مذكرة عن السيرة المهنية للسير توماس إدوارد روجرز [و‎‎٣‎٥] (١١٨/٦٩)

In Bandar Abbas again I was shortly to put up intermittently some competent
and cheerful members of the Middle East Anti-Locust Unit, notably O.B. Lean,
whose job was to seek out locust breeding areas and destroy the young before
they could fly off to threaten crops over the whole of the Middle East and the
Horn of Africa. Poisoned bait for the hoppers was their weapon but occasionally
a sackful of untreated specimens was brought to my cook for turning into locust
curry which almost persuaded us we were eating a thin and leathery kind of
shrimp. Lean and his assistant were joined for a while by a White Russian from
their London headquarters flown in incongruously by a Red Air Force pilot in an
astonishingly manoeuvrable light aircraft which could take off and land in a
few score yards. The crew of the ancient R.A.F. Vincent which had arrived to
help in the locust hunt looked on enviously as the Russian pilot broke every rule
in their book by banking steeply immediately on take-off almost before the plane
had left the ground. When the Embassy called Lean to Teheran and he boarded the
Vincent it promptly crashed as it was taking off, not from any bid to outdo Red
Air Force near-aerobatics but from sheer overload with extra petrol in the
confined space of the minuscule dried up field adjoining my Consulate garden. No
one was killed or even badly injured but the crippled Vincent beyond repair gaped
broken-backed outside my bedroom window for the rest of the war.
Once our Russian would-be aerobat, Captain Sazanov, did duty for the wrecked
Vincent by flying me off eastwards on a line from Jask to the Persian border near
Chahbar to ginger up the coast watchers. He did his best to shed his passenger
as we banked on to and off pocket-handkerchiefs of rock and sand along the coast.
I tried to forget the dozen spare cans of petrol strapped about our feet and seats
in an effort to increase our range. On one especially dicey landing when we
hurtled towards the ground with only an accurately judged steep bank to save us I
thought the suicide of one Russian at Bushire was about to be repeated with me a
still closer spectator. This time the spur of sharp remorse was lacking for we
landed with an unnerving jar but safely.