I was one of those Veterans on the parade, I was able at last to march with my head held high, and wear the medal that I earned during those three years of service in that cesspool of a place. Our story, which is called the ‘Suppressed Story,’ is one of hardships under squalid living conditions and lack of the very basics in life to exist. Our homes were old world war two tents, pitched in the desert sands alongside the runways of the airfields we were sent to maintain and defend, and in the many garrisons that were scattered along the Suez Canal, a waterway vital not just for the free passage of international shipping, but also a lifeline to our forces serving in Korea and Malaya. Our casualties in the Zone were the eighth highest of any conflict since the end of World War Two, and anyone captured by the Feyadeen would suffer brutal torture, and a horrific death.

All of you Vets worldwide who served in the Suez Campaign are at last getting the medal you fought for, and many will be going to relatives of those who died. There were many stories of heroism but we had to fight for 25 years to get justice done and the award of the General Service Medal with Canal Zone Clasp. In June when that historic announcement was made by Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, that we were at last going to get the medal we fought for, and deserved, I had to pause in what I was doing at the time, just sit down and take it all in that our long fight had at last been won.

As I stood in Whitehall on Remembrance Sunday while buglers played the Last Post, my mind went back to Egypt, I thought of our friends who never came home, it was a very sorrowful moment and many a tear flowed, as all Veterans remember their comrades and friends who went to their last posting. We are all getting old and way past our ‘sell by date,’ but we remember our friends as they were, young eighteen and nineteen year olds who were on their first overseas posting, and for many their last, the majority of them National Servicemen.

Our medal is not just any ordinary medal, for it is only the second in British Military history to be awarded so long after a conflict, and the other one was awarded in the Napoleonic Wars. To wait nearly half a century for a great injustice to be put right is no credit to the Government of that time, and Governments who followed. Over 600 British and Commonwealth souls were lost in Suez, from disease, the heat, and enemy action. To lose men in combat is bad enough, but to lose them from disease, Dysentery, etc. due to the conditions they were forced to live in gives little credit to the powers that were.  Next year will be the 50th anniversary of the signing of the treaty that ended the crisis in Suez, and I hope that a full compliment of Vets will be on parade in Whitehall to recognise this event.

At this time a further reduction in all three services of the armed forces is being considered. At the moment there are only 100,000 soldiers in the Army, and even less personnel in the RAF and Navy. There were more servicemen in the Suez Canal Zone at the time of the crisis than are in the entire armed forces now. It makes you think does it not?  If a major conflict was to start now, we would not have enough men to cope with it, and there would have to be a call up of TA forces and reservists. There will always be a war to be fought, whether Civil or Military, this is a sad fact of life and no lessons seem to be learned from it.  The First World War was called, ‘The War To End All Wars’, but twenty-one years later we were fighting another, and so it went on in Korea, Malaya etc, and today we still have our troubles in Iraq. Wars are started by politicians, but the price is paid for by the blood of young servicemen, and the British are the best in the world.

God bless you.
Tony Tolan
December 2003.