32nd Edition
November 2018
Veteran Leads with Volunteer Service to Community across the Mediterranean, through the Suez By Barbra Fairclough Alan Cook was as a young man in Ports- and down the Red Sea. As they came mouth England when he joined the army as through the Straights of Aden the British an apprentice millwright in the British Roy- Navy would be there to see aircraft carriers, al Mechanical Engineers Corp. During his destroyers, frigates, etc. They would let them all go through, then tours in Germany he also served they would pick up the in the Irish Rangers Battalion phone and call the White Mechanized Detachment House and say ‘By the way (Armoured Personnel Carriers). the Russians have just Alan served from 1960 to 1978. moved their fleet into the InHe was on three tours in Germadian Ocean’…” ny, and one in Yemen. The final Alan spent three months part of his career was spent in running convoys up country Marchwood on the south coast of from Aden to Al Habilayn. England. He was in a transport squadThe Yemen Emergency or the ron and his location had Rad-Fan Uprising began in 1963 fuel, ammunition and water, and when Alan was deployed in a favorable target. Because 1967, it was a time of escalating they were situated in a tensions in the area. There were ‘wadi’, a dry stream bed, 17,000 troops from army, navy they would distribute water and air force stationed there. Alan locally through a pipeline. was situated in Yemen at the port “We had a helicopter squadtown of Aden. It was a strategic ron there, and we would get location for reconnaissance on the Alan Cook aged 29, on the telephone ‘We’ve got Indian Ocean just next to the barracks in Deilinghofer, visitors on the west side,’ Straights of Aden. Germany they used to sneak in and we “When the Russians moved had the water well… that was their favorite their fleet from the high arctic in Northern Russia they would come around Scandina- target, was hitting the pipeline from the via, past the UK, Straights of Gibraltar, (Continued on page 3)
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