MANN, Michael.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Trucial Oman Scouts. The Story of a Bedouin Force. First and only edition, with the ownership inscription on the front free endpaper of Colonel (the Reverend) J. W. Bell, giving his record of service in the Gulf: "HMS Jufair (1964-66) (Bahrain), Trucial Oman Scouts (Sharjah), Sultan's Armed Forces - Bait al Falej", and with his pencilled annotations and markings to several pages. Bell remains infuriatingly elusive. His inscription refers to HMS Jufair, the Royal Navy's permanent base at Mina Salman in Bahrain. The TOS was headquartered at RAF Sharjah and the Sultan's Armed Forces at Bayt al-Falaj in Muscat, the site of the country's airport and the main operating base for its air force.Although not named in the book, Bell's annotations reveal that he was witness to or directly involved in a number of events described. For example, commenting on the TOS concentrating its presence in Sharjah to maintain law and order in May 1965 Bell notes, "Things got quite difficult" (p. 151). Regarding Ras al Khaimah's plans to unseat Sharjah's Sheikh Khaled he notes: "It got a 'bit dodgy' for 'Mutawa Mukadan'" (p. 153). He has emphatically sidelined paragraphs covering De Butts' handover of command to Colonel K. C. P. Ive in April 1967, and enlargement of the camp at Sharjah to accommodate troops being withdrawn from Aden, stating somewhat cryptically: "I had to make myself very scarce - ministering to the officer element + the Para's in Bahrain + the RC's" (p. 163). This is a well-writ

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