OH RATS!
I suspect that I am not the only Canal Zoner with recollections of Egypt’s rats. Those at Albuhera Camp were large and extremely bold. A few could always be seen favouring the camp fire points where they drank from the water-filled buckets whilst sunning themselves upon the ones filled with sand.
Close to my tent was a large paper store which we occasionally moved stocks from when on fatigue duty. There were so many rodents nesting within it that on entering we threw handfuls of stones to drive them up into the rafters where we could keep an eye on them.
Between the store and our tented lines was a flood drainage ditch which I never knew to contain a drop of water. On the store’s side its bank was pitted with rat holes. As a couple of the guys owned airguns on occasional boring afternoons we organised rat hunts there. We would ram bamboo poles in and out of the holes to set them running. They would pop out of any of the scores of openings before quickly vanishing into another, giving you only seconds for a quick snapshot. In fairground style in this way we killed lots of time but never bagged a single rat. I believe the rodents came to enjoy this diversion as much as we did!
But the most famous rat in the Canal Zone had to be the one which often made its appearance in the middle of a film showing in the Hippodrome cinema in Fanara.
The screen was suspended from a beam running across the building and this rat would scuttle back and fore across it, causing some squaddies to hurl missiles and loud cheering to break out. On a couple of occasions the film had to be stopped until order was restored.
The rodents are still as profuse in Egypt. Not many years ago I sighted a few in the temple of Ramses the Second at Abu Simbel and also in the gutters of a street market in Port Said.
But, just as on my 1950 visit with the Royal Signals they were not included
in the sightseeing itinerary.
Come to think of it, I don’t believe the army issued me with one.