HMS Tartar 4th Commission 1970 17

On the way back to Bahrain we spent a night looking for a lightship which had slipped its moorings, we didn't find it, that was left to someone else, we had a date with RFA Rosalie for mainly ammunition replenishment and after that we headed for Bahrain. This time we had several mechanical and electrical problems to solve, the former quite serious but this gave the rest of us time for relaxing.

I volunteered to go sailing, real sailing using the dinghy thingy that we had onboard, this was normally officers only but my mate Coop, who was part of the Fleet Air Arm crew onboard persuaded me to go along, the FAA crew being only four in number were much closer than the rest of us. I felt like the proverbial spare ***** at the wedding and it was even worse when I was crewed up with the Captain for a race, what did I call him, it wasn't an official do after all, he simply called me Anderson or you there. At one point in the race, which he took very seriously, a string broke holding the front sail thing, he told me to grab the end of the canvas and hang out over the front of the dinghy, I had in effect become a bit of rope. I never took up the offer of sailing again.

We had a show put on at Jufair for us and the rest of the British forces in the area, Army and RAF, it starred Barbara law and Wee Willie Harris, and the event is completely non memorable for me, perhaps I was on duty. I managed to survive my first Ramadan, something which was completely alien to me but we were all reminded not to offend the locals as we went about our business.

Wee Willie Harris, words fail me.

 We had been due to sail on November 7th but we were still not ready and the other ships, British and American did as we were to take part in a large exercise called "Midlink". We did manage to sail the next day, better late than never, we met the rest of the 'fleet' at Bandar Abbas on the 10th, nine ships in all. That night instead of going ashore it was decided to have an 'Operation Awkward', where we were supposed to be under attack from enemy divers and we all had to listen intently for sounds of mines being popped on the hull while many of us patrolled the decks, there may or may not have been divers around but it certainly was awkward if you just wanted to get to bed. There was shore leave the next night, I was of course on watch but from the tales brought back I didn't miss much.

So, we are all geared up now for the morrow and several days of pretend warfare, we all hope to get through this and then head for Singapore.