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IAN,SUDAN AND THE MINISTER CHRIS PATTEN
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One of the nicest couples my wife, Annie, and I met while I was working in Sudan in 1978 were Ian and Joyce. Ian was the First Secretary at the British Embassy, responsible for the Overseas Development Administration, otherwise known as the ODA, which was rather like a filter funnel through which British Aid Funds were poured into the bottomless pit of Sudan.
IAN WAS THE FILTER and my job was to fly him around the country, which, incidentally, has an area the size of Western Europe, to assess the various projects which were begging for British sponsorship.
Ian had started his adult life as a naval diver at the end of the Second World War. In my Book of the World's Heroes, right at the Bottom of the list of Heroic Professions come the terrorists who plant bombs which kill innocent people. These terrorists are nothing more than cowards who do not even have the courage to look into their victims' eyes before killing them, and believe themselves to be heroes when they never even place themselves in the line of fire.
Right at the top of my list of Heroes are the people who try to defuse those bombs and make them safe.
Ian was one of those. What made him particularly special in my book was the fact that he continued to practice his craft even after being blown up.
The bomb filled wreck of the Umbria scuttled off Port Sudan.
It happened in Antwerp Harbour after the war. The harbour, being a gateway to central Europe, had been a major target for Allied bombers throughout the war and much of the ordinance dropped had failed to explode.
The clearing-up operation was, to say the least, daunting. Some sceptics even said that there was such a mass of unexploded munitions in the waters of the port and its surrounding docklands that no-one could ever guarantee the safety of the shipping in the future. Ian was part of a Royal Navy team which set out to prove the sceptics wrong and it very nearly cost him his life.
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