A dusty field in Kumanovo, North Macedonia, in June 1999. Inside a stiflingly hot hangar, tense talks are going on to bring an end to an ugly war that had seen tens of thousands of Kosovar Albanians driven by the Serbs from their homes.
Nato has just conducted an 11-week air campaign, bombing Serbia and threatening the chances of continuing Western détente with Belgrade’s historic ally Russia, just emerging from decades of communist rule.
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The talks grind on for hour after hour with no sign of progress. The Serbs are tricky, truculent and burning with anger at the air strikes. Then, late in the evening, a British general emerges into the glare of the television lights to announce to reporters that a deal has been done. The war is over. The Serbs have folded. Their troops are withdrawing and Kosovo is free.
Mike Jackson is wearing camouflage fatigues and his maroon Parachute Regiment beret. We all know and like him, and his creased, handsome face, often split by a smile, is grave now as he reads the statement. The talks were on a knife edge until the last minute. It’s a triumph for him and just the first of several major contributions he will make to peace in the region.
General Sir Mike Jackson, who died on Tuesday aged 80, looked so much like everyone’s idea of a warrior that it is easy to overlook his formidable diplomatic and political skills and his profound humanity and emotional intelligence.
His panther-like lope and cheroot-cured voice – like molasses strained through gravel – reinforced the “Prince of Darkness” image that sometimes irked him. “It was while I was CO of 1 Para that I somehow acquired the nickname Prince of Darkness, though I have little idea why.” It was true, he conceded, that “I am fond of the odd glass of whisky and a cigar in the evening while putting the world to rights,” but he was hardly alone in his fondness for a drink. “Only occasionally did people find it a strain to keep up,” he reminisced.
Those who struggled did not include the bishop of Kosovo, say, at his seat in the 14th-century monastery of Gracanica. Jackson found himself lunching with the bishop on several occasions. “It was always a very splendid affair,” he recalled. “We sat down, waited on by nuns, and drank the best wine in Kosovo.” Indeed, Jackson would refer to smoothing out more than one tricky situation with “a drink or three”, often at “long and large Balkan lunches, washed down with local wine and slivovic, a local brandy made usually of plums and sometimes of pears”.
But like all great soldiers, he despised macho posturing and believed passionately that the whole point of possessing military might was to avoid having to use it. This credo was what drove his celebrated showdown with his Nato superior – US General Wesley Clark – shortly after the Kumanovo agreement was signed.
The deal had been greatly helped by the pressure applied to the Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic, by Russian president Boris Yeltsin. Naturally, Moscow expected to play a role when Kfor, the 40,000-strong force led by Jackson that was to implement the peace and allow refugees to return home, moved in.
Just before Kfor set off, a Russian-armoured column crossed the border from Bosnia and made straight for the sizeable airport near Kosovo’s capital Pristina, seemingly intent on holding it as a way to enable more of their units to fly in. Was the Cold War about to reignite? Not, it turned out, if Jacko – as he was universally known – could help it.
The drama that followed could have ended very differently had it not been for his sangfroid, diplomatic deftness and moral courage. When Clark – Nato’s supreme allied commander in Europe – heard the news, he flew to Macedonia to take charge.
His first thought was to helicopter Kfor units forward to seize the airport before the Russians arrived. Jackson pointed out that there were still Serb anti-air batteries in the area, which could shoot down the choppers.
Clark’s next solution was to send armour to block the runway. It was too late to get there before the Russian column, and the risk of a shooting match when the two met was considerable. It was at this point that, as Jackson later revealed, he took Clark aside and told him: “Sir, I’m not going to start World War Three for you.”
This, at first sight, was a startling act of insubordination towards his Nato superior.
“Sir, I’m a three-star general. You can’t give me orders like this,” he told Clark. “Mike, I’m a four-star general and I can.”
But Jackson believed he was within his rights, and was prepared to resign over the issue. For the moment, Clark gave him his head. But there were still nervy moments. On one occasion, he stayed up all night as the situation appeared set to unravel. “I was wearing boxer shorts, a glass of whisky in one hand and a cigar in the other,” he recalled, as he tried to broker a solution while dawn broke.
Jackson flew to Pristina just as the first Kfor column arrived at the airport, and met the Russian commander General Viktor Zavarzin, whom he greeted in the Russian he had learnt at school and Birmingham University. Jackson then produced his whisky flask: “Relations warmed up after that.” Later, after Jackson had passed on a fresh bottle of whisky to Zavarzin, the Russian general confided the difficulties he was having with authorities in Moscow: “I am hacked off with politicians.” Jackson, by then in possession of “the inevitable glass of vodka”, responded with, “You too eh, Viktor?”
A British contingent led by Jackson’s son Mark, who followed him into the Paras, secured the airport perimeter and the Russians were given a peacekeeping role.
Jackson’s performance was evidence of his assuredness when it came to handling people, whoever they were. In his dealings with the Serbs, he was up against some tough nuts, preternaturally suspicious and impervious to flattery. He had first encountered them a few years earlier when commanding a multinational division charged with implementing the peace in post-war Bosnia. There he learnt how to deal with inat – a Serbian word meaning either proud defiance or intense and pointless bloody-mindedness.
His performance with Clark was equally deft, helped perhaps by the fact that Jackson never seemed to take him entirely seriously. When the subject of his old chief’s subsequent short-lived 2003 bid for the US presidency came up, Jackson would smile and shake his head wonderingly, muttering “Wes for Pres?”
Jackson’s qualities made him an obvious contender for the Army’s top job and, in 2003, he got there as chief of the general staff (CGS). It was a difficult time, dealing with the global convulsions created by 9/11 and presiding over major deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq. At home, he tackled a fundamental reorganisation of the infantry. Tough choices had to be made, and his decision to amalgamate many historic regiments – thereby extinguishing cherished traditions – earned him some harsh words from the old guard, which may have hurt, but never dented his determination to do what he saw as his duty.
The workload never diminished his capacity for fun, either. He and his second wife, Sarah, with whom he shared nearly 40 years of happy marriage, were outstanding hosts at the Kensington Palace apartment that came with the job. As a guest, you were as likely to run into a famous television impressionist as you were a military honcho.
For all his charisma and intelligence, Jackson was, at heart, a simple man. He was content with the ordinary pleasures of a glass of whisky, an inexpensive cigar and the joys of foreign travel – particularly in Africa. He was happiest in the company of his family: Sarah and their son Tom, his children Amanda and Mark from his first marriage, and his grandchildren.
He was the most recognisable soldier of his age. No one who met him is likely to forget the encounter, and the memories of it are likely to be good ones. So much was apparent from the thousands of tributes that poured onto social media as soon as the news of his death broke. They were from all ranks and all reaches of the services. A veteran, Bill Callaghan, remembered having supper with him in the communal mess at a headquarters in Bosnia. “He made me, a sergeant at the time, feel relevant, valued and appreciated,” he wrote. It is a compliment that Jacko would have cherished.