The 40th anniversary of the Suez crisis on Tuesday showed the subject is still as contentious as ever. The decision to mount an Anglo-French attack has been criticised ever since; the decision to pull out, more so. However hindsight alters opinions, for the serving personnel who were there, it was a momentous attack, decided after Egypt's President Nasser seized all revenues for the Suez Canal and effectively blocked the West's commercial route to the Middle East. Paris talks between the British and French prime ministers resulted in Operation Musketeer, a naval operation supported by an air operation from bombers based in Cyprus. The whole thing was abandoned almost as soon as it began when the Americans took economic measures against Britain. ALWYN GRAHAM reports . . . AMONG the attacking force was Derek Woods, pictured above in uniform and right as he is today, who was probably the only Bolton man to take part in the only airborne operation of battalion strength since the Second World War.

Derek spent three years in the 13th Battalion Parachute TA Regiment before being called up for National Service and joining the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment with which he served in Cyprus during the EOKA terrorist activity. He recalled: "We had been in Cyprus for about eight months when the Suez crisis came along and we had to go back to England for intensive training. We went straight back to the Trudos Mountains in Cyprus." Then the call came to get out to Port Said.

On the morning of the November 5, 1956, he had little time to reflect that the flashes and bangs he could see as he drifted down to the Egyptian airstrip were a lot different from the ones Bonfire Night celebrants in England would enjoy.

More than 600 troops dropped and the incident was later recorded in a book, Came the Dawn - 50 years as an Army Officer, written by Derek's CO, Brigadier Paul Crook CBE DSO MA (the brigadier also recorded his anger over an opportunistic move by a Daily Mirror reporter who said he was an experienced parachutist and had a precious seat on a plane; the scribe was not experienced and hurt his ankles on landing, then took a helicopter back).

The men were dropped from Hastings, Dakota and Valetta aircraft from RAF Nicosia, their equipment strapped up beneath the planes, and were greeted by Ack-Ack fire and flak as they landed.

Four of the Regiment were killed and 40 or 50 injured. The conflict left 650 Egyptians dead and 32 Allied troops, of whom 10 were French, dead, with 129 - 33 French - wounded.

Derek's most vivid memory is of the drop itself, though there were some incidents on the ground - as when his group's vehicle narrowly escaped being fired on, mistaken for an enemy vehicle. They also took on board an injured Egyptian officer whom they were able to take to a casualty post.

No sooner had it begun than the campaign was called off and Derek was returned to his normal duties.

At the end of his service he returned to Bolton in the employ of the gas board and eventually married his girlfriend, Stella.

Servicemen who served in Northern Ireland and the Falklands had campaign medals struck for them, but for those who turned out in the Suez crisis there were none.

But reunions there are on an annual basis, and Derek has enjoyed these.

Now, as pundits look at the conflict through spectacles polished bright with hindsight, he can still remember the November 5 when the bangs and flashes were the lethal ones of warfare.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.