78. The Compassionate Mercenary.

Dearly Beloved,

"A Knyght ther was, and that a worthy man, ...

He was a verray, parfit, gentil knyght."

(Chaucer; The Canterbury Tales, The Prologue. c. 1387)

I first met David when I arrived in Oman to carry out a conservation project on the rare goat antelope the Arabian tahr, in Oman. He met me at the airport smartly dressed as a Wing Commander in the Omani air force. He was accompanied by a young wolf on a lead. He had been asked by the Diwan – the Sultan's personal ministry -- to assess if I was up to the task of working in the mountains and to teach me the ways of the local people and what constituted good manners and respect for Islamic 'Ibadi life and practice. The first days turned out to be a combination of a Swiss finishing school applied to a Muslim society and a commando assault course as we cavorted unroped on the near vertical, 1600 meter cliffs, of the Jabal Aswad (Black Mountain). There David had effectively set up a wildlife reserve on behalf of the Oman government using his very functional Arabic to sound out and recruit suitable local people to guard the reserve and its animals – the Mushrafyn. When he travelled he always asked if any tahr (wa'al) were to been seen in the area he was visiting.

Despite some alarming moments above long drops, difficult enough to cause my mind to concentrate so hard that time seemed to slow down, I passed my test in the mountains. I was then taught the etiquette of meeting people, of taking coffee and dates, of eating seated on the floor from a communal plate, as Jesus would have done – remember "One who dips his bread in the dish with me will betray me”. I was taught how to eat rice with my right hand and what to say and when, in a society of people some of whom were very poor, yet who were very formal and remarkable for their hospitality.

David was from an army family. His father had gained a Victoria Cross in the first world war when he landed his Royal Flying Core (RFC) biplane between German and British lines, carried out repairs under fire and took off again and in the afternoon bombed those who had shot at him in he morning. David had been a mercenary fighting the communist insurgency in Dhofar, a war which was managed by the government of the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen but which was won in 1975. The fighting was so intense that he realised he was not likely to survive for more than a few months so he changed his work to organising and implementing support of the civilian population. Unlike the image of the mercenary soldier we see in the cinema today, David was compassionate. He was very focused on the welfare of Omanis; he was unrelenting positive. For example he pointed out that the Mushrafyn, never became bored, as British soldiers became bored. Indeed they would joke and gossip all day if there was nothing else to do, all powered by the coffee and dates we carried up the mountain. He also pointed out that although they worked away from their households in mountains for three days or more at a time, they always prayed five times a day and did not reduce that to three as religious rules would have allowed them to do, on the grounds that they were travelling.

Modern mercenaries are often depicted in the cinema as heartless psychopaths and indeed some do have problems relating to their fellows. David had incited the male jealousy of a member of the special forces. Whilst having dinner one night this man was thought to have ripped out the electronics from David's Land Rover and on another occasion interfered with the swivel pin housings of both our vehicles. The devilish technique was to remove three bolts from the steering mechanism; the fourth eventually sheers under the stress of normal use and the steering collapses. I was lucky because when my fourth bolt sheered I was steering in tight circle on a flat gravel plain. David used his skills to everyone's advantage and I watched in wonder as he used plastic explosive to cause a boulder to disintegrate thus freeing an important irrigation channel, or on another occasion using a series of fertilizer bags full of petrol and weed killer to blast a road out of a cliff which could not be dealt with by the bulldozers of the road builders. Two totally different explosions producing the intended, but very different results.

Later David left Oman to stay a time on his Welsh hill farm, played his violin and reared children who were bilingual in Welsh and English. He returned to take a job in the Omani Ministry of the Environment in 1994, arriving as I left after a five year stint. His son joined the army too and, like his father graduated from Sandhurst. David's father was depicted in a heroic painting at the National Portrait Gallery and I photographed the three of them there, two either side of the pilot's portrait, for an article in a local paper. He was a lively correspondent too, keeping me up to date with goings on in Oman. He worked in his beloved Oman doing wildlife conservation until he became terminally ill with various complaints and really died in harness in 2015, having only returned to the UK just a few weeks before his death. I went to his funeral in Wales attended by local people, Omanis and wildlife workers who had flown in from Oman specially. A wonderful, spontaneous, Welsh choir of locals gave him a good send off and we buried him within a mile of the Church.

The Arabian tahr (Arabitragus jayakari) has increased greatly in numbers as a result of his work. He was very much a Renaissance man, a warrior, but cultured and compassionate too.

Peace, 

Paul.

Photographs Credit: Steven Ross, Manssor H. Al Jahdhami & Haitham Al Rawah. Source: Oryx 53 (3) reproduced by Cambridge University Press.

Two Arabian Tahr in the wild. The Jabal Aswad is the cliffs in the background of photograph on the left.