Perim Island
Diplomatic Wireless Station (British Eastern Relay Station)
When British and Italian Somaliland joined together to form the present day Somalia a new location was needed for the Diplomatic Wireless Station (DWS) transmitters that had been near Berbera. The selected location was Perim. Early in the summer of 1964 there was a terrorist attack on the DWS facility, which luckily did not cause too much damage. Following this attack a platoon of infantry from the 1st Bn The East Anglian Regiment, the British garrison battalion in Aden, was sent to guard the facility.
​
​
These two photographs above date from July 1964 and were taken on different days showing the arrival of the twice-weekly DC3 of Aden Airways bringing in fresh food and other supplies for the DWS personnel, the platoon, the lighthouse staff and the few others on the island. The aircraft were also used for the routine changeover of personnel. The black and white photograph shows the arrival of an Aden Airways DC3. All civil aircraft were met by the Inspector of the Armed Police who can be seen in the bottom right-hand corner of the black & white photo.
The colour photograph shows stores being off-loaded onto two DWS Landrovers, with the personnel in the foreground, civilian and military, waiting to board the aircraft.
This is the same Aden Airways DC3 registered VR-AAN that was destroyed in mid-air by an assassin's bomb on 22nd November 1966 north of Aden. All 30 persons on board were killed, including the crew. check out the Aden Airways website for more detail.
You will have noticed that all the soldiers are in 'bare buff' i.e. shirtless. During Ingleby Jefferson’s visit for a fortnight in July 1964 the GOC (Major General Cubbon) came to visit the detachment. The Beaver in which he was travelling did a circuit of the island – standard procedure for a military aircraft or helicopter in order to allow the detachment to meet the aircraft as it was landing.
The driver not being immediately available Ingleby self-drove the one and only Landrover at speed down to the airstrip, being somewhat surprised to see the GOC, the only passenger, get out of the plane! Ingleby cannot remember but he was probably shirtless.
The colour photo below was taken by Ingleby Jefferson in 1964. The four huts at the south east corner of the 'v' are the ones in my photo. The ones at the back look to have been more temporary structures. Talking of temporary structures the cookhouse-cum-dining room of our otherwise tented camp was made out of the packing cases in which some of the DWS equipment had arrived.
You get some idea of that from the black & white photo (below). Our camp was on the high ground to the east of the 'v' , fairly near the aerials which were also up there. A permanent small 'camp' was put up for the detachment (about 25-30 strong) near the sea. I went there on a brief visit in 1965.
The camp was also below the bluff, in the north-east corner. The 1.5 megawatt DWS transmitter etc was north of the 'V' - you can make out the outline of the ruins on Google earth. The station closed down in 1966 at which time there was a population of 400.
​
The two photos below, both taken in 1964 show the 'cookhouse' made out of packing crates. Of particular interest are the radio masts, four of which can be clearly seen in the cookhouse photo. The two small masts behind the tents are nothing to do with DWS - they would have been for the East Anglian’s HF link to their barracks in Aden.
When Ingleby Jefferson went with his CO in 1965 (by then as signals officer) in a Beaver aircraft he remembers that the platoon commander was shirtless when he met the pair at the airstrip. He was sacked! (Although the CO had been looking for an opportunity to remove him from the battalion). The difference was of course that in July 1964 there were no washing machines, irons etc and shirts would have had sweat stains as well as creases in the wrong places. However, by 1965 the platoon was living in somewhat better circumstances!