Forgotten war
We thought we were in paradise ...then the bomb blew me over. No one remembers Aden. It is...
he said: “At first we thought it was a fabulous posting. We had money to burn. You could put a bottle of whisky and a bottle of sherry on your shopping list every week.
“And the steaks we used to get, they were flown over from Australia vacuum-packed.
“There was scandal. It wasn’t as rampant as we might see in The Last Post, but I’ve got a friend who was posted away because his wife was having an affair.”
Judith, a former RAF cook who married Tony in Germany in 1962, arrived with the couple’s young sons Mark, three, and Simon, 10 months, a few months later.
She said: “I’d never heard of Aden. The first thing I remember is walking down the aircraft steps and I’d never felt heat and humidity like it, it was unbelievable.”
The couple’s flat was on the infamous Maala Straight, a dual carriageway lined by blocks housing military families. Judith, now 75, said: “You could get a bus to the beach. The sand was too hot to walk on and the sea was warm with shark nets. “As it got more dangerous we’d socialise in each other’s flats. If you had a babysitter you didn’t say, ‘The coffee’s there’ – you’d say, ‘The rifle’s in the cupboard, the rounds are in the dressing table drawer’.” By late 1966 attacks were escalating. Tony said: “There was a nightly broadcast and a daily paper – we heard of rioting and shootings. It was terrorism. They attacked our families when we were at work. If a bomb went off in Maala Straight you were worried it was your wife or child.
“A baby died when a grenade was thrown into his pram in the road and a wing commander’s daughter was killed by a mine at a party.”
Tony was discharged from the RAF in 1969 and worked for the glass industry and then the MoD.
He and Judith, of Sleaford, Lincs, went on to have three more children, Amanda, James and Louise, and become grandparents.
They are proud members of the 1,900-strong Aden Veterans Association and hope The Last Post – which used South Africa as a stand-in for Aden – will bring the story to a new generation.
Tony said: “I want people to know it was a really, really dirty war and we withdrew without honour.”
The Last Post starts tonight at 9pm on BBC1.
You told babysitters, ‘The rifle’s in the cupboard, the bullets are in the drawer’ JUDITH HOLLAND ON LIVING WITH TERRORISM THREAT