$ff2              Extract from "Soldier Blue" my service life 

$fff                            by Mick Domoney


$eff             There's quite a bit of body to the water today
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$aff
It's  May 1967 and I'm 18 years old and serving in Aden, 16 Squadron RAF
Regiment was protecting the main airfield at RAF Khormaksar.  The Flight
Commander  asked  for  volunteers  to  go on detachment "up country" and
seeing  as  there  was  over  a  hundred  incidents  a day in Aden (both
factions  of  local antagonists where currently in the active process of
reclaiming their bit of the British Empire back) I thought it would be a
nice  experience,  after  all I'd joined the RAF Regiment to travel, erm
and I thought it might be a bit quieter up country.

British Camp Mukerius was sited 7000 feet up in the Jebel (mountains) on
the  border  between  Aden  and  North Yemen, its purpose was to house a
radar  unit  that kept watch over the border, our purpose was to protect
it.   We  lived in tents whose walls were lined with sandbags to protect
us  from  the  mortar  bombs  which  arrived  nightly,  courtesy  of the
Communist  Guerillas  assisting  the struggle going on in Aden.  I could
tell at a glance that this place was not going to be quiet.

The  water  for the camp came from an ancient well in the nearby village
of  Mukerius  and the water was just drinkable, to get the water, once a
week  the  airstrip fire wagon escorted by some of us regiment lads in a
landrover would leave camp and drive to the well, where, a fireman would
drop  a  hose  down the deep dark crumbling hole in the ground and water
would  be  pumped  into  the tank on the fire tender.  We all noticed as
weeks passed that the water became more and more horrible to taste, then
whilst  doing  a  weekly  filling  something  blocked  the  hose and the
precious  water  ceased  to  flow, so, a fireman was lowered down the 60
feet  deep  1000  year  old  well to see what was blocking the hose.  He
spotted  it  straight away but in the dark it took him some time to work
out what it was, it was a dead arab.


           Per Ardua                                  MikDom

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