Meatboxes were relatively cheap by today’s standards at £30,000 a copy, so nobody was unduly bothered so long as the pilot walked away from it. Having said that we had two Courts Martial for flying offences in my time, but in those days a court martial for a flying offence as a junior officer was almost a rite of passage and, some said, a passport to high rank!” And they did bolster our squadron’s reputation for being a bunch of mavericks.
RAF Abu Sueir
Abu Sueir (3) (4) (5) was 
a pre-war
station, one of the most pleasant in the Canal Zone. But after the Egyptians abrogated the Suez Canal Treaty in 1951, there was a serious terrorist campaign by Arab Fedayeen against British forces in the Canal Zone. The technical_and domestic sites were surrounded by a high barbed wire perimeter fence, floodlit at night and patrolled by armed guards, to 
which we had to contribute from our ground crew, which inevitably detracted from aircraft serviceability. Behind this wire we were virtually incarcerated. Trips off-station were only allowed in convoys with armed escorts. Anyway there was nowhere worth going to except the beach by Lake Timsah on the Canal. The bright lights of the Delta, Ismailia and Port Said were all out of bounds. For most of my time 208 was the only squadron at Abu Sueir, which we shared with the Admin staff of HQ Middle East Air Force. A young and highly-spirited bunch of fighter pilots and a staid collection of senior staff officers were
not an easy mix in the Mess (6). We worked MEAF hours, between seven am and knocking off time at one o’clock, when we would adjourn to the bar. Our tame bar steward, Moussa, who had been with squadron since before the war, would pass tankards of Stella Ale over the heads of the waiting Wing Commanders and Group Captains to the thirsty jet jocks at the back of the crush. This went down like a lead balloon. The afternoons were devoted to sport, in the loosest interpretation of that word, including the war that we waged with thunder-flashes and fire extinguishers against the local Rockape squadron. Eventually we were banished from the officers Mess to an abandoned compound at the far end of the camp.
