War Games on the Coast of the Arabian Gulf

[British Army]. Exercise Gulf.

Extremely rare: an impressive example of a highly detailed Cold War period training exercise, with an even more interesting choice of location, the northern end of the Arabian Gulf. "Exercise Gulf" was a war game-style technical exercise based on the premise that "Two months ago a situation developed in Persia similar to that which occurred in Korea. A large part of the country in the North has been dominated by the Persian Communists with considerable material assistance from Russia [...]". The planners involved decided that such a situation demanded the mobilization of a composite Railway Regiment, which would be sent to Persia so as to create and operate a railway between Abadan on the Gulf coast and Andimeshk near Dezful, 300 km north. Possibly, Persia was chosen as a potential site of Communist activity due to the oil nationalization crisis and other events leading up to the British and American orchestrated Iranian coup d'état in 1953.

Though clearly a serious exercise, the cover demonstrates the Army's almost inexhaustible love of facetious humor and puns - visual and verbal: the upper wrapper shows a deep chasm dividing the 18th and 19th hole on a golf course. While it is likely that a small number of these documents were produced, we cannot trace another copy.

Very good, hole-punched and treasury-tagged into the original pictorial wrappers.