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British Army veteran looks back on life and duty in pre-independence UAE

Hugh Nicklin, who volunteered for the TOS, told Khaleej Times that a sense of adventure drove him to join the unit.

Most people today think of the UAE as a land of skyscrapers and a model of economic success. But for Hugh Nicklin, a young soldier stationed in Sharjah in the late 1960s, the Emirates were a distant desert outpost of the British Empire, a place without telephones and few roads.

At the time, Nicklin was serving in the Trucial Oman Scouts (TOS), a paramilitary force established by the British in 1951. Headquartered in Sharjah, the force originally comprised 30, mostly British officers, and locally recruited levies, mostly from Abu Dhabi. The force grew steadily and numbered around 2,500 by the time the UAE became independent.

Nicklin, who volunteered for the TOS, told Khaleej Times that a sense of adventure drove him to join the unit.

“The TOS was rather an exciting proposition,” he said. “I was in Germany in the British Army of the Rhine and didn’t enjoy it much. So a few of us volunteered for the Trucial Oman Scouts. It looked like it would be nice and warm and might be rather interesting, which it certainly was.”

Nicklin, a communications specialist, was one of the few members of the team which operated the only round-the-clock telecommunications network available at the time, connecting the seven Emirates to each other and to the rest of the globe.

“It was the only way to get a message out to the rest of the world,” he said. “It was the only way to communicate in the Emirates. There was no telephone anywhere, and certainly no mobiles. It was all Morse code.”

Hugh Nicklin with his team and a local youngster.

“The operators were all Arabs, and they were very good at Morse code,” he added. “You had to speak a bit of Arabic to get by. Some of the operators didn’t speak much English at all. They were trained to hear a sound in Morse code and write down a funny squibble and then hand it to me, and that was English.”

Duty in the pre-independence Emirates did not come without danger. In November 1952, for example, two British officers were shot dead by their own men while investigating the illegal sale of ammunition to Saudi Arabia. In another incident, in October 1955 two Arab soldiers of the TOS were killed during an operation to evict Saudi forces that had been occupying Al Buraimi Oasis since 1952.

“There was the odd chance that somebody might shoot at you,” he said. “We had one incident during an exercise with the Parachute Regiment that had just landed from Bahrain. We were firing blank ammunition, but then we saw live ammunition pinging off rocks to our left and right.”

“Some of the locals up in the hills saw the paratroopers and thought ‘we’re being invaded by the infidels’ and thought they could see their brother Arabs under attack,” he explained. “Fortunately, nobody was hurt and someone ran to the top of the hill to sort it out and tell them to stop firing.”

Nicklin says that members of the TOS — unlike many expats living in the UAE today — had close relationships with Emiratis, which allowed them to prevent tribal feuds from escalating.

The UAE was untouched in the early 1960s and there were no roads to get to the small villages. Camels and military vehicles were the only means. — Supplied photos

“There were often disputes over wells. If someone started shooting, you’d have a blood feud on your hands,” he said. “The TOS was meant to prevent that sort of thing. We’d do that by sitting down, having tea and coming to a solution. We had to keep the hearts and minds of the locals so we could get good information.”

“We had desert intelligence officers who lived with the locals,” he added. “We knew who was running guns. We had a pretty good finger on the pulse of the country.”

Nicklin noted that many Arab soldiers of the TOS went on to have important rules in administering the UAE after independence.

“I’d say that one of the reasons for the UAE is the TOS,” he said. “For one, it was the only place a young Arab lad could get a rigorous education, with math. We had a boys’ school and had some very capable Arab lads coming through.”

“It was the first Emirati organisation,” he added. “Men from all seven Emirates participated. Many of them went on to posts in government. They had education and experience working with the other Emirates. Since they were used to managing soldiers, they could manage departments and whatever else.”

Nicklin, who has returned to the UAE several times in recent years, said he has trouble fathoming the country’s transformation over the decades.

“Sharjah had the palace and not much else, a few huts and a souk,” he said. “It’s a completely different country. There is very little sign left of how it was. It was untouched back then. There were almost no roads to get to the little villages. Now there are busy roads, the Dubai Mall and skyscrapers!”

“If you were a well off Emirati at that time, you had a camel. If you were moderately well off you owned a donkey,” he added. “Now you can see big gold-plated 4x4s.”

bernd@khaleejtimes.com