Once upon a time there was a great Empire with outposts around the world. By 1951 the empire was crumbling but its military servants were still departing for places such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Kenya, Rhodesia, Egypt, Iraq ... and Aden at the foot of the Red Sea.
When Servicemen left on a posting there was always a delay before married quarters became available and their families could join them. During these long months the lonely wives had to care for children and home, an experience vividly brought back by last year’s very moving TV series on the Military Wives’ Choir.
Like all Service families our journey began 12 weeks ahead with the inoculation parade. The queue of National Servicemen stretched all the way round Binbrook’s SSQ, waiting for the jabs for yellow fever, smallpox, tetanus and the dreaded TABC, a cocktail against typhoid and typhus which laid out mother and myself with flu-like symptoms which lasted a week.
On the previous day the medical orderlies were busy sterilising their big glass syringes and sharpening their needles on whetstones. There was none of your disposable nonsense, I told you NOTHING was wasted. It was considered best to get in early before the needles became blunted by so many perforations but don't worry, the needles were sterilised between each customer. One or two airmen would pass out in the stuffy corridors laden with the fumes of surgical spirit, only to be laid on the floor and jabbed anyway.
Meanwhile our belongings were crated up for long storage or for Aden, marked ‘Not wanted on voyage’ as we could take only one suitcase to the cabins. Like all Service mothers, Mum was alone to do the packing, have our married quarters clean and inventoried, and take the three of us to Southampton, two long train journeys enlivened by sheer panic when my sister, then six, wandered off in Waterloo station. We just made the boat train and boarded the Dunera that afternoon.
New arrivals were housed in Khormaksar’s bungalows, for the station had yet to undergo the massive development of the 1960s. Long before the days of TV the family would sit happily under the security light, watching the lizards feeding on the insects it attracted. Around us the land crabs formed a companionable circle, their eyes on little stalks like periscopes following us if we moved from chair to chair.
Each evening my parents would listen to the news on crackly shortwave, with Lillibulero playing in Radio Newsreel on Saturday nights and Forces’ Favourites one Sunday a month. Most people wrote home weekly for there were no phones in airmen’s quarters. Telegrams were for emergencies.
The terrorist attacks were still a decade away but Khormaksar must have been a grim posting for adults, the tiny RAF community having nowhere to go except Steamer Point and perhaps Crater. The young National Servicemen hated the place, so most treated us like little brothers and spoiled us rotten. But for us youngsters, school finished at lunchtime, grown-ups went to sleep off the afternoon’s heat, and Khormaksar was wide open for us to enjoy.
Just how enjoyable you'll see tomorrow ...
