Airplane Crazy - 3

CHAPTER 3 — The Middle East

Ultimately I was posted from South Africa, up north, as they call it. I had to get to Durban and get a boat and we landed in Bombay. Spent a few weeks in a transit camp at Worli, Bombay. Then another boat up to Suez, where we got off, and were sent to some place in Egypt, an airfield, I can’t remember the name.
Whilst there, I remember walking through the desert one day with an Egyptian, who suddenly pushed me violently to the ground. I got up ready to do battle with this guy, and he said “Sahib!…” and he pointed, and I was just about to tread on a mine. I gave him all the money I had, which amounted to probably a few shilling, for saving my life.
Whilst up there I met a German prisoner of war who gave me a photo, a snap he had taken, this was at the time of Alamein, and he’d taken a picture of Rommel with all his generals on the eve of Alamein, drinking a toast. They expected the following day to march into Alexandria, which of course didn’t happen because of Monty’s determined thrust at Alamein.
I must say, Rommel had a great following amongst our men, because he treated British prisoners very fairly. They began to think more of Rommel than they did of Montgomery. I remember Montgomery getting the British troops together in the desert, and telling them that this must stop, you must have more hate for the enemy, and less respect.
Whilst in the desert in North Africa, I lived in a tent with two other lads, and for amusement we had a little portable, wind-up gramophone, and perhaps half a dozen old 78 records of Vera Lyn, etc. There was only one record that appealed to me, because I am a jazz fan, and this was a record of Duke Ellington playing “Take the A train”. I loved this record, I knew every note backwards on it. I played it until I wore it out. But I couldn’t figure out what the hell an ‘A’ train was. So in a moment of madness I picked up my pen and wrote to Duke Ellington, New York City, U.S.A., never expecting it would ever find him. But in a couple of weeks back came a big package full of large photographs of all the members of the orchestra, all personally autographed, and a letter from Duke saying “the A train is a subway train from Brooklyn to Harlem and you boys are doing a great job out there”. He also sent me a year’s subscription to an American jazz magazine called “Down beat”. That meant a lot to me.
I was put on another boat and went up to Basra, in Iraq. I’ve been up and down the road and railway between Basra and Baghdad many times. I was posted to Habbaniya, which was a big brick-built airfield just outside Baghdad, a big RAF station. I can’t understand why it hasn’t been mentioned in the war reports coming out of the country now because it was a huge base, beautifully built. Perhaps it’s now Baghdad airport. From there I was sent to Shaiba, to 199 maintenance unit. There we erected Hurricanes and Spitfires for the Russian Air Force. It was a hell of a place, heat every day a hundred and twenty degrees, over a hundred percent humidity, the flies were terrible. Food was terrible, everything was terrible. But we erected over a thousand Hurricanes and Spitfires for Russia. I remember the Russian inspectors coming round in black leather coats and wearing Homburg hats. They would run their finger over the instrument panel, and if there was the slightest trace of dust, they would say “Niet!”, didn’t want them. Cheeky devils!
From Shaiba I went to Sharjah, 244 Squadron with Bisleys. A Bisley is like a Blenheim, a long nosed Blenheim, with a drop down place underneath the front fuselage, where the navigator could lie on his stomach and fire a rear facing machine gun. The instructions were on landing, that the navigator would sit on the floor of the fuselage with his feet down into this well where the gun position was, but on landing he was supposed to put his feet up, in case the plane belly landed or the undercarriage failed and if he didn’t put his feet up his legs would be trapped underneath the plane. This happened one day, at Sharjah. I rushed out to try and get the navigator out, and the plane caught fire. I couldn’t move him ‘cos his legs were trapped underneath, I had to leave him. There was an investigation after, and they thought I should’ve taken the fire axe, which was strapped to the side of the fuselage in all aircraft, a very sharp axe. They thought I should’ve taken the axe out and severed this guy’s legs at the knees. But I couldn’t have done that.
When I was in Iraq I got some leave, and went to the Holy Land. I remember getting a mail truck from Baghdad to Damascus, and then by some or other form of transport, got to Jerusalem. Went everywhere Bethlehem, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, Tiberias. I was very hard up, very little pay. I remember selling my shoes in Jerusalem to an Arab for a few pounds, it helped. I used to stay at something like a YMCA, I think it was called “Sandey’s home for soldiers”. I remember walking down the via Dolorosa, one day in Jerusalem, which is where Christ carried the cross to Calvary. Going into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is the Catholic shrine to where Christ was crucified and buried. Listening to all their sayings, I was put off by the fact that they frequently said “If you would like to pay a dollar, you can put your hand in this hole in the wall and feel the shackle to which Christ was chained”. Things like that all the time, money making things.
So I wandered up here to this other tomb, where to my surprise there was an English Chaplin and he said “this is the place called Calvary, where Christ was crucified”. I said “Well that’s peculiar, I’ve just been to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and they told me that was the place”. He said “well they would, but if you read the Bible it will tell you that Jesus was taken outside the city walls and crucified at a place called Golgotha” which is Hebrew for skull, and he said “and if you look up to this rock formation you see, it looks just like a skull”, there were holes for the eyes and the mouth, etc.
So I went back to the Holy Sepulchre Church, I said “I’ve just been to another place and they told me that is the place where Jesus was buried, outside the city walls”, “oh well, you must remember the city has grown since then” and so on and so on. So I go back to the church of the English man, the Garden Tomb place, told him that and he said “well, you may not be an archaeologist, but if you’d like to go back to the Damascus Gate you’ll find they are excavating there and you will see that the present walls of the city are built on the foundations of the old walls. This was in Herod’s time, and Herod’s masonry is easily recognized because the edges of the stone are all fluted, and if you go down there and you’ll have a look you’ll see that this is the same”.
So I went down, got down into the hole they’d been excavating and saw quite clearly that the present walls of the city of Jerusalem are built on the old walls, and the fluted masonry of Herod’s time is quite evident.
So in my mind I’m quite clear and sure that this garden tomb is the place, it’s Calvary. Furthermore, when you stand on the Damascus Gate, and look across the road to this place, you’ll see that the shape of the rock is very much like a human skull, there are two hollows for the eyes and one for the nose and the mouth. In fact, Golgotha is Hebrew for skull.
I also visited Bethlehem, Nazareth and did most of the things that one does in the Holy Land, finishing up at the Dead Sea. Had a swim in the Dead Sea and it’s true, it’s so salty that you can’t sink.
Having finished my trip round the Holy Land, I became convinced that there was such a person called Jesus Christ, as to whether he is the Son of God is another matter. But it was the most interesting tour.
Then back to base in Iraq.
I made several trips down the Shat-el-Arab, and down the Persian Gulf in an old motor vessel, an Iraqi vessel called the “Tinombo”. We stopped at Dubai, Kuwait and Sharjah. There were no docks at Sharjah or Dubai, but the boat would anchor maybe a hundred yards from the shore, and one would have to go ashore in a rowing boat. Amazing the difference now when I see pictures of Sharjah and Dubai with skyscrapers. People even go there just for horse racing. It is incredible.
One day an amusing incident happened, at Sharjah. We had a little Cockney fitter in the Squadron whose name was Miles, he came from Tooting. One day a beautiful, bright, shiny, silver U.S. Air Force P38 fighter landed. I think it ran out of fuel. I remember the canopy sliding back and this huge guy got out. He must’ve been six foot six, I thought he was never gonna stop coming out of the cockpit. But this he did, and he wore a great big wide brimmed Stetson hat. He waved to everybody and said “Hiya man, I’m Hank from Texas”. Little Miles, who was in attendance, totally unimpressed, said “whotcha mate! I’m Miles from bleedin’ Tooting!”. That caused quite a laugh.
Then once we force landed during a sand storm in Kuwait. I remember being on the ground for a couple of days. Nothing there just desert, there was no airfield, we just landed in the sand. We had engine trouble and were there for a couple of days. The Sheik of Kuwait came out bowing to us as though we were Gods, and said “you must stay with me in my palace” which was a mud hut. Of course we did do, but how things change don’t they?
There was another amusing incident there: one day an RAF Beaufighter on its way to India must’ve seen our aircraft on the ground and decided he’d land. He’d made a couple of circuits, came in and the pilot got out and started running like hell across the desert away from the plane. I thought he must be injured, wounded or on fire or something and started chasing after him, to give help. He kept turning round and waving me back, but I continued running until I got quite close to him. Then he suddenly stopped, dropped his trousers and defecated in the sand. Of course it was embarrassing and I retreated shamefacedly back. This of course was why he had landed.
From Sharjah I was sent to Jask, on the shores of the Indian Ocean, actually in Persia. Jask. There was nothing there but sand. There was no runway, or anything, just sand. There was one little billet in which we lived with open doors and windows, open to the elements as it were. What happened was that 244 squadron was charged with trying to eliminate U boats, which hung about at the entrance of the Persian Gulf which is quite narrow, “the Strait of Hormuz” I think it’s called. All the oil and gas for the Middle East campaign, came from Abadan up in Persia, passed Basra, down the Shatt-el-Arab, down the Persian Gulf and out this little exit into the Arabian sea, and then on to Suez. Of course packs of U boats used to lie and wait for these tankers and torpedo them. It became very critical. So 244 was sent out with depth charges to bomb the submarines. Unfortunately they would often run out of petrol before they had a chance to engage the U boats. So they built a series of little landing fields, of which Jask was one. We had stores of petrol in four gallon cans and depth charges, etc. Planes would land there, stay over night, fill up and go on.
There were several other emergency landing sites in that area, places like Muscat, Masira, Ras-el-Had, etc. where planes could land, get fuelled and bombed up and be within easy reach, within the target area again.
Jask was a very lonely place, there were three of us there, and I was “officer in charge”. There were John McCandlish and Archie. Archie was sex mad, he talked about nothing else but sex. We banished him to a room on his own. Periodically, when aircraft came in to be refuelled, natives from the village would come up and form a line, and pass these four gallon petrol cans. Ula ula la la, ula ula la la, up the line and somebody would stand on the main plane and fill the tank though a fuel filter. Archie must’ve engaged one of these Arabs for a prostitute or something, and one night I’m lying on my bed in this billet, I had a rifle, that was the only arms we had. No phone, no radio, just 1 rifle between three of us.
I should explain at this point the billet in which we lived was nothing more than a mud hut with holes for doors and windows, there were no proper door, there was no security at all, and in fact when we had been there just a few days, a fisherman that we employed to catch fish for us, Hassan, told us that just before we arrived, another group of men had come ashore in a rowing dinghy to look around the place. But he said they didn’t have eagles up on their shoulder patches like we had, they had eagles on their breasts. They were obviously from a U boat. So we weren’t too well armed to look after ourselves.
So, one night I heard something go past the doorway and I got up with a rifle and I said “come out, come out who ever you are!”. This Arab bint appeared all covered in brass bangles and stuff, and she says “Archie Sahib?”. I said “Archie, you’ve got a visitor”. He took this girl into a room we used as a bathroom, just a bare concrete shell, it was, for a shower: we had a four gallon petrol can filled with water which we used to tip up over ourselves. To our chagrin, he took this girl into this bathroom and I’m sorry to say we spied and watched him and he scrubbed this girl from top to bottom with an army scrubbing brush. After an hour or so, she came out bathed in sweat, she’d had enough, she went home.
I used to spend hours sitting on the beach, listening to the waves rolling in. The stars glittered as they never do in the West. It was a beautiful place.
I used to read Omar Khaiyam, you know, the “Rubaiyat”:
“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it”.
I knew the “Rubaiyat” backwards.
Visiting aircrews used to love to spend the night at Jask, because we had a cook called a Bobojee. I think that was the Arabic term, Bobojee, a cook. All our supplies, food, fuel, bombs, etc., came by an Arab Dhow and we waded into the sea to land them .The cook had a wood burning range and a pantry there full of tinned stuff, etc. which I had the key for. I remember the aircrew used to come and we used to catch fish and have the local fisherman, Hassan, who caught fish for us. He used to take us out at night and we’d pull in beautiful fish, one after the other. When the aircrew would stop with us overnight, we had beautiful meals. One day the Bobojee said to me “Sahib, you like cushtud?”. I said “Cushtud? What do you mean, custard?” and he said, “ah, yes cushtud!”. He made caramel creams, and he made these and they were beautiful. I said “Bobojee, here’s the key to the pantry, you go in there and keep making these thing till I tell you to stop”.
We had a great time there.
Jask has always been a romantic dream to me and I even have the name over my door now, printed on a block of wood.
I remember I used to sit on the beach and watch waves break on to the sand, they didn’t break, they slid into the sand.

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