For three decades, David Walters was a diplomat in far-flung postings from Atlanta to Baghdad.
But life was far removed from linen suits and sipping gin in Raffles. It may have been an exciting career but those at the bottom of a “choking” hierarchal chain were treated like “dirt”.
David – who was awarded membership of the Royal Victorian Order for personal services to the Queen – served in more than a dozen countries, including Iran, Iraq, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Yemen, Nigeria and Taiwan.
He said: “For most of my career, the pay was bad, the hours were long and the hostilities were always worse in the office than with the locals. But it was interesting and the people I met were fascinating.
“I have witnessed much history.”
A working-class boy from Renfrew, David entered the service at age 19 and his first foreign posting was to Tehran in 1979, in the midst of the Iranian revolution.
He arrived at an airport riddled with bullet holes and an embassy whittled down to essential staff.
As a minor clerk, he was at bottom of the heap and was thrust into an embassy that was a flashpoint for anti-western demonstrations following the overthrow of the Shah.
Protestors periodically managed to storm the main compound and the atmosphere was febrile.
David said: “Inside, you would look out to mobs of demonstrators, bare chests, people flailing themselves and chanting. But although it was tense, I walked around freely and the Iranian people were friendly, good people.”
Inside the embassy, it was just as strained.
Management officers, which he later became, were the “gods” of the office and treated the clerks like “the scum of the Earth”.
He said: “There was a lot of bullying from the top. Often, the upper class weren’t so troublesome. Often, the ex-grammar school ones were the worst and they would step on your skull to get up the greasy pole.”
But the junior clerks were often in charge of classified material and as the civil strife intensified in Tehran, David found himself in the embassy, ordered to shred papers.
He was stripped to the waist as he threw the remnants into a burning incinerator in the middle of the night.
He was evacuated on Christmas Eve 1979 and although the government paid his ticket to London, he had to borrow money from a colleague to pay his way to his mother’s house in Renfrew, where he watched the demonstrations on TV.
He was still paying the loan for the car he had bought in Iran, on the assumption his posting was for three years.
He then spent three years in Bonn, Germany, then was stationed in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago.
He was now married and arrived with his wife and baby to the country, with no one to even meet them at the airport.
They were placed in a house with a metal “rape gate” separating off the bedrooms.
When the Queen visited Port of Spain in 1985, David slept in a cot bed in the office as he worked round the clock in preparation for her visit.
He was promoted and after a few years in London, he was given a four-year posting to Dhaka in Bangladesh with his wife and, by now, two boys.
They were evacuated during the first Gulf War but because of his skill and expertise, it became a pattern for David to be kept on as essential staff.
This meant long periods of separation and after an evacuation, his family had to fend for themselves and find accommodation in the UK.
In the next posting to Atlanta, he was a management officer. Part of his role was to shop for a new mansion for a high commissioner who felt his existing one was too small.
As in other countries, his duties included visiting Britons who had been imprisoned.
David added: “Prison visiting in America was horrendous. It was claustrophobic and intimidating.
“And when a prisoner is brought to you in shackles and an orange jumpsuit, you can’t help feel sorry for them. You can only try and be humane and listen and do as much as you can for them.”
He was in Islamabad, in Pakistan, in 2000 for four years, dealing with terrorist attacks until another evacuation after 9/11.
David added: “I knew as soon as the planes hit the towers, there would be an evacuation and it was, ‘Here we go again’. The scenes at the evacuation buses were like Dunkirk. “Husbands were standing there saying goodbye to their wives and children.”
In 2011, a close male family member was arrested in the Far East on charges related to cannabis.
Over the course of the following seven years, David and his family found themselves embroiled in an alien legal system with no assistance from the Foreign Office.
He said: “With worldwide conviction rates of mostly over 90 per cent, forced confessions, plea bargaining, junk science forensics and corrupt, inefficient systems, your chance of getting a fair trial that meets international standards is, most likely, low to zero.”
Eventually, they succeeded in bringing the man’s sentence down and he was eventually transferred to an open prison in the UK.
But David said: “Many people at the time said to me, ‘If this is how the FCO treat someone like you – one of their own – what chance do the rest of us have?’”
David is now working with company Justice Abroad, using his diplomatic expertise to advise on how to tackle an arrest or death abroad.
He said: “The first thing I would say is, ‘Do not be the crazy Brit waving your passport, demanding a gunboat and expecting the Foreign Office to fix everything. It won’t happen.’”
