A long shadow was cast over the British Empire 50 years ago. Young Merseyside soldiers were among those in the build-up to the Suez disaster. David Charters reports
by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post
IT WAS just a strip of oil-stained water, no wider than a thumb-nail on the globes that spun in the halls of power, showing the world who owned what.
That water would cost the lives of many as it broke the domination of two mighty empires and changed the delicate balance of power between nations.
And it gave young men such as Billy Woods and Tom Radford a glimpse of life and death, of disease, suffering and treachery, in what their older comrades had called "the dirtiest posting in the British Army".
Billy had been brought up in Ambrose Place, off Scotland Road, known locally as the Vatican because it had produced so many priests.
He was a hard young man of just 5ft 4ins, who had been an outstanding inside-right in the St Sylvester's school team and played once for Liverpool Boys.
From the familiar chilled winds, howling down the Mersey past Cammell Laird shipyard, ginger-haired Tom found himself in a desert, which drew the sweat from soldiers.
Once, the slaves and workers of an ancient civilisation built pyramids for kings in this land. Now, Egyptians wanted to kill Britons.
At the heart of the dispute was the Suez Canal, a 105-mile stretch of water linking the Mediterranean at Port Said with the Red Sea, built between 1860 and 1869 by Egyptian labour, under the supervision of the French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps.
The canal removed the need to circumnavigate Africa.
From 1888 it was open to all nations, but Britain had acquired the majority shareholding in the Suez Canal Company during Benjamin Disraeli's government.
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