Exercise JEBEL SAHARA is an overseas training exercise which has taken place each year since 2000 near Marrakech and in the High Atlas mountains of Morocco. It now involves about 500 exercising personnel. The Royal Gibraltar Regiment (RG) exercises jointly with the 2eme Brigade d'Infanterie Parachutiste (2BIP) of the Moroccan Army. Also taking part this year were three Chinooks and five Pumas of 18, 27 and 33 Sqns Royal Air Force, a team of directing staff from the Welsh Guards, a TA mobile bath and laundry unit, and me.
My job was to act as liaison officer between the RG and 2BIP. The Moroccans proved to be polite, cultured and well-educated (all of their officers take a degree in a language, law or science) and most spoke either English or French. For the whole of the first week, I was working with them on the firing ranges. Naturally, this filled my head with all sorts of odd associations. There is something very Legion Etrangère about giving the orders “Approvisionnez vos armes! Position couchée! Armez! Commencez le feu!” on a range in the Moroccan desert.
Each night after the ranges and for most of the second week, 2BIP and I went for nice long walks which ended with light and bangs. The Moroccans enjoyed that hugely. In the field, my job was to shadow their boss and make sure he was carrying out the orders he was getting from his Gibraltarian superior, and to keep the latter updated in real time with what 2BIP were actually doing. So I was wearing a helmet, assault vest and body armour plus carrying a rifle, two litres of water, a night sight, a radio (PRC351) and the usual other bits and bobs. My Moorish colleagues carried just the rifle, some magazines in their pockets and a thin plastic helmet. Although good fun, all this running about in kit was physically tough. During working hours we faced very difficult terrain and high heat. The ground was Martian rockscape in the lowlands. The mountains were identical to Afghanistan(or so the RAF boys claimed).
Watching the RG regulars doing section attacks on a daytime live firing range completely knocked me back. It looked like controlled murder. By contrast, the tactics of the Moroccan Army took a bit of getting used to. They said that they, too, employed “fire and manoeuvre”. But their version is subtly different. Heavy machine guns (which they did not have) provide the fire and everyone else manoeuvres in extended line straight at the enemy, at a steady pace.
The final exercise was without a doubt the most dangerous thing I have ever done in my life, beating our 2003 adventures in Iraq by a long way. Not the air assault we did - I had confidence in the RAF's Chinook pilots who I had seen wibbling in the souk at the weekend over what kind of silk slippers to buy themselves, and the Moroccans in my ‘chalk’ knew how to behave in a helicopter - but the night live firing at the very end, during which I was one of the range safety staff monitoring 80 or so 2BIP lads happily firing away. All my cordiality and deference went out the window when I had officers and men pointing the scary end of an SA80 at me with the safety off and saying “Mister, my gun, it does not work.”
The whole exercise was an education for me in what it would be like to be an individually-mobilised TA officer on operations with an unfamiliar regular regiment. I had to work hard in order to gain responsibility and keep my job interesting. On the whole, however, I am enthused about Morocco and this exercise in particular. For those taking part in it, it must be ideal preparation for the kind of work done in Iraq and Afghanistan, as Col Tim Collins and his 1st Batallion, the Royal Irish Regiment (veterans of EX JEBEL SAHARA) found soon after their visit in 2002.
