Page 258 - Demo

254sure that something was being ritually slaughtered. However, we all survived the night, our transport amazingly turned up and we went back to a hotel in Nairobi. I cannot find the photos I took at the end but remember that I was grey with the fine dust that blew about. It took 3 showers to get rid of it. I also discovered that my 5 days beard had a fair bit of grey in it which was upsetting. We flew back in a Tristar I think and then made our way back to Linton. The students were supposed to write a report on the expedition but I did it as I wanted to point out some failures of our organisation. The catch 22 of the operation order was one, but everyone wore their own boots and one chaps boots fell to pieces on the trek. I suggested that we had a store of boots that people could use and also a proper expedition store to draw equipment from. There were several other points as well but it was met with a furious response from Support Command. I was told that all my ideas were ridiculous and that we could have done the expedition in trainers. One of the reasons I wrote the report was that we had a new GSTO and I wanted to save him the bother. He wrote a letter saying that I was well known as being too soft with the students and that in many areas I was misguided. Frankly, I was stunned. I thought of asking for a formal interview with the Air Officer Commanding which I was entitled to do. Eventually I took the cowards way out and forgot about it. In time nearly all my suggestions were taken up and because the last part of getting up Point Lenana was up a glacier, it was later decided that the expedition leader needed a Winter qualification which I did not have. I had to keep working with the GSTO particularly on LSEs and as I got to know him more the less I liked him. His ideas of the ALTs was more or less an 18/30 holiday. If he taught the students anything it was probably how to fiddle allowances. Later his wife knowing what he was like told him that if he went on another detachment, she would not be there when he came back.