Anyone old enough to remember National Service and troopships? I got talking to my Uncle last week and as happens every now and again, one odd comment leads to something completely different.. much like our threads go off topic here once in a while
Anyway, I knew he'd done National Service in Cyprus. I've tried to find details of his flight out to Egypt (Faid) from Blackbushe but have only been able to come up with sketchy info. I'm pretty certain from his description of the aircraft and the time of the flight, he went out on a Hermes. From Faid, our troops then moved by road to Port Said and then over to Cyprus by ship, He remembered the name of the ship along with the dates and I've been able to find pictures of both the ship and the ships log. Here's the ship.. Asturias.
He didn't fly back to the UK on completion of his tour.. he came back on Asturias. Anyone else here remember her? He was chuffed to bits I found the info for him. This was the first time he'd seen or heard of Asturias since 1957
ATB
DaveB
She looked different in her early years, having a dummy stack up fwd (as did many ships of the day). My uncle has quite fond memories of her noting especially, how good the food was onboard. I gather she moved about a bit when the sea picked up but everything does in my experience 
I'm lucky in that I don't have any bad memories of either him or mom and that helps 
