Aden Combined Services Patrol

This 1963 photograph shows a combined services patrol on the streets of Aden. Aden had been an important British naval base since 1839. However, post-Suez and post-Indian independence it was less important in strategic terms and had an increasingly restless population as communist and islamist insurgents were enthused and supplied by Egypt, fundamentalists or the Soviet Union. Travelling the streets of Aden became dangerous for service men and women and life became increasingly more hazardous as this image demonstrates.