…... – we w
ere airborne on a MACEX working with some ships – when we got an airborne recall, and this really didn’t happen very often. We got back to Lossiemouth - had no idea why we’d been recalled – to see everybody running around like headless chickens, and it was the start of Op PULSATOR, which was actually known as Op HYPERION for historians for about 24 hours. But it was the support of the British forces in Beirut – there was a war going on there and there were lots of bilateral agreements, and I know Ben has covered this a lot in his speech before, between the Lebanese Government and different governments. Basically, we knew we were going to deploy and it was a case of go home, pack a bag, and we will give you a call. At 9 o’clock that night we had a call that we would pick you up at 5 o’clock in the morning, and then we went in and we flew out to Cyprus.
Click on this link to read Ben Laite’s account of Op PULSATOR:
Now, we landed t
here to be met with the lads with a bottle of moonshine that they made up in the Troodos Mountains – imagine a quick glug of that after a 6-hours trip! This Customs man standing by seemed really interested in what we were doing, but he was quite friendly. The next thing that was interesting was that we had been given pistols with real bullets to go out there. Now we had been used to flying in exercises with the pistols without bullets, but pistols and bullets – you know this was a bit new! So, we had sort of slugged this moonshine down and we then said: “OK, we need to go to the Armoury to hand the guns in. The conversation went something like this:
“Sorry Sir, the Armoury is full. You’re going to keep them with you.”
“OK, we are going to the bar. We are going to have a few drinks. If we have still got these, somebody’s going to get shot. Probably ourselves! Probably through the foot! We really would like to….”
“I see what you mean, Sir, come this way.”
So we then went and handed the guns in!
That was the Friday and then, on the Sunday, we had Air Task Messages to go and do a ‘Show of Force’. The Army troops in Beirut were a bit uncomfortable – they hadn’t had any air support, and our mission there was, should they be shelled, to go and take the artillery guns out. So we went off to do this ‘Show of Force’ around the City. It was a mixed 208 / 12 Squadron detachment.
