SUEZ - SCAMMELL, Anthony John.

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Archive relating to the Suez Crisis. This vivid and detailed eyewitness record of the Suez Crisis - unusual in offering a view "from the ranks" of one of the defining episodes of Britain's post-war imperial retreat - was compiled by Lance Corporal Anthony John Scammell (1937–2019), who served with 6th Royal Tank Regiment (6 RTR). It combines his journal with a notable body of original documentary and photographic material.Scammell's account is based on the diary he kept while on active service, parts of which were published in the Western Daily Press in October 1966 on the tenth anniversary of Suez. Here it has been carefully worked up, typed, cut into slips, and pasted into a commercial binder, so as to read as a continuous narrative. Called up in April 1956, Scammell was deployed first to Malta and then to Port Said under Major (later Brigadier) R. E. Simpkin, his unit forming part of Operation Musketeer, the Anglo-French assault on the Suez Canal Zone. The journal records his experiences from mobilisation and embarkation through training, the voyage to the Mediterranean, and combat operations. His account is candid and frequently graphic, describing the assault on Port Said, casualties, prisoners of war, sniping, looting, and the gradual restoration of order after the ceasefire.Here he gives a vivid account of his squadron going ashore at Port Said: "Then the great ramp clanged down … out onto hostile soil. That was when I felt the first real pang of sheer terror … the sni

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