Take a peek inside the Museum

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A sign to stick on a machine at work or in your home. I had the origonal on the photocopier in my office for years

Hi everyone, had this letter from some chinless wonder in the MOD called The Rt Hon Adam Ingram JP MP, on behalf of Geoff Hoon, and in reply to my letter about the lack of recognition the Regiment gets. Here is the letter, I'll give some comments at the end:

Comment!
Antidiluvian (for anyone not aware) refers to my being old. 

Problems Galore
I have been unable to update my website these last few months but now the mystery is solved. Freeservers have informed me that my web site space has been reduced by 8mb. As this put me over the agreed limit they deleted certain files. I have had to juggle files around to square things up but it means I am unable to add any more pages. I have a few Contributors galleries to upload still so I hope I have found the answer. (Freeservers have also reduced the file sizes that can be uploaded to 500kb and do not allow the use of an FTP program.) So I have now opened 2 more sites at 150m.com. The RAF Regiment Museum (snapshots can e viewed from this newsletter)and an add on to my main 'Per Ardua' site.Each site is allowed 100mbs so I haven't any problems with size now. It just takes time to sort it all out. So if you are are waiting for your pics or galleries to appear, please bear with me while I sort it all out

• The large salt pan in the north of the peninsula which becomes a lake and pink flamingo city during the wet season 
• A ridge - the aforementioned North Ridge which runs from west to east across the width of the peninsula and gives a reasonable view of the approaches to the base
• The legendary Lady's Mile beach which is on the eastern side of the peninsula north of the base and which abuts both the NE corner of the base and stretches into the suburbs of Limassol
• Two roads N - S which serve the base - one to the main piquet post and the other down Ladies Mile into the ARABS crash gate.  There is a track joining these just South of Akrotiri village

Well not being one to mince words I informed them both in a couple of pithy sentances what was happening and that for their own safety the wooden walls of the bungalow had no protection and that they had better get under cover in the monsoon drain.
Again, one of the crystal clear moments when my wife, the mother of my child, looked me disdainfully in the eyes and said quite unequivocally that that was out of the question because there were spiders in there.
Good leaders know when to fold up their tents and steal away in the night and that was precisely what I did in the face of such irrefutable female logic - grabbed the bergan, belt order and kit and legged it to the insanity of the Ops Centre.When I got there Mike and the signallers were deploying the on duty QRF sections. We sent them to 2 Rat Trap Locations - at the Aerial Farm on the Salt Pans and to the North end of Ladies Mile and to stop - not search but stop everything trying to get out of the SBA. The logic behind this was that we were playing for time to get enough troops together to conduct a follow- up and piece together what had happened.  Flt Lt Hugh Cross the 2 I/c - a soldier of great experience from Oman and elsewhere joined us as the CO was on Leave at Troodos.  Hugh was a great character, his god father had been Douglas Bader and he loved a bit of action - he told me to get Sqn HQ organized and sort out the deployment.  I shall never forget his words as I started to move off to the sqn compound - " and Flight - don't let the armourers do their usual f***ing tricks - full warloads for every man and I want at least 10 rounds of HESH and cannister in those Scorpions."  Well just about hit the spot that did - except when I neared the squadron compound the road was cordoned off by a solitary RAF policeman laddie - 20 if he was a day.  When I told him I had to get past he went into plod mode and informed me that there was an unexploded mortar round in the BP garage and that no-one could get past until EOD had cleared it.  I meandered up to take a squint as there was a crater just by the entrance and I had a suspicion that it was part of the exploded round.  Sure enough it was the tail fin of what appeared to be a 2" HE round.  So I told my driver to go straight past him leaving the poor laddie torn between running after me and stopping the traffic.  Plod mode won and he stayed to watch over the traffic.Sqn Recall was initiated and the troops started to arrive in dribs and drabs.  In the meantime the thousands of Greek Cypriots on Ladies Mile were so frightened that about 200 of them crowded the Rat Trap Landrover and fire - team and lifted it bodily out of the way.  This was because a car full of terrorists had driven down ladies mile firing AK 47's over the heads of the bathers.  We started to deploy and we got the east side of the main road with Flt HQ at the sailing club. What had happened was that the object of the attack was to provide a highly visible signal to the world - and Cyprus in general that Libya was not to be messed with.
The attack team was spilt into 5 groups - assault and penetration team, 2 mortar teams and probably a cut off group.  The assault team were to cut the chain at the ARABS gate and drive down the internal road to the Buttons Bay Bulk Fuel Installation and put up to 9 RPG 7 rounds into it - causing it to catch fire.  They would then withdraw under mortar fire and escape into Limassol  and thence to Larnaca and Syria.  However, as I said before, small things mean the difference between success and failure and the bolt cutters they had purchased in Limassol were not up to cutting high tensile lashing chain.  You can just imagine the look on the face when the kit did not work and slinging it down in disgust. One of the bad guys then did the Hollywood thing and tried to shoot the lock off.  It proved that Chubb was more than equal to an AK 47 round ( or rather half a mag of them) or he was a bad shot or Hollywood is not kosher.  Anyway at this time another of the bad guys lobbed a Russian anti personnel grenade onto a packed ARABS beach - full of women and children and wounded a woman in the foot.  The Station Education officers son had just wandered out to his dads car in the car park - about 15M from the gate when the bemused lock opener spotted him and preceded to give him a mag and a half of AK47.  The lad was terrified that he would get the blame for getting his dads brand new Mazda 323 shot up and stood stock still.  He didn't even get a scratch and as he was stood beside the car and the car had only one bullet hole in it, it was obvious that the Marksmanship Principles were not taken as seriously as they were on 34.  As the mortars went into action a third member of the gang sallied forth with his RPG7 and tried to lob the rounds into Buttons Bay ( either that or he was aiming for the sailing club tower - about 50 M away and was as good a shot as his mate with the AK).  What he forgot was the RPG round has a self destruct fuse for 900M  and they all went off in mid air.  I should imagine what happened then was that they all looked at each other and decided it was not their day - chucked the RPG away in disgust and legged it.  All except our friend with the grenades, for as he legged it he lobbed another one just over the fence and forgot that a chain link fence does not give you the cover that a proper grenade pit does and that grenades hurt!  Still they all legged it down the road and off to Larnaca.  Just over a hour later a flight to Damascus was taxiing near the airport fence, when the plane was stopped by 2 men with pistols on the flight deck.  The 23 passengers all got off and 23 others got on and the plane continued on to Damascus.Meanwhile back at the ranch, things were slightly chaotic, the Station Alert was sounded and Akrotiri went to war.  We could not get any comms or information from the Police at all as their phones were jammed and they took the jury rigged line off the hook.  Their radios would not answer and the first task Sqn HQ had to do was to rig a complete commes set up back into Ground Ops.  This was done by Taff and his gang in record time and shortly after 8 we rejoined Ground Ops.  It was a good job that we didn't know what the Police were doing as in the meantime some loon had deployed every policeman they could find, drunk or sober onto Ladies Mile with pistols and SMG's to find the bad guys.  As we had started follow-ups on foot any blue on blue contact with a fire team armed with full war loads and a GPMG and 800 rounds of 1 bit would have been a mite one sided.  However, luck was on their side and we deployed for the night into series of standing patrol/ offensive OP's.  I made it back to Ground Ops just after 2200hrs for a squadron O Group and saw a sight that has never failed to make me chuckle to this day.  Ground Ops was fully manned with every Penguin officer seated at their consoles ready for war - in KD and Shorts - with cam cream on their faces and steel helmets on.  Well I could not help but burst into a chuckle or two, after missing the CO's shush signal as I came in.  Result  - instant bollocking by the Station Master - what do you find funny FS?  Wits like a rapier and I replied the Steel Helmets sir.  To which he replied if we come under attack again the helmets will give us some protection.  Sadly tiredness and irritability were taking over and I replied " If a round hits the roof with its re-inforcing and penetrates, you'll need a f***ing lot more that a tin pot to save anyone sir.  Oops - daggers, and the CO got me out of there quick.  Must have struck some logic though as when I left some 30 minutes later they all had their helmets off.
Next day we swept the ground outside the base.  The RPG had been found outside ARABS gate by the SBA police, who all promptly disappeared.  We swept along the northern edge of the North ridge from the main piquet post to Ladies mile.  Warm work and they stopped us about 50 M short of where the first mortar was recovered by a local workman.  Next day we settled in to a more routine pattern of static Op.s and foot patrolling.  We had some int by this time and knew that the mortars were Belgian 60mm Hotchkiss Brandts with a range of 2200M.  We also had an impact plot.  Try as we could, we could not reconcile the plot with only one mortar and came to a conclusion that there had to be another one.  Sure enough at about 1230hrs Dai and myself were called to Sqn HQ to be briefed by the Adj and the CO.  When we said that we thought there was another mortar out there it confirmed their own thinking and said that a 4 man WIZ team from Epi were looking at the ground.  Dai and I had done some backplots on the impact map working on the assumption that the mortars would be fired by such a windy lot of baddies at full bore - max range.  This gave us an area of about 2 grid squares to cover with a probable position of about 200M by 200M.  Working on the theory that they would have legged it by car it would have to be by a track and this fitted.  Trouble was that A Flight were deployed and to redeploy them and hand over to C Flt, the reserve flight was out of the question and we would run out of daylight.  So we took all the NI search trained personnel from A Flight and 4 teams from C flight.  We got the order to go at 1330hrs - we briefed the troops at 1415 and deployed at 1500hrs.  The op went like clockwork and we located the second mortar in its firing position at 1530hrs.  The whole bit with it being swept by Felix and recovered by WIZ was over by 1730hrs.  The only weapon recovered from the attack with any uncontaminated forensic information on it was the second mortar and the beauty of it was that I never even saw it as Dai confirmed the find as search advisor and I ran the Op from the ICP.Well that was about it apart from a solid years deployment afterwards.  Interesting fact came to light though and that was the terrorists had all renewed their visitors permits at Limassol Post Office on the morning of the 25th July - before even we knew there would be no change in the alert state.  That has always made me think that they had someone inside.  Other than that, I found out later that the Brigadier wanted to detach 34 as the Island reserve as the best trained troops on the island and the big airforce turned them down flat.  An eventful few days followed by months of drudge.  One of the most remarkable things was that for almost 5 months 34 rarely had less than 2 Flights on and the other on two hours notice to move.  In all that time the troops carried loaded weapons.  As most people will know there is never been a NI roulement where there has not been at least 1 ND.  34 did not have one in the whole period from Aug 86 to July 87 - a remarkable testament to the caliber of the troops and the junior leaders.  The only other thing of note in the whole period was the night EOKA - B firebombed the Phissouri Police Station and bombed the water works, but that as they say is another story.
Bill Espie