I was posted to my regiment which was serving in Aden and up country in the Radfan Mountains and the Persia Gulf. During this time I was posted to Little Aden which was where the regiment's HQ and one Armoured Squadron to do escort duty of conveys up country to the Radfan Mountains was camped and the camp next door was the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards. I was only there for an hour when I was told that I would be on guard duty that night, having just left England the night before and been on a plane for 12 hours and no sleep, I had to spend the day bulling up my uniform for guard duty. The regiment was not called the shiners for nothing.

 

Anyway I stayed at the camp for 8 days and was posted to my Squadron which was in the Persia Gulf in Sharjah, but having to go via Bahrain, (you have to fly over an area that is called the Dead Quarter which is 1000 square miles of nothing). When I landed at Bahrain airport, I was taken to an army camp where I spent the night under armed guards and was not allow to go outside as there was rioting going in the streets

 

The Bahrain police had the old Rolls-Royce Armoured Cars with the 50. Vickers water cooled machine guns, it was a frightening sight to see. The next morning I left for Sharjah, when I arrived at the camp which was part of RAF Sharjah so I didn't have far to go. I was posted to 5th troop which half were in Sharjah and the other half was in RAF Salalah which is in the Oman but right down the coast on the India Ocean side they were with 4th Troop which my older brother Les was a L/Cpl so the troops did not come together for another 4 weeks.

 

I really enjoyed my time there as the weather was always in the 80f and one day it touched 126f and working inside the armoured cars it was very hot and sticky but it was great, one thing that will stick in my mind is the old coffee shop run by George who was Indian and we had a tick book where we could get coffee and rolls and pay when we got paid. I remember that I had to limit my spending to 2.90 Rps and to buy only 40 fags a day which was 1.40 n.p and the drinks were 1.50 n.p a day. I got Fred Condon to make me sign a note in a book which I still have to today. Next door to the cafe was the tailor, who also was Indian, you could get 'made to measure' silk shirts for about £2. We were using Rupees or chips as we called them which was about 1/6p or 8 pence in new money.

 

As we had to show the flag and we did the 1,000 miles patrol. The vehicles we had were two troops of Mk 2 Ferrets armoured scout cars and the old 3 tonners plus a couple of land rovers, which one I had to hide in the back of as my visa to enter the Emirates had not come back in time for me to go in in the open, so over 10 days we patrolled we went through Fire Pass which was the way in Buraimi then on to Muscat which in them days was the old walled town where we were forbidden to enter, so we stay out sided the walls, we also went the hot springs in the desert to get rid of the sand and dust. I stayed in Sharjah for 4 months, then on the 20th May 1965 I went down to Aden. The next day I drew my kit for up country which was a helmet, S.M.G plus 84 rounds and then on the 22nd May 1965 the Squadron was posted to the Radfan Mountains

I kept a log of what we did from the 22nd of May until we left Aden on the 30th September, for the first month we did mainly convoy duties to Dhala, Ballpoint, Holdfast and Monks Field. But on the 22nd of June I was cleaning my kit for a inspection by the C.O and the ashtray we had was the end of the brass casing of the 76mm shell cut down and of course it was full of burnt ash and tar we had to get them glimming. So the best way we thought was to burn it out and rub with wire wool so we lit a bit of Brasso inside the shell and we forgot about the petrol in a can by the opening of the tent... All of a sudden, a flame leapt across the tent and lit the petrol. Before we could do anything the tent was on fire, did we move!!! I think I cleared a 5 foot wall from standing by it and when I hit the ground I was running.

Because the rounds in the tent were going off and we had to wait until the fire was out before we go near the area. Did I get given hell or what !! For about a week after my life was not worth living. I remember watching the film The Longest Day in the canteen which was a marquee with sandbags around it to a height of 5 ft. Later on we changed the sandbags for ammunition boxes and on our days off we played cards. One of the duties we had to do was put a colour grenade down the toilets to kill the insects that built up over a week or two, one time someone forgot to look to see if anybody was in there and put a red grenade down only to find the Squadron Leader was using the other side - he was not very happy!!!! The other thing was the desert rose which was a pipe stuck out of the ground so you could go to wee.