The two-hour journey through the stark and barren mountain valley exposed them to the poverty and basic living conditions of the few villages through which they passed. Most male adults, they observed, carried a rifle of sorts, subsistence relying upon the sparse cultivation of a few vegetables and the tending of goats. It was an insight for Conley, the huge divide between the affluent West and the austere poverty of the Yemeni tribesmen they came across that day making a lasting impression upon him, in the light of which the emergence of al-Qaeda proved no real surprise.
They saw more Yemenis, men of the local militia who manned an ancient mud-walled fort which could have been straight out of the novel Beau Geste. This rag-tag band was of dubious reliability and loyalty. The Royal Engineers’ tented camp was close by, and their hosts advised them that their neighbours frequently fired their guns in celebration and were not averse to occasionally shooting up the camp by way of amusement. Several of the soldiers’ tents had bullet holes in consequence, and their more exposed facilities, such as the toilet blocks, were protected by armour plating.
The officers in the party enjoyed a very pleasant lunch in the officers’ mess; even in this remote and forlorn spot the regimental silver was on the table. On the other hand, the naval officers detected a degree of scepticism regarding the building of a road which led to nowhere, the task which the engineers were engaged upon. After lunch they were given a tour of the camp and its outposts before heading back towards Aden. The return journey was memorable, the army drivers showing off by leaving the road and tearing over the rocky scrub to hoots of indignation from their passengers.
After nine days in Aden undertaking self-maintenance and exerting a naval presence, Cambrian sailed for the island of Abd al Kuri, which is situated about sixty miles west of Socotra off the Horn of Africa. The island was at that time part of the Aden Protectorate and a British possession, and the ship’s mission was to conduct surveys of beaches on its northern coast. The purpose of this was to establish whether the beaches would be suitable for landing materials in order to construct a military airfield as part of the putative but, in the event, impracticable strategy of providing RAF air cover of the Indian Ocean. This policy was intended to compensate for the demise of the strike carriers by providing a circle of airfields around its periphery but, needless to say, it never got off the starting blocks.
The island of Abd al Kuri is about fifteen miles long and three miles wide; with mountains rising to about two thousand feet, falling away to a narrow and desolate coastal plain with few trees and little vegetation. Although the crew saw no sign of human habitation, fires were spotted at night on the eastern extremity, indicating that there were members of the local population about. The Cambrian first approached the more exposed southern coast where the British cargo ship Ayrshire lay beached. Two months earlier this eight-year-old ship had struck an uncharted rock to the south of the island and her master had deliberately driven her ashore in a sinking condition. The passengers had been lifted off, but her crew was still onboard and Dutch salvage tugs had arrived to patch her up and pull her off before the onset of the southwest monsoon.
The Cambrian’s captain and several of the crew visited the stricken vessel. Clearly, the warship’s presence was welcomed, as some of the Ayrshire’s crew were becoming agitated about their prolonged isolation on such a remote island. The Ayrshire’s master offered Commander Jenkin any of the cargo which was transportable and of use. Two days later, Cambrian having anchored off the more sheltered northern shore of the island, a working party was landed and crossed the island to the Ayrshire to see what sort of loot they could acquire. On the way back, the party left a trail of discarded goods as the return traverse across the hot and rugged interior of the island proved too much for them. Nevertheless, a large Persian rug survived the land crossing, only to be lost into the sea on being hoisted aboard; after the strenuous efforts to get it thus far, it was observed that some of the raiding party were almost reduced to tears. The fate of the Ayrshire herself was no better for, sadly, the Dutch salvage attempt was not successful and she became a total loss.
While this diversion was in progress, surveying had begun on a beach on the northwest side of the island which was considered suitable for landing craft. The survey technique involved deploying the ship’s whaler and taking hand lead-line soundings on the run into the shoreline, each sounding being fixed by observing the angles between three fixed and known points ashore. These angles were measured using a sextant horizontally and back onboard the destroyer were carefully and accurately transferred to a chart. However, the method suffered from being difficult to execute in a small whaler rocking in an ocean swell, and required both practice and time to accomplish successfully.
Conley learned something of its difficulties when on the third day of work he joined the survey team. After only two hours of surveying, the whaler worked too close inshore, where she was caught up and swamped by an incoming roller. With a saturated and defective engine the boat was beached, Cambrian was informed of the whaler’s plight by radio, and her sodden crew awaited the ship’s motor cutter to tow the whaler back to the ship. Offshore the odd shark could be seen, while the beach itself was littered with millions of dead blowfish forming a spiky obstruction at the high-water mark. With the waterlogged whaler baled out and towed back to the ship for repairs by the motor cutter, Conley and company were left ashore until finally assisted by some of the ship’s temporary Royal Marines detachment (embarked to assist in the survey), who arrived in an inflatable to return them to the ship late that afternoon, most of them badly sunburned after being exposed on the beach for several hours.
This incident ended the survey. Enough data had been collected to verify the beach was indeed suitable for landing craft but that was the end of the matter. Abd al Kuri was in due course ceded to Yemen but in later years and in light of subsequent events, Conley often considered that had Britain retained the territory and built an airfield on it, how important it would have become in supporting both operations in the Persian Gulf and the protection of merchant shipping against piracy.
After leaving the island Cambrian made a rendezvous with HMS Eagle and her escorts, being assigned the duty of plane guard. The purpose of this was soon made crystal-clear, for very shortly after taking up her station on the carrier’s quarter, one of Eagle’s Scimitar strike fighters experienced engine failure and the pilot ejected. He was quickly rescued by helicopter but Cambrian’s motor cutter, under Conley’s charge, was lowered to recover one of the Scimitar’s wings which was floating nearby. Unfortunately, the attempt proved futile, though they did pick up the pilot’s helmet, a disconcerting experience since, at the time, they had no way of knowing whether the pilot was under it.
The following day Conley and his fellow midshipman who had served in Eagle were transferred by helicopter to the carrier to witness flying operations. The twenty-four hours the two young men spent aboard the carrier proved exciting, as from a grand vantage point they watched the Vixens and Buccaneers landing onboard in the dusk and darkness. Their pleasure was ruined after being spotted by the shipwright officer, who lambasted them for their incompetence in developing the damage control shutdown routes mentioned earlier. They also ran into a pilot instructor from their Dartmouth days who had impressed upon them the very high casualty rate incurred in flying Sea Vixens. Dressed in full flying gear and about to climb into his Vixen cockpit, he looked distinctly tensed up.