OPERATION MUSKETEER 1956

As Remembered By Richard Carribine

 

I was there as a member of H6 Port Sqdn, R.E., shortly after the invasion and here is my account of what I remember:

SUEZ - THE REALITY

We arrived at Port Said within a week of the Suez Invasion of 5th November 1956, amid signs everywhere of the brief skirmish - shell-holed and bullet-scarred walls ready to collapse, broken windows, shattered telegraph poles, fallen electric cables and mounds of rubble that used to be houses.

From our boat we could see the white masts of scuttled Egyptian ships pointing upwards from the water in the harbour like marker poles for some crazy underwater golf course. The funnels broke the surface at ski-slope angles. It all reminded me of my home town of Liverpool and the docks following a 1940's air raid. All that bustle and confusion.

A sapper was using a bulldozer to push some of the rubble into a line of craters along the road. Three signallers struggled with a fallen telegraph pole. Some engineers tinkered with a mobile generator. A couple of native shopkeepers constructed make-shift shutters from charred timbers. Two paras, using a shell crater as a foxhole, set up a Bren gun and trained it on a block of flats, and a squad of blue helmeted UN troops received instructions from an officer.

Then, through all this, a team of Commandos trotted past and actually acknowledged us with a 'thumbs up' sign. The only other spectators of this incredible scene were a few Legionnaires, tanned and swarthy, sporting the winged Pegasus on their combat jackets.

We had just arrived from Cyprus in a small flat-bottomed boat with a cargo of fresh drinking water, packed into thousands of five gallon jerry cans, all painted black and white. Back home patrol was on ration, but at Suez in November it was water that was rationed. One pint a man per day to drink, wash and shave with. Our precious cargo was to supplement the supply of drinking water until the filtration plants (sabotaged by Colonel Nasser) started pumping again. As soon as our cargo was unshipped, we could return to Cyprus and Archbishop Makarios and the EOKA terrorists - but, despite them, the camp food there was good and free. You could also get very good cheap food such as pork chops, two eggs, chips tomatoes, bread and butter all for five shillings in Famagusta's cafes. And, of course, the water in Cyprus was unlimited.

The officer in charge of the water party, 2nd Lt. Ostler, Royal Engineers, was known as the 'groom' to us lads of 46 Port Squadron, R.E. and Sgt. Major (Monty) Banks, MM, RE, who had both gone ashore the moment we docked, arrived back in a Land Rover. "Muster in five minutes" Monty shouted, climbing on board, "Pass the word". The 'groom' beckoned urgently to our Cypriot skipper, Milo, to join him below.

At the team briefing, the 'groom' gave us the news, all of it bad.