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National Service 1955
Fourth part
The story in Cyprus continues
    The French paras set up their communications in tents just at the back of our signals center. We had our sophisticated system with the huge aerial arrays on the edge of the camp but all they did was to string a bit of wire between two trees and away they went. When a circuit was being set up it was normal to have a short message on a length of perforated tape, join this up into a loop, and keep it running in an auto sender to prove the connection. One of our favorites was "In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king". We translated this into French but never got a chance to send it to our new allies.

    H.M.S. Tyne was our command ship that was to direct operations at the sharp end of the landing. It had been sailing up and down the Mediterranean for some weeks and it was impossible to keep in contact for any length of time. As soon as a new frequency was settled on it started to fade and those in charge reported back that the ship board equipment did not seem up to the job. When the troops went in it came to anchor close in to Suez and with it stationary things were a bit better. Never the less the classified signals that did get through had to be taken ashore by boat and delivered by hand.

    As we advanced down the length of the canal there was a magnetic storm that wiped out all communication for a couple of days. The story was told that the first message to get through afterwards was the one calling a halt to the campaign because of the political pressure that was being applied. It was said that if the storm had lasted another day or so we would have got to the far end and the whole strategic outlook would have changed leaving us in a much stronger position.

    Eventually the cipher equipment was moved from the ship to shore. However it was put into an ordinary room in a building and the mechs had terrible problems with dust blowing in. We "talked" to them over the secure circuit and discovered that one was a new recruit straight off a training course and the other a reservist who had been back in civvy street for a couple of years. They had no means of making test tapes like the ones I described so we sent them a batch. Then they moved to a caravan much like the one we had seen pictures of Monty using in the desert but things did not improve. There was talk of us drawing straws to see who would go out and help them but in the end it was decided the technical officer would go. When he got back he told us that the trouble was mainly that the lead going out of the caravan away to the transmitter had rubbed against the gutter and frayed the insulation. As it moved in the wind it was shorting out the low power signal before it got to the transmitter. No one that end had been able to sort out the problem.

    There were two command ships, ours and one for the French. The story was told that the French commander was a bit excitable and went ashore to see the action first hand. The Russians then issued their threat that they would "nuke" the attacking forces so to be on the safe side the home command ordered both command ships to move apart and out to sea. Because of the limited secure ship to shore links no one could let him know so when he tried to sail back his ship was gone. He then spent several hours at the height of the battle wandering up and down the Med. looking for it.

    The war produced a lot more traffic for us to handle apart from the extra circuit into Suez. There had to be secure conferences with the UK. At the start the best solution was a group of "brass hats" gathered round the actual cipher machine, a ciphers sergeant recruited to do the typing and us keeping the other circuits running as best we could. Clearly this could not go on for long so it was decided a conference room was needed in a hurry and it was up to the cipher mechs to organize it. This was where our extended training came in useful as it was like nothing we had done for real before. I think it must have been over a weekend because those of us not on duty came over in civvies to help. When later on the Major i/c ciphers came in and found the whole lot of us beavering away he did a double take. I rather think we all got brownie points for the effort we put in but for us it had just been a bit of fun since there was nothing else to do. The actual conference room was some way from the cipher office so when there was a conference an armed guard was posted to patrol the line between the two points to keep the circuit secure!

    As I said all sorts of unusual things happened. One evening, I think we had set up a conference, I was working direct into Cheltenham which was not far from home. Things were delayed so I chatted to the civvy mech the other end and he knew where I lived. I remember him moaning about petrol rationing and the difficulty he was going to have getting home at the end of his shift.

    Our routines involved dismantling and cleaning various parts of the equipment on a daily or weekly basis. I remember we talked to The Cable and Wireless mechs about this and the reliability of our respective equipment. They did no such maintaining but relied on a full overhaul every six months or so and got much better results than we did. A lesson that I took with me into later life.

    One result of the war was that we got put on active service. This made no practical difference to us though it was joked that you could be shot at dawn if you disobeyed a direct order. There were one or two, presumably Arabic, expressions that had traveled with the regiment from Egypt. I've no idea of the correct spelling but " mafiche felluce" meant "no money" and "malish"  translated as "forget it" and "malish secundi" as "leave it for another time". It went up in orders that these latter two expressions were bad for morale and were not to be used, presumably on pain of death ! I expect we were entitled to a general service medal for being on active service but the Signals were not into that sort of thing and I never saw one.

    Presumably to keep morale up the army were quite good at some things. The postal service was good and letters were only in transit a couple of days most of the time. You could buy a UK newspaper the day after it was published at home and there was the radio, most tents had one, with a forces program in English. This was a mixture of local and rebroadcast UK material with the mandatory Sunday lunchtime "Forces Favorites" link up. Sometimes the link up signal was not too good with noticeable interference so the records were played locally and came over perfectly.

    I suppose in a way it was also a morale booster but I had always wet shaved up to this point in time. I suppose it was one of the things I least liked doing. Often you had to queue for a basin especially if you wanted to shave before the hot water ran tepid. Apparently a number of people had got skin complaints from wet shaving and the RSM decided something needed doing about this. It went up in Orders that using an electric razor was not only acceptable but even desirable and they were available at discount prices on the camp. I bought one and have never wet shaved again.

    Another good feature was the Army Kinema Corporation that ran the cinemas and brought in all the up to date films. There were two cinemas, a traditional indoor one that was used in the winter and an out door one for the summer. This had benches arranged round a natural amphitheater on the edge of the camp and there was one performance starting just after eight when it got dark. I well remember seeing "The Glenn Miller story" sitting in the open there. On the other hand the indoor cinema had two performances most evenings and the film I remember seeing there was "Rock around the clock". As I said we saw the UK papers and had read about people dancing in the aisles and cinemas being damaged when the film was shown so we wanted to see what it was all about. The army had obviously read the same papers ! Quite unusually the first performance did not finish on time and the second house was very slow getting in. Not until we had purchased our tickets and came to go into the auditorium did we discover the hold up. As we got to the door there were the two largest Military Police you could imagine and you had to actually push your way between them to get in. Without a word being said the message was quite clear, " It's not going to happen here!"

    Having mentioned the summer and winter cinemas perhaps a word about the weather is appropriate. Although it can snow at sea level the only snow we saw was up in the mountains. The coldest it got at Episcopi that winter produced a slight hoar frost on the ground. This was gone in an hour or so and it only happened a couple of times. During the winter we wore normal battle dress and as it got warmer there would be "short sleeve order" with sleeves rolled up and no tie. As summer arrived we would change to Khaki Drill with a texture rather like linen and which had to be starched after each washing to make it presentable. The army however was always mindful of the fact that malaria had been endemic in Cyprus until the late forties . A big campaign had been put in place to eradicate it and this seemed to have been successful, however the army was taking no chances. The malaria causing mosquitoes come out dusk to dawn , the day being too hot for them, and we always had to wear long sleeves and long trousers after dark. During the summer we were also issued with mosquito nets to sleep under. These hung above your bed and tucked in all round. We always used them as it was well worth avoiding a mozzie bite even if it was unlikely to give you malaria. You always seemed to get the odd insect bite but these were gone in a day or so. Not so a mozzie bite which really swelled up and could last ten days or more.

    At the start of the summer there would be lots of flies, enough to be a nuisance. When it got really hot there were less and then they came back for a while until the winter put paid to them. We did see bats in the summer, in amongst the trees, and some by our standards were quite large. Small lizards of various sorts were common. In the scrub on the headlands between the beaches were some really large ones. They were the sort with thick front legs and a crest along their back. People now don't seem to believe me but there were some well over two feet long and say ten inches to the top of their head. They looked quite fierce but always scuttled away as you came close. We called them dragons because they looked a lot like one !

    Snakes are supposed to be common in Cyprus and in fact the traditional dress includes knee length leather boots said to be protection against them. Strangely I never saw a snake in the whole of my time there although we were aware that a bite from a blunt nosed viper required immediate treatment as it could prove fatal. The Cypriots never distinguished  between the different sorts of snakes and were said to kill all on sight. On the other hand there were spiders, as big as your hand, called bird eating spiders though of course they didn't eat birds. You were advise to avoid them as they could give you a nasty nip. If you wanted a pet there were chameleons, I was never very impressed by their colour changing habits. One chap had one for a while but it was said he put it on the tartan of a Gordon Highlander and it died of heart failure......

    The Army was always keen on sports although the only time I went on the local football pitch was when it hosted the Queen's birthday parade. Just along the coast was Happy Valley with a whole range of sports facilities and also quite a good beach. In the summer someone ran a village bus service there for the afternoon and we went every so often. The new married quarters were being built on the cliffs at the back of the site and more sewage than the drains could cope with started to make its way down. One week when we went we found the pioneer corps hard at work putting in the required new sewer. Next week however there was no progress and just one chap on guard. Of course we wanted to know what the score was and it turned out that they had not fully appreciated the situation and most had gone down with dysentery.  Nothing more would happen till they got out of hospital and sick bay.

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