RECALLING ACTIVITIES IN EGYPT
As Remembered By Les Walklin
Transport Sergeant 1st Btn Coldstream Guards
I didn’t like hearing the bugle sounding reveille! The desert air was still cold after the night and I admit to shivering first thing after leaving the warmth of my pit and removing the Sten gun from beneath my pillow. Then quickly to the nearby open air wash-house for a cold water wash and shave. Our shower took the form of a Heath Robinson contraption in the form of an elevated 40-gallon drum filled with water from which we could get a soaking by pulling a long chain. But even so I was always pleased to see the sun creeping above the tinted horizon – silhouetted against dawn’s ink and orange glow in the east.
Not so for the unfortunates who had to drive all day in the oppressive heat!
Driving beside the Sweetwater Canal
The nearby Sweetwater Canal was anything but sweetly fragranced, rather it
was contaminated with parasites and wreaked of the stench of death. When driving
on the Treaty Road alongside the canal the smell was putrid. Bloated dead
animals could be seen floating along on the slow moving filthy water together
with all sorts of rubbish and waste dumped into the water. The fellahin probably
thought it easier to dump agricultural waste and animal corpses in the canal
rather than bury them in the desert for vermin to devour.
To think that the Royal Engineers somehow managed to detox it is amazing, for to drink this un-purified liquid would certainly be the last drink you’d ever swallow!
But even so, the contaminated waterway was a precious source used by agricultural workers to irrigate their tomato and potato smallholdings. A young lad wielding a stick could be seen keeping a donkey-powered waterwheel going as it trod an endless circular path. Round and round the donkey would go causing a primitive rotating bucket filling apparatus to pick up and deliver water to shallow trenches.
Searching the villages
Distant desert and plains stretched across either side of our vehicles. Followed
by our armed escort truck we occasionally drove past a palm-fringed wadi with
a cluster of ruined yellow sandstone buildings. Elsewhere, we came across
a number of white- washed mud brick houses that could be loosely termed villages.
These were dotted with dilapidated homes for camel drovers and goatherds sometimes
with a few bleating goats or sheep for milk in nearby stone-walled livestock
pens.
We were frequently tasked with searching these compounds for stolen items, as were the Paras and other units. Once within the darkened hovels the disgusting stench of rank body odours, urine and stocks of forage gathered for the winter well past its sell-by date greeted us. Hawk nosed black bearded men wearing traditional hooded linen or woolen djellabas reaching down to the ground, with curved knives stuck in their belts lurked inside. And we couldn’t see what they might be concealing.
The hoods protected the herdsmen from the sun and prevent sand blown by desert winds blasting their faces. They also prevent heat loss during the bitterly cold winter nights experienced in the desolate landscape. We learned to carefully check these hoods for weapons etc. because they contained large pockets covering the neck that might be used to conceal offensive items as well as essential provisions needed while crossing in the desert.
The more worldly wise Arab thieves were active in the black market and an undisclosed number of green coloured jerricans filled with fuel were thought to change hands and a lively trade in rations and other commodities was presumed to take place on a regular basis!
Dotted here and there were peasant’s camps with filthy white walled huts under rusty corrugated iron roofs – no doubt purloined long ago from military stores. Lean dogs were either scavenging for something to eat or else lazing in whatever shade they could find, always barking whenever the military were nearby.
Driving in the Canal Zone and Sinai Peninsula
The roads were not safe from ambush so vehicles carrying armed escorts travelled
in two’s or well guarded convoys. Each day large numbers of trucks and
Land Rovers traversed the 120-mile route from Port Said to Port Tewfik and
the City of Suez.
Driving along the pot-holed metalled Treaty Road was not good but much better than finding our way across little used desert tracks. Few, if any, road signs pointed the way when driving along the open desert roads – so as no GPS systems or sat navs was available in those days so we needed to brush up on our map reading skills before departing into the unknown. Military signs erected were quickly sabotaged or ‘adjusted’ to confuse drivers.
Littering the sides of roads and tracks were gutted rusting wrecks of abandoned vehicles that had not yet been ‘recovered’ by Egyptian scrap dealers. The desert winds shrieked creating swirling dust clouds across the barren land and balls of camel thorn brush tumbled across the road causing drivers to awaken from their semi-dozing driving mode. Sometimes a radio would squawk, screech or whistle and a garbled message be passed – that’s if the unreliable thing was working. Any diversion was welcome as driving in the heat caused fatigue and blinking eyelids. So a roadside cup of tea, brewed up in a mess tin on an improvised stove comprising petrol saturated sand in a can, was always welcome.
Besides it was a good idea to keep alert as hostile Arabs delighted in driving in the middle of the road bent over the wheel of beaten-up trucks belching columns of black smoke. It was a case of who blinks first! These road hogs were a real hazard especially as units reported attempts to force their cable cutting patrol jeeps off the road.
On the road it was usually blistering hot during the afternoon with the sun still as hot as a furnace due to the sun beating down and the air as dry as a bone. All right for those lucky enough to be cooling off in the sea, sun bathing or otherwise enjoying their stay in Egypt but not pleasant for the drivers.
I recall requisitioning RASC trucks and their drivers for long hauls. They would arrive and looking at the state of the drivers I’d think to myself: “What a shower”, until I learned that they were always on the move. Seldom getting rest with a roof over their head in a camp and often sleeping beneath their trucks. They were heroes.
Drivers, when driving along desert tracks, would occasionally report seeing robed camel drovers either walking slowly across the desert or lying prostrate on the sand with their camels nearby. Others purified themselves before prayers washing with sand if no water was available. They then kneeled while repeatedly lowering their forehead to the prayer mats and raising their face to the sky. They were obviously devout Muslims facing Mecca while reciting Koranic verses as they prayed to Allah, which they did five times a day wherever they might be. They prayed at dawn before sunrise, midday after the sun had passed its highest point, during the afternoon before sunset, in the evening after sunset and finally during the night. Their job was to lead the first camel by a rope tied to a peg attached to its nose, with each of the other camels of the file being led by means of a similar rope by the camel in front of it. Deeper in the Sinai drivers passed nomads with cotton shermagh head-dresses wrapped around their heads leading mule trains, no doubt carrying contraband that they’d been paid to shift.
Apart from the heat drivers had to contend with the fog of sandstorms and dusty windscreens spattered with dead flies. If the were unfortunate enough to travel closely behind another truck they encountered plumes of dust kicked up by its tyres adding to their discomfort. Dark storm clouds could sometimes be seen either drifting or racing across the Mediterranean sky. Then suddenly a violent crack of thunder would sound and heavy rain would be seen, at first spattering the parched desert sand and then hammering down in a torrent.
Night comes quickly and before long it is pitch black and too dangerous to drive on some of the crumbling stony tracks. So up with the bivouacs, brew-up and head down wrapped in a blanket for the night.
Nature at work
Overhead the occasional falcon could be seen soaring while scanning the expanse
below for prey onto which it might suddenly dive and lift it away clutched
in its claws as they do in the UK. The desert was, after all, home to a variety
of lizards, snakes and scorpions. But the notorious shitehawk, a derogatory
term used by soldiers in place of the correct name – black kite, preferred
an easier means of getting their food. They were despised for their habit
of stealing food. They’d swoop down and clear your plate or snatch a
sandwich from your hand if you weren’t careful (as do seaside town seagulls).
So when eating outside you’d need to wave your arms over the food between
each mouthful. But when over-flying the desert they had an uncanny ability
to locate carrion and dozens would swoop onto the carcass leaving only bare
bones.
Whenever food became available there was always something ready to devour it. I recall treading on a huge black flying ‘shite’ beetle and squashing it, as we did to the many cockroaches we came across. Within a minute or so a disciplined army of ants would appear in a column to carry the precious food underground.
I still cling to memories of experiences I had while serving
in the Canal Zone and even though it’s 60 years or more since we Canal
Zoners were there it’s good to recall a thing or two about living and
working there.
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