On My Way to Samarkand: Memoirs of a Travelling Writer

by Garry Douglas Kilworth

  This was not an attempt at humour. Like being angry when I was dead, it was meant to be ironic. Yes, we had joined the armed forces. Yes, we were ready to defend our country against attack by an enemy. Such was our job, though men do not join armies because they want to kill people, but often because they are in need of work. Aden was not our country. These people who we were killing, who were killing us, were defending their country and we were the aggressors, the enemy who had taken the land by force. Admittedly when we had first arrived in Aden it was a different time, different Britons with different mindsets, nearly two centuries previously. Right of conquest was then still an accepted rule throughout the world. This was not the nineteenth century though. We were now living in a world where colonisation was regarded as unacceptable. Yet, here we were, killing, being killed, in a land that did not want us. Why?

  With the hot season came sandstorms which covered our beds on the balcony with grit. It mattered little, since most of our time was spent at work or on sentry duty. One day we were told the hill on which our comcen stood was being attacked. Dissidents were apparently attempting to storm up the slope, but though we were lined up along the ridge with our weapons I didn’t see any of the enemy. As an NCO I had been given a Sten to use that day, a weapon that was notorious for jamming, but thankfully I didn’t have to use it. The army soon arrived and relieved us. Some swaddy with a Browning heavy machine gun slung over his shoulder nudged me out of the way with, ‘Leave this to the professionals, Corporal.’ I was happy to do so. This infantryman looked like Rambo, with his belt of bullets and huge HMG.

  Once or twice in the comcen I met with SAS men who went ‘up-country’, where the National Liberation Front was gaining ground and forming an army of some 25,000 men. There was talk that the colony might be invaded by this army, but since I was not privy to the secrets of generals I don’t know whether this was true or not. The SAS and their operations were known as the ‘keeni-meeni’, a Swahili phrase describing the slithering of a snake. These keeni-meeni included Fijians recruited by the British Army because their skin colouring was similar to that of the Aden local population and they could move among the Adenis more easily than could a European. One night one of these huge keeni-meeni Polynesians frightened the pants off me as he came out of the dark near our observation tower, silent as a ghost. With bandoliers of bullets criss-crossing his chest and carrying a machine gun he looked just like some South American revolutionary.

  Automatically I croaked, ‘Halt! Waqqaf!’

  ‘Hey, man, I’m on your side,’ he said, and a broad grin flashed across his face. ‘I’m your brother.’

  He was indeed.

  After that I have always had a soft spot for Fijians and when Annette and I visited the islands, much later in life, I found them to be among the most loyal of Queen Elizabeth’s subjects. In a bus queue on Fiji we were asked by the person in front, ‘When did you last see the Queen?’ The man was shocked when he heard we had not been to see our royal monarch, even though we lived ‘just forty miles away from Buckingham Palace’. ‘You should be ashamed,’ said the man, ‘I have seen the queen twice and I live thousands of miles away from her.’ Indeed, when we were there last, in the late 1990s, the Queen’s profile was still on their stamps and her portrait on their money, despite the fact that Fiji had not only gained independence a long time ago but actually left the Commonwealth too.

  On 5 June 1967 there was another distraction for the Egyptian troops in the Yemen: their country had begun a war with Israel. This was the six-day Arab-Israeli war. The local Arabs in Aden were cock-a-hoop on the first day of the war, yelling at us that Israel was about to be wiped from the map. ‘The Yahudi will all be killed!’ they shouted, as we walked around the town, or drove through dangerous areas in Land Rovers, ‘Then we will do the same to you!’ Quite the reverse happened of course. Within two days the Egyptian, Syrian, Jordanian and Iraqi air forces had been shot out of the sky by the Israeli Air Force. Within two more days the combined Arab land force assault had been halted, encircled and smashed. Two more days, and it was all over. The Israelis had inflicted disastrous losses on the armies of four countries and established themselves as the major military power in the region, with far-reaching consequences that continue today.

  Our Adeni Arabs were devastated, as they would be again when Saddam Hussein was defeated both times in the years to come. The military optimism of the Arab world has always been too high for its own good. Much later, when we lived in Hong Kong, the first Iraq war was about to take place. The Reverend Norman Jones, a close friend and the vicar of Christchurch Kowloon Tong, held a peace vigil the night before the ‘Mother of All Battles’. He got a call from local Muslims threatening him if he did not call off his vigil. They said, ‘We want this war to take place. We want to see the Americans defeated.’

  Every time there is a conflict between the Arab world and the West, the former believe their troops are going to be gloriously victorious. I think they still live in the time of Saladin, who was indeed a great warrior and defeated Christian armies with ease, but those times have long gone.

  Towards the end of my time in Aden, 1 Parachute Regiment and 42 Commando arrived to oversee the withdrawal of thousands of troops. The aircraft carrier HMS Eagle stood out off Steamer Point, in the bay, ready to use its Sea Vixen aircraft in the final days.

  However, earlier in the year the local Aden Armed Police had mutinied and shot down eight unarmed British soldiers from a transport unit. So far as I can recall, there were no reprisals and the assassins went unpunished. The Royal Northumberland Fusiliers also lost men shot in separate incidents and armed dissidents finally took complete control of Crater. We in Steamer Point were horrified to learn that an enclosed town of 80,000 inhabitants in the middle of Aden was now in insurgent hands. Gunmen and bombers could slip out of Crater at night and assassinate men in the streets, before running back to safety. Lorries with mortar tubes on the back could drive here, there and everywhere, firing mortars into our midst. It was a situation that the authorities, including General Tower and the High Commission, seemed willing to accept. Colonel Colin Campbell Mitchell had recently arrived in Aden with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and he was having none of it,

  ‘Mad’ Mitch was a soldier through and through. He was incensed that the politicians and generals were happy to accept the deaths of the fusiliers without retaliation. He requested permission to send in a small reconnaissance patrol to ‘assess the situation in Crater’ and this was granted. Mitchell used this authority to mount a major attack on the enclosed town. Driving his Land Rover at the head of his regiment, with fifteen bagpipers playing ‘Scotland the Brave’, Mad Mitch led the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders through the only narrow pass into Crater and swiftly reoccupied the whole town. It was said to be the ‘last battle of the British Empire’. Only one man was killed, a dissident. Colonel Mitchell was then chastised by General Tower, by politicians and by the High Commission. He was never awarded any medals for his time in Aden, though colonels before him who had seen far less action were given OBEs. The media loved him, his men loved him, and we loved him, but he was afterwards forced to resign from the army.

  Politicians and diplomats send forces out to fight their stupid battles and then expect them to stand still and be shot. Where oh where do they get their brains from? And where is their loyalty to those they use? None of us wanted to be in Aden while the politicians were safe on their fat bottoms in Parliament, but they expected their soldiers to police a totally hostile territory without defending themselves. They disgusted me then and they disgust me still.

  After we left Aden the National Liberation Front took over, not the sheikhs that the government had wanted to see in power. If Mad Mitch made a mistake by going into Crater and ensuring the safety of the colony while we made ready to leave, then the British Government made a massive mistake in the first place, keeping forces behind in the colony for two years, allowing their citizens and soldiers to be assassinate
d because of idiotic undemocratic political aims which in the end came to nothing. What a waste of men’s lives, both Arab and European. What a stupid, insane waste.

  I had the seeds of the pacifist planted in my soul at that point, though admittedly I did cheer with others when Colonel Mitchell and his regiment marched past our lines. The reoccupation of Crater was almost bloodless. A single dissident was shot when he fired on the Argylls. What a fuss the generals and politicians made of a battle that was not a battle, but merely a show of force. Over a hundred British servicemen and civilians had needlessly been killed up to that point. Two of my colleagues were among those who never came home.

  In the 123 SU observation tower one night, just before I left, I was standing guard with a friend when we saw a stream of fireflies coming towards us. The ‘fireflies’ began smacking into the base of the tower and travelling up its length. It took but a second to realise we were being fired on and that these insects were tracer shells from a machine gun. I fell flat on my face. My companion had to lie on top of me, since with all our equipment there was no other space. Unfortunately his bottom stuck above the parapet of the tower, only twelve inches high.

  ‘I’m going to get shot in the arse!’ he screamed. ‘I’m going to get my arse shot off!’

  The lad didn’t get his cheeks drilled, but he was pretty flustered by the time the shooting stopped. Later, when I was again posted to the MOD, he was there on my watch. He and his wife met with me and Annette several times and the incident was retold and retold.

  ‘It was your husband’s fault,’ he said to Annette. ‘Down in a flash he was, leaving my buttocks to be blown away.’

  Annette, remembering my shameful action in the street of bulls in Germany, replied, ‘Garry’s always had a strong sense of survival.’

  123 SU left Aden at the end of October, 1967.

  We were one of the last units to leave the land that was to become South Yemen. Some wags had hauled a broken-down car on to the top of Shamsan, the peak of the volcano that was Crater, and left it balanced on a pinnacle. We were not sent home, as we expected to be, but on to Bahrain, to finish our tours of duty. While we were in Bahrain it was Ramadan and the local cannon was fired daily to signal that sunset had arrived. When that gun went off every day most of the men of 123 SU, late of the Aden Emergency, dropped to the floor instinctively. Then we got to our feet a minute or two later, sheepishly remembering that we were no longer in a place where they were trying to kill us, but in another place where they might want to kill us one day but hadn’t started yet.

  While in Bahrain, two other lads and I rode stallions bareback in the sheikh’s desert races. My months at the Pear Tree Riding School outside Uxbridge were put to a severe test. None of us came anywhere near winning our race. I was quite happy to finish still clinging to the mane of a magnificent snorting beast that must have been thoroughly contemptuous of my efforts to bring him glory.

  14. Ministry of Defence (again!)

  Imagine my unbounded joy on my arrival back in England to learn that I had once again been posted to the MOD London, that hated place I had escaped from just a few years previously. This time I was prepared to wait it out, knowing I would be posted within six months or so. I had put down Cyprus as my first choice of overseas posting, with Singapore second and Hong Kong third. They ignored all three and told me my next posting would be the island of Malta. Ah, what the hell, Malta was as good as anywhere else and I’d never been there.

  Annette was staying with her parents. I walked up the garden path in Church Road, Shoeburyness, to be greeted by two small children, one with a smile on his face. Richard was now five years of age and I was thrilled to see he remembered me after a whole year’s absence. Not so my little daughter, a pugnacious curly-headed blonde who stared at me with frank hostility and said, ‘I’m goin’ to tell my dad of you!’

  ‘I am your dad,’ I said gently.

  She stared at me for a long while, thoughts going round in her three-year-old head, before giggling and running to fetch her mum.

  Annette came out of the house looking as lovely as ever.

  We were quite shy with one another at first, having been apart for so long. There had been no phone calls between Annette and me. Telephoning had been out of the question, unless an emergency occurred. Thankfully no such crisis had arisen during my absence. Such has been the progress in communication media to date that I have to say hand-written letters were in those days our only form of exchange. So we went for a walk, held hands like young sweethearts, and talked about those thousands of little things that sweethearts talk about.

  Once we had set up home again, this time in Shenfield, with easy access to London and work, things got a little difficult. Probably Annette expected life to be one way and I another. It was nothing terrible. There were no rows or heated arguments, but there was a sense of disappointment in the air. I think I had been dreaming for a year of how things would be once I got home and Annette had been doing the same, but our separate dreams did not dovetail for some reason. Once we learned we were going to Malta, everything changed for the better. We both walked about with sparkling eyes, me knowing I would not have to catch a dirty train to work every day and Annette knowing she would not have to be just a housewife, which she found very dull.

  Richard attended a local school for a few months in Shenfield. Chantelle went to nursery.

  After the lease on the flat had expired, while I was still in Aden, Annette had been given married quarters at RAF Debden, an RAF police dog training unit in the north of Essex, near Saffron Walden. There she had been robbed by a woman she trusted, her next-door neighbour, who was subsequently charged by the police. There was also an accident in the van, when a car driver ran into her while she was doing a three-point turn, but thankfully no one was hurt. Richard had not been happy at school there and was pleased to get away from it. We went in the van and collected some stuff and then that chapter was closed.

  At least while we were at Shenfield we were fairly near our parents and saw quite a lot of them, but our excitement with our new overseas posting was such we could not wait to get there.

  15. RAF Luqa

  We arrived in Malta in the autumn of 1968. The Americans were still having a hell of time of it in Vietnam, while a huge peace movement was sweeping the USA, but I was in a tranquil backwater of the Mediterranean and now far from the bullets and bombs.

  At first we again did not have enough points for a married quarter and took a flat in Sliema, near to the harbour. Valetta city was just a bus ride away and though Malta is a small island there were plenty of places for us to visit. The flat was on the third floor of a four-storey building and the landlord was not a very friendly man. One day Annette shook the crumbs from the tablecloth from the balcony at the back. Unfortunately there was a side plate still in the cloth, which went skimming out on the wind like a discus, hurtling out then down towards the landlord who was tending his tomato plants. It narrowly avoided decapitating him and smashed into the wall of a neighbour’s house. The landlord indignantly jerked up to see who was throwing missiles at him. By that time Annette had ducked behind the curtain, so he never ever did find out who launched a deadly plate at his head while he wasn’t looking.

  We loved the evening promenade along Sliema harbour, where the Maltese, young and old, would dress up in their best clothes and simply stroll along the water’s edge greeting neighbours. We too joined these light-hearted people in their evening walk.

  There was much we loved about Malta. The people were friendly and had some very British ways. (After all, Malta was the ‘George Cross’ island, the medal awarded to it for the stoical bravery of its people during the Second World War.) The buses were gaily painted in gaudy colours, with Catholic altars just inside the entrance doorway so that Mary could assist the driver. Many churches had two towers, each with a separate clock, one showing the right and Christian time, the other showing the wrong time in order to confuse the Devil. English money was used.
The people loved their fishing in the harbour and we would walk by a long line of rods each day. The beaches were golden sand and the water was only slightly murky. Fireworks were let off at regular intervals – any excuse was used for a display – and they were mostly bangers that were more like sticks of dynamite than squibs. The whole island used to judder during a festival. Maltese butcher’s shops displayed the words ENGLISH BUTCHERY, which looked like a political statement.

  As with Singapore and other RAF camps abroad, local men were recruited and worked alongside us in the comcen. I made a good friend in a Maltese guy called Fred Azzopardi, who tried to teach me the Maltese language. Maltese is a mixture of Arabic, Italian, English and local words. Fred would amuse me when I heard him talking to one of his friends on the phone, and English phrases kept coming out. ‘Yabba-yabba-yabba-yabba safe as houses, mate,’ was a typical sentence that he might use, the yabba being Arabic-Italian of course. I could recognise some of the Arabic words from my years in Aden, but I never got much beyond yelling, ‘Fred, isma ha!’ Which meant, ‘Fred, come over here!’

  ~

  We had been on camping holidays with Dave Thompson and his family in England on several occasions. Dave was another ex-Boy Entrant and we had been stationed together afterwards. He and his wife and kids were posted to Malta too. We all went off to Gozo, a smaller island off Malta where Calypso had her cave in Homer’s Odyssey. We camped on the beach below Calypso’s cave for several days, washing in the sea and getting thoroughly tanned and salty, then when the time came to leave, tried to get into a hotel for a meal. They turned us away at the door. We looked and smelled like tramps. The kids were incensed as we had promised them all ice creams, but there was nowhere else on Gozo to get such delicacies, so home we trudged, via the ferry.

  One of my co-workers in the comcen was a young man who had converted to the Mormon faith. Neil was an Englishman with a nice family, who had been persuaded into the belief of the Church of the Latter-day Saints. We became firm friends. He did not preach to me and I wouldn’t have listened anyway, but we both shared a love of the outdoors. Once we climbed a cliff on the north side of the island and slept overnight in a cave full of spiders and bats in order to see the sunrise. We would take our families and camp on the beach using a bed sheet and broomsticks to make a tent for the children. Another outing was not so clever. We decided to canoe right around the island of Malta. I’m not sure of the distance, but we thought we could do it in a day.