SANDSTORMS

A very unpleasant phenomenon as we subsequently discovered. We returned from our first tour, which had continued from Nairobi and set about bedding down in our permanent station of RAF el-hamra. I believe that the month was March. It was quite cold, for us at night, about 50F, so we were still in blues.

We were woken during the night by a howling wind which made the walls of the tent flap about and emit a very loud cracking sound. Since no one had told us about sandstorms, we ignored it and tried to go back to sleep. In the morning, we looked out of our tent to discover that we could see nothing at all due to a thick fog of sand blowing everywhere. We then had the arduous task of filling more sandbags in order to hold down the tent ropes. One unlucky duo lost their tent completely when the guy ropes parted.

The storm continued unabated for about three days and nights. Needless to say no unnecessary duties were carried out during that time by any of the station sections. The exceptions were of course the cookhouse and guardroom duties. How the cooks managed I shall never know. I recall fighting my way through a thick haze of wind blowing sand to the cookhouse and eating food which consisted mainly of sand. The sand got into everything. We had, by this time, wrapped such instruments as we could in whatever came to hand. There were at times ,strange and fearsome looking insects blown in to the tent along with the sand. Each new day began with sweeping the tent as clean as possible. oddly enough as far I can remember, our instruments came to no serious harm.