First R44 in Libya

Vangelis picked us up next morning as arranged, and we spent the morning in the control tower at Soudha trying to contact Tobruk.

We had our clearance number, but no confirmation that our flight plan had been received.

We were about to step off the edge of Europe, and this was our first real insight into the running battle we were to have with paperwork and administration over the next six weeks.

Sanctions were over, but for 20 years the outside aviation world had not been in contact with Libya, and information about phone numbers or contact frequencies was either not available or out of date. At the other end of the scale Martin had not heard from Colonel Gadaffi. We tried Air Traffic Control in Athens, and we tried the British Embassy in Libya; in each case with no luck. We tried the Libyan Embassy in Athens to see if they had any phone numbers for either the Libyan Civil Aviation Authority or Air Traffic Control at Tobruk. After a long time on hold, they gave us several phone numbers, none of which worked. We tried British Airways in Athens, who gave us particulars of their handling agent in Tripoli. We dialled the number, but couldn’t get through. British Airways helped us again, this time with the Airport Manager at Tripoli – and he gave us the frequencies.

All this took nearly three hours. At that stage the situation was that our flight plan of yesterday had not been rejected. Given Libya’s international reputation, we would have liked to be sure that it had been received, but perhaps we were asking too much. We filed another one, just in case. We had a good Cretan lunch, and decided to leave anyway.

We were out with the helicopter on the huge concrete apron when we saw the Duty Officer racing towards us in her red car. It was a message from Tobruk. This seemed to say that Tobruk was a domestic airport and we ought to contact Benghazi.

“At least it’s a reaction of some sort,” sighed Martin, who was clearly beginning to think we’d never get farther than Crete.

“I suppose with these radio frequencies we’ve got a fair chance of hearing from the Libyans soon enough to be able to turn round and come back if they don’t want us in their airspace,” I said, trying to persuade us both.

We went back to the control tower, sent another flight plan for Tobruk, this time addressing it to Benghazi, and took off.

We had tried to keep calm and business-like over all this, but there was no denying that we were pushing our luck with one of the most unpredictable regimes in the world. Communications within Libya might not be effective in letting the air defences know that at most we were a pair of harmless civilians in a miniature aircraft that could do no harm to anyone. If the worst happened we might find ourselves pursued by a flight of MIG fighters, and on the hot end of an air to air missile. Everything depended on being able to make contact using the ordinary helicopter VHF radio.

“Plus it’s a very long sea crossing, and whatever happens, it would help if the outside world knew roughly where we are,” Martin had said, as we had tried to weigh everything up.

The European mobile phone system extends only half way across the Med and our satellite phone works well only on land. In an emergency we would be relying on the mayday signals from the watch lent to me by Mappin & Webb, and who could guess the range of this. So we were unusually nervous on the flight. The weather was good, sunny with no cloud, next-to-no headwind; the sea calm with very little in the way of swell, and the temperature around 30 degrees at just over 1000 feet.

We passed over the island of Gardhas just 25 miles south of Crete, which is supposed to be the southernmost point of Europe, and Martin began to speculate that with his visit last year to Cap de Roc in Portugal, the most western point, he now only needed to look in on somewhere in Northern Norway, and somewhere in the east, to have done all four corners of the continent. This kept us occupied for a while as we headed towards the midway point.

We drank some more water.

Suddenly returning to reality, we realised we were indeed practically half way across, and on the point of entering Libyan airspace. We tried all the frequencies we’d been given, but without response. This was not good news, but not surprising, because the VHF, like light, is line of sight, and at 1000 feet the curvature of the earth soon cuts you off both from anyone listening and from any transmissions.

We had seen no ships whatever since we left Crete.

We thought again that it might be an idea if someone could at least know where we were, so we began to send out signals that other aircraft might pick up. We used the international distress frequency on 121.5mhz, making clear that we weren’t in distress but were just sending a practice signal.

It worked. A German airliner, seven miles above us, called us back.

“Hello. This is Germania 409, calling on 121.5. Can I help you?” A really beautiful German tenor voice, set against the soft background hiss of his radio.

“Good afternoon Germania 409. We are a helicopter on a VFR flight, Golf, Bravo, X-ray, Uniform, Kilo. We are heading from Crete to Libya Tobruk as booked and planned. Our current position is 87 miles south east of Soudha in Crete. We are seeking to establish radio contact with anybody else. Nice to hear you.”

There was a pause. They were probably asking each other if they’d heard us right, I thought.

“Shall we transmit something to any place?”

“If you are able to contact Libyan airspace, 120.9, and tell them we have passed their Flight Information Region boundary, and we are now in their airspace, that would be very useful.”

“I will try Athens.”

He came back in a few minutes.

“Athene want you to contact 130.9, Cairo.”

Athens, or Athene, obviously thought we were also an airliner at 37000 feet, to suggest that we call an airport 300 miles away. The higher you are, the further your radio reaches. There was no way we could get contact with Cairo from a height of 1000 feet. But we tried three times just to show willing.

We reported this back to Germania 409. He undertook to talk to Cairo, and then to Libya. No result.

I was by now distinctly worried at getting very close to Libyan territorial waters, where the prospect of being greeted by a hostile Libyan MIG fighter was looming large in my minds. Out of the blue we got a call from a Sabena airliner, whose operator also got to work on the problem. He quickly succeeded, being much higher in the sky than we were.

“118.5 correct frequency, call them.”

Feeling rather self-conscious, I called, “Libya, this is Civilian Helicopter Golf, Bravo, X-ray, Uniform, Kilo.”

“Ah, Uniform Kilo, we have been expecting you.”

I gave him our Estimated Time of Arrival, and told him our position. He acknowledged, and I said we would be in touch again later.

We could now feel certain that we were not going to be blasted out of the air, but it remained to be seen what sort of welcome we would be getting. For now we turned up the cd player and drank some more water.

We flew on, soon crossing the coastline where fingers of rocky yellow sand reached out into the bright blue sea, following the line on the GPS screen which we thought would take us to Tobruk Airport. Moments later, we saw the famous harbour in the distance. The GPS was telling us we were overhead the airfield, but there was nothing but sand beneath us.

“Hang on, I can see an outline of a taxi-way down there” said Martin suddenly as we circled round the dot on the GPS. “ It’s covered in sand. Call them and ask if they think we’re overhead”.

“Er, Tobruk, can you see us overhead?” I suggested on the radio.

“Head for El Nasser, 25 miles south of you. You are cleared in.”

El Nasser? From the look of the map it’s a Libyan military base – surely there was some mistake? And what did “We have been expecting you” mean?

I checked that they really meant El Nasser, and they confirmed. They sounded businesslike. El Nasser it was. Tobruk Airport itself obviously had been abandoned to the desert some time ago, and no-one had updated the maps.

El Nasser is about 25 miles south of Tobruk in the yellow sand of the desert. We had maps to cover it, but they weren’t much help. They looked like sheets of sandpaper, as did the ground below us.

It’s an operational military base, with long runways, buildings, aprons, the whole nine yards, all surrounded by a wall, a very long wall indeed, in the form of a square. The wall must be to keep out Bedouins and camels, or even the wind-blown sand.

I kept the camera filming for as long as I dared. This was the kind of thing I wanted to film, but it was the kind of place where it would get me into most trouble.

“Turn that frigging thing off and put it in your bag,” insisted Martin as we turned onto final approach, no doubt remembering the trouble we’d had in Corfu. “We’re landing on a secret military base in a police state.”

He was right, of course, and I did so, crestfallen that I was about to miss the best bit of action so far. But it wasn’t worth getting arrested for.

We hover-taxied to the apron in front of the terminal, looking round at the rusting corrugated iron hangars and the heaps of ageing military hardware decaying on the side of the taxiway.

We followed the air traffic controller’s instructions and he put us down not far from the tower.

The tower was modern and western in style, though incongruous, attached as it was to a small terminal building in the style of a mosque.

The whole place shimmered in the desert heat.

We took a last drink of Cretan bottled water, both wondering what we’d let ourselves in for. No-one had done this before, not since the battles with America, not since the UN sanctions, not since the Lockerbie bomb, not since the murder of the WPC shot in London.

We had naively come in peace and friendship, and suddenly felt a very long way from home and safety.

A white Toyota Landcruiser came racing out to us, gleaming in the brilliant sunshine, and I got out to meet it. A burly and authoritative figure in lightweight olive green battledress and dark green beret, complete with elaborate swagger-stick, climbed down from the Landcruiser, and we seemed suddenly to be surrounded by heavily armed guards, their eyes dark and narrowed against the sun.

My mouth was dry, as I watched the big man straighten himself up, and turn in my direction.

He came forward towards me, a haughty, senior officer look on his face. I wasn’t sure about all of this, and I briefly considered a few options, including getting back into the helicopter and flying off.

As he squared up to me, less than two paces from me, his face cracked into a broad smile. He shook my hand.

“Welcome to Libya. I am a personal friend of Colonel Gadaffi, and you are the welcome guests of the Libyan Government.”

He was the officer commanding the airbase, Colonel Sager, he told me.

I wanted to pinch myself, catching myself thinking how much like a James Bond film this must look like. I was very relieved to find that we were actually welcome.

To my embarrassment, Colonel Sagar then made a short speech. Consulting his notes he said that this was a historic moment, as we were the first British pilots ever to land at El Nasser airbase (not strictly true, I thought to myself, as the RAF had built it) and that we were the first civil aviation aircraft to cross from Crete in 40 years. Our arrival had been keenly anticipated and our journey had been followed on the radar ever since we left Crete. He concluded with a renewed welcome, and introduced his two companions, Lieutenant Colonel Mufta and Major Joma. I assessed them discreetly as I shook their hands. Secret police.

Engineers appeared, carrying a barrel of what looked like fuel, and a handpump. I hoped it was fresh and clean, but couldn’t think of a polite way of asking. It was at least the right colour. The pump looked as though it could be the real threat to our helicopter, covered in rust, cobwebs, and flakey paint. Martin stood beside me, and together we watched the procedure, both accepting the fuel in quiet gratitude and wondering if our engine would feel the same.

The fuelling complete, the Landcruiser took us to the control tower, where the Colonel shook hands again, and left us. His armed bodyguards went off with him.

Major Joma took us to our hotel, and booked us in. He explained that our living expenses were to be met by the Libyan Government. The helicopter was to be guarded by his soldiers. The Avgas fuel was also to be free of charge. Everything would be paid for by the Libyan Government.

“We pick you up after breakfast and take you on tour as guest of Colonel Sager,” he commanded. There didn’t seem to be a choice, and anyway it sounded great. There would perhaps be worries about our timetable, and some of our visas for later in the journey were valid only for certain times. But all we could do was go along.

I was stunned, trying to take it all in. It’s not everyone visiting an unfriendly country who is offered a formal speech of welcome, however short, from a senior military officer, and free hospitality and refueling. It was all such a complete contrast with what we had expected and feared.

We did our best to express our appreciation to Major Joma, and indicated that we felt honoured to be received in this way.

The hotel was ranked as five star. I left my bags by the un-manned Reception desk, and took a look round to get a feel for the place. It was huge, ugly, British- built in concrete in the late ‘70s, with a very generous reception area with lots of chrome fittings and smoked glass, a bar with no alcohol, a restaurant with a choice of one meal, a swimming pool with no water, a tourist office with no leaflets, and 300 rooms. It seemed to be staffed exclusively by men, and the toilet arrangements for guests catered for men only. It turned out that only about 20 rooms were occupied, mostly by European oil-workers.

We checked in, and made our way upstairs to our rooms, which were clean but scruffy.

Our first priority after a shower was to contact home.

There was no phone in the room, so I set up the satellite phone on the window sill of the room, turning the aerial slowly until I found a strong signal, apprehensive that using this equipment in Libya was probably punishable by death.

We spoke briefly to James to let him know that we were in Libya, safe and sound.

After a brief conversation, the signal on the sat-phone closed, as the satellite disappeared over the horizon, and I was left feeling very bad that we had lost the opportunity to speak directly to our families. I was suddenly beginning to feel a very long way from home.

The restaurant, which overlooked the harbour, was full of Western men, and staffed by Libyan men. There were no women or children. The waiter stood by us, pen poised over his little pad, just like he would at home. I looked at the menu he’d given us, while he stood there waiting for me to choose. The choice, as offered to us by the menu, was a single line of Arabic. I had no idea what it said, and the waiter could not tell me. I pointed to it, said ok and nodded at him with a smile. He nodded back, as if to say “Good choice!” Waiters, like taxi drivers, seem to be the same the world over.

Martin did the same, and we waited to see what would arrive. We were suddenly starving, as we relaxed from the tension and heat of the day.

Looking around, I could see everyone eating a kind of soup, which offered a clue as to what to expect.

The food was not nearly as Arabic as I’d imagined it would be - more Italian, as influenced by Libya’s colonial past. The soup was a kind of minestrone with risoni, and we pitched into it hungrily, trying not to spill it on our white flying suits. It was appetizing stuff and there was plenty of it.

“Whatever it is, it looks like maggots in tomato sauce”, said Martin, not letting the thought stop him from going on to a second bowl.

I thought back to Martin’s Mum and Dad’s place, in south east London, where, as a teenager I’d always been welcome to stay for meals as they arose. “There’s a spare dinner in the oven if you want it,” his Mum would always say kindly to me, as we came in from the garage, usually covered in oil from taking a bicycle or motorbike apart.

The food at their family home was always very reliable, filling, and traditional British, meat, gravy and two veg, on a Denby plate. There was always a pudding, with custard, to follow.

His Dad, a family doctor, would occasionally indulge us with some of his home made beer, brewed in the basement.

All that seemed a long way away, as I sat twenty years later with Martin in a hotel in Libya, overlooking the harbour at Tobruk.

That night, I slept uneasily, grateful for the hospitality, but unable to believe it enough to relax, and wondering what the next day would reveal.

Major Joma was there at breakfast, dark, chic and athletic in his trainers, and somehow compact.

“Colonel Sager send his regards, and orders me to make you enjoy day,” he smiled, full of promise, but wary. He obviously did not trust us an inch.

He suggested, for our morning tour, the English and German war cemeteries from World War II. Then he would give us lunch at his house. And afterwards he would take us on a tour of Tobruk town and its surroundings. Cemeteries weren’t a usual passion of ours, but we accepted happily, and set out in Colonel Sager’s Landcruiser, loaned to us for the day.

Military cemeteries are not to everyone’s taste, but these are beautiful and impressive, as well as distressing. Unimaginable numbers of young men, killed in battle at ages between 18 and 22, lie buried here, in the immaculate British and Commonwealth cemeteries recorded by row upon row upon row of individual gravestones. The Cemeteries retain the name used by the British to identify areas of featureless sand where battles had been fought; the one we visited had the name “Kensington” engraved on the elaborate sandstone archway over the entrance.

The German cemetery, by contrast, was in the shape of a huge medieval castle, clearly designed to last forever, built on the ridge above Tobruk town, poignantly commanding the best view of the town in military terms. The remains of the German dead, collected from the surrounding desert in the 10 years after the war by German recovery teams, had been placed in a massive pit in the castle’s courtyard. Their owners’ names were inscribed in granite, thousands of them, on arches around the great square stone courtyard.

Bizarrely, the key to the castle was held by a scruffy local who lived with dozens of similar families encamped in a dusty settlement at the foot of the castle walls. Overhead, a rusty pylon buzzed and crackled through sheer lack of maintenance. The old key was huge and black and heavy. The door was reluctant to open, despite the efforts of Lt Col Muftah, the less cheerful of our escorts.

Martin couldn’t help himself. Indicating with a sweep of his arm the castle and the Arab desert behind it, he advised cheerfully:

“You must say, Open Sesame!”

Lt Col Muftah, up to this point, had played things pretty cool with us. He had been making it clear no doubt that he had hard evidence that we were enemy spies and a threat to both public order and national security. Now he looked up from his work with the key, straightened up, and levelled his gaze at Martin. There was a tense moment, while he studied Martin’s friendly smiling face.

After a very long pause, abruptly he reached out with his hand to shake Martin’s, laughing and sharing the joke. This was a turning point, and they relaxed their guard with us, just slightly, from that moment.

The rights and wrongs of war, and of the Libyan campaign in the Second World War in particular, formed a major topic of our hosts’ conversation. Perhaps they thought that as skilled helicopter pilots we must have some undeclared military background, and would therefore be especially interested.

“Hundreds, thousands of young people died and for what? For miles and miles of empty sand! Desert lands that are not yours, not the Italians’ not the Germans’ to fight over? And remember, lots of Libyans killed, too.”

This was not expressed as if there is continuing resentment, but there was an enduring exasperation. They asked us how we would feel if Arab armies came to England to fight their tank battles. It seemed like a fair point, really, and not one which we could answer.

This was said in the context of their general resentment about being treated by the West, and the USA in particular, as an inferior culture.

Their assumption that we were paid by our Government to come to Libya was unshakeable, and probably accounted for their keenness to get us to lobby on their behalf with the Americans.

Leaving the old key with its guardian, we drove back to the airbase to visit Major Joma’s three small children at his home on the airbase, where we were given lunch. We enjoyed meeting them before they were hidden from view, and it set off a long talk about our own families, what they all liked and did and hoped to do; and passing round photographs. Lieutenant Colonel Muftah produced from his wallet pictures of his eight children.

The meal was formal Arabic, eaten sitting on the floor, and we noticed that Major Joma’s wife kept herself out of sight. She did appear, though, for a brief instant when we asked, and we were able to offer her our thanks for the hospitality before she quickly vanished back behind the scenes. This was obviously a clear breach of etiquette, but in the privacy of Major Joma’s home it appeared to be acceptable.

A tour, in the Landcruiser, of Tobruk town and the surroundings took up the afternoon, and this reinforced the strangeness to me of the role of women. The streets, with by our standards not much traffic, were an ideal playground. But for boys only. There was not a girl in sight. And women were not to be seen shopping; indeed the notion of recreational shopping whether by women or men did not seem part of the culture. I asked if we were allowed to go shopping in the rather thin looking bazaar.

“What you want?”

“Er, it’s not that I want anything, it’s just that I’d like to go shopping”.

There was an exchange in Arabic. This was either forbidden, or incomprehensible to them, or both. Without a further word, they sped off through the narrow streets, scattering as they did so shoppers, traders, produce, and goats, as the huge car dominated the narrow streets of the old town. We stopped a shop which had a government-run look about it.

“Wait here!” commanded Lt Col Muftah.

Minutes later, he returned with a brown paper bag containing two bottles of Libyan aftershave.

“For our British guests!” he said.

I thanked him profusely, and didn’t repeat my request to go shopping.

Many of the actual buildings of Tobruk, a town of 100,000 inhabitants, are made of whitewashed concrete, usually three or four storeys high. Perhaps because of all the dust blowing in from the desert, they do not give an impression of prosperity, though of course internal courtyards may tell a different story. We saw no old buildings, no public telephones, no parks. Shops were open fronted, bazaar style. We went past a mosque and a friendly-looking school. There was no vandalism and no graffiti.

The town is a port for the export of oil, and sanctions must have had a severe effect. The only other economic activity seemed to be some subsistence farming. The airbase may perhaps have helped too, though Major Joma’s delightful home, with its shady well-watered courtyard, planted with lime trees and flowers, was situated in a development related to the airbase rather than to the town: and the standard of living of the armed services, and senior officers in particular, may possibly be supported by some privileged system of distribution which would by-pass the shops in the town. We thought this was probably true at least of his elaborate satellite television and the rich fabrics and rugs.

The town had no roundabouts or traffic lights, and there seemed to be no rule about which side of the road to drive on. At junctions, whoever had the biggest car, the most stars on their shoulders or the ability to stand on their horn for the longest, took priority. At one boundary of the town we were stopped at a military checkpoint. Soldiers pointed Russian-made semi-automatic weapons at us. We were pleased as Westerners to be accompanied by our minders and were quickly waved through.

Major Joma was again with us at breakfast at the hotel, to smooth our departure, but he was unable to divert the hotel’s tourism adviser at the hotel. This delayed us for half an hour, while this earnest man told us all about his country, the culture, and the warmth and friendliness of the Libyan nation.

“Please tell all your people to come here as holiday,” he urged us with sincerity, elevating us to the status of some kind of popular leader.

Looking around me, I thought that for some people who had a compelling reason to come, such as relatives of servicemen buried in Libya, or people who see themselves as travellers rather than tourists, Libya has things to offer, but for mass tourism it has a bit of a way to go. I tried to imagine Club 18-30 applying for planning permission, or Saga Holidays sending in a luxury coach full of blue rinse ladies from Harrogate.

At the airport, we went to the briefing room and found we had clearance for Alexandria. The R44 was already fuelled and checked over. We shook hands all round, wished a special goodbye to Major Jomah and Lt Col Muftah, left our good wishes for Colonel Sagar,and took off heading east.

“You can’t go into Libya,” people had said beforehand. We’d done it, and we had been welcomed by a Government now perhaps anxious to change its image with the Western world.

I was personally very relieved, though, to be getting out of Libya. Getting in had been very stressful: our stay there, accompanied all the time, was not much less so. What we needed now was a calm and hassle-free day. The direct route from El Nasser to Alexandria, into which we were cleared, runs more or less along the coast, so we followed that, monitoring our progress on the GPS.