This has brought back some memories of living with the SAS at Ibri. We were allocated a time to use the village falaj to wash in daily between 1600 and 1700 by the head man at Ibri. There were two pools along the waddi, connected by a tunnel about 3 feet high and ten feet long. The upstream pool was for men to wash in and the downstream one was used by the women to wash clothes etc. Several SAS comedians used to sit in the mens pool naked, then let go to the side and get washed through the tunnel and say hello to the odd woman, who was washing some clothes. I don't think the locals were too impressed with this show of "force"!.
The Officers and senior NCO's shared a mess tent, which had a sort of bar at one end and there were two men to each tent. I used to sleep in the Twin Pioneer, peacefully, as my Nav, a Master Navigator used to snore horrifically. I remember a bit of rumpus one night in the mess tent, when the RASC sergeant in charge of weapons etc threatened to stop issuing plastic explosives to a couple of officers. When he had to go to the loo, which was a long pole above a trench full of sh*t, the two officers followed him out and pushed him off the pole when he was performing. They came back laughing, but the sergeant climbed out of the sh*t, went to their tent and got in and out of both mens sleeping bags.I felt thankful to be sleeping in the Twin Pioneer!