Fun In The Sun
By Cliff Sweeting
1st Battalion
Prince of Wales's Own Regiment
of Yorkshire (1 PWO)
By the time I arrived in Aden in 1965, I had the feeling I was on familiar territory. My father had done this tour in 1958 - almost immediately after the amalgamation of the West Yorkshire Regiment (14th Foot - Prince Of Wales's Own) and the East Yorkshire Regiment (15th Foot - Duke Of York's Own). They went to Aden as the Prince Of Wales's Own Regiment Of Yorkshire. Of course, Dad went to the Radfan - as far as he was concerned, Aden was a rest camp. He would have been totally mystified if he'd seen Aden as I did seven years later. The town was, by then, the major operational area. Dad was a product of the old pre-war British education system which taught that Britain was the hub of the known universe. A corollary of this view was that other races were of no account - except inasmuch as they made money for the British. "When you get to Aden, son, don't expect to see Arabs - the local wogs are pitch-black, not brown." I had to smile at his quaint description of the Somali upper-working-class, which staffed all the bars and restaurants and drove all the taxis in the town.
My initial posting within the Battalion, along with the rest of the new intake, was to A (Training) Company. We new arrivals were to be indoctrinated into the ways of this huge extended family which we had joined. We also had a fairly demanding fitness training programme to survive, under the euphemism of "acclimatisation." The author and supervisor of this programme was Major Sherratt, the Officer Commanding A Coy. He was a quite bizarre character, standing six feet, three inches and weighing in at 105 kilos (sixteen-and-a-half stones in the old language). Rumour had it that he'd survived a near-fatal dose of malaria in Malaya years previously - and that when his body evicted the sickness, it kicked out a number of brain cells along with it. (A rather harsh and superficial judgement of a fine officer.) He had a schoolmasterish, didactic habit of verbal capitalization. Every instruction he gave would start with the admonition "One Must" (as in "One Must never neglect to Cover one's Flanks when Moving Tactically...").
Starting that first afternoon, the following five weeks were to see a virtual repeat of the basic training many of us had only just completed at the Yorkshire Brigade Depot at Strensall, in England. Drill, fieldcraft, section attacks, range classifications, weapon handling and Battle PT were all in the curriculum, with minor changes to the UK programme. We were trained in riot-control - and we became familiar with the Tropical Training Area, or TTA. This was to the north of our Waterloo Lines barracks, and consisted of a salt-pan some fifty-five square miles in area. The hard crust broke easily underfoot. Boots were sometimes lost in the sucking mud beneath. The decaying projectiles of 30mm ADEN cannon rounds were littered all around, bespeaking the area's other role as a ground-attack air-gunnery range. The RAF flew a squadron of Hawker Hunters from nearby Khormaksar airfield.
The final exercise of our training programme was to be a five-mile compass march across the TTA, rendezvousing with the Company Quartermaster Sergeant, who would bring water resupply and hot meals in his 3-tonner. Then we would march back to camp. I had misgivings about this when I thought of the thousands of old cannon-shells embedded in the mud. How on Earth were you going to get an accurate magnetic bearing to march on? With the OC in the lead, we marched out of the barracks, turned north on to the beach then west on to the salt-pan of the TTA. I noted with vindictive satisfaction that the Major's giant frame broke the crust more often and more easily than the more lightly-built members of the squad. By the time we had been marching for half-an-hour, the OC was labouring under the strain. (Not to worry - another hour and we meet-up with the CQMS. Then we get morning tea, water and go back to camp.) The hour came and went without sight of the 3-tonner.
A piercing, drawn-out whistle signalled the presence of a Black Kite overhead, shadowing a camel-drawn water-cart which appeared as if out of the ground. These aerial scavengers, notorious for pirating food from anyone foolish enough to venture outside the cookhouse with a sandwich in hand, were nicknamed "shite-hawks" by the British. The reason for the nickname became apparent as the big hawk swooped to the ground, and began searching through the still-warm camel-dung along the main trade-route. That was when our OC realised that we were heading east towards Mukalla - not north-west towards Al Ittihad, as intended. The needle of his compass was swinging so wildly that it was virtually useless, and he decided to march by the sun instead. We had now been on the march for three hours, and the sun was virtually overhead as the Major strode out on what he confidently imagined to be the right bearing. The north-easterly heading he'd chosen, stood every chance of landing us in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia...eventually.
From the north-west, mercifully, appeared the familiar high cab of a Bedford RL 3-tonner. The CQMS, familiar with the Major's idiosyncracies, had backed his own navigational judgement. From the vantage-point of his truck roof, he had picked out the faint stirrings of dust to the south. The A41 radio now crackled into life as the marchers passed out of the mysterious blackout zone in the centre of the TTA. Theories abounded as to the reason for this radio blind spot - the RAF radar at Khormaksar, the metal in the saltpan - but nobody had found a satisfactory explanation. Now that radio contact was re-established, the CQMS, with his storeman, set off on an intersecting course across country to the south-east. To the weary marchers, the lumbering biscuit-coloured vehicle was a heavenly vision. We had covered, not five, but fifteen miles, marching non-stop for four hours. Four hours in which the temperature had soared to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Our tongues had begun to swell, our two water-bottles per man long since exhausted. Our skins had startled to prickle as sweat ceased to flow. Blurred vision accompanied a sense of disorientation. Sounds came to our ears as if in slow motion...
I staggered to the truck and uncapped one of the chagalls which hung from the steel side. I filled both my water-bottles, then drank one in the space of a minute and refilled it yet again. By now, the hero of the hour was Staff-Sergeant "Chalky" White, the CQMS. He cemented this new-found status by dispensing hot, sweet tea and good old English bangers-and-mash from the hot-box in the back of the truck. The effect on us young soldiers was miraculous. The staggering wrecks of only minutes ago were restored as if by magic to our former vigorous selves - a tribute to our physical fitness if nothing else. After an hour's rest and copious rehydration, we would form up in our three sections and march back to camp. From somewhere in the background came a vaguely familiar sound: "Of course, One Must Take into Consideration..."
Nobody took the least bit of notice.
Cliff Sweeting
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