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I was found a billet which was rather basic and crude. The legs of the beds were all stood in large polish tins which were full of paraffin because there were so many bugs about. Because of the paraffin it wasn’t very safe to smoke in bed but it did discourage the soldier ants.

Aden itself was a very clean place and there were no mosquitoes about but it was so extremely hot all you could wear all day was a pair of shorts and plimsolls. The projectionist at the camp theatre was leaving and they asked if there were any volunteers to run the cinema. I decided to volunteer for it as I had done this sort of work at the Empress in Sutton Coldfield, way back as I was an engineer working in the cinema. I ran the show and did it quite happily the whole time I was there which was about 2 years. It was a good thing as I got a little bit of extra money and I didn’t do too many guard duties either.

The town of Aden itself was quite a derelict spot. We were by the sea but the nearest town was a place called Crato an Arab city built right in the heart of an extinct volcano. I hoped it was extinct anyway. It was too hot to work all day so we used to work from 6am until mid-day with just a break for breakfast half way through.

Most of my work was fairly routine just servicing aircraft and working on the electrics and quite frequently we were asked to fly in them as a guarantee of good faith and on one occasion several of us were working on one aircraft. It was a special one and it had got to be a super job because some of the top brass were going to fly across to Jibuti. The work on the aircraft was meticulous and it was guarded day and night. Then the great day came and we had to take it up for a test flight so the pilot said ‘OK lads, pile in’, so all the boys, fitters, electricians etc. piled in and we took off and went on a nice little flight up country and were had climbed to about 10,000 ft when all of a sudden everything went dead and the plane started to fall like a stone and we all thought ‘what a way to go — sharks dinner’. We were over the ocean. The pilot was a very skilful man and he could see a little bit of desert sand in the distance which was fairly flat and he managed to glide the plane almost on to it and as he got there the plane fell like a stone on to the sand. We all climbed out and crawled out as best we could and we were shaking, bag of nerves all round. Everyone smoked but our hands were shaking so much trying to light the things. They sent a jeep out from the camp to pick us up to take us back - believe me it was a near thing.

When a post mortem was done, they found that someone had sabotaged the petrol tanks and in the bottom there was about 2” of silt and sand and they knew there was enough petrol to take off but they knew it wouldn’t go very far before it crashed.

I was found a billet which was rather basic and crude. The legs of the beds were all stood in large polish tins which were full of paraffin because there were so many bugs about. Because of the paraffin it wasn’t very safe to smoke in bed but it did discourage the soldier ants.

Aden itself was a very clean place and there were no mosquitoes about but it was so extremely hot all you could wear all day was a pair of shorts and plimsolls. The projectionist at the camp theatre was leaving and they asked if there were any volunteers to run the cinema. I decided to volunteer for it as I had done this sort of work at the Empress in Sutton Coldfield, way back as I was an engineer working in the cinema. I ran the show and did it quite happily the whole time I was there which was about 2 years. It was a good thing as I got a little bit of extra money and I didn’t do too many guard duties either.

The town of Aden itself was quite a derelict spot. We were by the sea but the nearest town was a place called Crato an Arab city built right in the heart of an extinct volcano. I hoped it was extinct anyway. It was too hot to work all day so we used to work from 6am until mid-day with just a break for breakfast half way through.

Most of my work was fairly routine just servicing aircraft and working on the electrics and quite frequently we were asked to fly in them as a guarantee of good faith and on one occasion several of us were working on one aircraft. It was a special one and it had got to be a super job because some of the top brass were going to fly across to Jibuti. The work on the aircraft was meticulous and it was guarded day and night. Then the great day came and we had to take it up for a test flight so the pilot said ‘OK lads, pile in’, so all the boys, fitters, electricians etc. piled in and we took off and went on a nice little flight up country and were had climbed to about 10,000 ft when all of a sudden everything went dead and the plane started to fall like a stone and we all thought ‘what a way to go — sharks dinner’. We were over the ocean. The pilot was a very skilful man and he could see a little bit of desert sand in the distance which was fairly flat and he managed to glide the plane almost on to it and as he got there the plane fell like a stone on to the sand. We all climbed out and crawled out as best we could and we were shaking, bag of nerves all round. Everyone smoked but our hands were shaking so much trying to light the things. They sent a jeep out from the camp to pick us up to take us back - believe me it was a near thing.

When a post mortem was done, they found that someone had sabotaged the petrol tanks and in the bottom there was about 2” of silt and sand and they knew there was enough petrol to take off but they knew it wouldn’t go very far before it crashed.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by P. Jennings a volunteer with WM CSV Actiondesk on behalf of Jim Nicholls and has been added to the site with his permission. Jim Nicholls fully understands the sites terms and conditions.

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