We want your stories and accounts of  your time at Big A , send us a couple of your favourite pictures too. We hope this will jog some memories and put you back in touch with some of your old pals.

Gordon Boam is the man on the spot here in Cyprus, who threatened the webmaster with a bottle of Keo to produce this page, read Gordons Story.

A Rockape Remembers

RAF REGIMENT WEBSITE

Looking through the Akrotiri website which I recently discovered I wanted to contact someone over there regarding the unit I served in which seems to be absent from the list of past squadrons, and maybe Gordon B would also be interested as we both served in the Regiment in the early days, reading comments on the website like "favourite posting" and "didn`t want to go home" made me smile because back then we could`t wait to get home.

My national service started in 1956, and with the promise of a hot sunny posting instead of cold weather and bullshit in Germany where our intake were heading I signed for an extra year, of course they never tell you where you are going so it was hello to the middle east and Aden (The Rock) the land of flies and gritty coffee, I did a one and half year stint at RAF Khormaksar 66sqn (anyone you know served there?) before making my way to Cyprus.

Back in the UK I was posted to RAF Felixstowe 194 LAA Sqn and from there we arrived as a unit on the island around April 1958, we had a couple of days in transit at Nicosia then on to Akrotiri, I remember we drove on up past the main camp to a barren stretch of scrubland which we were told had just been vacated by some French forces, welcome to your new home boys!.

Everything on the camp was either under canvas or just out in the open, we slept six to a tent meals cooked outside and we ate from our mess tins, we had open air wash house and thunder box latrines, the camp had a main entrance guard house and a rear guard house set at the opposite corner with dirt access roads, the camp was designated as Top Camp Akrotiri. although we were supposedly a LAA sqn we did not have any heavy equipment (Bofors ect) but we were all issued with the new Belgian FN automatic instead of the old 303 rifle.

Although the Eoka hostilities were more or less over security was still high on the island so our time was spent on 24hr guard duties on the camp, power/sub stations on the main roads, police stations and carrying out curfews in Limassol, most of our time off was spent swimming at a small beach which was just a short walk over scrubland from the camp down a steep cliff, to the right of the beach on that stretch of coast was a high rock/coral formation a few hundred yards out to sea which was used for weapons testing/target practice (hopefully still there), somewhere in the history of Akrotiri there is mention of a mutiny and a broken flag pole of the Regiments colours, yes that was 194sqn, all I can remember of it now is that it was a small number of rockapes having too many beers protesting at the conditions, I only had eight months to demob and counting the days.

I have never been back to Cyprus since then but I hope to visit next year and maybe have a tour of the camp and find out (if known) what happened to 194sqn and the Top Camp, I will bring a couple of old black/white photo`s that the museum might be interested in, one is of the actual broken flag pole and the other of the camp as it was back in 58,the commander of the camp when I left was Sqn Ldr G Hoddinott.

Cheers Bill,      Ex 4177684 LAC Alb Smith 194 Ind Field Sqn, Top Camp, RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus BFPO 53