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1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards
assassinated. There then followed the dreadful massacres of Sabra and Shatila. This resulted in the UN decision to send a ‘peace-keeping’ force to Lebanon. This was vetoed by the Russians, so the force ended up being multi-national instead of a UN one. Hence, C Squadron’s deploy- ment.
The journey from the port to our new home not only took us through all the areas that we would be patrolling but opened our eyes to the devastation that had befallen the city. This was contrasted by the people who seemed to be leading normal lives, going to work, shopping and, as we found on this first journey, traffic jams. There were hovels and destroyed buildings with brand new Mercedes parked outside, many with United Kingdom (UK) number plates. We later discovered that they were the produce of a huge trade in stolen vehicles. To our surprise, there was no shelling or gunfire to be heard. This was later explained by the fact that it was lunchtime! We were followed by the press throughout and Lieutenant Alex Roe’s delivery of our first television interview resulted
in a bollocking from the Squadron Leader.
“How can you talk about how shocking the devasta- tion is whilst grinning away like that!”
Aerial view of Beirut
up over the air. This had two effects. He shut up and the Signals contingent never integrated with the Squadron throughout the tour. In fact, they ate and lived in their
To our surprise, there was no shelling or gunfire to be heard. This was later explained by the fact that it was lunchtime!
comms room.
We arrived at our new
home, La Regie – the old tobacco factory – located in Hadath in the south-eastern tip of Beirut. It had been lived in by the PLO and then Syrian troops before us and the place was a mess – liter- ally! I think that those first few days will be remem- bered for shit and sandbags. There was excrement all over the floors and walls with strips of newspaper stuck on top, not to cover it up, but because the strips had been used instead of loo paper. Over the next couple of weeks, with help from the
Ironically, the lack of troop
training turned to our advan-
tage. The Squadron, without
previous agreement, natu-
rally adopted a Northern
Ireland style foot patrol
technique. The press imme-
diately commented on this
as the other contingencies
(United States (US), France
and Italy) conducted them-
selves far more casually.
The only significant incident
on the first journey was the fact that the Signals Officer, from the contingent of Royal Signals attached to us, couldn’t stop calling in radio checks every minute or so. Finally, someone told him to shut
Royal Engineers sent over from Cyprus, we redecorated. This included rocket screens in front of the building, anti-car bomb prevention and the building of walls in front of the entrances to the
balconies in all the sleeping quarters. Soon, we had sentry positions and a fully fortified camp. When the Engineers came to build the wall in our bedroom, we asked them to build it on the inside of the room, not the outside (as with all the other rooms) with a convenient gap so we could take a night cap whilst watching the night battles over the city. After a few weeks, we were so condi- tioned to the fighting we used to sleep through the shelling and small arms fire. We also erected mosquito nets, not just for the bugs, but to keep the camel spiders off us. These nasty things were
La Regie before rocket screens. Author’s room can be seen on top floor – without the outside balcony wall!
Cookhouse wall
Prime Minister Callaghan’s visit