All travel to Aden town and the club was by taxi. The cost was not high but the driving habits of the Arab drivers were maddening. No Arab driver I met could cruise at a constant speed. It was a case of foot on accelerator to speed up and foot off to slow down. The continuous forward and rearward force on one’s body, about every three seconds, sometimes turned annoyance into hysterical laughter. Vehicle maintenance was poor and only when the hooter failed was a vehicle considered seriously unserviceable because it was used constantly, even on deserted stretches of road.
The only driver I encountered who could cruise was a fellow from India who had spent time in Britain. He complained about Aden drivers. He said that in India nobody obeyed the rules of the road so every driver knew where he stood. In Britain everyone obeyed the rules so, again, everybody knew precisely where they stood; but in Aden some obeyed and others did not which made driving plain dangerous.
There was a peculiarity about shopkeepers in Aden; they could spot a Rhodesian way off and would start shouting, “Hello Rhodesia. Hello Rhodesia, come see my shop." How they distinguished us from the RAF people we could not tell. Our clothing was the same as our RAF counterparts, we wore the same wristwatches and sandals yet even ex-RAF Brits serving in the RRAF were immediately identified as Rhodesians.
One particular shopkeeper called Smiley gained most of our business because he had the best shop in town. I was there one afternoon when the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, even to this day, came gliding through the door. Dressed in white and obviously Eurasian, everything about this tall lady was so absolutely perfect that I wondered if I was looking at an angel. Moments later, her husband dressed in white slacks and jacket, came in. He was impossibly handsome and so neat despite the heat that I felt doubly sure that God had sent down His angels—but why to Aden?
When the couple, whose English-speaking voices and accents matched their looks, left the shop to return to their ship, I could not remember why I had come into the shop. Smiley, realising I was in a tizzy over the couple, laughed and told me that they were film stars from India who stopped over in Aden from time to time on their many sea cruises to the USA and Europe.
Having been brought back to earth, I remembered that I had come to buy something to take home to Beryl. One item I bought was an elaborately painted, hand-operated sewing machine called a Lion, a direct copy of the Singer sewing machine. Yvonne Stajer, Beryl’s sister, eventually took this machine to Canada where it is still rated as a good collector’s item.
Smiley talked me into looking at some special German brassières that he said were tops in women’s underwear. Knowing no better, I took him at his word and looked at them; but I had no idea what size to take. He was gesturing cup size with his hand when I noticed an RAF wife in the shop who was about Beryl’s build. Much to my embarrassment Smiley called the woman over and I left with two pairs of bras and a set of seven knickers embroidered for every day of the week. When I gave these to Beryl she laughed, saying the knickers would not fit a ten-year-old; but she said nothing about the bras. For years they remained amongst her underclothing until, I guess, she found someone to give them to, unused!
We were instructed to attend an Officers’ Dining-in Night that was quite unlike any I had known in Rhodesia. There were four RAF squadrons on base together with all the supporting services; so about a hundred officers sat down in full mess dress at superbly laid tables. Even before the main course was over, large quantities of salt tablets, ever present in bowls on the dining tables, were being thrown up into the fast rotating overhead fans that propelled them around the room like shotgun pellets. Next came little balls that exploded when thrown at any surface offering moderate resistance. Hilarious laughter, flying tablets, bangs and smoke filled a room that seemed more like a Goon Show set than a gathering of Her Majesty Officers. I must say we Rhodesians found it great fun, probably because such behaviour would never have been condoned at home.
We received our flight briefings in the Station Operations Room where the air-conditioning was so cold that having to return to the hot air outside was like walking into a blast furnace. Doctors had told us that going from cold into the heat was more likely to bring on flu than moving from hot to cold, but none of us was any worse off for the twice daily Ops Room visits.
The first briefing was for those of us who were new to the Aden Protectorate. This was for an orientation cruise up the eastern coast to the Oman border, along the northern border with Saudi Arabia, down the western border with Yemen then out to Pemba Island in the Red Sea.
Along the route the features we would use in the following days were pointed out. Radar-controlled anti-aircraft guns along the Yemeni border presented a threat which necessitated both height and distance separation, which we plotted on our maps as we cruised by.
The sheer height of the rugged mountains running along the north and west region impressed me more than I had expected. Steep slopes with tumble-down rocks and narrow ravines running into dry twisting wadis gave way to lush green agricultural strips between the mountains’ edge and the dry desert. Beyond the green, the dry watercourses followed haphazard lines that dissipated and were lost on barren sand. Clusters of mud-structured buildings were on every prominent hill adjacent to the green belts. Building on mountain foothills was to gain relief from high day temperatures and freezing cold air that settled over the desert floor at night.
When we were issued with our maps, we were instructed to mark the boundaries of ‘Prescribed Areas’. The governor-general of Aden had to sanction these as ‘No Go Areas’ for all living souls, animals included. Any sign of life within a Prescribed Area demanded immediate Offensive action with air weapons best suited to terrain and target.
Along with our maps, we were issued with cards in English and Arabic that the RAF nicknamed ‘gooly chits’. In the event of coming down beyond secure locations, a pilot was to hand his gooly chit to the first person he encountered. The chit offered a £10,000 sterling reward for returning a pilot, alive, to any British authority. However, there was a problem with this. The Yemeni Government offered twice this amount for any British serviceman brought in, whether dead or alive. We heard some terrible stories about mutilated bodies of downed pilots being dragged for all to see through the streets of Sana, capital of Yemen.
Some specially trained Army and Air Force men assigned to roam within and beyond the Prescribed Areas were employed to find the locations of the communist-backed terrorists who were waging a war of independence against Britain. These specialists were also highly trained to conduct forward air control (FAC) of strikes by bombers and fighter-bombers against enemy targets.
We had been told of these individuals who spent long, dangerous periods in the desert turning them into pretty strange characters who needed to return to base from time to time to regain some level of sanity in safe and civilised surroundings. I saw two of these men whose skin was almost black where their Arab clothing had not given their otherwise white skin protection from the sun. They were on recall for six weeks of total rest and recuperation. They seemed to stick to themselves and their eye movements and physical actions made it clear that they were ‘different’.
From time to time the special agents, known as Air Liaison Officers (ALO), called for strikes within Prescribed Areas and sometimes as punitive actions against headmen who were known to be assisting terrorists. It was easy enough to respond to calls for air actions against terrorists, but punitive strikes against headmen required a great deal of preparation. When any headman had been identified as having assisted terrorists, the British Governor-General had to approve punitive action before it was taken.