Was there an earlier date for some troops leaving?
I ask because at the fiftieth anniversary of Passchaendael The Northumberland Fusiliers stood guard of honour at Tyne Cot cemetery .This was October 1967.
They had just returned fromThe Crater disrtriict of Aden.
We lived in Belgium at the time and attended the ceremony.
The lads were very edgy and got upset when the Belgian people mistook their hackles for feathers won at the fair. We explained to the police officer they were battle honours and the lads would be very proud of them,having just returned from a very hard tour of duty they were in no mood to be laughed at. Word circulated around the fair in Ypres town square and in no time the lads had been bought chips ,and offered beer which they had orders to refuse as there was to be a church service at the English church later.
It was a very fierce engagement and as you say ought to be remembered.
Viktoria.
I'm not surprised they were upset - Bryan was in Aden when it was comparatively calm, unlike those fellows :-
"THE still night air over Crater City was shattered by the sound of bagpipes as pipe major Kenneth Robson struck up with Monymusk – the regimental charge of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders.
It was 7pm on July 3, 1967, and the 700 men of the 1st Battalion Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders were on the edge of the city, tensely awaiting the order to advance.
Two weeks before, on June 20, the Army had experienced one of its bloodiest days since World War II, when 22 soldiers – three of them Argylls – were massacred by rogue elements of the local Arab police, who now controlled Crater, a city built on an extinct volcano in the heart of the British colony of Aden in the Middle East.
After the attack, the senior British commanders in Aden had ordered the Army to withdraw from Crater, leaving the city in the hands of the police mutineers.
But one man was determined to end the stand-off and bring Crater back under British control – the commander of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, Colonel Colin Mitchell. He was a pugnacious, outspoken maverick who after that night’s events, would forever be known as Mad Mitch."