IN 1950 my father – a WO1 in REME - was posted to Egypt, to the Suez Canal Zone. At that time Britain maintained a large military presence along the banks of the Suez Canal, and extending some distance west, towards Cairo.

The British bases in the Suez Canal Zone, Egypt, in the early Fifties.

Although it was normal for families to accompany servicemen abroad, it was not possible for my mother to obtain passage on a troopship (Why? Korea?) So she booked a flight with Air Ceylon. Although I was 12, an adult for airline purposes, Air Ceylon agreed to allow me to fly for half fare.

The terminal, in those days was, I think, in Piccadilly in central London, and we were taken to the airport in a semi-double-deck bus, the rear seats raised above a large baggage hold.

All I remember of Heathrow was walking through a pre-fabricated hut, where my mother showed her documents to various people. But then, in 1950, a pre-fabricated hut was probably all there was. We crossed a few yards of wet apron and climbed a few steps into the aircraft and up the sloping floor to our seats.

The DC-4 that carried Mrs. Boon and her sons to Cairo to join her husband, WO1 Boon.

The aircraft was a Douglas DC4, named Laxapana. I recall nothing of the take-off at around 21.00. My next memory is of having breakfast in a large almost empty room at Rome Airport in the early hours. Then nothing again until we were flying over an empty blue sea.

We were served lunch, chops and strawberry tart. We then encountered some turbulence and my lunch saw daylight again. Later we flew along a coastline, sea on one side and desert on the other. Approaching Farouk Field in Cairo we banked steeply, demonstrating graphically to me the effects of centrifugal force.

My father and a colleague, also meeting his family off the same aircraft, met us. They bought us colas from a machine. To me, buying a bottle of drink from a machine was a miracle, and the more so since it was icy cold, the bottle beaded with moisture.

I soon discovered that in Egypt at that time, as everywhere now, ice cold Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola was ubiquitous, usually served from an icebox rather than a refrigerator.

We all got into a taxi, a large American vehicle, for the 80-mile journey to Ismailia, where we were to live. There were eight of us in the car, as well as the driver. It must have been very hot and cramped, but my attention was outside. The countryside was very different to England and, unlike today, where all the landscapes of the world are familiar through films, television and books, very strange.

An aerial view of Ismailia, where young John Boon’s life changed.

A typical shopping street in Ismailia in the Canal Zone.

On reaching the town of Ismailia we were taken to a families’ transit camp, where we would be staying while more permanent accommodation was found. Our home was a Nissen hut, built of curved corrugated iron like a half tube. Here was another miracle, an oscillating fan. A familiar enough object now, but completely new to me then.

The Nissen huts were in a park-like setting, with heavily watered grass dotted with tall palm trees. We ate in a communal dining room and were served by black Nubian waiters dressed in flowing white robes with red cummerbunds.

For schooling, at first, I went to the garrison school at Moascar. These were one-storey buildings with verandahs, surrounded by sand playgrounds.

The school buses were converted army trucks, with barely padded seats across the truck bed, reached by steps permanently attached to the rear.

Alone at boarding school

I QUICKLY discovered that the school was way behind compared with my schools in Frimley and Camberley. I had done most of the work already. In retrospect I should have told someone, but of course I was delighted instead. School was easy. This did me no good at all, for at the start of the summer term 1951 I was sent to board at The English School, Cairo. There, I was behind and had to have extra lessons in order to catch up.

Boarding school came as something of a shock. I had never been away from home alone before. I was quite lonely at first. At half term everyone went home for a week. Everyone, that is, except another boy and me. We were in the sick bay with tonsillitis. This, I think, was my most enjoyable period at the school. We were waited on hand and foot by Matron (who also gave us daily injections), and slept or played all day. A small luxury that sticks in my mind is the hot buttered toast that she fed us.

A trip to Aphrodite’s Isle

DURING THE summer break we went on holiday to Cyprus. We boarded the Empire Comfort at Port Said for the journey. The journey took about 24 long hours, but we eventually dropped anchor off Famagusta.

Empire Comfort moored next to HMS Chequers in Port Said. Comfort sailed according to the operational requirements of the Middle East Command. Military personnel, most of whom were taking ‘local’ leave to escape ‘the enervating heat’ of the Egyptian summer, were carried to Famagusta, Cyprus. The ship left Port Said on Tuesday at noon and reached the small Island harbor the next day at 08.00.

From the ship we were ferried to the dock in a landing craft and transferred to buses. These were wooden bodied, with glassless windows.

We climbed into the Troodos Mountains along barely surfaced roads. On the hairpin bends the buses had to reverse to the loose dusty, stony edges, with sheer drops beneath, to get round.

At last, in 1951, the family arrived at the Army's holiday camp in the pine forests at Troodos. ‘After the heat and sand of Egypt it was like heaven. The air was cool, and it was a real treat to sleep under blankets, instead of sweating on a sheet. The accommodation was in four-man tents amongst the trees, a bed in each corner and not much else,’ John remembers.

It was here that I first experienced fruit juice for breakfast and syrup poured over ice cream from the shop in the village. Everyday items now, but a luxurious treat at that time. The holiday itself was tame by today's standards; walking in the forest and a visit to the nearby village of Platres.

Returning to school after the summer break was much better.

Canal Zone ‘troubles’ start

TWO WEEKS into the term those of us from the Canal Zone were told that the Egyptian Government had abrogated the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, which had allowed the occupation of the Canal Zone by British military forces. We got out trunks up from the basement, hastily packed and were on our way by midday. We traveled in buses, each with an armed Egyptian police escort.

We were transferred to military buses and those of us traveling to the northern half on the Canal Zone were taken to the huge garrison on Fayed, on the western shore of the Great Bitter Lake. Here we were bedded down for the night on bare mattresses.

In Ismailia the next morning there was a large military presence. Every night there was the sound of gunfire, rather too close on one occasion when a bullet ricocheted off our balcony.

My parents slept with a Sten gun under their bed, and every soldier now carried a loaded gun when outside the military bases.

The suburb of Arishia, divided from the rest of the town by the railway, lived in a state of siege. The NAAFI shop had been burned down, and an emergency one was set up in a commandeered school, where we also went to a makeshift classes.

Lancashire Fusiliers fan out on patrol to capture the terrorists who had destroyed the NAAFI and to protect service families from further attacks.

The playground was on the roof, and we were guarded by soldiers armed with Bren guns in sandbagged emplacements at the corners of the roof. It was considered too dangerous to take us to the school at Moascar.

After a while things calmed down a little. But on 17 November two British army officers, armed with Sten guns, were going shopping with their families in Ismailia, when they were fired on. The two men were killed, and as a consequence all families were evacuated from Ismailia a few days later.

Tensions between the British and Egyptians increased and some service families decided to return to the UK.

Settled in Fayed

Fayed, the bleak, parched camp, which became Headquarters of Britain’s Middle East Land Forces after World War II.

WE WERE taken to Fayed, a vast British military area beside the Great Bitter Lake, halfway down the Suez Canal. We were initially accommodated in four-man tents, in the Royal Artillery camp where my father worked.

The tents didn't seem so luxurious this time. The toilets were just large holes in the ground, topped by seats and rough buildings. Meals, served by the cookhouse, consisted almost entirely of 'Pom' and Spam, that is powdered potato and a chopped meat loaf. This was because there was some difficulty in obtaining supplies due to the emergency situation.

An aerial view of the army camp in Fayed.

Later we moved to an area where the accommodation was in single-storey brick-built terraces, with meals taken communally in a place called Kensington Village. School here, too, lagged behind. I didn't mind, but it was to prove disastrous for my education later.

A young John Boon contemplates the food served at Kensington Village

Kote Camp compound road in Fayed.

There was a shopping area nearby, mostly run by locals, and dominated by a large NAAFI store. There was a shortage of coins (piastres or 'ackers'), so the NAAFI issued its own plastic coins.

'There was another shopping area across the road from the Senior NCO's Club on the shore of the Great Bitter Lake. This was a much more down-market affair with tiny scruffy shops sporting names such as Woolworth’s, Harrod's and Fifty Shilling Tailors'.

And if British families couldn’t get what they wanted in Harrods’s, there was a Selfridges store within walking distance!

The Boon children spent a lot of time at the Senior NCOs Club, set on a beach on the Great Bitter Lake. The water here was none too clean, but they didn't know any different and accepted it without question.

After a while the Boon family moved to Curragh Village, into our own three bedroom self-contained bungalow, still within the Fayed cantonment.

This was surrounded by a garden of pure sand, with a couple of raised beds and a border at the front which were flooded every night from a tap dispensing untreated water, supplied for the purpose. Indoors there was, to me, a miraculous piece of equipment, a large refrigerator. Ice cream did not seem to feature in the shops, but at last we were able to make our own, from a powdered product bought from the NAAFI store.

The other equipment was not so grand. The cooker was a flimsy paraffin fuelled affair and the 'honey-buckets' were still with us. And there was a constant smell of DDT, from the Flit guns that everyone used to combat the eternal flies and large brown cockroaches. When we weren't swatting them with wire mesh swats, which everybody also used extensively, that is.

A Holiday and then home

‘In 1952 we had another holiday in Cyprus, this time traveling in luxury on the small liner, Charlton Star.’

WO1 Boon of REME with John’s brother David enjoying a holiday in Cyprus in 1952.

AT LAST, in May 1953, it was time for us to return home. We boarded the troopship, 'HMT Empire Fowey, formerly SS Potsdam, at Port Said and headed westward. The voyage took about 10 days. I can recall the marathon eating sessions, with some of our group going through the whole menu. After all, it was free!

A brief stop at Valetta, Malta, and a few days later we were sailing up the Solent towards Southampton, a memorable experience. The brilliant green of the spring foliage after two and a half years of sand was amazing.

Aboard the Empire Fowey, the calmer waters of the Mediterranean, the Boon family head for home – and a Britain still experiencing rationing.

The Coronation took place soon after our arrival. Few people at that time had television sets, and a crowd of us spent the day watching a tiny black and white, gray really, screen in a neighbor’s house.

EDITOR’S NOTE: It wouldn’t be long before John Boon would return to Cyprus, this time in RAF uniform, based at Episkopi as the EOKA conflict drew to a close. His story can be found in the Cyprus section.

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