The last days of the British Empire

[Texas]

Recently, on television, there's been a three part series on the Suez fiasco, 1956. In parallel, a number of radio plays on BBC4. I didn't listen to any of the plays, but I watched the TV stuff.

I personally, was interested in the first episode. This was on the firefight at Ismalia in 1952, at the Egyptian Police HQ. It was toward the end of January in that year, and I had been in the Middle East about a week. I was, what was called 'duty lineman' that weekend, (this is in the Royal Signals I hasten to add) and was supposed to be responsible for anything that went wrong with communications, telephones etc; etc. Turns out, that weekend, the Egyptian Police decided they had had enough of British bull**** and barricaded themselves in the HQ in Ismalia, taking on all and sundry in the process, and that meant God knows how many British troops.

From my own point of view, I didn't know 'nada' at the time, no mark National Serviceman trying to do his job. I was dragged out of the tent and taken to the compound of General Sir Brian Robertson, MELF top dog, and told to keep the 'phones in order. Nobody knew nothing about what went on, like a bunch of mushrooms we were, you know, in the dark, and fed on s**t. Mind you, I had a great time after that.

[flyer]

1952 I was in Libya (3yrs)where we got realy bad food , not the high quality fare you guys in Egypt were use to, Ifind it hard to believe but i heard you even got real bread ,not the hard tack bis we had to chew on O happy days