Day2: Idris to Habanniya, Iraq - Tony Cunnane's Life and Times

We took off from Idris dead on time at 0930 local time and flew east across the Mediterranean heading towards Cyprus. Many of the passengers that had boarded in Lyneham, including the squadron leader next to me, had now the left the flight and I was able to move into the window seat. Before we reached Cyprus I plucked up courage and asked the Air Quartermaster if I could have a look round the cockpit. He said he would ask the captain and eventually he returned and told me I could. The flight crew made me very welcome and I stayed about 20 minutes. I noted in my diary that the captain “was sitting back twiddling his thumbs letting ‘George’ the automatic pilot do all the work. The engineer had instruments in front and on both sides of him . The signaller occasionally pressed his Morse key and fiddled around with his TR1154/55 while the navigator seemed to be the only one doing any work.”

We didn’t actually fly over Cyprus but left it a mile or two to port. The visibility was good and we could see quite a lot of the island, especially the central mountains. As we got closer the large peninsula, which is now the UK Sovereign Base, seemed to consist almost entirely of barren rocks with a few villages here but there was no sign of what would eventually be the huge RAF Akrotiri base. I was looking out for the only RAF base I knew of, Nicosia, but of course unknown to me at the time that was on the far side of the mountain range.

For the second day running it was dark for the last hour before landing. We landed at RAF Habbaniya, Iraq, at 1650 GMT, 1950 local time. We were taken by coach the two miles to the main camp and were dropped off outside a large tent. This was what passed for Reception. An RAF police corporal booked us in and then I changed half a crown (12.5p) into Iraqi money. I got 150 fils or 1/8th of a dinar. The next thing we did was move to another location, a proper building this time, for a meal. The NCO in charge of us was an Irish sergeant who seemed to be very fed up with life. In the dining hall whilst waiting for some of the others to finish, another chap and myself poked our heads outside the door to see what we could see. That seemed to make the sergeant see red for he started shouting and bawling and told us all to sit down. Even the locals came out of the kitchen to watch. Then he gave us all a lecture about people who “think they know everything”. He seemed very bitter.

After that we went for our bedding and it was then that we came into contact with the mud! Everywhere was covered with it and in places it was difficult to see the narrow, paved paths. The same bitter sergeant issued us with our bedding but he’d cooled off a bit by then. We didn’t get any sheets or pillow slips and the pillows were damp. He showed us to our accommodation – large tents with six beds in each and left us to our own devices.

After depositing our kit we went in search of the NAAFI. I had a couple of cups of coffee and bought another writing pad. In change I got some coins which looked like cog wheels – and I have them to this day! None of us could sleep when we first got into bed and we spent quite some time talking before we eventually dropped off. Soon after we’d put the lights out I had to put them on again because a flap on the tent wall had fallen in on me and a stout pole threatened to knock me on the head. Apart from that any rain would have landed on my head. It only took a couple of minutes to secure it and off went the lights again. (Diary extract)

We were woken at 0715 local time. As breakfast ended at 0730 we had no time to get washed – not that the prospect of washing in that place appealed to us. The sight that greeted our eyes as we went out of the tent was truly amazing. What we had seen in the dark last night was nothing to what we saw then. Oceans of mud and muddy water covered everything.

All of them but Jim King and himself had been sent to the Canal Zone (lucky devils!!). He, Dick, had been sent to Habbaniya for posting elsewhere  and  he didn’t know what had happened to Jim. He could only stop for a few minutes because he and another chap were in the middle of clearing preparatory to leaving Habbaniya.

The ride to the airfield only confirmed what a desolate place it was. It was obviously an enormous camp and was supposed to have within its bounds everything you could possibly want by way of entertainment, food and shops for a full 2½ year tour. Baghdad was the nearest town of any size and that was nearly sixty miles away and apparently RAF personnel rarely bothered to go there.

The road towards the airfield from the domestic site was very narrow, bumpy, and twisted and turned all over the place. At one point we had to cross the River Euphrates and I doubted if the scenery there had changed since Biblical times. After crossing the rickety bridge there was a steep hill up onto the airfield itself.

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