AFTER serving with 1 Para Bn Group in Bahrain and Aden in 1965 and 1966, Alex Harley and four of his fellow paratroopers were granted a month’s leave for some adventure training. What did they decide to do? Drive back to the UK in a Land Rover, of course.
Patrick Cruywagen: What was the deployment life like for a young officer during the sixties?
Alex Harley: In those days Bahrain was nothing but sand and rocks with a little poverty-stricken capital town and a sheik. We would also go down to Aden from time to time to fight, as there was a communist subversion going on. It was a one-year posting.
How did you come to acquire the Land Rover?
The communist influence spilled over into Oman with some of the insurgents camped in the mountainous centre of the country. We used to have to patrol the area, so we would fly in and parachute down, then patrol for a few days before walking to a desert airstrip where a plane would take us back to Bahrain.
The first people who come out of the aircraft on a jump carry equipment but they are not with the vehicles. Once they are all there and they have secured the drop zone, then another bunch of aircraft comes in with all the artillery, guns, heavy equipment and Land Rovers.
They are on a big metal platform with everything tied down. Each platform has about six parachutes, as well as air bags underneath that would burst upon impact. Losing or damaging kit was all part of it.
On one occasion when dropping a Land Rover out of the plane there was an issue with the parachute and the
