Page 144 - Demo

144attached, relieving the APL Wing. A highly placed British civilian eye8witness told me about this in 1961, saying that Donald Pocock%u2019s personal intervention with his Levy Wing, and the effectiveness of No 20 Wg, in the first RAF intervention in force on the ground in the Colony, had been decisive. No 20 Wg and its squadrons subsequently remained as the permanent IS garrison until 1957. Command of the APL passed to the RAF Regiment in the New Year but they were never called into the Colony again. A book published in 2000, The Armed Forces of Aden, 1839?1967,1 wrongly ascribes a %u2018mutiny%u2019 at Buraimi, in Oman, in 1953 to the APL, alleging that they murdered two of their own officers there. They did not. It was a wholly Trucial Oman Levies (TOL) affair. A Gulf Emirates Force, akin to the APL, but smaller and very lightly armed, the TOL was led by mercenary ex8army officers (mainly British and Jordanian). A flight of APL was sent to support the TOL against Saudi threats to Buraimi, a long8simmering dispute. The Saudis eventually backed off. However, immediately after the action, two dissident TOL soldiers who had some time previously been discharged from the APL, shot dead the British mercenary CO of the TOL and a serving RAF Medical Officer from Sharjah. Far from disgrace, Fg Off John Lee of the RAF Regiment, the only APL officer in Buraimi at the time, was Mentioned in Despatches for his action there. However, there was a sad sequel two years later. In June 1955, Flt Lt John Lee was killed in action in the Aden Protectorate, along with Wg Cdr Rodney Marshall, CO of No 1 Wing APL, an Arab Officer and five APL soldiers, in a ferocious engagement in the Wadi Hatib, a notorious hot8spot where, over the preceding eighteen months, the Levies had taken seventeen casualties. Sqn Ldr %u2018Jock%u2019 Stewart, OC No 6 Sqn APL, who assumed command mid8action upon the Wing Commander%u2019s death, won an MC for his conduct of the battle. He was the father of Col Bob Stewart, DSO, of Balkans/TV/radio/book fame, now (April 2010 ? Ed) a Conservative Parliamentary Candidate. Far worse than the inaccurate record of the Buraimi incident, especially in light of the bloody but gallant record of the Wadi Hatib over the period 1954855, is Sir Kennedy Trevaskis%u2019 disparaging of the RAF Regiment. A career Political Officer in Aden, and High Commissioner in the early 1960s, Trevaskis writes, in his oft8quoted