4
1941 The Soldier
C.K. Stead
So long since I slept so long! The slatted light
of Cairo wakes me at last. A smell like urine
mixed with exhaust comes up from the noisy street.
Under the fan, a woman’s legs lock mine,
her fingers thread my hair, her Ionian eyes
open, dark as olives, surprised and shining.
After the chaos of Crete – that sky full of paras,
our loss of the airfield, days in the rocks hiding
waiting for a boat – I think I must have forgotten
how well the body, well treated, will treat the spirit.
Twice-satisfied, I want to want her again.
I’m unsure of her name – she’s a mistress, not a wife.
I love her in a way you might love the planet–
impersonally. She might be called Beauty – or Life!
1990, Voices
Tracks in the Sand
Tony Vercoe
The half-starved, battle- and march-weary survivors of 22 Battalion, dumped on the fringes of Garawi after Crete, must have found the place a letdown. Anything but a rest camp: a drab desolation of sand and rocks. No vegetation, no buildings; tents at the end of the earth.
Image 19
Evacuated from Crete by the Royal Navy at the beginning of June, they were a sadly depleted outfit. Later that month 365 of us from 5th Reinforcements arrived to fill the gaps. Typically, 12 platoon, B Company now comprised about half-and-half old digs and new chums. The veterans, not exactly unfriendly, weren’t over the moon to see us either. They were indifferent; apathetic. Understandable, though. They had clearly lost a lot of friends, and Crete must have been a rough experience.
The blokes weren’t keen to talk about it, but we got the impression they felt they had been let down in Crete by their own commanders, particularly at brigade and battalion level; that it had all been a waste and the island could – should – have been held.
But as Colonel Andrew told us at our first parade, it was now a time for rebuilding. ‘Old February’ – he spelt out to us the significance of the nickname (28 days CB) – swung 22 Battalion into a vigorous training programme, haranguing us regularly and no quarter allowed. We would find it tough but we were going to become the fittest, best disciplined battalion and – this above all – the unit with the highest morale in the entire division.
‘You will be 22nd to none and second to none!’
The bitching and grousing – the footslogger’s traditional privilege – got under way early on and grew with the grind. Nursing sore feet, aching bodies and unslakeable thirsts after the marches, many blokes saw Old bloody February as public enemy No.1. For us, the uninitiated, the language commanded by a few of the old hands was a revelation.
Garawi Camp lay on the outskirts of Helwan, south of Maadi, and in the middle of a vast expanse of soft sand. Hardly the place you’d choose for a stroll, but it’s where we did our marching. And how we marched ... ‘You magnoon Kiwi.’ The wogs round here were bemused by the sight of the six hundred or so blundering around in full kit through the sand in the summer heat (echoes of Mad Dogs and Englishmen...) Bluntly and with characteristic gestures they proclaimed their view that we were crazy. ‘Bugger off, George. Imshi!’ We agreed with them, all the same.
One particular Saturday was the climax and came close to producing a strike in the unit. The Colonel was there to see us arrive back from the morning trek. He saw an untidy rabble. We were marching on our knees by then, stonkered, aching to get the gear off, hoping the water in the porous cooling flask hadn’t all evaporated, and set to drop prone in the tent. The boots would be left outside to simmer gently.
The Colonel called out to smarten ourselves up and march like soldiers. It was the last straw for one brassed-off soldier who reacted with ‘Shut up, you silly old bugger.’ In some units they may have gone unheard or ignored, but Old February’s reaction was as keen as his hearing. ‘A silly old bugger I may be but...’
Saturday afternoon leave was cancelled. Another route march was ordered, longer and tougher. The Colonel marched all the way with us and set a cracking pace. At the end many blokes were close to collapse, and if there were no Died on Active Service notices posted in the wake of that day it was a matter of luck. Old February’s presence on the march, coupled with our complete exhaustion, may have just prevented a riot or a mutiny. And in another shrewd palliative for other ranks’ overheated spirits the Colonel let it be known that the officers’ performance wasn’t good enough either. For them he decreed special sessions of square-bashing, not excluding rifle drill. The rest looked on with scarce-concealed gloating and delight.
2001, Yesterday’s Drums
Image 20
It took time to get used to this hard going. The heat got to almost everyone, and sweat sores under the men’s arms, in their crutches, and their feet still getting accustomed to being in boots all day, kept the medical orderlies busy.
No Butter On My Crust, Travers Watt
Training
RME
Say, watcha gonna do when the sand gets in your hair,
And the army treats you poorly, and you know it doesn’t care;
When the Sergeant-major bellows, and the Major does his scone
And the Bombadier hisses, and the Sergeant has you on;
Say, watcha gonna do?
Say, watcha gonna do when your temper’s wearing thin,
And the damned infernal sunlight raises blisters on your skin;
When the hide peels off your shoulders, and your cobbers turn to scoff,
And physically and mentally you’re ruddy well browned off;
Say, watcha gonna do?
And watcha gonna do when you’re silly with the sand,
And miles of glare-infested grit spread out on every hand;
When bed bugs bite your belly and you’re chewed alive by ants;
When your pay-book is in debit, and the OC raves and rants;
Say, watcha gonna do?
Say, watcha gonna do when there aint no bleedin leave,
And the girl-friend won’t see reason, though your heart is on your sleeve.
When a ‘klefty wallad’ strips you of your fountain pen and watch
And there isn’t any Stella and the bar’s run out of Scotch;
Say, watcha gonna do?
This is watcha gonna do: you are gonna let it rip;
You are going to raise your throbbing head and button up your lip.
You will take your gruel – and like it; you’ll come and ask for more:
And in the end you’ll know that you are fit to fight this war–
That’s watcha gonna do.
31 July 1944, NZEF Times
Maadi
Travers Watt
Maadi Camp consisted of a stretch of rough desert land, twenty miles from Cairo along the River Nile. Our engineers, along with hundreds of Egyptian labourers, built huts, stores, offices, cookhouses, and put in water. They even provided good toilets with a tin of disinfectant for washing the hands before leaving. The showers and ablution blocks were of good standard and it was almost becoming a home away from home. There was Bludgers’ Hill of course, where the office staff and military police were billeted and a jail for the bad lads, alongside which was Sloggers’ Gully where the really bad lads took a bit of weight off, napping stones. When finished it was a very large camp, for New Zealand soldiers only.
1993, No Butter on my Crust
Shafto’s
Martyn Uren
Places of amusement in our new camp [Maadi] were confined to Maadi Recreation Tent, two N.A.A.F.I.s, a Y.M.C.A., a Church Army Hut and Shafto’s Camp Cinema. Thomas Shafto [an Australian] is known to the troops as the man who brought them camp cinemas in practically every military camp in Egypt. His cinemas always consist of a framework of poles, upon which is stretched canvas, old carpets, or even army kitbags sewn together. The walls are erected as an afterthought, and made of wood. The prices charged are 3 piastres, 5 piastres, and 7 piastres, according to where you sit. A piastre is worth two pence halfpenny, so five piastres is the Egyptian equivalent of our shilling. The cheap seats are wooden seats near the front, and the 5 and 7 piastre touch, afford you cane chairs in a good position. The projector, and the films themselves, were our main cause for the feeling that often it was not worth while going to the pictures in camp. For one thing there was only one projector, which necessitated a pause between each reel of film; furthermore, the films were so ancient that they invariably broke and caused further stoppages.
For a long time the chaps put up with having to wait while the projector, the film or the electric plant was mended, but one dark night they lost patience and razed Shafto’s Camp Cinema to the ground. I was on guard that night, in our guard room, which was about one hundred yards from the cinema. I was a little bit in sympathy with the whole proceeding, so it was five minutes too late when I arrived on the scene with a file of guardsmen, armed to the teeth with empty rifles.
1943, Kiwi Saga
Night in the NAAFI
14050
Night in the NAAFI – smoke noise and chatter
Queue at the bar – kitchen staff’s chatter
Cups of weak chai – doughnuts like lead
Tables all crowded – lights hiss overhead
Chant of the housie – pause in the roar
Mutter of curses – one number more
Shout of the winner – hands full of cash
Jostle for tickets – beer bottles clash
Next will be last – two ackers a head
Four quid to be won – collected by Ted
Din on the piano – pedals hard down
RPs a’prowling – time to close down
Rush for the slide – bottles to cash
Dyspeptic supper – tough steak and mash
Shutters crash down – finished tonight
Barge out the door – blind from the light.
10 May 1943, NZEF Times
A Soldier’s City
Peter McIntyre
Cairo in the early days was unique, a soldier’s city. Ostensibly neutral yet crowded with a multitude of uniforms, near the war zone yet scarcely touched by bombs; it was a wildly colourful, crazy city. It wasn’t India, yet it seemed to come straight out of Kipling.
On leave we plunged into its joys. We were fawned on and pestered; we were offered the doubtful delights of all viciousness ... We discovered the Globe with its Hungarian dancing girls and the Bardia with its belly dancers. The favourite drink was a John Collins. It was good in the heat and it camouflaged the vile gin that was served in every soldiers’ bar ... Of course money was always a problem on a soldier’s pay. A friend of mine was stopped by the Military Police for being barefoot. In desperation for a drink he had sold his boots. He was an excellent actor and in the paddy wagon, with tears streaming down his face, he told the MP that he had done it only because his poor old mother at home was in desperate need of money. The MP damn near cried himself and let him off.
Two old lags who at one time had been borstal boys thought up an ingenious way of raising funds. They would walk into the foyer of Shepheard’s Hotel and, pretending to be batmen loading an officer’s staff car, would pick up a suitcase from the usual heap of luggage – preferably one with a name tag on it – and simply walk off with it. In some quiet bar they would establish the officer’s name, ring him at Shepheard’s and tell him they had seen a wog running away with a suitcase. They had stopped him on suspicion and found the officer’s name on it. Had he lost it? The officer would check, come back and say by jove yes and they would bring it round to him. Invariably on returning it they would receive a handsome reward.
Sometimes to relieve the monotony of long periods of training, battalions were taken for picnics in the Cairo gardens. One battalion commander somewhat indiscreetly took his men to visit the Stella Brewery on the way. The brewery was generous and the battalion arrived at the gardens feeling no pain. There was a zoo in the gardens and the zoo attendants were not a very prepossessing lot. The troops took a decided dislike to them and the high point of a very happy day was reached when the attendants were locked in the lion cages and the monkeys were released. It is said that what with the attendants looking remarkably like monkeys yelling and rattling the bars of the cages, the monkeys swinging and chattering in the trees and the troops in fine singing fettle, the zoo was a vastly improved spectacle.
1981, Peter McIntyre: War Artist
Image 21
George
J. Fletcher
The copper or the soldier,
The schoolboy or the guide,
The driver of the gharry,
In which you take a ride.
The vendor or the waiter,
The posh wog with his car,
The kid who lifts your parcel
Or the chap behind the bar.
In the laundry or bakery,
Working cotton or a forge
No matter who, or what he is,
to us, he’s just, plain GEORGE.
24 May 1943, NZEF Times
How Much, George?
Dan Davin
The shade of the mess wall soon had to be left behind and screwing their eyes to the glare they crossed the trodden sand of the parade ground and reached the road. An ancient taxi came cruising by, empty.
‘How much to Cairo, George?’
‘Forty piastres, George.’
‘Too much, George. Twenty.’
‘Forty.’
‘Twenty.’
‘Thirty-five.’
‘Twenty-five.’
‘Thirty.’
‘Thirty.’
The official price thus reached by formal rite, they got in.
‘You’re an extravagant bastard, Tony. We could have got a train ride quite easily.’
‘Why not ride straight through and be done with it. I’ve been piling up ackers in my pay book down there in the Delta and I’m going to make the best of it while I’m here. A man mightn’t be able to spend them if he leaves it till after the next offensive.’
Though the taxi had the usual smell of having been slept in, once it was moving the air swept through the gaps where the windows used to be. And George like all his Cairo brethren drove with extravagant speed and recklessness.
‘They’d make wonderful fighter pilots, Egyptian taxi drivers,’ said Tony. ‘Split-second calculation, astonishing nerve and a taste for exhibitionism. See the way he dodged that bint-cart.’ In their wake the slow, sloping cart and its tiny donkey diminished, the load of black-clad women still chattering and gesticulating indignantly.
‘Life’s cheap here. That’s why they take such risks. Seventeen million of them and no one gives a damn as to whether sixteen and a half of those millions live or die.’
They swept through the shaded Maadi streets, broad, well-laid avenues, the elegant houses stepped back from the road in fastidious seclusion. Then down the long, straight stretch, a fine tar-sealed road running along a causeway. On either side Egyptians slept under the trees, their scrawny sheep and submissive water-buffaloes alongside them, they also, perhaps piously accepting the inscrutable tyranny of some bovine Allah. In the irrigation ditches boy children splashed and romped, not yet reduced by poverty and labour and a manhood with one pleasure too often used, to the frequent sleeping which was their elders’ anodyne and anticipation of paradise. The girl children black-clothed, learning already how to enhance their charms by keeping them uncomfortably concealed...
They were in the outskirts of Cairo now. Trams clanged in the street, oxen moved at the pace of generations rather than of lifetimes, fat men with umbrellas sat on tiny donkeys, bint-carts multiplied, kids pullulated, the middle ages and the orient, backwaters of time and place, met and mingled. They swirled round the Midan Ismailia, up the Suleiman Pasha and past the big Groppi to stop in front of the Cosmopolitan.
‘Forty ackers, please, George,’ said George casually.
‘Now, George, thirty we said.’
‘Thirty ackers.’ With a flash of gold teeth.
‘They never worry if it doesn’t come off,’ said Tony.
‘If they had to worry on top of everything else, they’d never survive at all. It’s a pity the English haven’t got the sense of humour they’re always boasting about. Apart from laughing themselves sick at themselves – instead of just smiling – they’d get on better with these chaps.’
The man selling sunglasses, the man selling bootlaces, toothpaste and razorblades, the boot-blacks and the men with very clean sisters, glanced at them, but made only the most listless attempts to board them. After all, it was very hot and the tan on their faces showed they were not newcomers.
1947, For the Rest of Our Lives
Image 22
‘Ya Salaam’
ACK
We’ve heard lots of idle chatter, and serious converse too,
In snacks of purest Arabic, spoken only as Kiwis do.
For it’s ‘Y’alla’ to the bootblack, and ‘Igri!’ to the bus
Or ‘Taala-heena’ to the paperboy, it’s easy stuff to us.
We’re never deterred if we’re answered in English as good as our own;
We just keep on with our Arabic, the only tongue we’ve known.
If we say ‘Saaeeda’ nicely to the guard on the Maadi train,
He’ll probably answer ‘Good Morning,’ or ‘Good evening,’ if we try him again.
The gharry has run its distance, here’s where we must alight.
We just tell George ‘Estaanal’, he’ll set us down alright.
If on the Fouad we’re accosted by an undesirable dame,
Our ‘Baardin-Bint’ soon fixes her, if we don’t want a hand in the game.
The years are slowly passing, and our fluency’s getting hot,
To silence eastern clamour, we’ve learned to roar ‘Esskot!’
We never shout out ‘Listen!’ or ‘Hey there! ... I say! ... What ho!’
It’s always ‘Issma walhad!’ more effective, don’t you know.
And it’s ‘Shoofti!’ this or something else, which merely means to look.
Or, if you’re not so inclined ‘Maleesh’ or, ‘Why go crook?’
And when the NAAFI’s finished selling beer, it’s all washed up or ‘Kloss’,
Which seeing that we’re ‘Mafeesh faloose’ is actually no bitter loss.
We’ve clinched a deal in the mousky, (no chance of robbing us)
With snappy words to the merchant, ‘Khamseen piaster – buss’.
It’s just the same in a cafe, when we’ve dropped in for a meal,
We order our food in Arabic, it makes things awfully real.
For ‘Awha we’ll get coffee, and ‘Ayesh’ Egyptian bread;
And when we do get in a fix we’ll air our French instead.
It’s ‘La!’ to the ‘Swoyaa walhad’ who asks us for ‘Baksheesh’
And ‘Ouwa!’ to the gharry driver who’s careless with his leash.
We light an issue ‘Cigareh’ with an ‘Estaana Swayya Kabreet,’
And ‘Beera’ sounds much better for beer, same as ‘Sharia’ for street.
We’re frightfully peeved when we utter ‘Y’alla ya kelb!’ to a wog
Which simply means in plain English, ‘Get t’ hell out of it you dog!’
On the contrary, we’re pleased about it, and life is just one grand ‘Salaam’
When it’s ‘Kweiss kittear aawi’ or if you like, just simply ‘Tamaam.’
Image 23
Our vocabulary’s nearly exhausted, we’ve only got ‘Aiywa’ to go:
but it really is awfully simple, it only means yes, you know.
And when we say farewell to Egypt, we’ve got it already (‘Ha! Ha!’)
Just ‘Goodbye you beautiful country, goodbye’ and ‘Ma es salaam-a.’
8 February 1943, NZEF Times
A New Zealand Soldier Looks at Cairo
Dear Mother,
A few days ago they said to me, ‘Here’s three months back pay, there’s a track or something leading to a station of sorts, if it’s still there, push off for a week’s leave while you’ve still got a thirst and an appetite.’ Mike, Duggie and I pushed off; we’ve been pushed off ever since. There’s nothing we’ve not been pushed off: trams, cabs, pavements and pedestals, steps, sharaks, statues and shebeen seats.
You’ve just been pushed off one pavement when someone in a nightgown outfit pushes you on again. Mind you, this city has a pull; they grab you by both ears and pull you into the shops, bazaars and anything that has a hole in the wall. Everyone, including his cousin, has something to sell. They sell the view, with the smell thrown in buckshee, then, they sell the story, with Ali Baba embellishments, and finally sell you the way out.
At first it was great fun, but at the present stage I’m walking about in an advanced state of homicidal mania, with one foot ready for a drop kick, teeth bared, and a look in the eye that would make a lone wolf with rabies seem a charming children’s pet in comparison. Why?
We landed here late one night in the middle of the blackout. Egypt has a population of 17 millions, all of whom met us at the station and called on me and Mike and Duggie and Allah to preserve them with piastres. Each called the other a robber and touted for a different hotel, pub, speakeasy or moonshine factory. They offered us the wealth of Egypt on trays, in buckets, gourds, jam tins and baskets. They laid bare their souls and their hopes of salvation, and we bent double beneath the weight of their blessings, plus our infantry packs, but our piastres stayed in our pockets.
We pushed, fought and swore our way through the horde, but it re-gathered for another attack. So in sheer desperation we allowed a bearded, moss grown old magician to carry our packs. Only an infantryman knows what his pack is like, and in wonder and admiration we watched the tattered Tarzan carry three packs like a mother with a prize baby. We followed Mr Sharag ben Bullock ibn Rameses and arrived at the steps of our town residence to find he had already arranged our room, bed, terms and welcome.
It was the best five piastres I’ve had. We have a big room, well-furnished, for five days and the terms, inclusive of really good meals, came to less than two pounds each. We went to bed, but could not sleep at first. Something was wrong – there were no stones sticking into our ribs, no fleas gnawing, and no dust. It was marvellous. Next morning we had grub and sauntered to the street. The saunter lasted as long as the bottom step, Cairo had camped on the doorstep and had started the morning’s devotions to the great god ‘Piastre’.
They pushed things into our hands, into our pockets, hung them on our belts, or, if the article was supposed to be edible by anything from a camel upwards, they’d put it in our mouths. You could not ward them off, as both hands were required to cover the pocket holding your money. After a while the novelty palled and we tried to nose through. It was no good, so we became slightly annoyed. Two minutes late the annoyance became real and then we just went berserk.
It was then that Abdul introduced himself to us. At that moment he was the instrument of Heaven; our salvation, our father and our mother, and his only ambition was to achieve some pleasure and peace for us. He said so, so it must be right. He may have been all of those things, but he’s lots besides. The least of which is the most fluent liar and pirate in a land of them. Anyway, Abdul, with flapping omderrok and jaunty fez, holey sandals and the love of mankind and piastres in his eyes, took us to places where angels fear to tread. We saw the bazaar, the mosques, and the glory of the old Egypt; we saw the hopelessness, the poverty, and the corruption of the new.
We went to the leatherworks of Omar Khayam, where a direct descendant carries on to this day. We entered the workshops of the rope-makers, where children like Brian and Keith toiled skilfully with a life of semi-slavery in front of them. Abdul also kept the massed battalions at bay. He knew just the right bazaars – he did, because he gets a rake-off. We had him for two days at three bob each a day, but now have to dodge him as one of the 17 million. His eternal chatter broke us. There were times when we wanted to stand and look at something in peace, but he’d butt in. The only drawback is we’ve to continually fight off and snarl at mendicants, ward off clutching shopkeepers, and disentangle ourselves from the wiles of well-wishers. That is why we have developed an attitude of active homicide.
We’re just about flat broke, but perfectly happy, and soon will return to our desert – and our comrades.
Cheerio Mums, best wishes for Christmas and all.
Your loving son
BILL
21 December 1942, NZEF Times
(first published in a New Zealand daily)
Image 24
Maleesh
72149 (NZWAAC)
There’s a word in use out here that I never heard at home;
It’s as eastern as a yashmak, or the Mosque of Omar’s Dome.
For such precise expressiveness the English tongue you’d comb
In vain. There’s no replacement for ‘Maleesh’.
The patients find it fits the bill when they have earned rebuke
For not according MOs all the honour of a duke,
Or smoking cigarettes as brazen as old Luke–
‘What, fine me fourteen days feloose? Maleesh!’
We ministering angels employ the saying too,
It’s really quite remarkable the spots it sees us through.
Is it dressings we’ve omitted or forgotten how to do?
And Matron’s on the warpath? Well, ‘Maleesh!’
When we’re told to get our baggage packed and lumped across to mess,
And two days later see it there, exposed to filthiness,
We neither shriek or swear, we say ‘Maleesh!
10 May 1943, NZEF Times
‘The Burker’
Nelson Bray
There was a street in Cairo called Sharia Wagh el Burker where everyone went – there was plenty to see and wonder at. You could gamble at two-up, crown & anchor and so on. I was only down there two or three times in my just-on four years in Egypt, but it sure made an impression on me. ‘The Burker’ must have been some three-quarters of a kilometre in length and all the buildings were some five or six storeys in height.
Both sides of the street had girls, all colours of the rainbow from – black to white – all nationalities, all ages, all sizes; there must have been thousands of them, all trying hard to outdo the other. The girls would take a fellow’s hat and run into a room, and when the owner of the hat went inside to get the hat back, she would close the door and do her best to win the fellow over. Sometimes it worked, but often it did not. When we first went to Cairo the girls were 20 ackers, but it doubled within a year or so. A wog man thought he was well paid if he got one and a half ackers a day.
1996, A 39er’s Story
Bruce King
To illustrate how naive our officers were, we were warned not to have anything to do with Egyptian women. It was alleged that they carried all sorts of diseases which were highly contagious and could cause all sorts of things to happen to you, the worst being your genitals could rot and fall off. This only made us more curious to find out the real truth, which most did in a short space of time, and we proved that the advice given was quite erroneous. However a disease called ‘elephantitis’ did frighten us, as it caused the genitals to swell 20 to 30 times larger than their normal size. An example of this abnormality was preserved and displayed in a building called The House of Hygiene and the sight was quite terrifying.
Each time we were given leave we were handed a cleansing paste and a condom for protection and safety.
1993, I’m only an ordinary Kiwi
There was a lad a fool was he,
forgot his pro, now he’s got VD.
1989, Poems from a War, John Male
Cairo Cleopatra
Dan Davin
No mighty Caesar’s helpless gasp
In these lubricious thighs.
Plain soldiers in their practised grasp
Grunt inexpensive sighs.
Simple and short her shrift,
Cheap is her price.
All that she has in gift
Is pubic lice.
You who have sobbed above
This mortal core,
Cast off your agonied love
On this jetsam shore.
Recall to your coward heart,
Remind your despair.
This used Egyptian tart
May also ask where,
Where is there peace at last,
Peace from all lust?
The quiet of the womb long past,
What of the dust?
Or worse, no questions sear
This public flesh.
Enjoying each desperate dear,
She is content in the mesh.
1985, Poems of the Second World War
Peter McIntyre
When General Montgomery, as always in apparent daily communication with God, closed the brothels of Burka, the VD rate soared. The doctors were furious. They had regularly inspected the registered brothels to keep the disease rate down. In the Burka days a soldier could go to the medical station after he had been with a woman and get a prophylactic. He was given a dated blue card and if he then contracted a disease his pay was not stopped. Without the card he lost his pay for the entire time his treatment lasted. This system worked wonders but, with the Burka closed, the soldiers turned to the illegal brothels with disastrous results. God must have given the wrong advice.
1981, Peter McIntyre: War Artist
‘If they can’t fuck, they can’t fight.’
Attributed to General Freyberg, speaking to General Montgomery, who was complaining about the high rate of VD in the Div
Cairo
J.T. Burrows
Leave in Cairo brought its problems for the first few months, and even though a fast train to Maadi station provided a good service for the troops, there were always the few who missed the train and travelled back by taxi. Unfortunately, if a soldier is in a condition to miss the last train, the chances are he has also run out of money. A set price – I think it was 50 piastres per person – was the agreed sum to Maadi Camp. Cairo, however, is a very big city and the price of taxi hire could vary according to the point of departure.
One morning about 2a.m. I was awakened by a violent argument which came closer and closer until obviously there was a little group just by the entrance to my tent. I took my torch and went to see what it was all about, and found three soldiers of B Company under escort by the armed battalion guard, with an Egyptian taxi driver dancing around in a state of anxiety and excitement. The three soldiers, though very drunk, were clear about two things. First, that this miserable taxi-driving Wog was charging them too much, and, next, that I would see that they had justice. There was a third point that no one thought to mention until asked, and that was that they had no money anyhow.
So I produced the required number of piastres, with my three soldiers protesting that the little so-and-so had added another 30 piastres to the original price. Next morning I must admit I was a little surprised to have the money paid back in full, but not quite so surprised later to learn that after the taxi driver had been given his money, Wattie Jack, one of the three soldiers, had moved smartly through the line of tents, waylaid the driver on his way back to his taxi, knocked him down and removed his money on the grounds that he was a bludgering thief ... Life with B Company was never dull.
1974, Pathway Among Men
‘Say Ginge! – How do you spend your wages?’
‘About 40% on smokes and 80% on Leave.’
‘But that makes 120%.’
‘You’re telling me!’
24 November 1941, NZEF Times, Bill Gibson
Babel-el-Louk ‘If’
L.B.S
If you can keep your feet when those around you
Are using theirs to hack a passage through,
If you can trip and not be tired of tripping,
Or being kicked about, don’t deal in kicks,
Or being tipped up, don’t give way to tipping,
And yet don’t seem too soft, nor minus tricks;
If you can scheme and push and bump the faster,
If you can jab and yet be sure of aim,
If you can dive without disaster
And to the nearest seat lay claim...
If through the gate you pass without a ticket
and glance not to the left or to the right,
But keep a wary eye out for the picket
(Discretion’s best if he is still in sight):
If you can shove and jostle undetected,
Then draw aside and quaff a glass of tea,
Or shoofti magazines that George selected
(Including some you never ought to see),
Then once you see the motley crowd start swaying,
And watch the brawl beginning once again,
If you apply what we have just been saying,
You ought to board with ease the Maadi train.
22 November 1941, NZEF Times
Image 25
Entente Cordiale
1313
Tom was a chivalrous character, and when he heard maledictions heaped on the heads of unscrupulous natives he would stoutly defend them. ‘They’re not a bad crowd,’ he would say, ‘Trouble is, you blokes don’t understand them. You should learn a bit of Arabic. You go over big if you know a little of their lingo.’
One night, returning from Cairo, he noticed three natives at the far end of the carriage and remarked to his cobber Hutch, ‘I’m going down to have a yarn with those jokers.’ In less than no time the international party was in high spirits; everything and everybody was ‘quaise’ and with true Eastern politeness Tom was ‘Ma’salaamed’ like royalty when he alighted at Maadi.
‘There you are,’ he said to Hutch, as they walked across to the bus. ‘Did you see that? I had a darn good time with those chaps.’
Hutch was unimpressed. ‘Have you still got your paybook?’
‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ remonstrated Tom, ‘you’re always doubting them. That’s what you shouldn’t do.’
‘But have you still got it?’
Tom slapped his breast pocket defiantly, then, his face fell. His AB64 was gone!
20 December 1943, NZEF Times