Roy Venables
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I lived at Fort Goldmohur from Aug 64 to Aug 66 and worked at Fort Morbut. We swam from the open beach almost every day for two years and scoffed at the notion of sharks until one day whilst visiting somewhere in the harbour, probably HMS Sheba, I was shown the stuffed and mounted head of a shark with jaws open, evidently caught from Aden Harbour itself.
I acquired a very deep suntan on the open Goldmohur Beach between the Italian Clup and the Goldmohur Club. We would have scorned any suncreams, sun hats or dark glasses, in the same way as we scorned the notion of sharks in the sea.
Mercifully, I did not get devoured but I have had to put myself in the hands of the medicos in recent years who puzzled over the sores and spots etc on my head which did not heal. The mystery was solved when, under questioning, I admitted to two years on the Aden beach. Ah the foolishness and carelessness of youth!
The Stim Wallahs would appear each day with portable closed wooden boxes of Stim, dripping with melting ice. After some months, we wondered where on earth they could be getting the ice so far from civilisation. Eventually we discovered they were in cahoots with our Chowkidar and had run an electric cable from his little lodge, which we paid for, buried it under rubble and rocks to their fine refrigerator nestling behind some boulders.
Our Sgts. Mess on the Elephants Back promontory, where the lighthouse was, looked down on the Goldmohur Club with shark net and club house below.
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Membership was open only to one of our members who was in the Royal Army Pay Corps as he was able to assist on the financial accounting. We swam off the open beach which did not worry us. We had no transport to Steamer Point except the ramshackle and intermittent VW minibus service. I think I can say that in two years no one was offered a lift by a passing Club member either to or from town.
Membership to the less salubrious but friendly Italian Club at the other end of the beach could be obtained, on application, for a fee naturally.
I pursued with little success one or two of the WRAC girls but if you got a date, other than the cinema there was literally nowhere to go because of the troubles. The WRAC quarters were off limits. The Sgts. Mess was off limits because the girl did not have the rank and the other members objected (that was the internal Army caste system at work). Locals were out of the question and European civilians largely swept by us.
The Regimental Sergeant Major sent for me following my attempt to bring a girl to our mess for innocent refreshment and I anticipated a roasting, assuming I had been reported. He asked me to sit down and quizzed me a bit and then quietly slid his Italian Club membership card across his desk for loan.
As a former squaddie with all the ignorance and prejudices of the uninformed youth of the early sixties, we had the impression that civilian officials and their offspring regarded themselves as a cut above us.
When I see "Jewel in the Crown" currently being repeated on TV here based upon the Raj Quartet by Paul Scott it has struck me that the attitudes between the British Castes of India was replicated in Aden, which was in fact the dying embers of the old colonial empire.
As we all know, the sun shone in Aden every day. We used to foregather (about 20 of us) for breakfast before setting off for work about 0630 each day. We were often grumpy due to over indulgence the night before. A new arrival, after he had been with us a while, got into the habit of breezing in to the usually quiet dining room and saying brightly "I see it's turned out nice again!". We thought this quite amusing for a while but he persisted with the remark until it was not so funny.
One day, he breezed in again as usual. He made his by now familiar jocular remark. There was a silence and then a colleague leapt to his feet from his meal and, with a roar, felled him with one mighty blow from the other side of the table.
On my last day in Aden a friend agreed to take some pictures of Aden for me. I was busy packing my kit and giving away clothing and bits and pieces and did not accompany the photographer. On the day of departure, one flew out in the evening and the day for us was not unlike what I imagine a prisoner at the end of his sentence goes through.
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The photographer with my little camera was a RAMC Sgt called Tony Warren-Nichols. If he could be tracked down (I have tried) he would, I imagine, have some interesting artifacts and recollections. He was a sort of Public Health inspector who gave lectures on cockroaches, latrine siting, food hygiene etc. In this role he visited all locations and units in the Middle East. When I looked at the views when I got to UK, I remember being a tad disappointed and wished I had gone on the pillion of his little Honda and done the job myself. I simply asked him to buzz around and take views as he saw fit and therefore I am not in every case sure as the view or the point from which pictures were taken.
In The Times on 15 Feb was the obituary to General Sir Charles Harington GCB,CBE,DSO,MC the C in C prior to Admiral LeFanu. Quite interesting. As Base Wallah soldiers we were not called upon to do anything very martial. However, we did have to guard the C in C`s residence when he was not in residence. If he was in, then the resident infantry battalion found the guard. As the troubles worsened, the Infantry did it all the time. We had to wear plimsolls so as to not disturb the household!
The House was reached by a road which rose with hairpin bends. One hot sweaty evening I received a complaint from the house to the effect that some vehicles were making excessive noise gear-changing etc as they negotiated these bends. I was ordered to detail a man to go and sit above the bend and note down the registration numbers of offending vehicles in order that the ADC could get hold of them via the Vehicle Registration Office on the morning following.
Later, as the troubles got worse, the guard became more beefed up and the infantry blokes did 72 hour stints. The ladies of the house then became disturbed when their gaze fell upon the poor squaddies performing their ablutions - quite necessary in a 72 hour stint. Engineers were sent for urgently to erect wicker work screens to hide the offending view.
Admiral Sir Michael Lefanu, on the other hand, was much liked. He was jovial and he liked to talk with sentries and the squaddie in the cinema queue for instance. ~ Roy Venables roynven@aol.com