After a long and arduous journey we find ourselves in Cyprus - Limassol port - waiting for the HMS Gloucestor and York to bring evacuees from Lebanon. After a couple fo very long days and nights of lives and pakages in the blazing sun we finally get some back up from London.
Here are Glen an Derek, satellite engineers admiring the sunrise whislt we wait for HMS Bulwark to come in carrying 1300 passengers.
With the dish set up between two rusting hoppers on the dockside where hopefully it will stay cooler, we wait for the ship to arrive
HMS Bulwark slowly docks, she and her crew are actually supposed to be docking in Portsmouth after a 6 months at sea but has been diverted to help with the evacuation.
Alex has been on board overnight and I get on as soon as she docks to meet up with her and follow a couple of families. The place was packed with people everywhere having slept where they could including in the corridors.
With 1300 people to get through the system it took a while for everyone to get off - those with children first waiting in long queues, slowly making way down three or four decks before disembarking.
All of the crew worked very hard in making everyone comfortable bringing lots of tea, coffees around, playing with the kids, changing nappies. No one had a bad word to say - in fact only lots of praise for their tireless effort.
Once processed, everyone who was going back to the UK was bussed up to RAF Akrotiri where a hanger had been turned into a huge bunk. Again the servicemen and their wives couldn’t do enough to make everyone comfortable, giving toys to the kids and generally just chatting to people and making them feel better. The relief was obvious.
The govenment was critised for waiting or taking too long but compared to other countries who rushed in and left people on the dock side I honestly think that we did it the best and the forces were amazing.
