My brief Libyan soiree was Exercise Vibrissa, for a stay of eight weeks.
I have three overriding memories:
1) I was tasked to establish the Regimental comms which covered not only our own radio nets but also a link onto the Brigade Safety Net. My intrepid crew were Solly Moulton, Mitch Metcalfe and Steve Beavers. Our location was a remote hill, which we soon named "Fly Hill" for obvious reasons, where we set up skywave long-range communications (some of it using Morse). We had two incidents of note: The first was when we arranged the casevac of an injured soldier from Scots Guards and the second was keeping in contact (and advising) with Joe Diver who was lost in the desert with his fuel supply troop. It turned out that he was 24 miles from where he believed them to be .
2) Bombah beach for R&R was fantastic. It mystifies me as to why the Libyans haven't utilised the area as a modern holiday resort.
3) When the time came to leave we assembled at El Adem RAF base the evening before our flight out was scheduled. Sadly it landed on the runway with no undercarriage down! RAF staff made it plain that we were not welcome to use the facilities of their camp during our prolonged stay.
Thanks Arnie, question was for any who served there or knew some history of the place. My thoughts.....not sure I'd of been that excited to be posted there, after all Berlin et al is/was much nicer.
Having been in Sabratha 1952/4 the only time I was in Tripoli was to do guard duty at Dif H Q And a month on the school run collecting and returning the army personel`kids, there were 7 T C Vs doing the runs. There was the Corner cafe that was used the British and U S troops.
Also the B M H of course.
Bodge.
Arnie,
I never had my story 'published' as such.
I had my step son, who is a computer freak, secure the data so that it can not be changed without a very complicated access code. Then I offered it on several websites for free, not wanting money for the blood on my hands.
There were an estimated 1000 readings and I got some nice feedback and several old friends contacted me, which made it all worth while.
I did look at self publication via Amazon's book service, several friends have published their stories that way, but apparently it takes almost a year to understand how to do it ... and with my love of computers that was a none starter.
Another friend published his book 'Penal Company on the Falklands' via 'Pen & Sword Military', Phil speaks well of them as publishers ... and I can highly recommend reading his excellent historical account !!!
Service details: Enlisted in 14th/20th King's Hussars on 2 Feb 1959. Served Hohne and Rheindahlen 1959 - 1962 Libya 1962 Cyprus with C Sqn Dec 1963 - Feb 1964. Returned to Benghazi then to Tripoli with B Sqn until Sep 1964. Left for Courses in NBC then to 7 Armoured Brigade till 1967. Transferred to Intelligence Corps 67. First posting to Northern Ireland 67 - 70. Singapore 70 - 71, Hong Kong 71 - 72. NI 72 - 74. NITAT (Northern Ireland Training and Advisory Team) 74 - 76. Berlin 76 - 79. Final Posting, Preston Int and Security Section. Stupidly Retired on 1 Feb 81, and emigrated to Australia.
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