Return to Silent Valley
On 20 June 1967, Gail Ainsworth’s father, who she never met, died in a back street on Aden, South Yemen. Gail was only six months old at the time and was never told circumstances of her father’s death until much later in life. “Return to Silent Valley” is the story of one woman’s determination to discover more about her father’s death and to try and put some ghosts to rest with the help of men who knew her father and were with him when he died. The programme follows Gail and others as they return to the back streets of Aden to relive what happened on that  fateful day 35 years ago.
The Aden Mutiny broke out early on the morning of 20 June 1967. By sunset, twenty-two British soldiers had been killed on the streets of the Crater district. The town was in the hands of an estimated 500 armed Arab terrorists and the Arab Police. On the 3 July, 1st  Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Colin Mitchell, in dramatic fashion reoccupied Crater with little loss of life and imposed a regime that Mitchell called “Argyll Law”. This uncompromising and tough attitude and its attendant constant media attention helped save this famous regiment from disbandment.
Nigel Sharp, who as a young officer lead the first Argyll Platoon in Crater, re-walks the rout his platoon took the night the Argylls re-entered Crater. Gail Ainsworth, whose father was killed in Aden on the 20th of June 1967, will visit her father’s grave in Silent Valley along with the veterans of her father’s battalion to pay respect to the the men who never returned. Unlike the Falklands war, where families were offered the option to have their loved ones returned, the men who were killed in Aden never came home. They now lie in the British Military cemetery aptly named Silent Valley.