Under the Red Sea Sun

by Edward Ellsberg

“I ain’t had a drink, Commander, since that time. I want to go to Massawa, and if you’ll only give me another chance, I’ll try my best to stay sober. I can’t promise you I’ll never take another drink, but I can promise I’ll do my damnedest to stay away from it. I’m not looking for any trouble or any fights with anybody. All I want is to go through with what I started. Don’t send me home.”

  That was an honest enough statement. Looking into Cunningham’s deeply serious face, no one could doubt he meant it.

  “That’s fine, Cunningham; I’ll take you at your word,” I assured him briefly. There could be no gain in long lectures on the evils of drink. “You try your best and that’s good enough for me. All right, you can go with us. And good luck to you on the job.” I rose and shook his hand warmly.

  He thanked me wholeheartedly but uneffusively and in only a few words, and left. I rolled back into my bunk to see no more of Bill Cunningham for months to come.

  A little later, I was roused by the heat, for as we approached the Guinea coast and the sun got higher, it began to get uncomfortably warm. I rose again, stripped, and soused myself in the shower to cool off. Then down to breakfast, with a feeling of thankfulness that shortly I should say farewell to that dining room and all its unpleasant memories.

  Up on deck again, even in a light khaki uniform, it was hot. The breeze happened to be from dead astern and about force 2, matching our own speed, so that effectively we were traveling in dead air, with no movement relative to us to cool us off. But since it was just as uncomfortable on deck as inboard, I soon retired to my stateroom to pack my bags, preparatory to departure.

  About 2:00 P.M., as expected, we picked up low-lying land ahead. Still steaming on for a short time without the slightest change in course being needed, we hit the entrance to the harbor between the long outlying breakwaters squarely on the nose, a beautiful landfall!

  This was perfection, which I had scarcely dared to hope for in deep sea navigation. But that something at least within hail of perfection was necessary in making Lagos, soon became evident.

  As a grim reminder of what was now going on in the world, lying not far to the westward of the channel entrance were the topmasts of a large ship protruding from the water—just the tips of her two masts with some shrouds showing above the waves, and nothing else. The pilot (a very black native of Nigeria who boarded from a small pilot boat at the channel entrance to take us up the river to Lagos) laconically informed us of what had happened.

  Those were the masts of a vessel which had recently made the mistake of coming close in, too far to the westward. Then when the error was realized, and she had found where she was, she had steamed directly east for the breakwaters, only to hit a defensive mine en route and founder finally, unsuccessful in her struggle to get into the shallow harbor before she went down.

  I scanned the tips of those masts with professional interest. Apparently the ship was down in about fifteen fathoms of water. Too bad I hadn’t one of my salvage ships with me. Here right at the western gateway to Africa was a job for us. But I knew I had no need to worry about jobs. If what I had heard of Massawa were only half true, we should have a plethora of wrecks to work on.

  All hands were now crowding up on deck, intensely relieved. Discarded life jackets went sailing helter-skelter onto the boat deck, to land nobody cared where any more. We were inside the breakwaters at last, safe from any further wartime perils of the sea. Now all eyes were turned eagerly on Equatorial West Africa, opening before us as we entered the river up which Lagos in Nigeria lay.

  White sand beaches fringed the river mouth. Palm trees were everywhere, and the river banks as we stood on were lined with lovely White tropical homes, a yacht club, the Government House, and such other appurtenances of British colonial life as we’d read about.

  Passing the Government House, the guard and band (very soldierly looking blacks in white uniforms but with bare feet) were paraded in our honor and an American flag hoisted alongside the British, while the band ashore played both “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “God Save the King.” As we had no band, we could answer this welcoming gesture only by dipping our colors and cheering wildly.

  Within half an hour, we were being breasted in by tugs against our berth, a very modern pier. Our thirty-two-day voyage was ended safely—no thanks to the S.S. Pig’s Knuckle and her Pinafore crew.

  CHAPTER

  12

  AS WE HAD KNOWN ALL ALONG, WE were due to cross Africa to our Middle East stations by air. Once the ship was tied up, the sole topic of conversation was how soon the planes would start us on our way, as Lagos was hot, humid, and worst of all, malarial. This was the fever coast of ill fame, where in the old slave trading days, no white man could stay a night without contracting malaria, where a stay exceeding a few months was sure death from malarial fever.

  Before leaving America, together with all the other Middle East personnel, I had been immunized by the Army Medical Corps against everything possible—smallpox, typhoid, tetanus, yellow fever, cholera, and typhus—a series of shots, which though spread over several weeks, had kept me decidedly groggy till departure.

  But against malaria, the Army had no inoculation. Each of us was armed with a package of quinine tablets, but that was no preventative—it would merely mask and mitigate the symptoms once malaria was contracted. Our only defense, so our surgeons assured us, was to stay behind screens once night had fallen and the malarial mosquitoes were abroad, and to sleep under mosquito nets, with which all of us had been provided.

  Under the circumstances, although to some degree the swampy mosquito coast had been cleaned up, getting out of Lagos in a hurry was desirable. General Scott sent his aide ashore immediately to check up on the air transportation situation.

  It turned out to be not bad. The Army Air Corps was running all air transport across Africa with Pan-American planes and pilots doing the actual flying. Having been warned by cable of our coming, though not of the exact day of our uncertain arrival, Pan-Am had arranged to mass all its transport planes at Lagos for the movement. But even so, with 379 passengers landed all at once to take out, the departure would take three days, starting with one plane in the morning while the others were being assembled for later despatch.

  Since this was an Army movement, it goes without saying that priorities in departure were naturally to be in order of rank. Civilian rank (due to executive position) was, however, also equally recognized, with the planes taking off alternately with soldiers and with civilians. The first plane out next morning was scheduled to carry military passengers.

  Early next morning found General Scott and the fifteen top ranking officers (including me) going over the side to the pier, bound for the airport outside Lagos, clad in our lightest weight khaki, for it was already (or still) hot. Without regret and without ceremony, we bade farewell forever to the S.S. Pig’s Knuckle and all she stood for, to us seemingly only a long drawn out nightmarish dream from which at last we had escaped by waking.

  Hopefully, the moment our feet touched the pier ridding us of her finally, our faces turned eastward across Africa and what opportunities in the war lay before us there in the Middle East.

  It was only a short ride in a car to the Lagos airfield, a flat, wide, well laid, out plain, baking under the Equatorial African sun, the first of many such fields I was soon to be acquainted with.

  We were on time for our early morning take-off, but our plane wasn’t. Something wasn’t right with its engines, and the mechanics were still struggling with them. Meanwhile, the sun rose higher, and in spite of the protection of the airfield office into which we promptly fled for shade, we began to swelter.

  Finally, the perspiring Army Air Corps major running the field came in to tell us the plane, specially rushed to Lagos for the first trip, could not be tuned up sufficiently well to take off that day for the 3000-mile flight across Central Africa. Our faces fell at that lugubrious announcement. Back to the Pig’s Knuckle for another day? It was unbearable! />
  But hastily he revived our sunken feelings. A regularly scheduled land flight was due in about 9:00 A.M. from the cross-Atlantic air terminus at Roberts Field in Liberia; westward of us. Considering all the rank he had before him and the circumstances, he would bump all the passengers off that plane and give it to us for our eastward trip. We should be delayed only a few hours. The incoming passengers he would forward, depending on their priorities, as rapidly as he could.

  This was better. While we sympathized with those coming in who would find themselves unexpectedly held over in Lagos a day or more, still we shed no tears over them. If they had been lucky enough somehow to get across the ocean to Africa by air in a few days, while we had suffered a month on the same passage, it was only the natural law of compensation that they, rather than we, should bear the burden of this mishap.

  At 9:00 A.M. on the dot, the plane, a twin-engined Douglas transport, appeared over the field, circled to a landing, and then taxied up to a stop in front of the airfield office. The port side door was swung open, and the passengers started nonchalantly to debark to stretch their legs (so they thought) a few minutes before taking off again for the interior of Africa.

  With eagle eyes we, already on the field out under the sun again, scanned their necks and their shoulders as one by one those unsuspecting passengers emerged. All Army men, except one naval lieutenant and one very insignificant-looking civilian clutching an umbrella. And, thank God, from their collar or shoulder insignia, not a general, not a colonel, not even a major in the crowd! There would be no serious trouble in bumping off that lot.

  The Air Corps major bustled up to the descending passengers.

  “Sorry, gentlemen!” he announced. “There’ll be a delay here for all of you. Get back in the plane and bring out your belongings. You’re going no further in this plane!”

  We got back into the office out of the sun, content to leave arguments and protests to the airfield manager, of which he immediately got plenty. But some of the more indoctrinated Army juniors and the Navy man, looking over the general’s stars, my brass hat, the eagles, and the silver and gold oak leaves liberally sprinkled over the waiting group in the office, took it more philosophically.

  Protests or no protests, however, within half an hour the plane had been emptied of all the incoming passengers and their baggage, our bags stowed on board in the nose of the plane in their place, and we were invited to embark. General Scott first, so he might choose where he pleased to sit, then the rest of us, clambered through the door into the khaki-colored plane bearing the Army Air insignia painted prominently on its wings. All sixteen of us were carefully checked off inside the plane, both by the airfield manager and Colonel Gruver, to make sure none were missing and no unauthorized passengers were with us, then the manager descended and the door was slammed to, sealing us in.

  The plane had stood half an hour already on the field, absorbing heat both from the overbaked ground beneath and the sizzling African sun overhead. Since all insulation and interior sheathing had been stripped from its aluminum shell to lighten it for war service, it was literally an oven inside once the door was closed.

  We expected momentarily that the chocks would be pulled from the wheels and we should take off to cool ourselves in flight, but it didn’t happen. Instead, minute after minute for another half hour went by and we stewed. I couldn’t stand it any longer. After a few minutes, off came my khaki jacket, wringing wet with sweat. A little later, off came my khaki shirt, even wetter. Still we remained on the ground. Casting dignity to the wind, off came my undershirt then, completely soaked through. Meanwhile, my fellow passengers were doing likewise, and I think we should next have started stripping off our trousers had not the door of the plane been suddenly opened from the outside. To the cry,

  “Another passenger! Flat orders to send him! You’re off now!” there was literally tossed through the opened door, followed by his bag, the insignificant little civilian who had previously been bumped off the plane, still, of all things, clinging to his umbrella! Behind him, the door was slammed to again and secured.

  Simultaneously with that, the chocks were jerked free of the wheels and we taxied over to the runway. Swabbing our faces vigorously to clear our eyes of sweat so we could see out, all of us were so engrossed in watching the ground whiz past while our plane hurtled down the runway and lifted smoothly into the air, we gave no more than a swift malevolent passing glance at the cause of our delay as he picked himself off the deck and sidled inconspicuously into the end seat next the door.

  Even after we had straightened away in flight and were steadily climbing, all hands were fully occupied for some time in trying to dry their dripping torsos, a hopeless task, as no one had anything dry at hand to work with. Gradually as we rose into higher altitudes, with the hot earth dropping away beneath us and the cooler air rushing by at 160 miles an hour to wash away the heat from our plane, it became comfortably cool inside, so we stopped perspiring.

  But the plane kept swiftly climbing till we were at 9000 feet long before we or our belongings had opportunity to dry out. As we rose toward 9000 feet, to us it became colder and colder. Whether we liked it or not, to keep from freezing, back one by one went on our soaked undershirts, our dripping shirts, our wet jackets. Finally we were driven to slipping on our overcoats, which we hadn’t worn since leaving Cape Hatteras, but which now fortunately we were carrying with us inside the plane, since we couldn’t stow the bulky things in our bags. Thus clad, we sat shivering for some time till the heat of our bodies at last dried out everything between our skins and our overcoāts.

  All this took nearly the first hour aloft. Not till then did I pay much attention to the interior of the plane. When reasonably dry, I began to look around. Our plane was a standard Douglas twin-engined transport, stripped completely and outfitted for Army service. Gone were the upholstered bucket seats, the interior sheathing. We could look directly at the aluminum ribs, the outer aluminum shell, all the tiny rivets holding the plane together.

  For our seats, instead of the athwartship chairs, nicely upholstered for comfort, there ran along each side simply a long, low aluminum-topped bench, molded into seat bottoms, but naturally with no give to the aluminum. Other than these two benches, the inside of the plane was completely barren of fittings. This plane was the prototype of hundreds of others I was to see before the war was over, unarmed, lightened as much as possible, intended only to carry as many troops or paratroopers and their fighting equipment as it could lift off the ground.

  Having satisfied my curiosity as to our plane, I looked casually aft along the port side. There, huddled on the end of the bench next the door, sat the added passenger who had been the cause of our sweltering delay. (I was myself seated well forward on the starboard side.)

  He must have been quite an important civilian in spite of his half-pint size. And he must have had quite an unusual priority to have managed to hold the plane till he could get the airport manager overruled and himself reinstated on a full plane once he had been bumped off. That no one of our own group had been bumped off at the last minute to make room for him when reinstated, was probably due only to the fact he weighed so little, it made no difference to the plane.

  Now for the first time, I took a good look at him, then looked again in astonishment. There could be no doubt of it, our very important passenger was a Hindoo! Except that he had more on, all light linen, he was a dead ringer in appearance, age, and manner for Mahatma Gandhi, and certainly weighed no more, not over seventy or eighty pounds at most. Perhaps, considering what had happened, he was the Mahatma!

  I nudged the Army captain seated alongside just abaft me, and asked him to look and see if he saw what I saw.

  He took a look, and his eyes bugged out. Excitedly he turned again to me.

  “Why, I know that Hindoo! I was on the Clipper bound westward across the Pacific for the Middle East that got hung up in Honolulu the day they bombed Pearl Harbor. And that Hindoo was with me, bound home
for India. Of course, the Clipper ended its voyage then and there, and how that Hindoo wept all over the place! Now I’ll be damned if I’m not with him again in a plane bound east this time for the Middle East, while he’s still headed for India. But it’s wartime now. How’d he ever wangle an air priority across the Atlantic?”

  That, of course, I wouldn’t know. It was all quite a coincidence, not to mention very curious. My seat mate jumped up, walked all the way aft down the passage, greeted our Hindoo fellow traveler most cordially. It turned out to be the same Hindoo, sure enough, but he seemed to be far more interested in solitary meditation over that umbrella clutched now between his bony knees than in renewing a casual acquaintance with an American. Their conversation swiftly languished.

  My companion came back a little crestfallen.

  “It’s the same Hindoo, all right, but he doesn’t seem to want to talk any more. I asked him how he was lucky enough to get a priority going this way in wartime, and he shut up like a clam, so I left him. Funny little duffer, isn’t he?”

  I agreed he was, and then lost interest in him, for now, having left the coast and the green valley of the Niger behind us, and having cooled the plane off, the pilot was flying at lower altitude, 5000 feet, and giving us a better view of the country. We were heading northeast for Kano, 400 miles inland from the coast, our first stop, and we were not too far away from it.

  The terrain below had changed from the dense green along the coastal belt to more open, drier country with only straggling vegetation, and then became rather barren.

  Soon we dropped very low and started circling for a landing over Kano, a very ancient market city on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. Kano, with a native population of 100,000, from the air was startling. All over the place were what appeared to be huge, sprawling, flat-roofed apartment houses heavily built of mud, resembling very much the Indian pueblos of our own Southwest, except they were decorated with gaudily colored tiles. Surrounding the whole city, and perhaps explaining how it had managed to survive some thousands of years, were tremendous mud walls, some forty feet thick. The brown mud of which everything seemed to be built, looked as if a heavy rainstorm would dissolve the whole city, but presumably it rained very little, if at all, thereabouts.