I thought that would be it, but Arthur Holt, who was Hampshire coach at the time, invited me back. I made 80 odd and it was suggested I might like to accompany the second team on a tour starting in Bristol and finishing in Kent. This was my big chance. Don Leslie sent me home for a celebratory leave. My father was not in favour of me playing for any county other than Yorkshire and we were in the middle of a dispute when I received a cable saying I had to return to Salisbury immediately.
The consequence was that when I ought to have been playing cricket for Hampshire Seconds I was aboard a landing craft heading for Suez.
10
PROPER JOURNALISTS BEGIN AT SUEZ
I was ordered to join a unit called 4PRS. This was a hastily conceived outfit assembled to deal with the requirements of the world’s media if and when we invaded Egypt. Our commanding officer was John Stubbs, a lieutenant-colonel in the Sherwood Foresters. He was a genial man who laughed a lot, mainly at my Yorkshire accent, which he thought hilarious. He descended from fighting man to media nursemaid when he lost an arm in a battle and there were times when you caught him gazing wistfully at nothing in particular, like a man recalling happier times.
His number two was another fighting soldier, Major Charles Macgregor, who had been injured in Korea. He was not much given to introspection and was clearly disgruntled with his new posting. Then there were two captains from the army reserve, one of whom had something to do with publishing. The other worked as a salesman with a drinks company. He was a reluctant soldier with a ruddy face and a short temper. Our team was completed by one other National Service second lieutenant, a young journalist called Robin Esser, who later went on to become editor of the
Sunday Express
and is now the executive managing editor of the
Daily Mail
.
We planned our part in the downfall of Gamal Abdel Nasser in a Lyons tea house in Piccadilly. It soon became apparent that the National Service officers were the ones designated to have daily contacts with the media while the senior officers would play a strategic role. Generally speaking, the political arguments raging at the time passed us by. It is not that the embarking soldier is ignorant of why he is getting on a troopship, it is simply he has other more important things to worry about, like staying alive.
I was both frightened and excited at the prospect of going to war. I wondered, as all men do, what I’d be like under fire. Mainly, I was intrigued at the prospect of travelling to foreign lands. I was twenty and had never been on a plane or left the country of my birth. My mother wrote to me, calling the prime minister, Sir Anthony Eden, a ‘warmonger’. My father added a note saying Barnsley was doing well.
We flew to Cyprus in a DC3, which bucked and lurched in such an erratic and frightening manner it gave me a lifelong dislike of flying. We stayed in the Ledra Palace Hotel in Nicosia, which had been the media base during that dangerous time in Cyprus when EOKA was conducting a terrorist campaign against British rule on the island. The hotel was favoured by the media not simply because it was the best hotel but because the concierge, George Savas, was an infallible source of information of the most important kind. If you were heading out of the house, particularly at night, it was prudent to check with Savas. He would ask your destination and then nod or gravely shake his head, which meant there was likely to be an incident in the area to which you were heading. While I was in Cyprus, half of 4PRS, the vehicles and radio vans and their drivers, were camped in Malta, waiting to cross over to Egypt when the action was ready.
Robin was with them when a big story broke in October 1956.
Many of the men in the 3rd Battalion of the famous Grenadier Guards regiment, also camped in Malta, were Z reservists, plucked from their civilian jobs and recalled for the invasion force.
Unfortunately, army pay lagged far behind civilian pay and the reservists’ families were left back in the UK struggling to make ends meet and feed the children on a few pounds a week. The reservists themselves were fed up with hanging around in temporary accom modation waiting for the politicians to decide if they were going to fight or not. The pressure on the men was huge and there were open demonstrations and even threats to mutiny.
‘Guards Mutiny’ – what a headline for Fleet Street!
A plane load of reporters landed in Malta to be met by the only army PR officer on the island at the time – Second Lieutenant Robin Esser.
He provided a coach, suitably equipped with cold beers, towels and swimming costumes, and bussed them, via a pleasant beach, to the headquarters of the regiment on the island. He arranged for the soldiers to explain all their grievances, openly and fully, and sent the reporters and photographers away fully briefed.
A day or so later General Sir Hugh Stockwell, who was in charge of the invasion force, flew in to Malta. He called for the PR officer responsible for what he judged a job well done. When Robin presented himself, in the uniform of the General Services Corps and with one pip on his shoulder, the general looked him up and down and asked, ‘What are you?’
‘Your public relations officer, sir,’ Robin replied. ‘I am doing my National Service.’ Stockwell, a charismatic soldier with a great sense of fairness, turned to his ADC and asked, ‘What rank do these chaps normally have if they are doing this job?’
‘Captain, sir,’ came the reply.
‘Well make him a bloody captain then,’ said Stockwell.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Robin.‘But there’s another one. My colleague Second Lieutenant Parkinson is in Cyprus organising the advance band of correspondents.’
‘Same for him,’ said Stockwell to his ADC. ‘I want my men properly rewarded.’ That was how we became the two youngest serving captains in that force.
It was decided a volunteer media party would accompany the first assault troops and I would accompany them. I don’t know how I was given this job. Unlike the correspondents – Cyril Page of ITN, Terry Fincher and Donald Edgar of the
Daily Express
, Hanson Baldwin of the
New York Times
and Seeghan Maynes of Reuters – who all bravely stuck their hands in the air when the colonel asked for volunteers, I had most certainly kept my hands in my pockets.
All we knew was that, while the politicians dithered, a large invasion force was gathering in the Mediterranean and a declaration of war was imminent. I was told to conduct my advance party to Famagusta where we would join a boat to rendezvous with the invasion fleet. I took my colleagues to the quartermaster’s store to get them kitted out and when I saw them in their uniforms they looked shambolic. I have never been able to fathom why the uniform of the British Army is so ugly, uncomfortable and ill-fitting. It doesn’t approximate to any known human shape or size and is made of material as hairy and intractable as coconut matting. Terry Fincher – who later became a friend and a colleague on the
Daily Express
– was an especially forlorn sight, wearing a blouse the size of a large overcoat and a pair of trousers that kept falling around his ankles.
The only one of the party who looked remotely businesslike was Cyril Page of ITN. No matter what the turmoil, Cyril always looked smart and groomed. He wore a Canadian army uniform in soft and tailored material. Cyril was a top-class cameraman, fearless without being reckless, a man who survived a lifetime of conflict and who came to know more about operating in a war zone than most of the soldiers he filmed in battle.
We travelled through the night in a taxi. The driver thought we were crazy, a group of men in army uniform, driving across the island in the dark, prime targets for the terrorists. We bribed him to continue his journey but his concern caused me to consider checking our only means of defence, which was my revolver. Then I remembered I had packed it in my kitbag which was strapped to the roof of our vehicle. I decided to keep this information to myself.
We arrived at the dock gates at Famagusta and they wouldn’t let us in, saying they had no record of a group of correspondents joining a ship. The duty officer arrived and after a great palaver we discovered our vessel was berthed at Limassol, a port some fifty miles away. I had been given the wrong orders, not that a taxi load of tired and cynical correspondents believed me.
We arrived at our destination at dawn and were ferried out to the
Empire Ken
, a boat that had done long service as an Irish ferry before being converted into a troopship. Soldiers were idling on deck, but there was an expectation around that we were not far from the action. As it was, we cruised the Mediterranean for a couple of days more while the politicians argued about what should happen. On the morning of 6 November we ceased sailing in circles and started a purposeful move south.
We were part of a formidable armada sailing towards the coast of Egypt and it was in that moment I fully realised, for the first time, that I was going to be witness to a war. As Port Said became a line on the horizon, jet fighters started appearing overhead, screeching towards their targets, and we began to see fingers of smoke appearing on the skyline.
They told us to prepare to land and when we were about a hundred yards from shore we were transferred into a landing craft crammed with assault troops. There was tracer both going in and out of Port Said and, as we headed for shore, I looked at the strained faces around me and saw that stoic resolve we Brits have of not making too much of a fuss about things. My fear was contained by a thought I had as I leapt ashore. I realised that instead of a weapon I was carrying my portable typewriter above my head and I wondered what Mum and Dad would think if they received a telegram from the War Office informing them their son had died defending his Remington.
Our destination was a block of flats on the sea front, which was to serve as media headquarters. We arrived in time to see a platoon of commandos working through the building, floor by floor, flushing out snipers. There were a couple of dead soldiers in the well of the building, and large holes in the walls where it had taken a direct hit from shellfire. Even this early in the campaign there was a feeling that Port Said had fallen, the opposition had fled and all that remained to be done was the mopping up.
We didn’t have any transport so we went in search of a car and found a large abandoned American saloon. Driving through the streets of Port Said, we saw two young women struggling with heavy suitcases. They said they had been working as dancers in a local nightclub and had become caught up in the war. Their flat had been damaged and now they were homeless. As gallant invaders, we found them an empty apartment nearby and told them we would return with provisions.
It was a day or two before I managed to avoid the curfew and, carrying a large box of food and drink, visited the apartment. The door was opened by the biggest French paratrooper in the world. He looked me up and down, curled his lip at my Pay Corps cap badge, relieved me of my goodies, said ‘Merci’, grinned and closed the door. Sometime later, I heard some of the journalists talking about a brothel run by two dancers in a nearby building. I didn’t inform them who was responsible for providing the business opportunity to the women involved.
The Egyptians surrendered after twelve hours. There was a ceasefire and we sat and awaited the next move. The media group became bored at the lack of attention, frustrated and angry at an almost non-existent communication system that meant, even if they had a story to film, the method of getting it back to base was, even on a good day, useless.
4PRS took a battering. There was also a conflict within the ranks between the journalists, such as Robin Esser and me, who understood the media’s frustration, and one or two of the other officers who believed in keeping the media at a safe distance. I was told to keep a tight rein on a reporter from ITN. According to an instruction from London, this man was likely to turn into a hostile and subversive presence. I was required to watch him closely and report any untoward behaviour. The reporter was Robin Day. I followed Mr Day doggedly without seeing or hearing anything that might be termed treasonable. He regarded me as more of a batman than an accompanying officer, treating me with the haughty disdain that was to become his trademark.
Another journalist I was assigned to accompany was Randolph Churchill, son of Winston, who had been employed by a London paper to write an overview of the operation. I was warned he might be irascible and rude. The man I met at El Gamil airport was best described as mellow.
‘Where do you want to go, sir?’ I enquired.
‘Where are the French?’ he asked.
‘Across the canal in Port Fouad,’ I said.
‘Let us proceed there . . . better cellar,’ he said, by way of explanation.
The big story was when the United Nations troops arrived as peacekeepers in Port Said. I had four or five photographers in the back of a jeep driven by Corporal Chayevsky. The corporal was an interesting man, a regular soldier who had spent some time in military prison in the Far East for assault. He was my self-appointed driver and bodyguard. He was an East End wheeler-dealer, in the terminology of the day a bit of a wide boy. He didn’t like Port Said or its citizens, most of whom turned out to welcome the United Nations troops.
We were following the Blue Berets as they marched through the streets when we were cut off at an intersection by a mob of demonstrators. They ignored us until Chayevsky started nudging forward, sounding his horn. Then they turned and, seeing our isolation, began pressing on the front of the jeep, forcing us to stop. At this moment one demonstrator jumped on to the front of the jeep and began ranting at us. We had a sten gun in the car and I had my .45 revolver in its holster but I reckoned a move to use either might prove provocative, not to mention fatal.
By now we were surrounded and one or two of the locals were working themselves into a lather. The photographers seemed unconcerned. They kept snapping away, apparently oblivious to the danger and unaware that the men they were taking photographs of might turn out to be our lynch mob. I could imagine the caption: ‘Last Picture of British Press Party. Army Officer from Barnsley Among the Missing’.