John Boon Memories

Page 2a

In 1950 my father was posted to Egypt, to the Suez Canal Zone. At that time Britain maintained a large military presence along the banks of the Suez Canal, and extending some distance west, towards Cairo.  Although it was normal for families to accompany servicemen abroad, it was not possible for my mother to obtain passage on a troopship (Why? Korea?) So she  booked a flight with Air Ceylon. Although I was twelve, an adult for airline purposes, Air Ceylon agreed to allow me to fly for half fare. The terminal, in those days was, I think, in Piccadilly in central London, and we were taken to the airport in a semi-double-deck bus, the rear seats raised above a large baggage hold. All I remember of  Heathrow was walking through a pre-fabricated hut, where my mother showed her documents to various people. But then, in 1950, a pre-fabricated hut was probably all there was. We crossed a few yards of wet apron and climbed a few steps into the aircraft and up the sloping floor to our seats.  The aircraft was a Douglas DC3, named Laxapana. I recall nothing of the take-off, which was around 9p.m. My next memory is of having breakfast in a large almost empty room at Rome Airport in the early hours. Then nothing again until we were flying over an empty blue sea.  We were served lunch, chops and strawberry tart. We then encountered some turbulence and my lunch saw daylight again. Later we flew along a coastline, sea on one side and desert on the other. Approaching Farouk Field in Cairo we banked steeply, demonstrating graphically to me the effects of centrifugal force.  My father and a colleague, also meeting his family off the same aircraft, met us. They bought us colas from a machine. Pepsi or Coca, I don't know which. But to me, buying a bottle of drink from a machine was a miracle, and the more so since it was icy cold, the bottle beaded with moisture. I soon discovered that in Egypt at that time, as everywhere now, ice cold Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola was ubiquitous, usually served from an ice box rather than a refrigerator.  We all got into a taxi, a large American vehicle, for the 80 mile journey to Ismailia, where we were to live. There were eight of us in the car, as well as the driver. It must have been very hot and cramped, but my attention was outside. The countryside was very different to England and, unlike today, where all the landscapes of the world are familiar through films, television and books, very strange.  The road passed through small villages. It was dry and dusty. The men for the most part were dressed in what appeared to be nightshirts and the boys in pyjamas. The woman were largely swathed on shapeless black garments, often with their heads covered with the same material, and occasionally veiled. The villages were mud huts, usually whitewashed, and the road edge frayed into the dust. There were no pavements.  On the right, for most of the way, ran a canal. I was told it was called the Sweet Water Canal and had been built to carry fresh water from the Nile to the workers building the Suez Canal. It was now used for irrigation. Fields of unfamiliar crops lined the far side of the canal, as did dusty palm trees, mostly dates. The fields were surrounded by irrigation channels, into which the farmers poured water poured water raised from the canal by the use of primitive shadoofs. These were simply a pole hinged to an upright, with a weight at one end and a bucket at the other.  Tiny donkeys plodded along beside the road, either bearing their owner or an enormous load of vegetation.  On reaching the town of Ismailia we were taken to a families transit camp, where we would be staying while more permanent accommodation was found. Our home was a nissen hut, built of curved corrugated iron like a half tube. Here was another miracle, an oscillating fan. A familiar enough object now, but completely new to me then.  The nissen huts were in a park-like setting, with heavily watered grass dotted with tall palm trees. We ate in a communal dining room and were served by black Nubian waiters dressed in flowing white robes with red cummerbunds.  A few minutes walk away was a small beach, furnished with wicker chairs and tables and a bar, from which drinks and snacks could be obtained. The beach, reserved for service families fronted onto Lake Timsah, one of the lakes through which the Suez Canal passed. It was here that I taught myself to swim, by the simple expedient of plucking up the courage to float, then moving around by the use of my arms and legs. The water was filthy, although it is only in recent years that I have come to realise this. It even had excrement floating in it, but nobody seemed to worry or indeed to become ill.  We soon moved into a flat which belonged to an Egyptian lawyer named Haseeb. The flat was part of his house, which also contained his offices. Our part consisted of two bedrooms, a sitting room and a kitchen. There were more wonders here. The kitchen boasted an ice-box which , while rather primitive, was more than most people had in the UK. One half  contained a large block of ice, the rest was the storage area. The ice was delivered daily from an open truck full of the stuff. We were under strict instructions not to suck the ice or drink the water, since it was unlikely to have been made from purified water.  Mr Haseeb had an office intercom,  two telephone sets connected together by a wire, which he let us play with. He also had a 16mm sound projector with which he showed us films, and a miraculous device called a wire recorder on which he recorded our voices.  Outside the flat was a courtyard, closed off from the street by a high gated wall. In a room off this courtyard, underneath our flat lived Mr Haseeb's Nubian servant, whose services also came with the flat.  A few yards away in one direction lay the mysterious native quarter of the town. It was out of bounds to all British service people, which was indicated by signs at every entrance. In the other direction lay the French-built town. Our house was in Rue Negrelli, which passed several large French-colonial houses in their own grounds before reaching the commercial centre.  The most important shop for me was the bookshop. A large shop, it was piled high with British newspapers and periodicals, including the all-important comics. I had been allowed to have one comic on subscription from the U.K. I had chosen 'Radio Fun', but this and all the others were easily available in Ismailia.  And in addition they also had American comics.  These were more colourful then their British counterparts, on better paper, with exciting characters like Superman, Captain Video and all the cowboys I had previously only known on the silver screen. The adverts, too, were eye-opening. Full page adverts for air guns occupied the back page on most, along with such mysterious items as Popsicles.  The other shop of interest was Groppi's, purveyor of cakes, pastries and ice cream of a quality unknown to me before. There were other shops, of course. Boring places like grocers and greengrocers, and the NAAFI shop. This was situated near the station, away from the other shops, but was notable to me only for its outdoor café and its selection of fireworks at the appropriate season.  Near the flat was a bakery, where we would buy bread straight from the old-fashioned oven. On our way to and from the shops we passed a cinema, outside which was a salted peanut vendor. We often bought some from him. They were delicious, and very different from those purchased in packets now. Dispensed into paper cones made on the spot, the peanuts were large and dry, and liberally encrusted with salt. For schooling, at first, I went to the garrison school at Moascar. These were one-story buildings with verandahs, surrounded by sand playgrounds. The school buses were converted army trucks, with barely padded seats across the truck bed, reached by steps permanently attached to the rear.  I quickly discovered that the school was some way behind compared with Frimley and Camberley. I had done most of the work already. In retrospect I should have told someone, but of course instead I was delighted. School was easy. This did me no good at all, for at the start of the summer term 1951 I was sent to board at The English School, Cairo. There, I was behind and had to have extra lessons in order to catch up.  Boarding school came as something of a shock. I had never been away from home alone before. I was quite lonely at first, since I knew no-one. There were some 80 boarders, all I believe from the Canal Zone. Most of the pupils, of both sexes, did not board, but came daily from the families of diplomats and ex-pats in Cairo as well as from well-off Egyptian families who wanted an English education for their children.  We were accommodated in what I understood to have been the Headmaster's former flat at the top of the building, the girls separated from the boys by a locked door. The dormitories, having been ordinary rooms, each contained only 4 to 6 beds. There was usually a gecko resident on the wall of each room.  On Sundays we went to church. Apart from one visit to the Anglican Cathedral on the banks of the Nile, we went each Sunday to a stone-built replica of a typical English church, in cool leafy grounds, tucked away amidst the noisy dusty surroundings of Cairo. One pupil would be detailed to pump the organ during the service. At half-term everyone went home for a week. Everyone, that is, except me and another boy. We were in the sick bay with tonsillitis. This, I think, was my most enjoyable period at the school. We were waited on hand and foot by Matron (who also gave us daily injections), and slept or played all day. A small luxury which sticks in my mind is the hot buttered toast that she fed us.  When I was better Mr Haseeb, who had remained a family friend even though we were no longer tenants, drove my parents to Cairo. I was allowed leave for the weekend, and we stayed at a hotel. We had a meal with Mr Haseeb's father and it was, to me, very grand. We were waited on by servants and there were little brass bowls on the table to rinse your fingers in after every course. We visited the Pyramids and the Sphinx, with which I can't remember being very impressed. The area was practically deserted, unlike today. The following day we I'm told we went to the zoo, but I remember nothing of that. During the summer break we went on holiday to Cyprus. We boarded the Empire Comfort at Port Said for the journey.  This, and the Empire Peacemaker, a similar vessel in which we returned to Egypt, had originally been designed as corvettes as HMS York Castle and HMS Scarborough Castle respectively. But before completion they had been converted to Convoy Rescue Ships. Corvettes were small warships, built for speed rather than for comfort. The motion as the ill-named Comfort climbed and rolled in the swell made me seasick, much to the delight of my brother, Dave, who gleefully cried "Up, Down!" as I turned green. The journey took about 24 long hours, but we eventually dropped anchor off Famagusta. From the ship we were ferried to the dock in a landing craft and transferred to buses. These were wooden bodied, with glassless windows. We climbed into the Troodos Mountains along barely surfaced roads. On the hairpin bends the buses had to reverse to the loose dusty, stony edges, with sheer drops beneath, to get round.  At last we arrived at the army's holiday camp in the pine forests at Troodos. After the heat and sand of Egypt it was like arriving in heaven. The air was cool, and it was a real treat to sleep under blankets, instead of sweating on a sheet. The accommodation was in 4-man tents amongst the trees, a bed in each corner and not much else. It was here that I first experienced fruit juice for breakfast and syrup poured over ice-cream from the shop in the village. Everyday items now, but a luxurious treat at that time. The holiday itself was tame by today's standards; walking in the forest and a visit to the nearby village of Platres.  Returning to school after the summer break was much better. I now had friends, and knew my way around. Unfortunately, this did not last. Two weeks into the term those of us from the Canal Zone were told to stay in the hall after Assembly. We were told that the Egyptian Government had abrogated the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty, which had allowed the occupation of the Canal Zone by British military forces. There had been riots in Ismailia and we were to be returned to our families immediately.  We got out trunks up from the basement, hastily packed and were on our way by midday. We travelled in buses, each with an armed Egyptian police escort. The usual route, alongside  the Sweet Water Canal, was considered too dangerous, so we struck off across the desert road towards Suez. After a while a British Army spotter aircraft arrived and circled overhead until we reached the border with the Canal Zone.  We were transferred to military buses and those of us travelling to the northern half on the Canal Zone were taken to the huge garrison on Fayed, on the western shore of the Great Bitter Lake. Here we were bedded down for the night on bare mattresses.  In Ismailia the next morning there was a large military presence. During the riots a couple of days previously Mr Haseeb had come to my parents flat with a gun in his hand and said that he would have shot any intruder he had found there. Luckily there was none. Every night there was the sound of gunfire, rather too close on one occasion when a bullet ricocheted off our balcony. My parents slept with a Sten Gun under their bed, and every soldier now carried a loaded gun when outside the military bases. The suburb of Arishia, divided from the rest of the town by the railway, lived in a state of seige. The NAAFI shop had been burned down, and an emergency one was set up in a commandeered school in Arishia, where we also went to a makeshift  school of sorts. The playground was on the roof, and we were guarded by soldiers armed with Bren guns in sandbagged emplacements at the corners of the roof. It was considered too dangerous to take us to the school at Moascar.  After a while things calmed down a little and we were able to resume a more normal life. I went back to school in Moascar, again redoing work I had already covered in England and Cairo. The converted trucks used as buses carried an armed escort. Roads outside the town had frequent checkpoints with chicanes constructed of sand filled oil drums, and all civilian vehicles were searched. But on 17 November two British army officers, armed with Sten guns, were going shopping with their families in Ismailia, when they were fired on. The two men were killed, and as a consequence all families were evacuated from Ismailia a few days later. We were taken to Fayed, a vast British military area beside the Great Bitter Lake, halfway down the Suez Canal. We were initially accommodated in 4-man tents, in the Royal Artillery camp where my father worked. The tents didn't seem so luxurious this time, somehow. The toilets were just large holes in the ground, topped by seats and rough buildings. Meals, served by the cookhouse, consisted almost entirely of Pom and Spam, that is powdered potato and a chopped meat loaf. This was because there was some difficulty in obtaining supplies due to the emergency situation.  Later we moved to an  area where the accommodation was in single-storey brick-built terraces, with meals taken communally like an old-fashioned Butlins, called Kensington Village. School here, too, lagged behind. I didn't mind, but it was to prove disastrous for my education later. Toilet facilities consisted of communal Elsan chemical toilets, basically a bucket under a seat. The contents were collected daily by the 'honey wagon', and emptied into slopping old oil drums by local workers.  There was a shopping area nearby, mostly run by locals, and dominated by a large NAAFI store. There was a shortage of coins (piastres or 'ackers'), so the NAAFI issued its own plastic coins.  We spent a lot of time at the Senior NCOs Club, set on a beach on the Great Bitter Lake. The water here, too, was none too clean, but we didn't know any different and accepted it without question. There was another shopping area across the road from the Club, a much more down-market affair with the tiny scruffy shops sporting names such as Woolworths, Harrods and Fifty Shilling Tailors.  After a while we moved to Curragh Village, into our own 3 bedroom self-contained bungalow, still within the Fayed cantonment. This was surrounded by a garden of pure sand, with a couple of raised beds and a border at the front which were flooded every night from a tap dispensing untreated water, supplied for the purpose. I don't recall anything worthwhile being grown there, apart from some castor oil plants and a couple of young bananas.  Indoors there was, to me, a miraculous piece of equipment, a large refrigerator. Ice cream did not seem to feature in the shops, but at last we were able to make our own, from a powdered product bought from the NAAFI store. The other equipment was not so grand. The cooker was a flimsy paraffin fuelled affair and the 'honey-buckets' were still with us. And as everywhere, there was a constant smell of DDT, from the Flit guns that everyone used to combat the eternal flies and large brown cockroaches. When they weren't swatting them with the wire mesh swats which everybody also used extensively, that is. From here we were taken to school under armed escort, the schools being sited in Kensington Village, where we had earlier been accommodated. In retrospect, this was a little odd as otherwise we children, and everyone else, roamed freely about the cantonment, through which ran public roads. Perhaps the Army was just covering itself. In 1952 we had another holiday in Cyprus, this time travelling in luxury on the small liner, 'Charlton Star'. (Search resulting web page for 'Bure') At last, in May 1953, it was time for us to return home. We boarded the troopship, 'Empire Fowey' formerly the German liner 'Potsdam', at Port Said and headed westward. The voyage probably took about 10 days. What we did all that time I don't remember. All I can recall are the marathon eating sessions, with some of our group going through the whole menu. After all, it was free! A brief stop at Valetta, Malta, and a few days later we were sailing up the Solent towards Southampton.