Last Man Standing

Last Man Standing
by
Peter Hinchcliffe C Coy PWO West Yorks

I was a 19 year old, one year short service commission 2/Lt (A volunteer for National Service being domiciled in Northern Ireland where there was no ‘call-up’)

In late October1956 the Battalion-I, West Yorks, embarked on the Empire Fowey for Suez, accompanied by the Royal Scots. I had a family connection to the West Yorkshires-my grandfather had been RSM of the 2nd Battalion, then commissioned, awarded the MC at the Somme and retired as a Major (QM). My most vivid memory of that voyage was hearing the Leader of the Opposition, Hugh Gaitskell, virtually urging servicemen not to fight in an unjust colonial war-this was a broadcast made when we were two days steaming out of Port Said with hostilities under way as the Paras and Marines were assaulting the beaches. The troops were very fed up with this opportunist politicisation of a conflict in which we might lose our lives.

In the event the fighting had ground to a halt by the time we landed. A ceasefire was in place and the British occupied Port Said with the French looking after Port Fuad across the Canal. I was with B Company (Major Willoughby-Foster) and we had a chunk of Port Said to control.

Peter in Dhala 1964

The Company ‘Mess’ was established in an opulent flat near Simon Artz store- familiar to thousands of tourists before and since the campaign. The owners had fled and may indeed have been members of the large, generally affluent, Greek community many of whom were evacuated. I am afraid that we young soldiers were not too scrupulous about the rightful ownership of valuables and a number of items were ‘liberated’ from the apartment. My Company Commander was envious of a Lieca camera I had acquired and persuaded me to swap it for an elephant gun he claimed to have at home in the UK. I agreed (after all he was a Major), handed over the camera but never saw the gun.

As we started active patrolling of the area the resistance to our presence, egged on by the rhetoric of Cairo Radio, increased. There were a number of demonstrations, invariably peaceful and dispersed easily. More serious were the occasional shootings but I don’t remember the battalion taking any casualties. The Soviet Consul’s house was in our battalion area. Intelligence reported that he was helping to encourage and possibly arm the local resistance. His meals were take aways from a nearby restaurant, his family was not around and so to ‘punish’ him we used to seize the food en route from the take away, search it for incriminating material and when it was nice and cold, allow it to be delivered. Childish but we thought it fun to tweak the Bear’s tail from time to time. I believe he protested through Diplomatic channels but we were never informed officially.

We were told that we would be leaving Port Said and handing over to a UN force, mostly Scandinavian troops. They arrived in mid-December and the process of withdrawal started. Just a few days before we were due to go-having covered the final pull out-a young subaltern, 2/Lt Tony Moorhouse (of ’Moorhouse Jams’ in Leeds) was kidnapped by the Egyptian resistance. Frantic house-to-house searches were unsuccessful. We were subsequently told that he had been put in a large rubbish container outside a house .As the searching troops closed in on the area his captors fled, not to return for several days; by which time Tony had died of suffocation. We did not get this news until we were at sea, about 12 hours steaming away from Egypt. There was an ugly mood on the troop ship and wild talk of seizing the bridge, turning the boat around, and mounting a punitive expedition to revenge our comrade’s death. The truth is that we must bear some of the responsibility for what happened as the rubbish container was missed during the search-assuming of course that the account that we got (presumably from UN or Egyptian sources) was true.

On the morning of 22 December my platoon covered the battalion’s withdrawal. I was the last British soldier to leave Egyptian soil after the militarily successful but politically disastrous Operation Musketeer. We were too late to get home for Christmas and had a rather miserable one on board. Our arrival in Southampton was a sour occasion. HM Customs went to town on us and a lot of items were confiscated including a Pouf I had bought (not nicked) from Simon Artz. It was described as ‘offensive’ by the Custom’s official as it was stuffed with rather grotty paper. Major Willoughby Foster talked the camera through but the whole attitude of the Customs was hostile reflecting much of the public mood on the Suez escapade. It was not a grateful nation to which the boys came marching home!

Peter Today

My’ last man standing’ withdrawal from Port Said, a tiny foot note in history, is one which I proudly relate to my students of Modern Middle East History at Edinburgh University. It was some what ironic that this episode gave me a great interest in (and eventually much liking for) the Arabs and the Arab world. 5 years later I was back in Aden as a Political Officer and again came across the PWO Regiment of Yorkshire-an amalgamation of the East and West Yorks in the Radfan campaign. And 30 years after Aden folded I finally finished my career in the Diplomatic Service having been Ambassador in Kuwait and later Jordan. Had I missed Suez would I have sought a career in the Middle East? I think not. Thank you Sir Anthony Eden!

Peter Hinchcliffe.
February 2005