Gogglebox

Gaaaawwwd, No, "M", I spent two years there at RAF Khormaksar in the 60's servicing these,








and even these





It was hot, humid and sweaty,





and the smell/stench from the causeway and the Bay which was only half a mile away is something you don't forget. What Married Quarters that there were were mostly on RAF Khormaksar. Married men, without their Wives, only served a year there, while those personnel that were Single served 2 years. The program doesn't even come close to portraying the conditions, heat, sand storms, flies [you had your own squadron of them], Bed Bugs, and the added protein of Weevils in your Weetabix and watered down milk, and you could burn your hands of the hot metal of aircraft.
Not a place to visit now or then.


You get the idea!!

 

Thanks, BH, but it's the guys who lie in "Silent Valley" in Aden who deserve the respect,




the rest of us who left Aden were glad to see the back of the place. At the end of my tour in Aden I was detached to RAF Eastleigh in Kenya for 3 months......which turned into 6 years there. That kind of made up for Aden.

 

Thanks, BH, I actually served 22 years in the rif raf mostly keeping my head down, working with guys who really were the real Heros. I was lucky enough to be close enough to see a real Hero at work trying to save some of his men, who were trapped in the City of Crater, who was this Man who became an Icon of all 3 Services,

Colin Mitchell c.1967
Nickname(s) Mad Mitch
Born 17 November 1925


Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Campbell Mitchell (17 November 1925 – 20 July 1996) was a British Army officer and politician. He became famous in July 1967 when he led the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in the British reoccupation of the Craterdistrict of Aden. At that time, Aden was a British colony and the Crater district had been taken over by nationalist insurgents. Mitchell became widely known as “Mad Mitch”. His reoccupation of the Crater became known as "the Last Battle of the British Empire". Although some observers questioned whether the Last Battle was ever worth fighting, the event marked the end of an era in British history and made Mitchell famous.

After leaving the British Army in 1968, Mitchell embarked on a career in politics. He was elected as a Member of the British Parliament in 1970 but stood down at the February 1974 general election. After subsequent involvement in a failed business venture he made his living until 1989 as a military consultant.

From 1989 until his death in 1996 he managed a charitable trust involved in the removal of land mines from former war zones.

Aden[edit]
Britain's Aden territory consisted of the Aden City Colony attached to Protectorates with a total land area similar to that of the UK. Within Aden City was a district known as the Crater. The Crater was the old part of the City.[15] According to Mitchell's autobiography, Crater was a "town of 80,000 inhabitants".[16] By 1967, the British position in Aden was coming under pressure from groups of armed Arab nationalists (who were competing for future power after the final British withdrawal), resulting in a counter-insurgency campaign known as the Aden Emergency.

In June 1967 the Argylls were due to take over operational control of the Crater from the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers. However, before this could happen, on 20 June Arab members of the locally recruited Aden Armed Police mutinied and seized the Crater in association with nationalist insurgents. Eight British soldiers from a transport unit were ambushed and killed by the mutineers. Other soldiers were killed in separate clashes. Three members of the Argylls, D company commander together with two privates, were killed when a patrol of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers they were accompanying was ambushed. All but one of the party was killed.

On 5 July 1967 Mitchell led a force that reoccupied the Crater district accompanied by 15 regimental bagpipers of the Argylls playing "Scotland the Brave"[17] and the regimental charge, "Monymusk".[18] Mitchell subsequently used what were described as “strong arm methods” to keep control of the Crater in the remaining months before British withdrawal.

The reoccupation itself was almost bloodless (one local was killed)[19] and Mitchell then used an integrated system of observation posts, patrols, checkpoints and intelligence gathering to maintain the Crater as a tranquil area while security elsewhere in Aden began to deteriorate.

However, allegations were made and admitted, of atrocities by Mitchell and the troops under his command. There were also allegations that the Argylls had been guilty of widespread looting.[19][20] The Argylls used the Chartered Bank building in the Crater as their headquarters and snipers stationed on its roof would shoot at anyone thought to represent a threat in the streets below. A BBC journalist wrote "once we stood together in Crater watching the Argylls stacking, as in a butcher's shop, the bodies of four Arab militants they had just shot and Mad Mitch said: 'It was like shooting grouse, a brace here and a brace there'." [21]

The imposition of "Argyll law" (as Mitchell described it) on the Crater endeared Mitchell to the media and to the British public. But it did not endear him to certain of his superiors in both the Army and the High Commission.[22]

Mitchell's critics stated that he was a publicity seeker and that the troops under his command lacked discipline. One High Commission official described the Argylls as "a bunch of Glasgow thugs" (a statement for which he later apologised).[23]

The reoccupation and subsequent control of the Crater district were controversial. The GOC Middle East Land Forces, Major-General Philip Tower, had feared that reoccupation of the Crater would ignite more disturbances. Tower (a veteran of the North African campaigns and Arnhem) also considered that undertaking a full reoccupation of the Crater was pointless given that British withdrawal from Aden was imminent. Tower had authorized a probe into the Crater to be led by Mitchell using the Argylls and other units. Mitchell used this authority to carry out the reoccupation. Tower later instructed Mitchell to "throttle back" on his operations within the Crater.[22]

Mitchell stated that he considered Tower’s approach to be “wet hen tactics”. The situation that developed was described in The Times as follows:[24]

“ Mitchell frequently appeared on television: a small, handsome man with a direct, pugnacious manner, speaking the robust, unminced words that the British had not heard from their army officers since the acceleration of the Imperial decline had begun nearly two decades before. Newspapers took him up as a popular hero, proudly bestowing upon him the sobriquet of 'Mad Mitch'. ”
The Crater reoccupation was carried out on Mitchell’s own initiative. Some MPs asked questions about this in Parliament. Tam Dalyell (Labour, West Lothian) asked whether it was true that: "Mitchell disobeyed operational and administrative orders of his senior officers during the recapture of the Crater".[25]

Mitchell himself later stated that he had been rebuked over the reoccupation by General Tower. The nature of this rebuke was explained by Defence Minister Denis Healey as follows:[26]

“ … the brigade commander thought it necessary to emphasize to Colonel Mitchell that the maintenance of law and order with minimum force leading to an orderly withdrawal from Aden with minimum casualties was the policy that had to be followed. ”


He was a superb Officer who went into Crater to rescue his men against the orders of his Senior Officers and certain Politicians. He went into Crater, taking no prisoners, and recovered his men who had been killed after they had run out of ammunition. I was lying nearby on the roof of a Hotel and saw him entering Crater under fire. He didn't get the recognition he deserved due to the politics at the time, but all servicemen who were in Aden at the time gave him their respect and not many will forget him. It's not a story that the Politicians want remembered and therefore not one that many know..........now, that was a real Hero.

 

Now you watching a real program, Martin