Mosques Behind - Home Ahead, Lend Your Ears

Mosques Behind - Home Ahead, Lend Your Ears - Decontamination

VA's at a Military Hospital by B3/59

FROM Cairo across the wasteland of the Sinai desert, through the well-ordered camps of Palestine, and into the mountains of the Lebanon the news spread. Big it was giving rumour-mongers a harvest and causing even the most wary to speculate. For a fortnight it was the one topic of conversation and practically the sole thought of every Australian.

There was to be a move-not just a move by a few units from one area to another, but a mass move, with everything pointing to a sea voyage. The bet-on-anything bookmakers got to work. Java, Malaya, India, and Burma were equal four-to-one favourites. Russia and China had their supporters at long odds, as did New Guinea, England, and even Australia.

The backers of the outsider Australia were regarded as wishful thinking punters prepared to back a dream. There was no information from the stables and no "form" for a guide. Every one's opinion was just a hunch, so well did the army authorities keep their secret.

The day of departure from Syria and Palestine drew near, and for the first time many Australians realized the attachment they had developed for people and places in the Middle East. For so long now it had been the haven of the Australian army, a home for the war weary from Libya, Greece, and Crete. Here were friendly people and friendly country. Ahead, once more, was the unknown.

For every Australian soldier there was a round of farewells. George, the favourite storekeeper, Farid, the favourite cafe' proprietor, Eli, the favourite gharry driver, and a host of others, wished God's protection on the heads of their new friends with genuine fervour.

Every place and every favourite had been frequently cursed, but on the eve of parting they appeared in a new light.

That morning in January when our convoy of trucks pulled out from Baalbek, high up in the Lebanese mountains, is one of my most vivid recollections of the Middle East. In the first light of dawn, with the temperature far below freezing point, the ruins of the old pagan temples were a gaunt silhouette against a horizon of poplars. The trucks rumbled from the barracks that had been our home for four months, through the outskirts of one of the oldest towns in history, and into the morning light.

No one spoke. All were a little sad and sentimental. Familiar fields and landmarks rolled by, and with each town came memories that already seemed a decade behind.

And then came Palestine. Dear old Palestine-now-with its familiar candle pines and neat little Jewish settlements. Orange groves were the guard of honour announcing Tel Aviv, and again a flood of memories. What Australian soldier does not know Tel Aviv, the world's newest city in the world's oldest land, and has not great memories of it?

A farewell night, in the old spots. On the surface was the same old gaiety, but in the eyes of old customers and old proprietors alike were wistful expressions. We were sad because we were leaving this behind for the unknown; the proprietors were sad that their friends the Australians were going.

And so on to Qastina and Julis, camping sites of some of the first Australians to arrive in the Middle East. Again memories and reminiscences and a little sadness, and again those cattle trucks across the hated Sinai to the Suez Canal, land and sea junction of the Australian army.

In the week on the sandy banks of Suez reminiscence and speculation were equal favourites, but still the destination was a closely kept secret. Even when the ships were boarded and the Australians had watched the shores of their Middle East fade to a haze, the destination was not disclosed.

In the days of shipboard routine and leisure that followed, surveyors on our ship were able to compute progressive positions. When a certain port was finally touched, every man on board dared to think that home was a strong probability.

Then came the official announcement from the O.C. troops over the ship's loud speaker system. "Yes, boys, it's home . . ." There was no outbreak of cheering. This was a parade, but every man committed a small breach of discipline by turning his head to shoot a glance of excitement at his neighbour.

And home it was. There were nights of noisy celebration as the ship neared Australia's shores, but at the first cry of "land ahead" there came a silence expressive of the feeling in every man's heart. Happy memories of the Middle East were pigeon-holed for a future day. Already those campaigns were a dim chapter in the past as the title page of a new adventure, at home, appeared.

A few days later, as we walked down the gangplank at our disembarkation port and travelled to the State's capital by train, the silence was gone. Cheering people lined the railway fences waving flags, giving real Australians a real Australian welcome home. From every throat came shouts of encouragement. In the eyes of many of the men about me there was a mistiness which suggested suppressed tears. I thought of home, with my wife and mother waiting, and could read similar thoughts on the faces of the others. Another glance through the window showed an avenue of gums leading to a suburban football oval surrounded by neat, suburban homes. God, it was grand.

"SX7240"

ON LEAVING THE MIDDLE EAST

FAREWELL to arms
Thus is it ended,
The heartache and the happiness.

The shrill alarms,
The hundred fluttering fears;
The agony of striving
The scheming and contriving
Of these two years.

The heady ecstasies of triumph
Sore defeats,
The stubborn siege
And sullen, sad retreats;

These we have shared
With passions streaming,
With reckless, hopeless dreaming
Through two strange years;

Together have dared
With unrepentant tears
This thing called life.

Well have ye served me,
Borne with me bravely
The scorn and the strife

Fare ye well
Living arms that have held me,
I'm going back home to my wife.

"ANONYMOUS"
(for obvious reasons)

AS the transports pulled out of Suez on the first stage of the tedious trip that was to lead us to Australia, the senior officers, after the inevitable "conference", decided: "Ah, yes! Lectures! This is an opportunity to brush up on a lot of theoretical stuff. We'll have, let's see, four, no, five lectures a day - with extra morning and afternoon lectures for the officers, of course. The bulk of the lecturing will be done by the junior subalterns."

And it was! A colossal syllabus, as complex as a horoscope, was drawn up, and we "stinkers" set out to lecture ourselves to -. No one knew where. We lectured on line, range, and angle of sight, on M.T. and message-writing, on signalling and staff work.

We wrestled with tactics and trigonometry, knotting and splicing, and broke the native quartermaster's heart by drawing complicated diagrams of the planetary system on his paintwork.

Plan 17 of the First World War was duly reviled and Wavell's 1940/41 push unctuously praised. As a standby there was always "Cammerflarge-n-c'nceelment".

The response was uniformly disappointing. Most of the men speedily developed a complete armour against lectures, the outward and visible sign of which was an utter relaxation of every muscle (with a loosening of the spinal cord) into a state closely resembling sleep.

The eyes, although remaining open, took on the seeing yet sightless dullness of dead mullet, so that any lecture group, except for the lack of fem leaves and water-cooled glass, reminded one of a fishmonger's window.

The effect of this apathy on the lecturer, especially if he was young and conscientious, was often considerable. Some-foolish they-tried to bully their audiences into attentiveness and were rewarded with a gleam of hostility behind the mullet-stare. Others tried to feed interest with humour, but ran out of jokes. The easiest solution was to match one's hearers' lifelessness with a style as uninspired, and to deliver the lectures in a flat sing-song that was easy to the lecturer and which didn't worry the audience, as they were not listening, anyhow.

One sub-unit, however, had a soldier who was regarded as the perfect subject.

No matter how complicated or uninteresting the lecture, how useless or well-known its information to him, or how potent the current diversion, he would fix the lecturer with a look of openmouthed and flattering eagerness and listen, listen, listen.

He was soon offered in the open market for purchase and transfer and was about to change hands for six reels of signalling wire and a set of plug spanners when he scratched himself by snoring in a lecture.

He was asleep with his eyes open.

Our big enemy, apart from boredom, was diversion. There is little enough deck space on a small vessel with 1,500 odd troops aboard, but when the 1,000 odd natives who appear to make up the crew are added, the position is critical. And the myriad activities of these dark little ants were so timed as to give the maximum opposition to the before-mentioned syllabus. Hosing was their great sport. Imagine a great canvas hose, twisting and slithering, spewing sea-water and spraying needle-jets from a hundred leaks, in absolute control of twenty sailors, ranging from the head-of-the-watch at the nozzle to a cringing deck-boy at the tap, each yelling his own pronunciation of, "Water come, sahib." Cicero himself could not have held his hearers' interest.

Another popular diversion was the appearance of the "cricket team". It came at ship's inspection time, a snake-like procession with the captain (and bugler) at the head and, half a deck behind, the acting orderly bombardier learner for the week.

This had an added interest in that the number sometimes varied, and the lecturer could always hear his group counting, more or less sotto voce: "Nine, ten, eleven, twelve-extra men to-day." A ship on the horizon, however, was as interesting to the lecturer as to the class and presented no difficulties. The lecture just stopped.

There were, however, some really good non-military lectures, especially when various people spoke of their own "racket" in civil life. The intricacies of the newspaper world were

always good material, and plantation men usually had a hearing. (At the time Java was the popular fancy.) A former asylum attendant had a stock spell-binder, "Lunatics I Have Known". The same man, something of a dietician, was asked to lecture on "Living off the Land", a lecture which he persisted in calling "How to Eat a Banana".

We, the junior subalterns, disliked giving lectures as much as our audiences disliked listening to them. Posterity may borrow for our epitaphs the Sydney University tag,

Perhaps they didn't teach us much,

But they taught us all they knew.

"NX17761"

WE had been given our movement order. Rumour had said we were leaving the Middle East, which meant a sea voyage, but our destination was not disclosed.

The last of the unit's cases had been hoisted into the ship when a truck pulled up and unloaded a box
labelled "decontamination". From the front seat of the truck the major shouted to us to take particular care of the box, which was then hoisted over the side and dumped with the rest of the gear. One of our number looked at it, grunted "more of them gas gadgets", unrolled his blankets on the lid, and promptly went to sleep.

Ours was not a luxury liner. It was a glorified sort of tramp, and we were the aft gun crew. Bang went our visions of hot and cold water, gadgets for producing stewards, and spring beds.

Weeks went by, and each day seemed longer and more monotonous than the previous one. "Bully 'n biscuits" comprised the main diet. Rats gnawed the tongues of our boots. Cockroaches pranced, route-marched, and did the polka in every corner and crevice. The only water on the ship was highly chlorinated.

Gradually we explored, hunting in holds for tucker boxes that had been stored in, vehicles. One of our chaps was something of a cracksman in an amateurish way, and there was not a padlock that did not yield to his knife and piece of wire. At last every crib had been cracked and everything edible eaten.

Disconsolately we sat on our gun platform, using the "decontamination" box for a seat. We dreamed of pleasant drinks and steaks. "Raffles" tinkered with the lock of' the decontamination box as he told us what he'd do when he hit Australia. Click. The lock opened. In a disinterested sort of way, Raffles lifted the lid.

We-e-e-ll ! There, stacked neatly in rows were bottles of whisky, gin, crème de menthe, and every liqueur known to the Middle East.

What would you have done? That's what we did, or as Raffles so nicely put it-:
"Well I'll be decontaminated."

"VX16838"

"Red Sea Day". Australian troops whiling away a day on the Red Sea during their return from the Middle East to Australia. By B3/59