RAF 107 MU KASFAREET 1951-53
"BE CAREFUL WHERE YOU SLEEP"
As Remembered By Mike Favell
Come the turn of the year and I recall that I was demobbed some 59 years ago, on December 31st 1953, travelling to Dorking (or was it Woking?) the next day to receive my demob suit, which lasted me for quite a few years. I quickly realised after a couple of weeks leave that January was not a good time to be on holiday, so I returned to the drawing office I had been in three years before and started work again. Anyway, that was not what I intended writing about as I thought the weather in the Canal Zone was more to the point.
In the summer, the tentage area I was in would sprout beds outside on the sand. Laying there under this huge sky, I would find myself watching the shooting stars crossing the heavens. There always seemed to be a lot of them, before one dropped off to sleep. When one woke in the morning the blankets were very damp with dew, but a couple of hours later, of course, they were bone dry and nicely aired in the sun.
There was one night at Kasfareet when the weather must have turned chilly and everyone moved into the tents, which I would explain were set over a brick and concrete base, dug in about 2’6”, so that in the tent we always slept below ground level. At Kasfareet the camp was set against the railway line and our tentage area was also beside this. This particular night the guards on the next camp (REME) saw some movement by the wire, just where our tents were but they didn’t know that we were there. All that they would see was sand, wooden crates and the railway line, plus the searchlight tower beside our tents. Thinking that they would be doing the RAF a good deed they let fly with a Bren, bullets whistled through our tents going through the walls about 18” above the ground, just where anyone sleeping outside would have been.
However, not only did they miss any intruders, but also some 90 odd airmen!!
This must have happened in 1953.