These articles are about the Army when I did my National Service. They were written with the aid of a five-year diary and later between working hours during early morning shifts.
A SOLDIER'S TALE (8)
After unwisely patronising the "bumboats" which surrounded "Lancashire" like water-beetles (no change ever came back up the rickety pulleys in return for the purchase of near-rotten pineapples and other items of doubtful quality), Johnny, Mike and I eventually got ashore in Port Said.
We picked our way through the dirty postcard purveyors and wound up at one of the fine services clubs which then dotted the world, with cool drinks, armchair relaxation and some respite from the crowded troopdeck and hard decks above. We did buy some postcards - photographs of extremely poor quality of Port Said and the Suez Canal - because our cameras were forbidden in the Canal Zone. However, I do have a record of ships in the lakes halfway along the canal, taken surreptitiously through our portholes as we passed by.
Too soon, our freedom was over and we returned to the ship in the cool evening, to wake early next morning sweating pints as "Lancashire" entered the canal. It was 91deg. on deck. Goodness knows what the temperature was on the troopdeck - even with the portholes open. These were now occupied with bottomless coal-scuttle-like scoops, designed to force a draught of air into the ship as she moved through the water. Like many simple ideas it was quite successful.
My first early morning view of the canal, as the ship convoyed gently through it, was memorable for the hard brilliance of the blue sky, the limitless, hazy desert, and the sheer incongruity being a ship in a desert. The flies too. Nasty, aggressive, small, black flies with nasty minds, bit us ferociously and we felt sorry for the troops stationed in the Zone who had to cope with them daily. Now I could understand the vehemence of my father when he described them when a soldier in Mesopotamia in World War One.
"Lancashire" waited in the lakes for a north-bound convoy to pass, reached Suez in the evening and headed into the Red Sea, mercifully leaving the flies behind. It was hot in the Red Sea too, as one might expect, and the effort of cleaning the troopdeck with squeegees and sea water, and cleaning the latrines and ablutions was a sweat-pouring, exhausting job. I escaped from the task to a book on the main deck with great pleasure, and watched the rugged, inhospitable mountains in the Gulf of Suez with a great sense of their remoteness.
Johnny had an unhappy experience in the Red Sea. As an accomplished violinist he had insisted in bringing his instrument with him overseas. Of course, that brought him a great of ribaldry - and a great deal of anxiety - as he manoeuvred the delicate instrument in and out of wagons and trains safely to the troopdeck, where he virtually slept with it at night.
However, word got around about his prowess, which eventually filtered upstairs to the officers, whereupon Johnny was pressed in to play with the Royal Marine band for dances in those highly civilised quarters where wives and WRACs lived. One evening when Johnny was in full fiddle, the violin collapsed! The heat had melted the glue holding it together. The assembled company found the incident quite amusing, But for Johnny it was a disaster. He was depressed for days, until the ship's carpenter offered to mend it for him. But injury was only added to insult when Johnny returned from collecting it - "Look at it. The ****** lunatic's put a ****** great screw through it, the ignorant philistine", he fumed. "Now it's completely ruined." He was furious - and rightly so. He was lost without the precious instrument.
The ship's routine was enlivened from time to time by sessions of bingo - then tombola - and the screening of ancient films on the after-deck under the evening stars. And there were interminable games of cards. Duty-free cigarettes made ideal chips for games of pontoon and poker, and I looked back with some envy to when I called "buy one" and nonchalantly threw a pack of twenty into the game. The cigarettes in question were generally "ship's" Woodbines - but such Woodbines as none of us had smoked before. The sealed tins of 50 concealed such rapturous smokes that we wished we had been pressed into naval service so that we could kipper our lungs for ever on them!
Each day we were allowed a small beer ration - McEwans, as drunk, must have been early experimental canning. To me, brought up on bitter from real wooden barrels, it tasted foul, but nevertheless it was most welcome. So apart from the routine parades and fatigues, life temporarily took on an almost idyllic air on the long hop to Columbo, in Celon (now Sri Lanka). We got our knees - and everything else - brown, after several false starts through excruciating over-exposure to the now-searing sun; watched the glittering flying fish racing the ship, and the Portuguese "man 'o war" jellyfish slurping by in the deep blue water, and felt kindly disposed to HM Government which had sent us on this cruise. After all, how many of us could afford such a trip - let alone expected such an event in our lifetimes?
We changed our minds when the weather cut off rough again and there was a return to the unpleasantries of seasickness. One night we slept fitfully in our standees and were woken by the sound of of water sloshing fitfully around the troopdeck. "We're sinking", shouted Johnny and, about 100 naked panic-stricken soldiers jumped off their beds, visions of reefs, and rampaging ex-wartime mines flashing through their sleep-dulled minds to snap them into wakefulness. But there had been no alarm...
Bewildered, we stared at a two-foot-high wall of water rushing back and forth across the deck as the ship rolled. Then she lurched a little more to port and cascades of water streamed down the walls. No-one had thought to remove the scoops or shut the portholes! Relieved that the worst tragedy was wet kitbags, we laughed. And then laughed hollowly as a group of us were detailed to mop up. Mop up! With water on the move like that! It took hours of ingenuity, patience and foul language. As we prepared for our next shore leave, Mike and I got chatting to a near neighbour, an old soldier called "Yorkie". Apparently, he had been to Colombo before, and naturally, all rapidly-maturing lads wanted to know what the girls were like there.
He sipped beer from a can. "Nah, mate, yer wanter keep out outer them brothels in Columbo"
"Oh yeah, and how do you know, Yorkie?"
"Never you mind how I blooming know", he retorted, "I'm warnin' yer."
To be continued...