SUEZ CRISIS 1956 - Assault Battalion Not Required
As Remembered By Les WalklinTransport Sgt, 1st & 3rd Btn Coldstream Guards
We like many other Suez veterans got really fed up and frustrated with the “It’s On’ – No, it’s off’ dithering by the Government. How many times were you fellow Canal Zoners hyped-up and ready to go and then told to just await the order to “Go”? Perhaps even worse for those who got as far as Malta, Gibraltar or Egypt itself and were then halted.
With this in mind I’d like to publish my take on what Colonel Richard Crichton CVO MC, Coldstream Guards, later had to say concerning the matter.
In June 1956 the 3rd Battalion was based at Moores Barracks, Shorncliffe as part of the 1st Guards Brigade, a part of the 3rd Infantry Division. Six weeks later the Egyptians decided to nationalize the Suez Canal. I was recalled together with other specialist reservists and joined the battalion. This caused a great deal of domestic disruption for those reservists who cheerfully accepted the recall to active service. Only weeks of false alarms and routine training caused them to become somewhat impatient.
We were on 48 hours notice to ‘go’. The fighting echelon of vehicles laden to breaking point with ammunition was aboard a Landing Ship in Barry Docks, Glamorgan, They were painted ‘desert blush’ with large white ‘H’s’ for recognition. So we in Shorncliffe were without vehicles and by marching everywhere the battalion became very fit. But ‘plans’ had been changed and the vehicles were later unloaded and returned to us. One now knows that this marked the end of the plan to land on the beaches of Alexandria, a plan in which the 1st Guards Brigade, to which we belonged, was to have been an assault brigade.
When the plans changed to a Port Said landing we entered a period of chaos, passing through many changes of orders and periods of notice including two recalls to immediate notice and a day when the Commanding Officer told the battalion in orders, “this time it really is firm, we sail tomorrow.” The morale of the Battalion soared to dizzy heights and the CO fingered the sealed orders locked in his safe. Two days later we returned with the orders unopened and reverted to seven days notice.
Once again, in mid-November, our transport went off, this time to Welsh ports and we were brought to notice once again. By now we were becoming veterans of false alarms. But we came down to 48 hours notice to move and our transport and equipment actually did set sail in two ships bound for the Mediterranean. The Transport Officer and about 130 NCO’s and men, mostly drivers, were aboard. As far as the remainder of the Battalion were concerned they’d sailed off into ‘limbo’; we had no idea where they were. But we later learned that one was in Malta and the other in Gibraltar.
Only one officer actually landed in Egypt. He was attached as Liaison Officer to Head-quarters, 3rd Infantry Division.
The Parachute Regiment landings took place in Egypt and we followed the news anxiously, daily expecting orders to move ourselves. Then suddenly in the early hours of a Monday morning we heard that the Anglo-French forces had halted. In due course the whole depressing truth became clear. Then a sudden order was received, “Release all reservists wherever they are.”
The 3rd Battalion Coldstream Guards returned to peacetime activities with no shot having been fired in anger!