Suez 1956, page 39
In the illumination of the Newfoundland’s searchlights, the mystery vessel was revealed as the Egyptian frigate Domiat. The signal from Newfoundland ‘Stop or I fire’ was acknowledged, but when ordered ‘Report when stopped’ the Domiat switched off her navigation lights, increased speed and trained her guns on the British cruiser. At 1, 500 yards the Newfoundland opened fire just before the Domiat began firing with all her guns. ‘When only a few hundred yards away, the frigate turned in an apparent bid to ram the Newfoundland, but Newfoundland’s fire was so accurate and effective that the attempt to continue the action was hopeless. Both ships stopped firing together and Domiat, badly damaged in the blaze, capsized and, after floating bottom up for three minutes, sank.’ The silence that followed the noise of the guns, the sight of the burning ship and of the survivors struggling in the water had what Captain Gower described as a ‘sobering effect’ on his young and inexperienced ship’s company, one hundred of whom were under twenty years of age. ‘Any feelings of anger during the action were replaced by sympathy for the Egyptian sailors, many of whom had been trained in England.’ Six officers and sixty ratings were picked up by rafts from a choppy sea or were hauled in over the side by ropes and scrambling nets. British casualties were five injured and one killed.17
Two days after the Domiat incident came the first casualties from mistaken identity. HMS Crane, patrolling off the Straits of Tiran, was attacked by four Israeli jets. One of them was shot down.
Meanwhile, aboard his command ship HMS Tyne, Stockwell was under pressure from Beaufre to bring forward the paratroop drop on Port Said. Long and arduous were their discussions. Beaufre was increasingly frustrated by the delays imposed by the methodical and, as he saw it, unimaginative British commanders, delays for which he was carrying the blame in Paris. At one point, the impatience of Barjot became so great that the admiral requested permission of the French government to take over direct control of the paratroops, a ‘completely lunatic’ idea, decided Beaufre, who could see that his own authority was under threat.18 Barjot did not get his way, but Beaufre succeeded in persuading Stockwell to discount the air photographs that showed a concentration of Egyptian troops at Port Said and along the canal. There would be no postponement. The drop would go ahead as planned.
The British 3rd Parachute Battalion, led by Lieutenant Colonel Paul Crook, was to land 668 men with seven jeeps, four trailers, six anti-tank guns and 176 containers on Gamil airfield, 3 miles west of Port Said.19 Fifteen minutes later, the French 2nd Colonial Parachute Regiment under Colonel Pierre Chateau-Jobert, better known by his Free French pseudonym ‘Conan’, would drop on Port Fuad, a residential suburb of Port Said on the east bank of the canal. Both landing zones challenged the skills of the assailants. Roy Fullick, who was with 3rd Para, recalls that Gamil airfield ‘only just merited the description of airport’.
It was a strip of land running between the sea and the brackish Lake Manzala, never more than 800 yards wide and consisting of a pair of runways and a simple control tower . . . Between the airfield and Port Said lay the town’s sewage farm, surrounded by half-drained marshland and then a series of cemeteries reflecting the diverse creeds of their inhabitants. Nearer still to Port Said were several blocks of high flats and the coastguard barracks and then on the edge of the town proper an area known as Shanty Town, whose inhabitants were to suffer most from the invasion.20
As for the French paratroop force, their landing was even more hazardous. To drop with any accuracy on a zone barely 300 yards long and only 150 yards across, bounded by the sea, roads, the canal and trees, the planes would have to fly in at a height of 450 feet, almost 200 feet less than the accepted minimum.
Brigadier Butler, who had overall command of the British paratroops, was with the French in wanting an even bolder plan, a brigade-strength drop at Ismailia and another at Port Tewfik to coincide with a sea landing at Port Said. In this way, all three key points on the canal would be seized at one blow.21 On paper, the plan had everything going for it; in reality, however, Stockwell felt that there were too many hostages to fortune. There was no shifting from what was codenamed Operation Telescope save for the addition of a second French parachute drop south of Port Fuad on the afternoon of the 5th.
In the twenty-four-hour countdown to Operation Telescope, the Port Said defences came under heavy air attack. While preparing for take-off from Cyprus, French and British paratroopers had the chance to compare notes. From the beginning it was clear that the advantage was with the French, as Air Marshal Sir Denis Barnett conceded:
. . . In general the equipment supplied to the French Air Force for tactical operations was so superior to that available in the Middle East that at times the Royal Air Force looked almost Victorian. This equipment varied from modern tentage in the French Air Force compared with ancient marquees available to the Royal Air Force, to highly modern mobile photographic equipment which the French had and which was not available to the Royal Air Force.22
There was also a contrast, unfavourable to the British, in the suitability of the aircraft used to carry the paratroops. While the French were blessed with the rear-loading Nord Atlas 2501 which could accommodate thirty-five paras with their equipment and support weapons, their partners in war had to make do with the Hastings and the Valletta, veterans of the Second World War. Both were side-loading, which meant that heavy equipment had to be slung under the aircraft instead of taken on board and dropped from a tailgate. A rear-loading plane, the Beverley, was due to come into service but it was not ready for Suez.
The loudest complaints were reserved for the interior design of the twin-engined Valletta, which had a main spar about 18 inches high across the fuselage in the middle of the aircraft. Half of those on board had to climb over this obstacle to reach the door. This could prove difficult for a paratrooper carrying a parachute, kitbag, weapon and ammunition amounting to a load close on twice his weight.
In terms of experience there was not much to choose between the two allies. Action in Algeria (and in a few cases Indo-China) could be equated with action in Cyprus, though there were those on the British side who noted a sharp difference in professional attitude. ‘There had been an embarrassment in Cyprus when a young English officer informed a French colleague that he had done twenty-seven jumps. The French older captain was puzzled and said he had only done three. The French only counted their operational jumps into real war, regarding keeping a tally of exercise jumps as a bit childish.’23
The British drop was at 7.15 a.m. local time; the French drop a quarter of an hour later. The flight from Cyprus took ninety minutes. As the aerial convoy passed over the ships steaming towards Port Said, fighters were shuttling to and from attacks on Egyptian anti-aircraft guns that might otherwise have upset the schedule.
The plane I was in was a Hastings heavy-drop aircraft, carrying fourteen men, all very relaxed, who for most of the flight lay about the floor of the aircraft, reading magazines and paperbacks. We were flying in fairly low as we approached the Egyptian coast, and the British and French fleets were an impressive sight in the early morning sunlight. It all looked very peaceful, with a line of breakers pounding on the sandy shore. Then we turned into the sun to make our approach round over El Gamil for the drop. Standing in the door provided a fine view of the delta, with little flashes of ack-ack fire from the Egyptian batteries.24
There were those who were slightly unnerved by the absence of reserve parachutes. But with a drop height of less than 600 feet, they would have been virtually useless. Anyway, Crook had decided to allow for extra ammunition and still save on weight. For three soldiers the drop, frightening enough in itself, was especially memorable.
Private Peter Lamph of ‘B’ Company – he was No. 20 in a Valletta, and got his strap wrapped round his leg as he crossed the spar . . . As the plane turned for home, he dropped and landed in the sea. As he came down, he came under heavy small-arms fire and his personal weapons’ container was hit several times. He feigned dead and, as time passed, ‘B’ Company began attacking, and he made his way towards the beach and was picked up by a patrol later in the day. The happy ending came when Group Captain Macnamara sent him a crate of beer with the compliments of Transport Command to compensate him for his wetting.25
Private Pugsley was the first to arrive at his platoon objective, the airfield control tower.
He landed in one of the only two ornamental palm trees by the tower and hung there muttering: ‘Cor, fuck me!’ as Sergeant Legg and a platoon raced to secure the tower and the adjacent building. As Private Looker of B Company was still at about 200 feet, with his kitbag swinging beneath him, he saw that he was about to land in a slit trench. The Egyptian occupant obviously thought so too, scrambled out, and stood on the edge of the trench, pointing his rifle at Looker. The fates intervened and Looker’s 80 lb kitbag swung into the Egyptian, knocking him into the trench. Looker landed on top of him and quickly despatched him.26
The final tally was four dead, with one soldier landing in a minefield, and thirty-six wounded. One of the latter was a Daily Mirror journalist, Peter Woods, later better known as a television newscaster. He it was who managed to persuade Colonel Crook’s brigade major that he knew all there was to know about jumping out of aircraft. When he came to admit that this was something of an exaggeration it was too late and he was out of the door. He broke both ankles on landing but he had his story. The Mirror ran it under the headline ‘I Jump with the Red Devils’.
There were two other unusual casualties. One was a staff officer who had a half-bottle of whisky in his hip pocket. Having performed a fast back landing, he cut himself painfully.27 The other, more serious, was the regimental medical officer, who lost an eye. This caused consternation in Cyprus. Major Frank King was told to do something about it.
I couldn’t find a single doctor on the island who was parachute-trained. So we got three young Air Force doctors from a nearby hospital and said, ‘One of you is going to parachute into Egypt.’ None of them was very thrilled, so we drew lots. Fortunately, however, we got another message saying a replacement was not required. The officer who lost his eye had a very good sergeant who patched him up, and he carried on. He was subsequently awarded a well-deserved MC.28
The French landed with guns blazing, the advantage of having weapons that could be employed during the drop as opposed, in the British case, to having to wait for the landing before 1940-vintage Sten guns could be unstrapped and called into service – assuming, of course, that they did not jam in the effort. The drop was spot-on but the landing zone had the distinct disadvantage of being occupied by a contingent of Egyptian infantry. Pierre Leulliette was there.
Lightened, I rose from the ground, clutching my automatic rifle. I saw my companions surge up, like myself, from every hole. Immense confusion. The ground didn’t seem very safe: water, humps and hollows everywhere. But a few hundred yards off was a green belt of magnificent palm trees. Behind it were some large, dazzlingly white buildings: the reservoirs, our first objective. They were firing machine-guns at us from behind the trees: through binoculars, you could see the crews busy round their guns.
We dashed over to them in confusion, jumping, falling and getting up again, the captain at our head. But it was a long way, several hundred yards at the double, our legs bruised by the jump, and bullets flying. From time to time, one of our lot pitched on to his face in the sand. You couldn’t tell if it was fatal, but it was forbidden to stop; there were orderlies in our wake. Stopping during an attack, even to pick up a wounded comrade, was considered desertion.
Then some field-guns opened up on us. It wasn’t a biblical deluge of fire, as imagined by people whose idea of war comes from the cinemas. No, just a bullet here and a shell there. That was all. But it was enough to fill the air. Eventually, as we ran, we realized that this confused noise wasn’t stopping us. We were so beside ourselves, it didn’t even frighten us.
Yet, in a flash, I took in an image which I shall never forget: hanging from the top of a palm tree by the straps of his parachute, Sergeant B.’s body was slowly dripping blood into the sand. He had apparently been one of the first killed, before reaching the ground, shot in full flight. His large body was swaying in the palm fronds, sharp as spears. Ten yards away, in a hedge of flowering rose trees, in the shade of the palm trees by the reservoirs, among the damaged stalks, another body caught my attention: the small khaki body of an Egyptian soldier. The contrast between the vitality of the flowers where he’d crashed and his bloodless face took my breath away.29
A great benefit to the French paratroops was an unlikely secret weapon, directed by a ‘rough tongued, one-eyed veteran of colonial wars’. General Gilles had an aerial command post. Flying above the battle with sufficient height to give a superior radio signal, he was able to direct air fire on to enemy positions.
The immediate objective of the French was to secure the two Raswa bridges, the vital link in the Port Said–Suez route. One bridge had been destroyed but the second, the Treaty Road bridge over the Junction Canal, was intact. It was defended by 30 mm field guns firing from trenches between the iron girders of the bridge, which also gave protection to infantry who showed every indication of knowing how to use modern automatic weapons.
Low-level air strikes, coming in at little over 30 feet, helped to silence the field guns, though blanket bombing was inhibited by the need to protect the bridge. In the end the defenders were drawn out by a mass assault on guns and trenches.
Shots, confusion. The Egyptians, encircled, surrendered. They emerged one by one from their pillboxes, hands in the air. Like us, they were wearing magnificent red berets. They were Nasser’s famous ‘death commandos’!
But the bridge was still in their comrades’ hands, and they would not give in. They were still firing from beneath huge iron girders which protected them from the air. A heavy barrage. Losses on both sides. Then they slowly began to fall back.
While his comrades withdrew, covering each other, one Egyptian remained more than a quarter of an hour by himself at the entrance to the bridge, defending it with his one gun against our entire company, furiously and hopelessly. He was a real death commando. Then a bullet struck him. He slumped back grotesquely, like all heroes.30
The whole operation had been concluded in an hour and a half, well ahead of schedule. The troops having dug in to await reinforcements to be parachuted in, probing patrols were sent out towards Port Said and down the canal towards Ismailia. They found no sign of the enemy and the road was clear of mines. The explosives stored by the roadside suggested a plan for craters to serve as vehicle traps. But the defenders had run out of time.
Back at El Gamil, the airfield had been cleared rather more quickly than Crook had anticipated. The drums filled with concrete that were distributed across the runway were presumably there to deter troop carriers from landing. But for 3rd Para they were a positive help in providing cover for a successful attack on Egyptian machine gunners firing from two pillboxes. Another strong defence position was the nearby cemetery, which was dealt with by Crook calling in air strikes. More of a problem was the sewage farm, ‘also home to thousands of mosquitoes who proved to be more irritating than the Egyptians’.31
The last obstacle before Port Said, the coast guard barracks on the beach road, was also set alight.
These barracks had been turned into a strong point by the enemy, and rocket fire proved ineffective against it due to its size and construction. After . . . a rapid change of armament Wyverns armed with 2 × 1, 000 lb and 1 × 500 lb bombs apiece, fused 30 seconds delay were launched and destroyed this target. Ground observation after the Cease Fire showed that this strike was so accurate that adjacent buildings were untouched.32
One Wyvern was hit by flak. The pilot bailed out but was picked up by helicopter.
By 1 p.m. 3rd Para was running short of ammunition and the order was given to dig in. Here was an opportunity to check out captured weapons. Many an unreliable Sten gun was thrown aside in favour of a brand-new Czech-made automatic side arm.
In the afternoon 3rd Para was reinforced by a second drop. They were also visited by a French Dakota, which managed to find a landing strip at Gamil. On board was Colonel de Fouquières, who was under orders to see whether it would be practical to fly in French ground forces. The consensus on the British side was that any assumption that the Egyptians were finished was premature. Beaufre was later to claim that this had been a missed opportunity to advance at all speed on Port Said. In both their sectors the paratroops had achieved more than they had been called upon to do. Most critically, the French were in control of the freshwater reservoirs that supplied Port Said. Thus they had a weapon to hand that was more powerful than any explosive.
But it would have taken an audacious ground commander to have pre-empted the infantry heavy armour landing scheduled for the following day. Whatever else can be said about the Suez campaign it was not one that allowed for flexibility or encouraged subordinate officers to use their initiative. In any case, communications with Stockwell on his command ship were all but impossible. Vital wireless equipment that had dropped with 3rd Para – three old and unreliable long-range sets – had fallen to bits on impact. The alternative low-powered sets were near useless for any but the shortest messages until the naval convoy was closer to shore. So it was that Colonel de Fouquières departed without a promise of further action until the next day. But he did take with him a full load of casualties, including the medical officer who had carried on doing his job despite his own wound, together with the female war correspondent from Le Monde who had come along to view the battle from the British side.
