JARIC (ME) RAF Episkopi

Main Family History home page

The History of JARIC (ME), its ancestors and descendants
Compiled largely from the memories of those who were there

Steve Benkel (2707006 C.S.S.Benkel S.A.C /Tracer P.I.)

In January 1954 we touched down at Fayid in the Suez Canal Zone. My first impression of Egypt was not good, having left England on a cold winters morning we were expecting it to be warm but when they opened the cabin door it was just like a furnace door being opened, and this was in the middle of the night! O.K. that was to be expected but I had not expected the all pervading wreak of diesel oil which I think was ever present for the rest of my time in Egypt.

So we had arrived in Egypt. A group of eight very new airmen who had obviously arrived too soon, there was no place for us on the JAPIC (M.E.) establishment, so the powers that be decided that we could spend the time usefully on an induction course. We were sent to an army camp called Namur where we were shown the workings of the Royal Engineers 42 Field Survey unit, they were the map makers and we spent the next three weeks having lectures, map reading exercises and photo interpretation exercises. The officer in charge was a very jolly gentleman named Sandy Cibern (I'm not sure of the spelling of his name), he was a Captain in the Gloucestershire Regiment who had just been transferred from Korea, no wonder he was jolly! During one of his lessons on photo interpretation we were introduced to stereo glasses, we all seemed to be doing quite well except for one individual who just couldn't get a stereo image. Sandy was very patient with him until the poor lad volunteered that he was blind in one eye and he wondered if that was the reason? Needless to say he was assigned to new duties and we never saw him again.

Eventually we were told that we could join our unit. We were bundled into the back of a three tonner with some other unfortunates and drove off into the desert stopping on the way to deposit individuals at various inhospitable locations. Then we arrived at our new Camp, R.A.F. Deversoir. We were introduced to our new billets in the tent lines and were split up into three men tents. Then we were taken to our new section. We had arrived at the JAPIC (M.E.) compound. We were confronted by a single storey building which formed the four sides of a square with an open garden area in the centre. It had a continuous covered veranda around the exterior walls and the veranda was enclosed with wire mesh fencing. The building sat in the centre of an enclosure which also had a high wire perimeter fence. At night the whole enclosure was illuminated with an array of powerful lamps.

We settled into a routine much as you describe and we new erks started our trade training as Tracer P.I's. When we passed our tests we were made up to L.A.C's and eventually S.A.C;s. Because we were segregated from the rest of the camp, i.e. Guarding our own compound and not the rest of the camp and the supposed mystery of what went on inside JAPIC we became known as the "JAPIC Girls", this didn't bother us and we soon became a close knit unit made up of R.A.F. and Royal Engineer personnel. It was about this time the unit became JARIC (M.E.) and there were subtle changes in the type of work we undertook. We were moved from the tent lines into Nissen huts which were partly below ground level and stayed comparatively cool. I believe they were constructed by the Americans during WW2, when they flew bombers from Deversoir. Deversoir could be called civilised, mainly because of its location, it is situated at the northern end of The Great Bitter Lake where the canal cutting heads north, through Lake Timsah, the town of Ismalia and on to Port Said. the camp had its own flotilla of sailing dighies which were built by local craftsmen to a specification supplied by the club. There was also a very good social club run by a Scottish church, I can't remember which one. We also spent many afternoons on the banks of the canal watching the ships passing on their way to who knows where? We did see one French troopship passing on its way to Indo-China. The French troops were allowed on deck but while they were passing through the canal they were kept in great cages made of rope netting to ensure that wouldn't go A.W.O.L

Late in 1954, JARIC(M.E.) was relocated at R.A.F. Abu Sueir, the unit was allocated a very substantial brick building which came complete with flushing toilets, what luxury! The downside was that the building was considered secure enough not to need exterior guard patrols and a reduced guard occupied the building in non-working hours. This meant that we were now available for station guard duty, a twenty-four hour stretch, the only saving grace was that guard personnel list was much larger so the duties came around less frequently.

Our living quarters were a wooden hut left over from WW1, the spiders and bedbugs reigned supreme. Soon after moving in, we stripped the building bare sealed all the windows and doors and had the building fumigated. We tried to keep the crawlies, bedbugs and mosquitoes at bay with a combination of DDT,mosquito nets and standing the feet of the beds in cans half filled with oil. This seemed to discourage the little varmints.

In the adjoining shower block we had the luxury of a bathroom which had running hot water at certain times of day. this was very unusual but it might have been because the other end of the shower block was in the WAAF compound.

By mid-1955 we were preparing to pull out of the Canal Zone and there was a marked improvement in relations with the Egyptian authorities. It meant that we were free to visit nearby towns without armed escort. We visited Ismalia frequently and we also made several trips to Port Said and Port Fuad and were allowed one visit to Cairo, the Giza Pyramids and the Cairo Museum where we saw the treasures of King Tut long before they came to the U.K.

During our posting to Egypt we had two leave passes to Cyprus. One trip was spent in Nicosia and on the beach at Famagusta. The second visit was more adventurous, four of us hired car and we discovered a great deal of the island including Nicosia, Famagusta, Limassol, Platres in the Troodos Mountains, Kyrenia and St. Hilarion Castle to mention just a few. These visits were long before the partition of the island and the existence of the green line. I doubt very much if I could ever repeat that trip.

Eventually it was time for us to leave Egypt. JARIC (M.E.) was on the move again. A convoy of 10 ton lorries arrived at the unit and loaded everything that moved. We drove to Port Said and embarked on a T.L.C. named the "Snowdon Smith", and sailed for Cyprus. After a very pleasant voyage, we slept on deck because it was too hot and noisy below decks, we arrived in Cyprus. I think it was Limassol, but I can't remember. We drove to Episkopi where we greeted by an S.P. in very casual dress, I seem to remember that he was sporting a tartan shirt and stood outside his guard hut which had a notice informing us that it was the Sheriffs Office!

It seems that JARIC were one of the very first units to arrive at the camp. We obviously had to guard the vehicles until they were unloaded but as far as we could see our only neighbours were a few goats and some Turkish construction workers who were very friendly and offered to share their bread, grapes and wine with us.

Our first impression was that we had landed in paradise when comparing it to Egypt and one of the first excursions, when we had some free time, was to take a path down to the beach.

JARIC (ME) in the second half of the 1950s

The Great Bondu Fire of '62. In the top picture the drawing office is located at the extreme left with the admin building in the background, next the squarish building with the sloping roof was the incinerator, The Nissan building in the middle was the film library which we had to spray with water from that huge hose we had to keep it cool during the fire when they remembered how much nitro they had in then (health and safety!!).

Photos left and below: Neil MacKinnon

Brian 'Willy' Wickert

On my second tour in Cyprus from 1964 to 1967 I was working in the new ARIC (NE) building, which opened in 1963. It was on two levels, with the top level containing film library, admin, drawing office and the PI offices. Below this was the photo section which was partly underground. It was a fantastic building and a shame to see the sorry state that it is in now. When I was on guard duty I was able to get all my films that I had taken developed and printed by the photogs on night shifts. This also happened on my first tour as well. I was one of those Cpls that used to let the airmen sleep after midnight, while I took the turns round the compound on guard. I also brought up the question about the security lights shining in the new ARIC compound and the outside perimeter being pitch black. But nothing ever got done about it. Talk about being a sitting target for a terrorist.

Neil MacKinnon 1962-64

There was a major reshuffle in 1963 when an army infantry battalion moved in and took over Block 10. The inmates of Block 10 moved south, to Block 3.

Paul Wiseman 1970-73

Our block was just about the highest building on Epi camp, and proved to be very handy when there was a bush fire call-out, when we used to lift and climb out of the trap door in the ablutions (my room was on the top floor) and lay flat on the roof until the heat (literally) had died down. We couldn’t be seen by being overlooked, and as long as we took some water out with us, we could stay there for a good few hours if necessary.

Some of the huts that made up the old JARIC(ME) compound may still have been around in my day. The NAAFI was then across there somewhere, and many’s the night we staggered back to the block only to find we were a man short – lost along the wayside, stranded in the bondu, covered in scratches and swearing pitifully. The new NAAFI opened in the summer of 1970 alongside the road going up from the guardroom towards the new JARIC

At some point in time JARIC(ME) changed its name to ARIC(NE). I was posted (in 1970) to ARIC(NE), which changed to JARIC(NE) at some time while I was there, I think in the first year or so, upon the arrival of a WREN officer with a huge prow and stern to match. The photo section, darkrooms etc were all downstairs towards the rear of the building. It had no windows but – bliss – it was air-conditioned! Upstairs was the drawing office, the PIs’ rooms, the orderly room, the CO’s office and the crewroom. They had to make do with enormous ceiling fans and ventilation through the windows. There were panoramic views from up there, but give me air conditioning any day!

In my day there, the farthest half of Tunnel Beach (from the tunnel) was designated as “Officers’ Beach”, behind which was a 9-hole golf course with “browns” instead of greens. There was a perilous path down the cliffs onto the golf course, but it wasn’t a good idea to attempt it after a few Keo’s.

Happy Valley was a sports centre par excellence. Every outdoor sport imaginable was practiced every afternoon. The beach itself was pretty crap, but you can’t have everything.

On the Google Earth pics of JARIC(NE) it is tucked away down in the bottom left-hand corner of the pictures. The triangular car park is a dead giveaway, the site itself being on the inside of a narrow fork in the road.

M. Shahab Din (“caterer to the British Forces for over 100 years”) was still doing a roaring trade in the early 70’s from a small Nissen hut on the main road. His egg banjos were unrivalled, and he was better value than the NAAFI for most comestibles. Dodge City had hardly changed at all. The Station Tailor’s Shop, I seem to remember, was next to the SWO’s office in Dodge, and there was a YMCA, a Salvation Army café and bookshop, a flip-flops store, a newsagent, and the Station Barber Shop was also up there.

JARIC (NE) closed April 1975

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Main Family History home page

The History of JARIC (ME), its ancestors and descendants Compiled largely from the memories of those who were there

Steve Benkel (2707006 C.S.S.Benkel S.A.C /Tracer P.I.) In January 1954 we touched down at Fayid in the Suez Canal Zone. My first impression of Egypt was not good, having left England on a cold winters morning we were expecting it to be warm but when they opened the cabin door it was just like a furnace door being opened, and this was in the middle of the night! O.K. that was to be expected but I had not expected the all pervading wreak of diesel oil which I think was ever present for the rest of my time in Egypt. So we had arrived in Egypt. A group of eight very new airmen who had obviously arrived too soon, there was no place for us on the JAPIC (M.E.) establishment, so the powers that be decided that we could spend the time usefully on an induction course. We were sent to an army camp called Namur where we were shown the workings of the Royal Engineers 42 Field Survey unit, they were the map makers and we spent the next three weeks having lectures, map reading exercises and photo interpretation exercises. The officer in charge was a very jolly gentleman named Sandy Cibern (I'm not sure of the spelling of his name), he was a Captain in the Gloucestershire Regiment who had just been transferred from Korea, no wonder he was jolly! During one of his lessons on photo interpretation we were introduced to stereo glasses, we all seemed to be doing quite well except for one individual who just couldn't get a stereo image. Sandy was very patient with him until the poor lad volunteered that he was blind in one eye and he wondered if that was the reason? Needless to say he was assigned to new duties and we never saw him again. Eventually we were told that we could join our unit. We were bundled into the back of a three tonner with some other unfortunates and drove off into the desert stopping on the way to deposit individuals at various inhospitable locations. Then we arrived at our new Camp, R.A.F. Deversoir. We were introduced to our new billets in the tent lines and were split up into three men tents. Then we were taken to our new section. We had arrived at the JAPIC (M.E.) compound. We were confronted by a single storey building which formed the four sides of a square with an open garden area in the centre. It had a continuous covered veranda around the exterior walls and the veranda was enclosed with wire mesh fencing. The building sat in the centre of an enclosure which also had a high wire perimeter fence. At night the whole enclosure was illuminated with an array of powerful lamps. We settled into a routine much as you describe and we new erks started our trade training as Tracer P.I's. When we passed our tests we were made up to L.A.C's and eventually S.A.C;s. Because we were segregated from the rest of the camp, i.e. Guarding our own compound and not the rest of the camp and the supposed mystery of what went on inside JAPIC we became known as the "JAPIC Girls", this didn't bother us and we soon became a close knit unit made up of R.A.F. and Royal Engineer personnel. It was about this time the unit became JARIC (M.E.) and there were subtle changes in the type of work we undertook. We were moved from the tent lines into Nissen huts which were partly below ground level and stayed comparatively cool. I believe they were constructed by the Americans during WW2, when they flew bombers from Deversoir. Deversoir could be called civilised, mainly because of its location, it is situated at the northern end of The Great Bitter Lake where the canal cutting heads north, through Lake Timsah, the town of Ismalia and on to Port Said. the camp had its own flotilla of sailing dighies which were built by local craftsmen to a specification supplied by the club. There was also a very good social club run by a Scottish church, I can't remember which one. We also spent many afternoons on the banks of the canal watching the ships passing on their way to who knows where? We did see one French troopship passing on its way to Indo-China. The French troops were allowed on deck but while they were passing through the canal they were kept in great cages made of rope netting to ensure that wouldn't go A.W.O.L Late in 1954, JARIC(M.E.) was relocated at R.A.F. Abu Sueir, the unit was allocated a very substantial brick building which came complete with flushing toilets, what luxury! The downside was that the building was considered secure enough not to need exterior guard patrols and a reduced guard occupied the building in non-working hours. This meant that we were now available for station guard duty, a twenty-four hour stretch, the only saving grace was that guard personnel list was much larger so the duties came around less frequently. Our living quarters were a wooden hut left over from WW1, the spiders and bedbugs reigned supreme. Soon after moving in, we stripped the building bare sealed all the windows and doors and had the building fumigated. We tried to keep the crawlies, bedbugs and mosquitoes at bay with a combination of DDT,mosquito nets and standing the feet of the beds in cans half filled with oil. This seemed to discourage the little varmints. In the adjoining shower block we had the luxury of a bathroom which had running hot water at certain times of day. this was very unusual but it might have been because the other end of the shower block was in the WAAF compound. By mid-1955 we were preparing to pull out of the Canal Zone and there was a marked improvement in relations with the Egyptian authorities. It meant that we were free to visit nearby towns without armed escort. We visited Ismalia frequently and we also made several trips to Port Said and Port Fuad and were allowed one visit to Cairo, the Giza Pyramids and the Cairo Museum where we saw the treasures of King Tut long before they came to the U.K. During our posting to Egypt we had two leave passes to Cyprus. One trip was spent in Nicosia and on the beach at Famagusta. The second visit was more adventurous, four of us hired car and we discovered a great deal of the island including Nicosia, Famagusta, Limassol, Platres in the Troodos Mountains, Kyrenia and St. Hilarion Castle to mention just a few. These visits were long before the partition of the island and the existence of the green line. I doubt very much if I could ever repeat that trip. Eventually it was time for us to leave Egypt. JARIC (M.E.) was on the move again. A convoy of 10 ton lorries arrived at the unit and loaded everything that moved. We drove to Port Said and embarked on a T.L.C. named the "Snowdon Smith", and sailed for Cyprus. After a very pleasant voyage, we slept on deck because it was too hot and noisy below decks, we arrived in Cyprus. I think it was Limassol, but I can't remember. We drove to Episkopi where we greeted by an S.P. in very casual dress, I seem to remember that he was sporting a tartan shirt and stood outside his guard hut which had a notice informing us that it was the Sheriffs Office! It seems that JARIC were one of the very first units to arrive at the camp. We obviously had to guard the vehicles until they were unloaded but as far as we could see our only neighbours were a few goats and some Turkish construction workers who were very friendly and offered to share their bread, grapes and wine with us. Our first impression was that we had landed in paradise when comparing it to Egypt and one of the first excursions, when we had some free time, was to take a path down to the beach.


JARIC (ME) in the second half of the 1950s


		The Great Bondu Fire of '62. In the top picture the drawing office is located at the extreme left with the admin building in the background, next the squarish building with the sloping roof was the incinerator, The Nissan building in the middle was the film library which we had to spray with water from that huge hose we had to keep it cool during the fire when they remembered how much nitro they had in then (health and safety!!). Photos left and below: Neil MacKinnon



Brian 'Willy' Wickert On my second tour in Cyprus from 1964 to 1967 I was working in the new ARIC (NE) building, which opened in 1963. It was on two levels, with the top level containing film library, admin, drawing office and the PI offices. Below this was the photo section which was partly underground. It was a fantastic building and a shame to see the sorry state that it is in now. When I was on guard duty I was able to get all my films that I had taken developed and printed by the photogs on night shifts. This also happened on my first tour as well. I was one of those Cpls that used to let the airmen sleep after midnight, while I took the turns round the compound on guard. I also brought up the question about the security lights shining in the new ARIC compound and the outside perimeter being pitch black. But nothing ever got done about it. Talk about being a sitting target for a terrorist.


Neil MacKinnon 1962-64 There was a major reshuffle in 1963 when an army infantry battalion moved in and took over Block 10. The inmates of Block 10 moved south, to Block 3. Paul Wiseman 1970-73 Our block was just about the highest building on Epi camp, and proved to be very handy when there was a bush fire call-out, when we used to lift and climb out of the trap door in the ablutions (my room was on the top floor) and lay flat on the roof until the heat (literally) had died down. We couldn’t be seen by being overlooked, and as long as we took some water out with us, we could stay there for a good few hours if necessary. Some of the huts that made up the old JARIC(ME) compound may still have been around in my day. The NAAFI was then across there somewhere, and many’s the night we staggered back to the block only to find we were a man short – lost along the wayside, stranded in the bondu, covered in scratches and swearing pitifully. The new NAAFI opened in the summer of 1970 alongside the road going up from the guardroom towards the new JARIC At some point in time JARIC(ME) changed its name to ARIC(NE). I was posted (in 1970) to ARIC(NE), which changed to JARIC(NE) at some time while I was there, I think in the first year or so, upon the arrival of a WREN officer with a huge prow and stern to match. The photo section, darkrooms etc were all downstairs towards the rear of the building. It had no windows but – bliss – it was air-conditioned! Upstairs was the drawing office, the PIs’ rooms, the orderly room, the CO’s office and the crewroom. They had to make do with enormous ceiling fans and ventilation through the windows. There were panoramic views from up there, but give me air conditioning any day! In my day there, the farthest half of Tunnel Beach (from the tunnel) was designated as “Officers’ Beach”, behind which was a 9-hole golf course with “browns” instead of greens. There was a perilous path down the cliffs onto the golf course, but it wasn’t a good idea to attempt it after a few Keo’s. Happy Valley was a sports centre par excellence. Every outdoor sport imaginable was practiced every afternoon. The beach itself was pretty crap, but you can’t have everything. On the Google Earth pics of JARIC(NE) it is tucked away down in the bottom left-hand corner of the pictures. The triangular car park is a dead giveaway, the site itself being on the inside of a narrow fork in the road. M. Shahab Din (“caterer to the British Forces for over 100 years”) was still doing a roaring trade in the early 70’s from a small Nissen hut on the main road. His egg banjos were unrivalled, and he was better value than the NAAFI for most comestibles. Dodge City had hardly changed at all. The Station Tailor’s Shop, I seem to remember, was next to the SWO’s office in Dodge, and there was a YMCA, a Salvation Army café and bookshop, a flip-flops store, a newsagent, and the Station Barber Shop was also up there.

JARIC (NE) closed April 1975
	Contact me: This is an image, not a direct email link, to defeat spammers. Please type into the address box in your email programme.