"FROM DUSK TO DAWN"
As Remembered By Bill Julian (3 GHQ)
Who among us will ever forget those balmy nights in Egypt?
I am sure you can all recall the sun dipping towards the horizon and its golden orb changing first to copper then a fiery red before the approaching night chased it below the rugged foothills and another day was close to being struck from the calendar.
Soon the sky put on a new face, becoming a velvet pillow of the deepest and
darkest blue. And far more stars then we ever saw at home gradually pierced
it with pin-holes of diamond-bright light. Even the moon seemed brighter and
yellower in the cloudless unpolluted desert air than the one that beamed down
upon South Wales.
On most nights there were shooting stars to be seen. Away to the north faint
flickers of lightning might be seen over Europe. But it was so far away there
was never ever a hint of thunder.
With the sounds of the day stilled those of the night took over. Cicadas chirped a clicking chorus that would not be silenced until dawn’s first light. Music drifted from unseen radios in the tented lines, sometimes playing The Tennessee Waltz, or Roll A Silver Dollar. Even more bizarrely, the wailing notes of Radio Cairo sometimes intruded. And scattered shots would spasmodically ring out as white-faced josses over reacted to tell tales that had been spun to them by brown-kneed old sweats before going on guard duty. Then the sound of a single pi-dog howling at the moon might be taken up by a dozen others creating a spine-chilling Hounds of Hell chorus which would sometimes be responded to by a desert jackal drawn by the sounds to the entrance of its rocky den.
But it was after lights out during hours beloved by kleftie wallahs that thoughts most often turned to home. If duty kept you from your be and you looked skywards the seven stars in the Ursa Major constellation forming The Plough were so comfortingly familiar that a feeling of hiraeth would tug at the heartstrings. These same stars were shining down upon your local pub where you perhaps used to play darts or skittles; the youth club where you met your first real girl friend; the sitting room at home with Mam and Dad sat in front of a flickering coal fire listening to a radio play; the rugby field where you clocked up more bruises than points; the local chapel where well-known hymns were sung with a fervour that only the Welsh can muster; and upon the Monkey Walks where lifetime partners were sometimes destined to meet.
Those same stars are still shining down upon TEK, Suez, Port Said, Moascar, Fayid and even reflected in the waters of the Sweet Water Canal and the even sweeter ones of the Bitter Lakes.
To this day, whenever I look up on a clear night and see The Plough shining brightly in the Northern sky my advancing years wind backwards to nights when clad in KD and toting a Sten gun they comforted me as I trod my lonely picquet pursued by the scent of hashish drifting from the ghaffir sentries glowing hubbly bubblies.
And it also reminds me of those comrades in arms who never cam home and now sleep eternally in Egypt’s British Military Cemeteries and unmarked desert graves.
So when you go from here lads remember to occasionally glance skywards on clear
starlit nights then look towards the east and take comfort from the thought
that the stars shining down upon you are the same stars that will still be watching
over those comrades who were never fortunate enough to make the journey home.