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Hastings to Ceylon - 1954 - Part 2 of 2
RAF Habbaniya was obviously an enormous camp
and was supposed to have within its bounds everything you could possibly
want for a full 2½ year tour by way of entertainment, food and shops
 We
took off dead on time at 0930 local time. We 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 Quarter Master 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 and no sign of what would eventually be the huge RAF
Akrotiri base. I was looking out for the only RAF base I knew, 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.
 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 us as we left the tent was truly amazing. What we had
seen in the dark the previous night was nothing to what we saw then. Vast
oceans of mud and muddy water covered everything. I can’t help thinking that
we must have been pretty smelly by then! Still it would be the last day we
would have to wear our blue uniforms until we were ‘tourex’ 30 months later.
I took this photograph of Mick Harley (left) and Tombstone Gaunt outside our
tent at Habbaniya.
After breakfast, we waded over to the airmen’s lounge to wait for the
transport to take us to the airfield. There, who should we meet of all
people but Dick Lewis from GSp22 at Locking, smiles all over his face as
always. From him we were able to get some information as to what had
happened to those of our class who went to the Middle East. 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.
We took off at 0915 local and straightaway disappeared into a layer of
cloud. We soon climbed above that and found brilliant sunshine on top. It
wasn’t to last. Soon after passing Kuwait and going over the Persian Gulf,
for that is what it was called in 1954, we ran into more cloud and got
rather shaken about. I was well on the way to being sick when, after about
two hours of it, we ran into clear skies once more and our troubles (or mine
at any rate) were more or less over. After that the flight seemed to pass
very quickly. We put our watches forward another two hours and we landed in
Mauripur, on the outskirts of Karachi, at 1857 local time (1357 GMT).
As soon as the plane doors were opened, and that was only after a lengthy
delay, a Pakistani civilian came into cabin and walked up and down the
gangway spraying the interior and its occupants with some vile smelling
disinfectant. He was followed by an RAF Movements Officer who told us that
the doors had to be kept closed for five minutes. They were apparently
protecting themselves and the Pakistani nation from any Yellow Fever we may
have brought in with us. While we were waiting in the aircraft for any bugs
to die off, the Movements Officer informed us that we were on a Royal
Pakistan Air Force station and that the conditions were very poor because of
that. I remember thinking that was not a very polite way of putting it. We
began to wonder if Mauripur could possibly be any worse than Habbaniya.
 When
we eventually climbed down we were taken into a building where we had to
produce our Yellow Fever inoculation certificates for examination and then
we had to pass the Customs Officer. One of the NCO aircrew had five bottles
of spirits which he had bought at Idris and Habbaniya confiscated. He was
told he could have them back the next day before we took off. He seemed to
know the score so he’d probably done the run several times before. We could
change money in that same building but we were advised that most things we
might want to buy were very expensive so no-one bothered.
That night Mick Harley, ‘Tombstone’ Gaunt and I shared a room in a barrack
block. We had a Bearer to clean our shoes and make our beds for us – that
was a first! We packed our blue uniforms away into our large kit bags and
got out our Khaki Dress tropical kit ready to wear tomorrow but first we
tried it on.
The following day, Tuesday 14 December 1954, was the last day of our journey
to Ceylon. I wrote in my diary that, “Breakfast was really horrible: some
queer lumpy porridge and some sort of milk which tasted like nothing else on
earth.” We took off from Mauripur at 0815 local time. The trip, avoiding
over-flying the Indian, mainland, was uneventful with good weather all the
way until we neared Ceylon when it became very cloudy. We landed at 1545
local time, 5½ hours ahead of GMT, and a few minutes later it started
pouring with rain just as we were about to disembark.
For six of us, Ceylon was our final destination and we collected our heavy
baggage before we left the aircraft and then walked across to the terminal
building. After having our documents checked we were sent to a transit
billet where we joined those airmen going on to Changi, Singapore, the
following day. They were still in their blue uniforms because they had not
been permitted to unload their heavy baggage from the Hastings. Mike,
Tombstone and I got drenched going to tea but it was warm rain. I remember
we cavorted along the camp roads like schoolchildren, splashing in the many
puddles, much to the amusement of other airmen we met along the way, all of
whom were carrying locally made highly decorated umbrellas. Still, our
clothes soon dried on us. In the NAAFI I met a couple of old friends from
159 A and B mechanics courses at Locking.
I had finally arrived. Lyneham to RAF Negombo had taken four days and
roughly 30 flying hours.
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