Nothing apocryphal, happened as related, just after we all got back together in Kingdom after GW1 and retrieved the jets from Al Kharj. And trust me that Akheel wasn't pulling the pith. He was denser than lead and a Muttowa to boot. I flew a checkride with him that included the main runway getting blacked by a KC135 just as we got back from al Kharj on Strikey min fuel in a nasty sandstorm in the Kuwaiti oil-smoke. I just bent it around onto the cross runway and this pillock Akheel says (as we turned a close-in base): "Tell them we want touch and go". "You tell him Major". He was no mental giant.
I haven't read the Cruel Sea in years but I can't imagine Jack Hawkins or Donald Sinden saying "**** this or **** that" or any RN Officer of the era - let alone Nicholas Monsarrat the author. But I may be wrong. However at the time - laugh, did we laugh. But necessarily, it was all eerily soundless. Selling one's soul in those days is different to imperilling one's mortal structure in the present circumstances. I wouldn't be hanging around there nowadays. They're too unpredictable, life's too precious.....and no-one trusts the Company.