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For a year, the unit had been on a secret assignment, codenamed Operation Jaguar, to protect the Sultan of Oman from an insurgent force, the People’s Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arab Gulf. On the morning of July 19, 1972, 250 of the Front’s best fighters stormed the port in a surprise attack that left the nine SAS men pinned down inside their fort.
Labalaba, 30, knew that without heavier fire power, the unit faced almost certain annihilation. In a daring break, he sprinted across an exposed 800 yard stretch to reach a 25-pound field gun.
The gun usually required a team to operate it, and by the time he reached it Labalaba was soaked in blood from a bullet wound to his jaw. But the elite soldier, still under heavy fire, spun the weapon to face the advancing guerrilla fighters and opened up from close range.
Ignoring his wounds he continued to hold off the 250 Front fighters for six hours. Captain Mike Kealy and comrades Tommy Tobin and Sekonaia Takavesi also ran the 800 yard gauntlet to try to save the sergeant’s life.
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