Swotting

Off to Oman in October for a reunion trip to the island of Masirah and the mainland town of Salalah. Both were Royal Air Force stations in the 60's when I was posted there but dated back to the 30's as British dependencies.
I have a website for Masirah, at the link above, and the trip is being organised by the RAF Masirah and RAF Salalah Veterans Association. There's about 60 of us going.

Salalah is famous for supporting the Sultan of Oman's forces and it is where his palace was located. Unfortunately, it is also very close to the Radfan and Yemen where rebels would frequently raid the RAF base shelling it with mortar bombs.
The Battle of Mirbat was fought quite close to salalah and we are hoping to be allowed to lay a wreath in memory of the 3 SAS killed during the action. There 9 SAS holding off about 400 rebel forces, I think the first 'S' of SAS must stand for 'Spartans'!

I'm using Rosetta Stone to swot up on my Arabic, I was quite good 25 years ago but very rusty now since leaving Saudi in 1989. I went back to Riyadh, Al-Khobar, Jeddah, Damascus, Beirut, Abu Dhabi and Dubai but only for business trips of 3 - 5 days at a time. It was a great job :-)