Hello everyone,
I think a lot of this sub and admire its stringent rules on good questions and good answers. I hope this question follows those rules.
My question is prompted by my grandfather (served in the British army for a time in the late 1960's and early 1970's, but I'm not sure on exactly when). He is no longer around but we have lots of pictures of him sitting in the desert holding a rifle. I remember stories from him stating that he was in "Saudi Arabia". I remember stories of eating "rancid goat meat" and of guarding what he described as a "rubbish dump", but little else.
From the little that I know, it seems more likely that he was stationed somewhere like Oman. Where were British soldiers stationed at that time? Where might he have been and why might he have been there?
For context, if it helps, he was born in 1943 and was also posted to Germany and Northern Ireland at some point. He claimed to have been in Germany when the British actor Leslie Grantham shot a German taxi driver, which was in 1966 - but I'm not sure on the truth of that story.
Apologies if this is not the appropriate sub, I appreciate your contributions regardless.
Without more context it is difficult to say. The late 1960s and early 1970s were a confusing time for Britain in the Middle East. (Granted, what period of time hasn't been confusing time in the Middle East?)
But for context the relevant starting point is probably 1956 and the Suez Crisis, when the Egyptian government nationalized the Suez control and seized it from British control.
For almost a century, Suez had been the critical element of British Middle Eastern policy. But it's loss led to the relatively rapid realization that the canal in fact led to an overseas empire that Britain no longer controlled in Greater India, and that the system of protectorates that Britain had established in Arabia on the Suez-->India route were no longer worth the cost.
This was only underscored as the years went on by the Aden Emergency (1963-1967) that resulted in British withdrawal from Yemen and the independence of South Yemen, and the 1967 Six Days war that closed the Suez Canal entirely from 1967-1975.
This realization prompted Harold Wilson's government in early 1968 to announce--surprisingly and suddenly for many of these Arabian protectorates--that Britain was withdrawing from east of Suez. This resulted in the independence the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, as well as a bloodless British-backed coup in Oman that finally settled a long-standing rebellion in that country.
As for Saudi Arabia, while it was never a British protectorate like the other countries I've mentioned, in the 1960s and 70s (and in various shapes and forms down to the present) the Saudis have had close military ties with both Britain and the United States that have included British military training in Saudi Arabia for the Saudi military.
So, in other words, it's plausible to me that in the late 60s or 70s your grandfather could have been stationed in any of these countries.
Based on his description of being on guard duty my hunch would be that he might be less likely to have been in Yemen, and while Saudi Arabia is a possibility, again, if he was on guard duty I'm not familiar with any troops deployed in Saudi in that time period for that purpose, although I can't rule it out.
For those reasons, Oman, the UAE (then known as "Trucial Oman" before independence), Qatar, or Bahrain all seem like potentially more likely candidates than Saudi or Yemen to me.
Edit: Also if you're willing to post any of those photos, particularly if any of them have any defining landmarks in the background (mountains, towns, sea, ships, oil rigs, etc.--anything really) that might help give a clue.
Edit 2: This isn't my speciality, but of course if you know what regiment/unit he was in I suspect we might have some British military boffins on the sub who would actually know or could find out precisely when/where those units were deployed.