War's Nomads: A Mobile Radar Unit in Pursuit of Rommel during the Western Desert Campaign, 1942-3

by Grice, Frederick

  Friday 7 August 1942

  Suez Canal zone

  Scenery round the canal – bare grassless stretches with higher hills on right and left – here and there oases, settled by Arabs – living in shockingly slum-like native brick buildings, flat roofed, little ventilation – fields of maize and vegetables, maize in all stages of growth – date palms – ploughing still done by wooden plough and oxen – patches of tough prickly vegetation, browsing grounds for sheep, cattle of fine hide, but un-English shape – deep chested – donkeys – motley sheep herds – brown, black, grey and pied brown, white, black and white – and goats. Women and children herd the flocks. Women voluminously dressed in full black robes – lake water very bitter and buoyant. This is where they feed the hens on ice cream to prevent them from laying hard-boiled eggs.

  Saturday 8 August 1942

  This account is meant to tell the story of our life from Kabrit9 onwards. But I must mention, before beginning the story of how we arrived at our station, the adventure of the last night at Kabrit (Fig. 2). Harding had been ill all day – but no worse than a hundred others. Diarrhoea was endemic at Kabrit. Early in the evening he lay down and the rest of us, forgetting him, began a discussion on ‘reading’. The discussion was long, heated, absorbing and did not finish till nearly midnight. But when it was over and we were ready to sleep, we remembered with concern that Harding had left the tent about eleven, apparently to go to the lavatory, and had not yet returned. Concerned, we scoured the neighbourhood of the tent for him, but, not finding him, began to fear that he had fallen into one of the deep pits that had recently been dug all over the camp. But he could not be found, and when after a long search we made sure that he had not reported sick and been taken into the hospital, we had no option but to ask the sergeant of the guard to call out a search party. A dozen guards searched with torches and lamps for over an hour, but still no trace of Harding. We disbanded and went to sleep, satisfied that we could do no more, but no nearer the explanation of his disappearance.

  Morning came, but Harding had not yet returned. We anticipated extensive enquiries and sensational discoveries, but to our amazement, five minutes before breakfast time – in pyjamas and slippers – the missing man came walking home. Nothing more sensational than this had happened. In the darkness he had completely lost his way and wandered into the neighbouring aerodrome. There he was sheltered by the crew of a gun pit,10 and put on the right track home as soon as daylight broke!

  This morning we abandoned our tent on the ridge. It was overrun with mice. A few hours later we said goodbye to our new home. Farewell to Kabrit for good and all – and no regrets. It was a plague spot. Nowhere did we have so much illness. Every day a dozen men went down with a mysterious ailment that looked suspiciously like food poisoning. The flies were pests, the rats and mice everywhere, the dirt smells nauseating. Phew!

  Tomorrow for new country, Egypt.

  Sunday 9 August 1942

  Almaza and Heliopolis

  Yesterday, by lorry from Kanforest (107 Maintenance Unit) to AMES Middle East Pool at Almaza, near Heliopolis – a fairly pleasant ride, but through country which was in the main very arid – here and there a prickly half-bare thorn tree and patches of dry vegetation – but little else (Fig 4).

  Last night – walked into Heliopolis. Heliopolis apparently a kind of residential suburb of Cairo – and a little township of extremely fine modern buildings (Fig. 4). Architecture in places really superb – a Lycée des Garçons (1937), an excellent building – one main shopping street – shops withdrawn from street in a kind of arcade. Stopped at a little drinking garden with tables set in open air – and certainly had money’s worth of entertainment – visited by musicians, mango sellers, peanut sellers, beggars, hawkers of razor blades and toothbrushes, balloons, carpet slippers and underwear. As good as a picture show. Later sat in cool of evening at a boulevard shop – French spoken here. I had one conversation in French.

  Prevented from enjoying everything to full by feeling of great weariness and sense of strain – heart not too good. Very amusing to see the laundry men ironing away in open-fronted shops – the sidewalk sellers of knick-knacks.

  Monday 10 August 1942

  Today I saw Cairo, and I think that seeing Cairo has been for me the most significant event of my travels. I cannot generalize with any accuracy about it – I’ve been in the city no more than a few hours – but it seems at first sight a sprawling disordered place, teeming with people, busy and baffling. I was fortunate enough to get a lift by lorry to the city and found myself dumped there, as it were without warning. And to be pitchforked into the middle of Cairo was bewildering and amusing. Up the not-too-wide streets went bumping the trams, three yoked together and lurching against each other, with a red-fez’d conductor who blew on a horn that sounded for all the world like a child’s trumpet. Up and down outside the arcading where we found ourselves, five or six men walked. They had large glass cisterns of cool drink strapped to them, and as they walked they clacked two little metal plates together, making a sound like a muffin man’s bell.

  Selling is an extraordinary business in Cairo. Anyone can take a couple of cucumbers in a basket, sit on the pavement with them and be in business. Under the arcading were a score of little pedlars selling mangoes, knick-knacks, melons, grapes – and a score of things – some voluble, some silent. These – perhaps they were the genuine Egyptians catering only for Egyptians – did not bother with us. But we soon ran into the soldiers’ pest, the shoeshine boys. What irrepressible cheek! What utterly dislikeable impudence! They followed us for yards crying ‘Shoe shine! Shoe shine!’ Only a show of force could turn them off – even then, one of the more persistent of these guttersnipes out of spite dabbed Rupert’s and Jack’s boots with heavy smears of blacking. Vexed beyond endurance, Jack took the gamin by the scruff of the neck and cleaned his shoe on the boy’s long nightshirt affair. The young rogues!

  Our purpose was not to see Cairo at all, but to go to the Pyramids – so that all I can mention is the various shops, all deeply recessed into the street, with no attempt at window dressing (in fact, often no windows at all) – but piled high to the ceiling with stuffs – the beggars sitting in the sun – the native men in their long night shirts, blue, green, grey, striped, pyjama-patterned, and the women in heavy black, dressed like Hindus (here apparently the men make a display of their dress, not the women) – the sellers, the women suckling children on the pavement, and the thousand and one foul smells in every street. Cairo, city of smells – and few pleasant ones. There was one street of cabarets we went along – it stank to high heaven.

  Meeting Rigby and a few others at a corner, we found a guide and went in a party of about ten or twelve, off to see the Pyramids. The guide contracted to take us to the Pyramids, pay our tram fare there and back, give us the low-down on their history, and arrange for us to see everything for two shillings and a penny. And to all intents and purposes he kept his word.

  We boarded a tram and had a really interesting ride – over the Boulac Bridge, across an arm of the Nile to Gezira Island, through the island, the favourite residential area for rich English, over the second arm of the Nile and out into the country (Fig. 4). The Nile does not look half so important as I thought it would – but the countryside around Cairo is everything the geography text book says – flat, irrigated, green, one big market garden, thousands of square miles of it – growing everything. Quite a pleasant looking countryside – broken here and there by a new French villa or indescribably filthy native village. These native villages must be photographed, or sketched and done in water colours, to be realized. They seem to have the minimum of doors and windows – flat roofs where all the manure, rubbish and old hay and maize straws are piled. Dung at your feet, dung at your threshold, a dung heap over your head!

  Still, to my story. Less than an hour’s ride and we were at the tram terminus, almost at the foot of the Pyramids. After five minutes’ walk up a little bank we were at the foot of the
great Pyramid of Cheops (Fig. 4). We looked at the Great Pyramid, over the valley to the hills where the limestone was quarried, the Second Pyramid with the smooth outer covering still partly left on it, and the Third Pyramid, the pit where the cement was mixed, three smaller pyramids, quite close by – then went down the hill (all on foot, except Jack who went on a camel) to see the Sphinx, and the temple of the Sphinx – then back to go inside the Pyramid to see the burial chambers.

  If I stay to write everything in detail, I shall be writing all day. I’ll make a list of all the things that impressed me – the accessibility of the Pyramids, their excellent site overlooking Cairo, the Nile valley, not the immensity of them (until I learnt the facts), the size of the separate blocks, the beauty and shapeliness of the Sphinx (though it was rather smaller than I expected) – and its secluded site: the wonderful basalt and granite – red granite pillars in the temple of the Sphinx and the priests’ tombs there – wonderful stone cutting: the smell of urine as we entered the Pyramid by the robbers’ entrance: the eerie climb – up steps, up the ramp, pause, up again, through the little low tunnel into the burial chamber – then into the queen’s burial room – the magnificently cut granite slabs in the king’s room – the flaring of magnesium ribbon there – the feeling of faintness that almost overcame me inside the Pyramid – the pipe player at the entrance – the delightful glass of lemonade after it was all over. Only one regret – I did not climb to the top of the Great Pyramid. I did not feel equal to it. But I’ll go again if I get the chance, and do it.

  I packed a lot into yesterday. If I’d been better, I’d have packed more. Speaking of smells, last night the streets of Cairo were filled with a lovely smell – a little sickly and exotic, but sweet. Where did it come from? The perfume shops, or those collars of little white flowers that some of the women were wearing?

  Tuesday 11 August 1942

  A walk through the streets of Heliopolis

  Leaving the Services Club, we follow the tram lines that will take us home. The night is beautifully cool and dark. Three brown trams, all linked together, come to a stop suddenly near where we are. They are all full, the middle tram, which has no sides, with men in European lounge suits and fine dull red fezzes. A spark suddenly flashes from the cables overhead, the conductor blows his little toy trumpet, and the trams jerk away with a shock and a bump.

  We let the trams go and walk on under the arcades of these fantastic dream-like Heliopolis buildings. A lady walks past, with a little necklace of small white flowers, and the air becomes sweet with a fine perfume. Is it the flowers or this little recessed shop with its shelves piled high with perfumes? We walk on. From a by-street comes now a foul smell, making us forget the sweetness of the flowers. In this lane it is dark and forbidding.

  Now we come to more shops. Laundrymen are standing at tables piled with clean clothes, folding and ironing tirelessly. They are all dressed in long white gowns that reach below the ankles. One is chanting very quietly as he irons. Then a shoemaker’s shop. It is late but he is still cobbling, stitching a sole to a shoe. Nearly all the shops are still open. In one, the barber is sitting on the doorstep before his empty shaving chairs. In another, a tiny triangular recess, not big enough for a bed, a basket weaver is working,

  Now we leave the shops again. At the other side of the road, a big awning has been made. Its sides are hung with enormous tapestries, patterned like carpets, and it is filled with Egyptian gentlemen in smart European suits and fezzes.11 They are being served with cool drinks under the strong light of electric lamps. Why are they there? Is it a wedding, a christening, or a funeral? No one can tell us. While we are watching, we hear a pattering of feet and look round in time to stand out of the way of a shepherd driving three brown sheep down the street. More shops, and then we come to the last row. Outside the little cafés small tables are laid out. Men are drinking there, and in and out of the tables go the sellers of mangoes and small stuffs and underwear. Outside one big hotel, set in an enclosure above the road, wealthier folk are drinking in the lovely evening air, quiet and undisturbed. We walk on, beyond the city, on to the desert road, where the night arches blue-black over us and the Scorpion trails its jewels over the heavens.

  These fantastic Heliopolis buildings – many-storeyed, quaint shaped, flat-roofed, and pinnacled, with strange platforms, spiral stairways, sun platforms, tall perpendicular windows, lovely bizarre sweeps and curves – surfaces, white and cream – the colour of the desert sand (Fig. 4). Heliopolis is like a city of a dream, or a fairy tale, diverse and bizarre, and many mosqued. From the top of the roof stick slanting aerial poles, looking as though some lazy fishers had gone to sleep there, and left their fishing rods, their lines dangling in the air for stars.

  Meals – new style

  7.30 am Breakfast

  porridge, egg, marmalade, tea

  12.30 pm Tiffin

  salad, corn beef, sort of high tea

  5.30 pm Dinner

  normal lunch and tea

  Tea with every meal – and how we love it!

  Wednesday 12 August 1942

  Love and longing

  All last night, and the night before, and the night before that, I lay and dreamt of Gwen and home – all night long, at home under English trees in an English summer. Every night, it seems, as soon as I fall asleep, my spirit goes back to Gwen and England.

  Thursday 13 August 1942

  I am just beginning to emerge from a period of dreadful depression, in which I could do nothing but lie and ache for Gwen, home, Gillian, English scenes – my head ached, throat ached, back ached, heart ached. Oh, anything to be home again! I think I must have been ill, almost delirious. I haven’t mentioned this to Gwen. Have I done rightly?

  Monday 17 August 1942

  Makendon days: account of an early marital tiff

  The pleasure I had from walking on the hills around the farm was always doubled when Gwen came with me.

  My greatest regret in my walks on the hills around the farm was that Gwen could not come often with me. It was difficult for her to leave Gillian for any time and she did not care to leave her baby even for a short while in the hands of Florrie, who was too irritable and worried to be handy with children. Most of my long walks therefore were done alone, but on three or four occasions we experimented carrying Gillian in her Moses basket and had good outings. Once we carried her to the old camps and picnicked in the caravan that stood there. Another day we pushed her in her pram to Blindburn and from there carried her in a clothes basket to see Mistress Lowes at Yearning Hall. A third lovely day, we went by the ‘postie’s road’ to Buckhams, to old Mrs Little’s great delight. A fourth expedition was to the top of the Dod, near the peat bogs. It is about that outing that I want to write.

  It was a fine warm day and we ought to have been in good spirits, but I was in a surly, vexacious mood, sick in myself and ready to pick angrily on anyone’s mistakes, hurt by my own troubled body and ready to hurt others. When we reached the summit of the Dod, we saw the last range of the Cheviots rising before us with Buckham Wells like a little toy house on a green expanse, and beyond that ridge league upon league of fertile Scottish lowland. Gwen and I sat down on a tuft of heather and I opened my map.

  ‘Would you like to pick out the names of all these landmarks, dear?’

  I said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Gwen.

  ‘Good. Let’s begin then.’ And I began to look this way and that, identifying this and that point. Gwen said little, so I chivvied her a little.

  ‘What would you say that is then, dear?’ I asked, pointing to a prominent landmark to the north.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Gwen colouring.

  ‘But you can find out, can’t you, from the map.’

  Gwen looked at the map and said, ‘I don’t know where to look.’

  ‘Well!’ I cried. ‘You mean you can’t use a map.’ In my mood I was easily huffed.

  ‘We might as well pack up then,’ I said ‘if the map’s no
use to you.’ Gwen said little but looked at me with hostility, with justifiable hostility. But my love for her was dead that afternoon, and there was something in her that made me hurt her. After a few moments’ heavy brooding silence, we picked Gillian up and went back down the hill.

  At the tea-table and all that quiet evening I sulked and Gwen was hostile. I went out and splashed up and down the burn, throwing stones at boulders, and slashing the heads off thistles with my walking stick. After supper I waited moodily for her to feed Gillian and followed her sullenly upstairs.

  In bed, I turned from Gwen and said goodnight to her. But she insisted on talking.

  ‘It’s no good saying goodnight like that. Here we are as bad as ever. What are we going to do?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know,’ I said wearily. ‘When you speak like that I wish I’d never married you.’

  ‘Well, it’s you who makes me like this.’

  ‘But it’s always the same story. I come to you enthusiastic and anxious to show you something which delights me, which is a discovery to any sensible sensitive person, and you pour cold water on all my enthusiasm.’

  ‘You go about it the wrong way. You may be a good schoolmaster in school but with me you’re the worst in the world. Oh!’ suddenly bursting out, ‘Damn you!’ And twisting the ring from her finger, Gwen threw it across the room. I heard it hit the wardrobe and roll over the floor.

  ‘I’ve never been really married to you so I’ll throw it away.’

  There was another silence. Our bodies lay together like two effigies, two bodies of lead.

  ‘What are we going to do, Fred?’ said Gwen a few minutes later. ‘We cannot go on like this.’

  ‘We’d better separate, Gwen. We cannot live with each other.’ Yet I thought even while I am saying this, I do not believe it, we can, we can. But I still said, ‘We’d better part somehow.’