Social Life
Another factor was that, it was a full tour of 2.5 years. The Canal Zone was on active service, so no one could live off base and married quarters were very scarce. Married unaccompanied officers often based their wives in Cyprus and could visit them occasionally. But for the 20-odd randy young bachelor pilots of 208 there were virtually no girls. Apart from the flying,
our lives were, I must admit, dominated by the question where the next bit of ‘nookie’ was coming from! We were able to send pairs of aircraft away on weekend rangers; one of the sanctions that I as a Flight Commander could use to try to curb my unruly junior pilots was to substitute an extra orderly officer for a weekend ranger flight. Nicosia was the nearest destination, and probably the most fruitful socially, particularly the Chanteclaire night club mentioned by Twinkle last year. Tunis, Tripoli, and Malta were also popular, and for a long weekend including a grant like Easter, Nairobi was just about feasible via Wadi Halfa, Khartoum and Entebbe. This tended to be a Fit Cdr’s perk!
[Malta Rangers became more frequent towards the end of 1955 when, in accordance with our withdrawal agreement, the Egyptians took over Fayid and introduced a requirement that all aircraft entering the Canal Zone should clear customs and immigration there. Pay Gyppo duty on our booze? Horrors! So every month or so we sent a pair of aircraft to Luqa with a large stash of dosh. Saccone and Speed’s bonded store would load 2 dozen bottles of spirits into each ammo tank a total of 96 bottles per aircraft. About 150 miles out from Abu Sueir they would contact Approach and pass their ETA at Fayid. At the appropriate moment we would scramble another pair of aircraft from Abu Sueir who would swap callsigns with the pair inbound from Malta, land and clear customs at Fayid. In this way we kept all the messes and clubs on the station supplied with duty-free until we left Abu Sueir].
The Standard 
Presentation
Much has been written in the squadron histories about the parade and flying display in Nov 1955 (7) for the presentation of the first squadron standard by Sir Geoffrey Bromet. We had honed our drill for weeks under the supervision of a Guards Sergeant Major. On the morning of the parade one man reported sick, which left a blank file on one of the flights. This was unacceptable, so the Boss called for two volunteers to fall out. No one did - remarkable, considering that some of them were still National Servicemen.
