Brakedwell:
Your last two photographs show the Esso filling station which was just round the corner from me (from the other side of Maalla Straight). I used it often. Then, one morning an RAF Sergeant (I think he was aircrew) was assassinated there whilst filling his car to go to work. I have a feeling that he was one of the first victims of the paid assassin(s) who hailed from the GDR. He managed to bump off quite a few people before he was caught and that was because a Swedish journalist actually saw him attack someone in the Crescent. He had easily escaped capture up until then for no one had thought of rounding up Europeans after an incident!
I was also on the roof of Bazara South one night on warden duty when there was a loud bang. A Claymore mine had just gone off inside a "civilian" block about 100 yards away. The occupants were an assortment of Aden Airways, civil servants and service personnel who should have known better. (We were restricted to six people in your flat during curfew but they were in a non-protected area and had no such limitation.) One of the hired servants for the party had placed the mine (a "jumping jack" mine) in the drinks cabinet. I seem to remember that most of the dead and the badly injured were wives. Rumour had it that one Wg Cdr's wife lost both of her legs.
Despite this, we were reasonably happy in Bazara South for we figured that the Cameronians were not very far away. We had a good relationship with our neighbours across the road. From time to time I would pop across to the ASD and speak to the Duty Sergeant. I would ask him to send two of his soldiers over to us when they came off patrol and we would feed and water them. This was usually after a Nairobi trip so they would enjoy fillet steak, mushrooms and all the trimmings - my wife was a bloody good cook. The water usually consisted of Glenfiddich.
It is hard to imagine now that we had over 9,000 dependents living in Aden at the time. Thanks to our wonderful soldiers, not many of us got killed.
I have today stumbled upon an interesting web site which gives an interesting view of the last two years of Aden from a different viewpoint:
The Aden Emergency