My Life by Lionel Graves. (Page 20)
The job was quite cushy. I had to draw a revolver and six rounds from the armoury and then escort a party of Africa Corps prisoners, usually great blond hulks all over 6 feet tall while they did odd jobs around the barracks and prevent any escapes, there was no where for them to go in any case. I spent most of the time playing table tennis with a fellow guard, while the Jerries stooged around doing what they had to do outside. Until the fateful time when a mad officer dashed into the recreation room, looked all round, even going on his hands and knees and looking under the table, “Where are the prisoners, trooper? I see no prisoners”. A bit like Nelson I thought but I spun some cock and bull story that one had gone to do this and the other had gone to do that. As he must have had a sense of humour he accepted it for the masterpiece it was. He then asked my fellow guard to draw his revolver and of course, like mine, it was unloaded. I mean, there could have been an accident and someone got shot, but I thought it better not to mention that. That brought another little homily about guarding dangerous, warlike prisoners in abstentia with unloaded pistols. But he didn’t put us on a charge, I put it down to his being out too long in the sun. When he suggested it was a good idea to guard them with loaded weapons, the only possible answer was a rapped out, “Sir!”.
Shortly after this our orders went through to travel to Alexandria and collect the Humber MK1 armoured cars that were being sold to the Iraqi government. In Alex we loaded them driving up planks on to flat railway wagons, a bit nerve racking but nobody tumbled off, they were then tied down firmly and covered with tarpaulins, at the same making our own tent like sleeping quarters under a tarp slung between the front of one vehicle and the back of the next, as we had to live and sleep on the flats until the train reached Haifa.
The journey was terrific, we lived rough spending the days sitting on the edge of the flats, watching the scenery, the sweet water canals, where the water was anything but sweet, rumour had it that if you fell in you needed 15-20 injections, inoculations and vaccinations. The irrigation pumps or shadufs which haven't altered in thousands of years, the camels, donkeys and the fellahin, or peasants at their daily drudgery, the beauty of the sunsets and dawns and the general sense of freedom.
The whole journey took several days because we kept having to be shunted into sideways to let the regular trains through. I cant remember exactly how we got our meals but we brewed up plenty of tea on stoves and must have had haversack rations as well as cooked meals at the station halts along the way. Then across the Suez Canal and into the Sinai desert, where Moses led the people of Israel, the sparse vegetation and the wind from the carriages whipping up the sand into your faces.
Into the lusher countryside of Palestine, the many orange groves where we could jump down and pick oranges at one of our frequent stops. Once we were literally bombarded by hard unripe oranges thrown by young Israeli's, not in a friendly fashion as a game but with deliberate intent to maim and damage – so we threw them back in the same fashion, we were not popular there, either. Still it could have been bullets or bombs. Finally into Haifa where we drove them off the flats and to a motor camp for a final and proper service.
We stayed for three or four days in this transit vehicle park working on the cars. One day I was walking round the camp in filthy, oily, denim overalls, two M.P. Corporals with an Alsatian guard dog approached, the dog bared its teeth and snarled at me, I froze, rigid and the M.P's pulled it away. Sometimes you would see piles of stones on the outside of the high barbed wire fence, Arabs used to pinch tyres, the stones were used for jacking up the vehicles, luckily, I never met any when on guard duty. I saw a performance of Pygmalion by ENSA company at the camp theatre – not a very good one.
At last the great day came and we moved off in convoy, three to a car. The night before we started the Hagannah, the main Jewish terrorist group had attacked an aerodrome, blown up some planes on the ground and the security forces were out in strength with road blocks checking all vehicles – a case of locking the stable door after the horse had gone, as usual.
Crew for Baghdad. Second row from front seated, third from the right, smoking a cigarette.
Scene from the railway carriage window
Email: Lionel Graves (lionel@graf-tek.com).
Copyright ©2000-2008 L. Graves. All Rights Reserved.
