Suez 1956, page 1
Also by Barry Turner
. . . And the Policeman Smiled
When Daddy Came Home
Equality For Some
A Place in the Country
Countdown to Victory
AS EDITOR
The Writer’s Handbook
The Statesman’s Yearbook
www.hodder.co.uk
First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © Barry Turner 2006
The right of Barry Turner to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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ISBN 9781 444 7 6485 7
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CONTENTS
Also by Barry Turner
Title page
Copyright page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Endpiece
Acknowledgements
Notes on Sources
Index
The Suez Canal is 101 miles long (excluding 7 miles of approach channels to the harbours), connecting the Mediterranean with the Red Sea. Its minimum width is 197 ft. at a depth of 33 ft., and its depth permits the passage of vessels up to 34 ft. draught. It was opened for navigation on 17 November, 1869. The concession to the Suez Canal Company expires on 17 Nov., 1968. By the convention of Constantinople of 29 Oct., 1888, the canal is open to vessels of all nations and is free from blockade.
The Statesman’s Yearbook, 1955
The Suez Canal, a work attempted centuries ago by ancient Egyptians, by Persians and Greeks and Romans and Arabs; advocated by some of the greatest minds of history; and finally executed under the genius of Ferdinand de Lesseps, has not been altogether a blessing. While serving the needs of mankind, promoting civilization and progress and bringing closer the East to the West, it has also been the cause of discord, of international rivalries, of economic imperialism and of war.
Charles W. Hallberg, The Suez Canal.
Its History and Diplomatic Importance,
Columbia University Press, 1931
1
Sunrise, 6 November 1956. On the placid blue waters of the Mediterranean, 130 British and French warships with aircraft carriers and heavy cruisers, accompanied by scores of destroyers and frigates – the largest amphibious fighting force since the end of the Second World War – stretched along the Egyptian coastline. For Donald Edgar, a reporter with the Daily Express and one of only two journalists invited to witness the invasion at first hand, it was a scene so spectacular as never to be forgotten.
It was a bright morning with a blue sky and our ship was in the centre of a great array of warships and transports which covered a great arc of sea from Port Fuad to the left of the Suez Canal to Port Said in the centre and Gamil airfield on the right. Our ship was nearly stationary about three miles off shore, distant enough to reduce the scene to the size of a coloured picture postcard and the warships to toys on the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens. It was only with an effort of will I could grasp that it was all for real, not a sequence from a film. It was really happening.1
The anticipation had seemed interminable. The event that had sparked the action, the declaration by Gamal Abdel Nasser, head of Egypt’s ruling council, that the Suez Canal was to come under exclusive Egyptian control, had taken place three months and ten days earlier. It is hard now to imagine the consternation caused by a simple act of nationalisation. But the Suez Canal was not like any other waterway. Built by the French and long administered by an Anglo-French company, the canal was seen as Europe’s lifeline, the route by which Middle East oil was delivered to energy-hungry economies. Egypt was not to be trusted; Nasser was not to be trusted. The ‘act of piracy’, as the headline writers called it, had to be avenged. This was the moment.
While those on deck watched and waited below, troops in full battle gear were climbing into their landing craft. When they broke their routine to listen to muffled explosions coming from no one knew where, a loudspeaker voice calmed fears with an announcement that RAF jets were bombing the beaches. Soon after, the close-support destroyers opened up with broadsides.
To the left of the Canal entrance a great cloud of black smoke from burning oil tanks was drifting over Port Said forming a sinister cloud. Along the sea-front puffs of white smoke were rising from shell-fire and red flames were taking hold on the right where the shanty town lay . . . To the extreme left, off Port Fuad, the French sector, lay a great battleship, the Jean Bart, and from time to time it fired a heavy shell from its great guns which made the air tremble a little where I stood.2
At 4.15 the troop carriers opened their bow doors and the ramps were lowered. Second Lieutenant Peter Mayo, a conscript officer with the Royal Marines, was in one of the first landing craft to hit the water.
Almost immediately some shore battery fired two rounds which landed in the sea about 100 yards to our right, but that was all. There was a tremendous barrage going on, and the noise was something with the shells passing close overhead and bursting all along the beach. We were about a mile out. There was a huge pall of smoke and dust through which at times we could see the outline of the first buildings on the beach. Luckily two or three prominent church towers were quite visible to give us direction. A stirring sight was the RAF jets which came screaming down in a steep dive to sweep through the dust cloud, dropping bombs first and then zooming out the other end to turn and make a second run firing rockets and cannon, whose tracers could be seen jabbing viciously along the beach. Soon many of the beach huts were blazing. At one moment there was a huge explosion and fire ball some way inland which was a large petroleum installation going up. It was to go on burning for three days.3
Still the passive observer, Donald Edgar was telling himself how lucky he was,
. . . standing on the bridge watching the most impressive military operation the British had put on for many a year, with parachutists, marine commandos, tanks, aircraft and a naval bombardment. What is more I was looking at it all in safety. In the cussed way of the English I think this last factor was beginning to have its effect on me. I was beginning to feel sorry for the people of Port Said who were on the receiving end.
I remembered only too well what it felt like. In 1940 in France it was the Germans who had the tanks, the aircraft and the overwhelming force and I was at the receiving end, taking shelter in ditches and cellars. However, I fought these feelings back. A few miles away British troops were fighting their way through a city, perhaps against heavy opposition, suffering casualties.4
Edgar was stretching the imagination in mentioning the parachutists. The drop had taken place twenty-four hours earlier after the French and British bombers had virtually wiped out the Egyptian air force before it could even get into the air. More than two hundred aircraft had run relays over the twelve main Egyptian airfields, attacking the hangars and installations every fifteen minutes over eleven and a half hours with rockets, cannon and multiple machine guns. ‘If the Egyptian airforce was ever a serious military factor,’ reported Hanson Baldwin of the New York Times, ‘its remnants were certainly of little importance by sundown.’5
Even so, the paratroopers, whose objective was to secure essential communication points, did not have an easy time of it. It was the job of the Deuxième Régiment de Parachutistes Coloniaux to capture the canal bridges south of Port Said which opened the road to Suez. The dropping zone was a narrow strip of land between Lake Manzoleh and the canal. The risk was landing in water and being dragged down by heavy equipment. There was only one way to minimise the hazard and that was to orchestrate the drop at an altitude low enough to avoid drift. The trouble was, if it was too low there would be no time for a canopy to open. The decision was taken. The drop would be from 450 feet, 100 feet down from the accepted safety level.
With even the weakest A-A fire, it had the appearance of Operation Suicide. The pilots took their maps scored with red lines. They must not deviate one yard from the marked lines; they must not hasten nor delay the drop by a second.
At 7.32 the aircraft were over the dropping-zone. ‘Water, water, everywhere,’ murmured a paratrooper. They dropped the equipment containers. The Egyptian A-A massed about the bridge opened up furiously. The containers, dangling below the parachutes, b
Miraculously nobody fell in the water. But the smoke-screen began to fade. Egyptian cannon, machine-guns and mortars opened up on the swinging silhouettes and on those on the ground, struggling from their harness.6
One bridge was blown up before the French could get to it but a second bridge, which carried the main road and railway, was captured intact. They went on to take Port Fuad.
A perilous drop by the 3rd Battalion The Parachute Regiment also met with success. El Gamil airfield was no more than 800 yards wide and consisted of a pair of runways and a makeshift control tower. It was bordered on one side by the sea and on the other by Lake Manzala. Like their French colleagues, the paras risked a watery grave.
Although the lack of good intelligence about the strength and dispositions of the Egyptians had resulted in the briefers exaggerating their numbers, it still surprised the men of 3 Para to see red tracer arching towards them as they floated earthwards. Fortunately for them, it is an even more frightening experience to see a cloud of several hundred parachutists descending upon one than it is to be shot at in the air when the adrenalin is flowing freely. Apart from that, men hanging from parachutes lack freedom of action, while those on the ground can make themselves scarce and unless they are of exceptional staunchness this is what generally occurs. It says much for the Egyptian soldiers that they fought for as long as they did, but within thirty minutes of landing 3 Para had cleared the airfield, which they found had been held by about a company of infantry defending a couple of concrete pill-boxes and a number of trenches dug along the beach and the airfield perimeter.7
Four hours after being taken, the airfield was once again ready for use. The link-up between the paras and those troops ferried in by helicopter or landing craft took place the following day.
Port Said beach line was ablaze from end to end, and a massive pall of smoke dragged away to the east, bringing to mind newsreel pictures of the evacuation of Dunkirk. It billowed from a point behind the town to form an oily and ominous backdrop to the whole electrifying panorama. The sky around us seemed full of shrieking jets and clattering helicopters; the sea dotted with naval vessels of every description.8
The area around Port Said was not the only scene of action. Egypt was at war on two fronts. On 29 October a crack parachute force of Israelis had dropped at the Mitla Pass in the Sinai Desert, just 40 miles east of Suez. As the sixteen Dakotas flew above the Kuntilla border crossing, the paratroopers could see below clouds of smoke and dust thrown up by the tanks and trucks of the Israeli land force racing towards the Egyptian bases that guarded the road to Mitla.
As his plane approached the drop site, battalion commander Raful Eitan stood by the door, first in line.
I had a feeling of great excitement, despite having jumped many times before. This jump was part of a wide-ranging military operation and was far from the Israeli border. When I got the go-ahead I jumped and drifted slowly down toward the Mitla crossroads. It was five o’clock in the afternoon and the sun was beginning to set. There was a stillness interrupted only by the sounds of our planes and isolated gunfire.
After freeing ourselves from our parachutes, we quickly regrouped and unloaded our weapons. We spread out and assumed positions in the staging area. The sun had already set as we began to set up roadblocks, lay mines and dig in. The task of fortifying our positions was made easy by the bunkers and communication trenches that were still standing from the days of the Turks. After positioning two units at the Parker monument to the west, we completed our day’s work by marking the area the French planes would need to drop our supplies.
Not long after digging in, the Israelis had their first encounter with Egyptian forces.
They were travelling past us, unaware of our presence, when we took them by surprise. We captured several of their vehicles and were lucky to find a generous supply of drinking water as well. After the French completed their drop, we were confident that we were well supplied.
Late that night I prepared to sleep. Sleeping the night before a battle is always difficult because there is great tension and excitement. Yet, I dug myself a foxhole, upholstered it with cardboard, cushioned it with parachutes and went to sleep.
At dawn I awoke and examined the area. Our troops were engaging in minor clashes with Egyptian forces that were passing through the Mitla Pass as they fled our advancing troops.9
Those troops were led by a maverick commando officer and a future Israeli prime minister – Ariel Sharon. Advancing over 90 miles in four days, it was this Israeli incursion into Egypt that gave apparent legitimacy to the Anglo-French action.
As bombs fell on Port Said, the French and British forces offshore braced themselves for the invasion. Their declared objective, received with incredulity by the rest of the world and not least by the United States, was to restore peace in the Middle East. In fact, as everybody knew, the aim was to take back control of the Suez Canal and to overthrow a demonised enemy, President Nasser.
So it was that Lieutenant Peter Mayo, whom we met earlier as his landing craft nudged the beach at Port Said, experienced his first action.
I drove straight up the land through the beach huts and in a couple of minutes we were disembarking behind the wall in front of the first of our three houses. These turned out to be still in the last stages of construction, the tallest being seven or eight stories high. 1 and 2 sections took cover in some rubble, covering the mosque to the left, while 5 section cleared the first house. There was no one inside and my section moved straight on into the third house and cleared it, sections leap-frogging upwards till we reached the roof where there was a balcony. Almost immediately several Wogs (as all Egyptians are generally known, though there seemed to be the understanding that ‘Wog’ meant an armed wog, all the others being termed ‘civvies’) appeared running down the street immediately in front of us. They had rifles but no uniform, and must have been Home Guard. Whatever they were, Soggers shot four of them with his bren-gun. I didn’t actually see it happen, but when I looked at the figures sprawled on the pavement in widening pools of their own blood I wasn’t as affected as I thought I should be, but viewed them in a detached and objective sort of way.10
The horror of it wasn’t brought home to Mayo until a few minutes later when another Egyptian suddenly appeared and started running up the street.
People said he had a pistol in his hand, but I didn’t see whether he had or not; but he hadn’t taken more than a dozen crouching steps before five or six shots tore into him, and as he fell he half twisted to look up where the fire came from with a look of furious surprise on his face. He fell out of sight under a bush. I felt slightly sick. We weren’t supposed to be shooting at civilians, but it was very difficult to tell, as most of the people we met were civilians with rifles. There were very few uniforms to be seen. We spent an hour or so up there, shooting at what were mostly fleeting targets. The incredible thing was the way civilians, women and children, wandered around apparently unconcerned only a few hundred yards away.11
The next ten minutes were said by Peter Mayo to be the most unpleasant of his life. Riding in Assault Landing Craft (LCAs), each with two Bren guns mounted in front, A Troop moved forward into the built-up area.
Things happened too quickly at the time for me to become really consciously frightened. It is only on looking back at it that one realises quite how dicey it was, and really how very lucky we were not to have more casualties. We started off down the street with high houses on both sides, and almost immediately we were fired on. A lot of windows held snipers, and all the side streets too. From then till we got out the other end there was a continual boil of fire. We kept shooting all the time, half the time not at anyone in particular, because moving as we were it was difficult to catch more than a fleeting glimpse of the Wogs. However it must have done something to discourage them, and their aim must have been pretty poor. There was the continual crack of bullets passing by, but luckily it is difficult to tell just how close they are – lucky that is for our peace of mind.
