's upper body had splattered bright red arterial blood roughly tracing its ex-owner's outline. Leaving the body soaking in its blood-lake, we tackled the labyrinth again. I climbed up through a skylight and jumped onto a flat roof. Bullets thudded beneath my feet. The Sultan was below, had heard me land and was firing into the ceiling. We had him trapped.
Dropping down a two-metre wall landed me onto a patio next to a glass door. Captain Richard and his light-machine-gun (LMG) team were across the patio. A group of al-Hawasina askars appeared on the palace's top-most roof. We were outnumbered. Hopefully the bribe was still working. I tried the door handle locked. I butt-stroked the glass panel armoured, and made by Pilkington, I read in the bottom right hand corner. Signalling to Captain Richard, I drew a white phosphorous grenade and hugged the wall behind a column by the door. Captain Richard rested his LMG on a soldier's back and maintaining the same aim point, fired 2-round bursts at the door from 15 metres range and within 30 centimetres of my left shoulder. Whining bullets ricocheted around the patio. A hole appeared in the glass, expanded gradually by double hits travelling at 836 metres per second from the LMG.
A hole appeared also in the Command Group's confidence. My name, shouted from outside the palace, brought me to the patio parapet. Sheltering below behind a building corner, Lieutenant Colonel Teddy Turnill, Desert Regiment's Commanding Officer, shouted again. He ordered me to withdraw, adding that he intended to negotiate with the Sultan; behind him, Captain Tim Landon, Intelligence Officer and Qaboos' Sandhurst friend, added his voice. Teddy was taking counsel of his fears, or of someone else's. Fuck that, I thought. I assured them that it was nearly over, ignored their protestations and went back to work.
Aged 25 years, I had come a long way from the damp, emerald-green turf of County Kildare, Ireland, to fight someone else's war in Oman's parched brown deserts, mountains and wadis and in its Sultan's palace.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Distributed via Smashwords
• Seitenzahl: 361
• Erscheinungstermin: 5. Juni 2014
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780956058966
• Artikelnr.: 45440456

Autorenporträt

Ray Kane was born in Ireland. He was in the South African Police when Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island in 1964.
In 1965, while hitchhiking through Tanzania en route to England, he crossed the path along which Che Guevara would lead his Cuban Brigade just three days later into the Congo and his first revolutionary defeat.
Kane's first novel, The Sowti Squad, was born of these two events.
Suspected of being a mercenary while hitchhiking through Juba, the Sudanese government arrested and deported Kane to Uganda. Hoping to continue his homeward journey by ship, Kane travelled through Uganda to Mombasa, Kenya's port on its Indian Ocean coastline. Fortune smiled on Kane. The Braemar Castle, en route from Cape Town to London, was in port and had just medevaced a broken-legged crewman back to Durban. There was a vacancy. Kane became Seaman Kane and worked as a steward on the luxury liner to Tilbury (London) docks.
Commissioned into the British Army in 1965, Ray Kane served in Germany and Libya. In 1968 he joined the Omani Army. Commissioned as a Captain, he was promoted Major after a year and served for a further two years as Red Company Commander, Desert Regiment, in the Dhofar War. He led the Red Company palace assault group which seized Sultan Said bin Taimur al-Busaidi on 23 July 1970, in the coup d'état which started Oman's renaissance, and in which Kane was wounded.
Leaving Red Company in 1972, Kane commanded Firqa Forces Dhofari irregular tribesmen. He was "sacked on-the-spot", and quite rightly too, in Kane's opinion, by Colonel Mike "Oddjob" Harvey in May 1972, after playfully shooting-up the RAF Salalah (Dhofar) Officers' Mess and its open-air cinema.
Asked by a friend if he had been drunk, mad or both, Kane replied, 'Neither, I did it for the Craic.'
Ray Kane founded his security company, Trawl Services Ltd in, in 1982. He is divorced and has a son and four daughters.