Brigadier Rtn Tony Calder Army Experiences
Speaker meeting 20-May-10 O
ur speaker on this occasion was
Brigadier Tony Calder, who is a mediator and Chair of the Army Benevolent Fund. Tony was at the club to talk about his army experiences and he kept all those present in a state of eager anticipation as he spoke with pride about his family connection with army.
I
n 1964 he was posted to the mountains of Agfan near Aden in the Middle East. He wanted to use his experience as a comparison to his son‟s and the present day soldiers who are fighting in Afghanistan because the geography of the two countries is similar. Unfortunately for Tony and his men, the rocks in his mountain range have an iron content which rendered their compasses useless. This meant that all navigational directions were by the stars at night, and during the day they just had use their eyes. They also had difficulty finding mines which the enemy would bury some three feet below the surface. Several vehi- cles could pass over such a mine before eventually the vibrations would detonate the device. Tony witnessed one such explosion, as one of the vehicles containing members of his platoon was blown up. Fortunately in that case they all survived.
H
e pointed out that the question arose as to why they were there.
Apparently, the area was a very important camel route, and local tribesmen were attacking the caravans to steal their supplies.
M
ost amusingly, Tony originally found out the nature
of his posting from a local taxi driver, who seemed better informed than the soldiers being sent to defend the route. The equipment they had to use was very old, being mostly old WW11 stuff. Aircraft support consisted of some old Shackleton bombers dropping a few bombs, mostly inaccurately, to make a point to the locals. However, the Hawker Hunters which supported the troops on the ground were fantastic. Helicopter support was supplied by
the three services - army, navy and air-force - one of which kept crashing, which was rather unsettling!
T T
hey had mortars but no ammo, they had to use 3in. shells in the 80mm.
mortars and the anti-tank guns were useless. Personal kit was OK but they had no helmets, relatively new rifles, an old bren gun and a new machine gun which no-one knew how to use and they just had to work it out as there was no manual!
he heat made the men sweat a lot and the salt rotted their clothes. The boots
they were issued with had rubber soles which quickly wore through, and the men had to line them with cardboard which lasted for about three days before the card had to be replaced. Eventually they received decent boots. There was a shortage of water, so what they had was needed to prepare food. This meant that washing was definitely not allowed, which literally caused a bit of a stink. Sleeping was also a problem. They had no sleeping bags, just Hessian mats which were laid on the rocky ground. Ouch!
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