More than 40 years have passed since Britain fought a secret war in Oman. Former Major Nicholas Ofield has returned for the first time since the conflict to retread his battlegrounds with his son, filmmaker Tristan Ofield. This blog contains excerpts from the production diary Tristan kept during filming.


Monday 16 July 2012

That is a military map, it is unlikely to list interesting flora and fungi

I'll admit to being a little Balza about the danger of mines.... In fact the only thought going though my head while we were traipsing through the ground of Op Dragon was tr la la la la la la la it's hot

It only really dawned on me today when reviewing the interview I did with Mike Austin, that the danger became apparent.

Operation Dragon is a long story that I won't go into right now. Needless to say it all started with a landmine.

Okay it's been 40 years, the chances are everything that is going to explode would have done so by now. However that's kind of like thinking - that football pitch is 99% free of land mines, now go play.

The old man refused to go into the remains of any sangars because an old enemy trick was to mine sangars in case anyone went back into them. Was there a mine that had sat waiting 40 years for us? Luckily no.



It can't have escaped anybody's notice that blog post have been a little lacking recently. Well it's back on the doc all guns blazing now. With an aim to having a rough cut by January. Then I'm envisaging a KickStarter Campaign to buy permissions for news footage, music, some extra days shooting, as well as some After Effects work.