Chapter XV: Middle East
With the War in Europe obviously coming to a close, the Army decided that there was an urgent need for A.E.C. instructors to be sent abroad in order to help with the rehabilitation of the troops for their return to civilian life. So I was sent at the beginning of April, 1945, to a transit camp in Buxton, Derbyshire, in preparation for embarkation from the port of Liverpool.
The transit camp was a huge hotel on the outskirts of the town. If I remember rightly, its name was the Imperial Hotel. When the troops for embarkation were assembled there, it hardly provided the appearance of a smart Spa hotel. The rooms were quite bare, stripped of all carpets and pictures and hotel furniture. I should think that the hotel too would be in need of urgent rehabilitation at the end of the War.
The main benefit of this move was that I was granted a fortnight’s embarkation leave – a leave that I thoroughly enjoyed in spite of the possible long separation that would follow. But there was no great worry as I felt certain that by the time I reached my destination abroad the War would probably have ended.
So, with a fairly light heart I proceeded with the rest of the Buxton contingent to Liverpool Docks to embark on the Georgic, a 27,000 ton liner that had been bombed in the Suez Canal in 1942. This was its first voyage after being extensively repaired. There were three thousand troops on board, but in spite of the Army’s declaration of urgency there were only two A.E.C. sergeants and I was surprised to see an insignificant figure of a man who could not have been much more than five feet tall. But I soon found out that his small stature gave him no inferiority complex. Indeed, he had more self-assurance than I had. We became quite pally throughout the voyage. With my gradually increasing nominal amnesia, I just cannot remember his name, but I do remember the name of his home town. It must have made an impression on me as it seemed a strange name – Alsager in Cheshire.
The voyage was quite a pleasant cruise although our quarters were very cramped, most of the men having to sleep in hammocks although the standard of the food, of course, would not compare with the fare provided on present day cruises. It was really no mean task for a ship’s galley to provide food for three thousand men without some of the disgruntled Jeremiahs grumbling. We sailed in a big convoy of merchant ships escorted by a small naval warship. This seemed to us to be an unnecessary precaution at this final stage of the War, but when we were well out into the Atlantic there were frequent rumours, probably unfounded, that there were German U-boats in the vicinity.
After several days sailing in the Atlantic we came in sight of the Gibraltar Rock, and as we passed through the Straits we had a wonderful view of the Rock and the ships anchored in the harbour. As we proceeded along the Mediterranean, still in convoy, we could feel the temperature rising every day as the sun shone down on us from clear blue skies. We were accompanied by a school of porpoises almost all the way to Malta. Leaning on the ship’s rails watching the regular motion of these porpoises as they dipped rhythmically up and down helped to relieve the monotony of viewing vast expanses of water with no land in sight.
We eventually arrived in Valetta Harbour in Malta. It was a fine sight but also a depressing one to see so many fine buildings damaged by the German bombers. The harbour too was dotted with sunken ships, mostly dingy-looking Italian ships. After some extra provisions were taken on board and some of the merchant ships had unloaded their cargo, we sailed on towards the East. Our destination, as was usual with the Armed Forces when sent abroad, was not revealed to us, but by now it was quite obvious that we were heading for the Middle East. After thirteen days on the high seas we arrived at Port Said in sweltering heat, and it was then that we were relieved of our heavy uniform and allowed to don our tropical kit.
As soon as the Georgic anchored in Port Said quite a surge of scruffy-looking Egyptians swarmed on to the ship. They were given all sorts of menial tasks on board. The three thousand troops were disembarked, the various regiments being ordered to disembark in turn.
My pal and I, carrying heavy kit-bags were met at the bottom of the gangway by one of the scruffy and dirty-looking Arabs almost demanding that he should carry our kit-bags. But first of all we had to bargain for the price he demanded. As we were ignorant of the real value of Egyptian coinage we must have finally agreed on what proved to have been an exorbitant price. Another difficulty was the lack of communication, and when we protested that he could not possibly carry the two heavy kit-bags, he simply lifted the bags, one on top of the other, on his shoulder. Then we followed him for about a hundred yards or so to a bend in the road, where he dropped both bags, indicating with signs that we had arrived near our destination. As soon as he disappeared we realised that we had been conned, as we still had quite a distance to carry our bags to the train which was to take us to Cairo.
It was a fascinating trip, the line following the Suez Canal for a large part of the journey. The first surprise was the width of the canal. It was only wide enough for one large vessel to sail along it, except where lower down there was a larger stretch of sea where the ships could wait until a passage was clear.
It was interesting to watch some of the Egyptian peasants along the banks. Most of them were dirty-looking and were wearing scruffy loosely-hanging clothing. Some could be seen sitting cross-legged in the heat, as if contemplating their bellies in concentrated meditation. A not unusual sight was a man riding on a donkey and his wife walking alongside. A story was told of how a group of soldiers pulled a man down from his donkey and lifted up his wife to take his place – a breach of Egyptian etiquette, I should think!
We arrived in Cairo station amidst a turmoil of seething masses, milling round the platform, some offering to carry your kit-bags to the Army trucks waiting outside the station, some selling little cups of some drink and some selling hard-boiled eggs. It was amusing to hear them shouting, ‘Eggza-boiled!’.
We were transported by the Army through the main streets of Cairo to the outskirts of the city, where the transit camp for the Middle East was situated. It was called Abassia Barracks and it was here that I was to find myself for the next four weeks, kicking my heels. In spite of the Army at Home declaring that there was an urgent need of A.E.C. instructors, I had to call almost every day at the Office to see if my posting had come through. After very many days had passed, the posting finally came through, but even then I could not make a move, as the transport arrangements for the train journey took quite a long time to be finalised. Indeed, a full four weeks elapsed from arrival to departure.
Even before the posting was made known, rumours emanated from the Office that there would be two postings, one to Beirut in Lebanon and the other to Khartoum in the Sudan. By this time I seemed to have lost track of the pal who sailed with me in the Georgic, and the other sergeant awaiting a posting appeared only when I arrived in the transit camp. However we two often compared the merits and demerits of the two possible postings, or rather we agreed on the merits of Beirut and the demerits of Khartoum. The latter at this time of the year would be unbearably hot and the standards of hygiene there were bound to cause what was called gyppo tummy. The climate in Beirut, although sticky in the port itself, would be pleasant on the hilly slopes above.
Well, my good fortune favoured me this time again. I was informed that I would be posted to Beirut. Of course, there was the usual anxious anticipation as Lebanon was a country of which my knowledge was very scanty. The only snippet of information I had was that the Temple of Solomon was built of the Cedars of Lebanon and that it was a country of hills and mountains. But, as I have said, there was quite an interval between the notification of the posting and the date of the departure.
In the meantime the days were spent in eating, drinking and sleeping, with the occasional interesting interlude. We ate well in the Sergeants’ Mess, our meals being served on small tables for four by pitch-black Sudanese waiters. The main complaint, especially mine, was that the hot food was cooked drowned in oil. I do not remember seeing any of the soldiers drinking beer. Actually, the local brand, called Almaza beer, was not at all to the taste of the British soldier, at any rate those with whom I came into contact. The staple drink was hot tea, yes, very hot tea, the best thirst-quenching drink in the extremely hot weather, the temperature reaching even 110°F at midday.
We drank on the square around picnic tables under huge umbrellas. China must have been very scarce, as the receptacle for drink was a brown glass bottle with the top cut off by tying a string around and then setting it alight. The top came off just below the neck, but it was hardly ever a clean break. Most of the mugs had very jagged edges, both a danger to the lips and to healthy hygiene. However I never suffered from the dreaded ailment ‘Gyppo tummy’.
I had disliked the look of the poorer Egyptians on the way from Port Said to Cairo and in the Cairo Station. People of today have a very good idea what to expect to see in foreign countries, European, Middle East or the Far East, because they see almost every day visual representations on television, but it must be remembered that in 1945 there was no television, and the only pictorial representations of such countries could be seen only in books and magazines. So, on the whole, it was quite a shock for me, brought up in a quiet rural area, to see these povery-stricken, ragged and sometimes, to me, evil-looking human beings.
The result was that I was really afraid to wander out on the streets of Cairo, in daylight let alone at night. However the other A.E.C. sergeant and I did venture out once or twice in order to see some of the famous sights of Cairo. Another reason why we hardly ventured out was the obvious hatred of the British soldier shown by the average Egyptian. Indeed this was not to be wondered at. The ordinary ignorant and uncouth British soldier treated the poor Egyptians whom they called Wogs with such contempt that they could be seen sometimes kicking them as they spewed the filthiest possible language at them. Nevertheless we did manage to wander unmolested through the main streets, having a glimpse sometimes at some of the side streets, which with their noxious smells and scattered rubbish contrasted very much with the splendour of the buildings in the main streets. We also visited one or two museums, which for the most part were filled with Egyptian mummies.
But the highlight of our stay in Cairo was the visit to the Pyramids. We sailed for a short distance up the Nile, and then travelled (I cannot remember how, but I believe we must have joined a kind of package tour comprised of civilians as well as soldiers) across a short stretch of barren desert to the Pyramids, near which was the Gizeh hotel where Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met for their tripartite conference. The Pyramids were an impressive sight. In addition to the Great Pyramid there was the smaller Pyramid, the Sphinx and some exposed ruins. Even the ruins were an amazing sight. These were huge blocks of stones set on top of each other, that had been so dressed and so carefully laid that a pin could not be pushed into the joins even though no such material as mortar had been put between them.
It was quite a thrill to climb on to the Sphinx and walk along its back, but the great thrill of the afternoon was the climb up and into the Great Pyramid. We had an Egyptian guide to lead us, a long-robed dubious-looking character. First of all we climbed up the huge stones for a short distance and then entered a dark long tunnel, following the guide whose only light was an ordinary candle. We groped our way along, climbing all the time, until we eventually entered a kind of small cell in the middle of which there was an empty tomb, a sarcophagus. The massive Pyramid was just a huge tomb encompassing a small tomb in which one of the Pharaohs, King Cheops, had been buried. The Egyptians believed that their Pharaohs should be so buried that their tomb was indestructible and should last for eternity.
The most significant event of the period I spent in Cairo should have been mentioned before. Only a few days after I arrived there the most heartening news of the war was expected almost every hour and indeed it was announced on the Ninth of May that the Germans had surrendered unconditionally. And yet I cannot remember that the news was received with that enthusiasm, excitement and jollification that seemed to have occurred throughout Britain. It was received with cool, calm and quiet satisfaction. Even on the voyage out there was much speculation as to when demobilisation would start and how it could be administered. So, in a way, the news was an anti-climax.
The consideration uppermost in our minds was when would we get home, and even now there was a tinge of doubt lurking in the mind: ‘When would the War in the Far East come to an end, and would the continuation of this War slow down or even halt the process of demobilisation?’ In any case, when I was given the actual date and details of transport to Beirut I felt very sure that my service in the Army was gradually drawing to a close. This feeling, I am afraid, produced the attitude that I no longer needed to take my work too seriously and that my policy would be the one usually prevailing in the Army: only do those duties which you were commanded to do. But then the Army authorities in England had declared there was an urgent need for A.E.C. instructors during the period of demobilisation; that is, we were to help in the process of rehabilitation. Well, I wondered what the conditions would be like in the various units; would they be conducive to any kind of success in such a task.
Such were my thoughts on the journey to Beirut. A few of us were taken by truck to Cairo Railway Station, where there was the usual milling around of hordes of people, men in military uniform, touts and cheap-jacks shouting their wares, people of all colour – brown, black and betwixt and between colours. I do not remember whether it was a special troop train, but what I do remember is a noisy, dirty-looking mob swarming all over the train, very many of them settling on the roofs of the carriages. I should think that these casuals, obviously non-paying passengers, would be carried no further than the Egyptian border.
It was actually dark when we crossed the Suez at Kantara. We could see nothing, but we could hear the clatter of the train wheels on the fairly long bridge crossing. It was just dawning when we arrived at Lydda station. The train stopped there so that we could have breakfast, and it was a welcome one too because, in spite of the heat during the day, the nights were really cold. We were served a breakfast of fried bacon and baked beans with a large chunk of bread and a mug of hot tea – all served in our own mess-tins. All this was cooked in the R.T O.’s (Railway Transport Officer) quarters on the Station, a considerable feat of improvisation.
The train proceeded from Lydda to Haifa. I should think most of the troops on board dispersed there, some to board a ship to Cyprus, and some to various units in Palestine (not ‘Israel’ in those days). As we had quite a long wait in Haifa I shall give a description of the surrounding country, as I viewed it from a subsequent visit. Then I drove an Army truck from the centre of the town up a very steep hill to the top of Mount Carmel from which a panoramic view could be gained.
A paragraph from H.V. Morton’s ‘In the Steps of the Master’ will probably afford a more illuminating picture than I can give.
‘The smallness of the country is such that from many of the high ridges of Judaea all the boundaries are clearly visible; snow-capped Hermon to the North, the sandy desert to the South, the Mediterranean Sea to the West, and the high ridge of the Trans-Jordan mountains to the East.’
H.V. Morton also gives a vivid description of the road leading from Haifa to Beirut. During the period when Morton followed the steps of the Master, there was no railway from Haifa to Beirut, but I was able to travel by train, because in the first months of the war Australian soldiers had built a single-track railway to Beirut, more or less hugging the coast all the way. So Morton’s description of the road is also an apt and picturesque description of the railway route.
Here is his description:-
‘The road that runs beside the Mediterranean through Tyre and Sidon to Beirut is, I believe, the most interesting coast road in the world. No other coast road has such memories. On one side the waves pound on yellow sands, on the other orange and banana groves lift themselves gently towards the distant snow-dusted Lebanon. The road is dotted with trellis-work cafes on whose crazy little platforms men in baggy Turkish trousers, with red fezzes on their heads, sit cross-legged and suck at their hookahs, watching the blue waters, palm trees straggling on the sands, white minarets lifted against the dark hot sky. The road clung so closely to the edge of the hill that every corner appeared to end in a wall of rock and a drop into the valley.’
When I arrived at Beirut station, which looked more like a goods-yard than a station, I followed the usual routine of reporting to the R.T.O. I do not believe that such a small station, that had very little troop movement, was manned by an R.T.O. all the time. Probably an N.C.O. had been sent to the station in the knowledge that a Sergeant from the A.E.C. was due to report there. So the R.T.O. rang the Hospital where I was to be stationed, for transport to fetch me.
By the time I arrived on Beirut Station it was late evening and so the temperature was equable and bearable. But the 143rd General Hospital, Middle East Forces, was situated about halfway between Beirut and Aleq, a town or village almost at the top of the Lebanon Range. It was a location that proved to be much cooler than the hot and sticky atmosphere of the port of Beirut.
I was soon safely and comfortably billeted in a small two-bedded room with one of the Hospital orderlies, a friendly Scottish sergeant, who spent almost every evening, late into the night, with his lady-friend, although he claimed to be a happily-married man. Indeed after I had settled down in the Hospital he tried his best to get me hooked to his lady-love’s friend, but I am pleased to relate that I was strong-willed enough not to succumb to such a temptation.
All our meals were eaten in the Sergeants’ Mess. The quality of the food was good, as each sergeant had to supplement the catering funds with a weekly contribution. There was a lounge and a bar, and an entertainment-room in the building. Yes, I had landed, as it were, on my feet again. There were altogether about twenty five sergeants, a very friendly and intelligent company, a cut above the usual run of senior Army N.C.O.s. and yet none of them was at all interested in the educational projects I tried to launch.
Everything was made easy for me to establish a kind of Education Centre. I was allotted three rooms in a solid stone building, unlike the wooden Nissan huts which served as Hospital Wards. The building was shared with two young dentists, to whom two or three other rooms had been allotted. I must confess that when my centre, as often, had attracted no customers, I spent quite a lot of time chatting with these two jolly fellows, who, like me, had a lot of inactive periods.
The Headquarters of the A.E.C. in the area was in the centre of the town of Beirut, a palatial building that used to be the Italian embassy. I had to report there soon after I had arrived at the Hospital in order to have my instructions and also to explain to the Officer-in-charge what my plans were. This officer turned out to be a Welshman, but a non-Welsh-speaking Welshman. However we were soon able to establish quite a rapport.
One of my plans was to set up one of my rooms as a library. So with the help of HQ and by scrounging books from the wards themselves I managed to make a kind of a show of a library. I say ’show’ because I had realised long before that as long as you could give the appearance, however real, of well-planned work and at the same time produce a monthly report of seemingly successful projects, the Authorities were quite happy. The Army was quite as guilty of bureaucracy as any Civil Service Department.
It was not long before I realised that I was not succeeding in making any real contribution towards advancing the cause of rehabilitation. It was not for the want of trying at the beginning. But almost all my attempts and approaches failed to bear any fruit. The military units in the Beirut area were very small, and when I approached them to arrange discussion groups or courses, such as preparation for college, I was brushed off with the excuse that now they had to make preparations of disbanding they were much too busy to take part in any educational work or any kind of rehabilitation. I received the same kind of rebuff from the Hospital itself. ‘It was not education that they want but physiotherapy’. So I carried on with the pretence of doing something worthwhile and so was able to produce a monthly report which seemed to satisfy H.Q.
Amidst all this frustration, which, of course, did not worry me overmuch now that I too was expecting demobilisation, I received from H.Q. a very odd assignment which ensured me a discussion group that could not be turned down by the victims. If the various units would not volunteer to receive me, then there was one particular unit on which the Army could use their customary practice, that is ‘compulsion’. The unit was to be found in the civilian prison in Beirut itself, where there was a small group of army detainees. This was a strange and rather unnerving experience for one who had been brought up in a law-abiding community and who had never mixed with any criminal element.
Arriving, with feelings of trepidation, at the huge gates of the prison, ringing the bell without any idea of what I could expect inside, I was let in by an army sergeant dangling in his hand a huge bunch of keys. The first thing in the spacious square that met my eyes was a giant of a black soldier being driven around, being lambasted and tortured mercilessly – not an auspicious entry for me!
Then I was led to a small cell, where eight Army prisoners were waiting for me, all looking very sullen and unfriendly. I was afraid that I would not be able to gain any response from them, but after breaking the ice, I found that it was more difficult to stem their flow of comments than to encourage any response. The main gist of what they had to say was that they had been treated badly by society and that they in no way felt any obligation to their fellow-men nor did they have any kind of sense of duty. All they would do, after they had been demobilised would be to live ‘on their wits’.
I have more or less given adequate coverage for the somewhat feeble attempts to educate the British soldier in preparation for his return to civilian life. I should think that mine is not the only story of futile A.E.C. attempts to rehabilitate. Frankly, the conditions of service and the comradeship of the soldiers contributed more to the ideas prevalent on demobilisation that it was the duty of the Government to provide conditions for a fairer distribution of the wealth of the country, and that that could only be achieved by the provision of work for all. This ideal, of course, has not been achieved. Indeed, work has become scarcer and scarcer as the years progress – disillusionment has set in! I must cease to pontificate and make note of the only real contribution I was able to make to the education of the staff and convalescing patients of the 143rd General Hospital.
An afternoon trip was arranged by someone or other to Byblos, and as this town had some historical importance I was asked at short notice to give a brief talk on its history on an ancient site of the town. I made frantic efforts to find some of the historical facts, luckily with some success. The facts that I gained can be better quoted from an account in the book, ‘Civilisations of the Holy Land’ by Paul Johnson.
‘One of the first alphabetic inscriptions we possess dates from the thirteenth century and is on the sarcophagus of a King Ahiran of Byblos, now in the Beirut Museum. It is no accident that the earliest alphabet should have been associated with Byblos, for this ancient settlement may well have been the world’s first manor port. Indeed, Philo, the first century AD Jewish philosopher from Alexandria, thought it the oldest city in the world! It was the entrepot and exporting centre for wood from the enormous Lebanese cedar forests, which throughout antiquity supplied the finest timber for palaces and temples. The first pharaohs of the United Kingdom of Egypt (which, apart from the sycamore, had virtually no native wood) were big customers, and Byblos was involved in the Egyptian timber trade as early as the Old Kingdom, that is in the first half of the third millennium BC. In Egypt, in fact, all ocean-going vessels were known as ‘Byblos ships’.
‘The ancient site of Byblos is near a modern village. There is a twelfth century Crusader castle, and part of the medieval walls. Excavations have revealed that Byblos was exporting copper as early as 3000BC and was even then a town of sorts, with paved streets. It retained its close links with Egypt throughout the third and second millennia, interrupted by periods when the Egyptian dynastic power was in retreat.
‘There was a very early Egyptian-style temple at Byblos, and the inhabitants shared the Egyptians’ passionate interest in life after death – the dead were placed in giant jars and then enclosed in tombs cut into the rocks. The people of Byblos had their own Semitic tongue, and, as we have seen, used clay tablets inscribed in cuneiform rather than Egyptian script written with brush-pens on papyrus, but they were at times influenced by Egyptian literary forms and Egyptian narratives, such as the story of Sinhye.’
Realising that my audience, especially as they were standing in the open, could not possibly be interested in all the details as described in ‘The Civilisations of the Holy Land’, I confined myself to some of the more interesting facts, and I am innocent enough to believe that the majority of the audience appreciated my talk.
In my monthly report the inclusion of an account of this trip to Byblos created a very favourable impression. But frankly, what relevance had the relating of ancient history and of mythology to an education for rehabilitation? Indeed, I suppose my talks could have appealed only to those of my audience who were more academically minded. Well, I have accounted for most of the attempts at rehabilitation that I had made. Now I shall try to give an account of the many activities and pleasures I had enjoyed during my period of service in Beirut. Actually, my time was spent more on non-educational activities than on serious education. All with no pricks of conscience!!
I used to make frequent visits to Beirut, very often to put in an appearance in H.Q., both to give verbal reports and to meet the other Education N.C.O.s, Sergeant Jolly and Sergeant Grundy. Sergeant Jolly was a very refined gentleman, who in civilian life was the Head of the English Department in Wimborne Grammar School in Dorset.
Sergeant Grundy, in spite of his English cognomen, was a typical Welsh-speaking North Walian, more rustic in appearance and a little rough in his manners, but who could be called a rough diamond. He was the Headmaster of a small country Primary school somewhere in Gwynedd. The fact that he was Welsh-speaking, of course, helped us to establish quite a close friendship. He was a humorist and a ready wit, but at the same time he had a deep religious bent, having been brought up in the Puritan Methodist traditions of North Wales.
He managed to persuade Sergeant Jolly and me, and a Lebanese friend of his, to attend a bilingual religious service in Welsh and English in a Christian church in the Christian area of Beirut. He had gone to great trouble to hire the church after the usual Sunday evening service. It was an unforgettable evening. Sergeant Jolly, who was a fine organist, played the organ and the rest of us, just three of us, struggled to produce a reasonable semblance of hymn singing. Grundy gave a short sermon and then knelt in prayer. What I remember of his prayer was that he compared the humid and sticky atmosphere of the evening with the evening when Christ, with beads of perspiration running down his face, prayed at the Rock of Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he said, ‘Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee; take this cup away from me. Yet not what I will, but what thou wilt’.
During weekends I was often able to have a lift into the town of Beirut, in order to see the sights, such as the Museum, again full of Mediterranean types of sculptures, the harbour to see the ships to-ing and fro-ing, and in the evening to see a film, which almost invariably would be an American film with sub-titles in Arabic. Here is a short description of the town by H.V. Morton:
‘The town is a huge, rather ramshackle place, filled with little tinkling tramcars. Like all the coast towns from Haifa northwards, the situation of Beirut is perfect, a blue sea, a curved bay, and the snow-dusted Lebanon piled up all round the town.’
Indeed, it was a beautiful place, spoiled now by the continual merciless strife between Christian and Moslem. H.V. Morton mentions the little tinkling tramcars. This was indeed a feature of the main streets of Beirut, and what an experience it was to ride on them! At every stop there was a mob of long-robed Lebanese scrambling to get on, as was seen in Cairo railway station. But the tramcar would be packed like sardines in a tin can, already, and it was amazing how they managed to squeeze on to the outside platform or some would cling precariously to the sides while others tried to find an empty space on the already covered roof. The poor conductor would be squeezed tightly within the mob and held there as in a vice, and, of course, he would find it impossible to collect any fares. Even if he managed to collect any, the money he would receive would be in the form of tattered and torn pieces of paper worth five piastres.
Not only did I manage to make fairly frequent visits to Beirut itself, but sometimes during weekends I went further afield. Soon after settling down in the Hospital I found a sergeant who had a similar background to mine, and what is more he was a Welsh-speaking Welshman, the son-in-law of a well-known Radio personality, known as Meuryn. He was the Hospital pharmacist and was in charge of the dispensary. He was very much au fait with the movement of medical supplies in Hospital trucks to various units in the whole of Lebanon. If any truck travelled in the weekend to a location in some town or village noted for its past history or for the beauty of its surroundings he would inform me and would suggest that we should take advantage of the opportunity to visit one of these places.
Since I cannot remember my Welsh friend’s name, I shall call him Meuryn from now on. One of our ambitions was to make an expedition to Damascus. But he failed to be informed of any truck travelling there. So he suggested that one Sunday afternoon we should start straight after lunch to try to hitch-hike our way from the Hospital to the town of Damascus, an impossible venture I thought, but indeed soon after we had started walking we were picked up by an Army truck which was travelling all the way to Damascus.
The long distance (my guess is about fifty miles) was soon covered, giving us about two hours to see some of the famous sights, such as the Street Called Straight and the wall down which Paul escaped in a basket. One small incident left a deep impression on us. In one of the small shops in the Souks we saw strips of apricot being prepared. A big piece was dried apricot was rolled out flat on the floor like a piece of leather. Then the Damascene, with bare feet so dark and swarthy that it was difficult to decide whether they were dirty and unwashed or whether they were a naturally dark colour, trampled back and fore on the big leathery-looking stretched piece of apricot. This sight made me vow that I would never touch any dried apricot.
The city itself is disappointing to any one, like myself, who believed it to be the very soul and essence of romance. I have always imagined Damascus as the very heart of the East of the Thousand and One Nights. But it is not. It is a city that is saved only by sunlight from looking like a slum. The world-famous bazaars of Damascus are dark avenues under curved corrugated iron roofs which look like some elongated and poor relation of King’s Cross Station.
The most interesting thing for a Christian in Damascus is the Street Called Straight, where Saul was converted and baptised as Paul: ‘Saul went on into Damascus, a blind man. He went to the house of Judas in the Street Called Straight, and there Ananias, a follower of Jesus, came and healed him. The Street Called Straight is nearly a quarter of a mile long and is without a bend. It is covered like many Damascus streets with an arched roof through whose holes the sun squirts in widening beams like little searchlights.’
At the beginning of the story of my life I stated that I should begin writing my story before my memory began to fail, began to have a covering of moss growing over it. Well, that film of moss, as it were, is becoming thicker. However, some incidents and events had made such a deep impression on my mind that they had become unforgettable. Two of those events, although the edges maybe have become blurred, were on the one hand the trip to Damascus, and on the other the trip which I am now going to describe, the trip to Baalbek and Zahle.
Meuryn asked me one day whether I would like to take advantage with him of a truck taking medical supplies during a weekend, first to Baalbek and then back to Zahle. Baalbek is situated at the far end of the Bekaa Valley, which lies on the beautiful and fertile plain between the Lebanon range and the anti-Lebanon. The road to Baalbek is so straight and level that the wonderful ruins of Baalbek can be seen many a mile before you arrive there.
After visiting the awesome ruins of Baalbek we made our way back along the Bekaa Valley to a village called Zahle, a village noted for its beautiful surroundings, but hardly ever included in any maps of the area. We made for the Army Casualty Station, where we were welcomed by a friendly group of R.M.C. orderlies. We were immediately offered accommodation for the night, gladly accepted, of course. In the evening we were escorted to a beauty spot, the most beautiful, in my opinion, of the places I visited in the Middle East. My vocabulary and powers of description can hardly do it justice.
It was a kind of fairy glen or grotto in a narrow valley, with a clear silvery stream running down its middle and flanked by rows to trees glamourised by a festoon of coloured fairy lights. Here we were in a shower of sparkling light with the area beyond the trees black as pitch. In one part near the stream there was a kind of stone-built rotunda. It was built to a height of about three feet all around. Chairs and tables for eating food were placed all around. Drinks could be placed on a little ledge about a foot from the top. Fresh water from the stream flowed into the rotunda and overlapped this ledge by two or three inches and so the drink was kept cool.
Another surprising sight was to see plates piled with feathered corpses of sparrows. These sparrows were well pickled, so much so that they could be eaten whole, bones and all. They were considered a real delicacy. There was a continuous supply provided by young boys, who were given a penny for each sparrow. They shot them down with stones and pellets from home-made slings.
By the beginning of August 1945, I was due for a leave of what I thought should be for ten days. So I submitted to the O.C. of the Hospital an application for such a leave. Although, according to the rules in the Home Country I should have ten days, the O.C. granted me seven days according to the rules obtaining in the Middle East. I think the distance from Beirut to Jerusalem is about 210 miles, and with my usual good fortune I found out that an ambulance was to travel all the way on the very day on which my leave was supposed to begin. The journey, actually, took a whole day, as we had to call in several places on the way. Of course, the journey was extremely interesting, but yet I was eager to get started on a tour of those places that had a direct connection with the life of Christ. So my mind was concentrated on the expectations of such a tour.
What were these expectations? Biblical scenes had for many years been impressed on my mind, not, of course, by the natural eye, but by the eye of the imagination. When I was a boy I was told many Bible stories in the Primary School, and I went to Sunday School where some of my teachers had a thorough knowledge of the Bible but scant knowledge of the geography of the Holy Land. The result of this was that their stories were of places exactly like the ones in which they and I lived.
This also brings to mind the dramatic and descriptive sermons of an old much-loved preacher, Bowen Hermon. He used to dramatise the events of the Bible, making up imaginary conversations between, say, Christ and his disciples – he would describe very vividly the places and the houses where these events took place, but, of course, in those terms and in that environment familiar to him. Having been brought up under such influences, not like modern tourists to Israel under the influence of all the modern visual aids, such as the cinema and television, it was natural that I had many preconceived ideas about the places I was going to visit in Palestine. These preconceived ideas were shattered, and induced in me a cynical mood of disillusionment.
I had been excited by the prospect of driving through a large part of Palestine, which had so often been described in the pulpit as another Wales – a small country of hills and villages. By now I was prepared to be disillusioned concerning the appearance of the country and also its climate – I had already travelled along the Palestinian coast on my way from Cairo to Beirut. I had seen the stark and harsh colours of the landscape, parched by the cruel and unrelenting rays of the sun from a cloudless sky, which, however, had a certain beauty of its own, but not the beauty of the gentle colours of the landscape in Wales – no, there is a difference between Wales and Palestine.
Compare this quotation from H.V. Morton’s ‘In the Steps of the Master’:-
‘Judea is fiercer than anything in Europe. It is a striped tigers country, crouched in the sun, tense with a terrific vitality. The fierceness of the parched gullies, the harshness of the barren hill-tops and the burning cruelty of waterless valleys are concentrated and made visible upon the highest hills.’
My second disillusionment came when we arrived at the outskirts of Jerusalem, a city situated on a hill two thousand feet above sea level. It was a fine modern city, just like any modern European city with wide open streets, big modern stores, many well-dressed men and women wearing smart clothes. The women! Can you imagine anything more beautiful than a young slim dark-haired Jewish beauty wearing a plain white dress, with a red rose in her jet-black hair, and all this, of course, in the bright sunshine? – white is essentially a colour for the sun and not for the murky skies of Wales.
On the recommendation of a friend of mine I went to stay in the hostel of the Anglican St. George’s Cathedral. There I was in the right atmosphere for the start of my tour of the Holy Land. Soon after I arrived there came a party of about thirty American Army officers on a flying visit to Palestine which they were going to ‘do’ in three days! Already there too was Sergeant Jolly, my colleague in Beirut.
I was allotted the same sleeping quarters as a British army chaplain, Padre Minns. Rather a frightening experience for a mere sergeant and an innocent layman who had never been much in the company of clerics. But again a stroke of good fortune! Padre Minns had an Army truck at his disposal to tour the country, and furthermore this was not the first time for him to have been in Jerusalem and the surrounding area. He, with his altruistic nature, kindly offered to take some of us around Jerusalem and the surrounding country.
I was also very fortunate to meet kindred spirits. These were Captain Minns, Sgt. Jolly, like myself a Secondary School Master and a member of the A.E.C., Sgt. Holmes, a highly intelligent young man in the R.E.M.E., and Sister Chadley, a young and charming Army nursing sister. There was a large number of British soldiers on leave in Jerusalem, but the majority of them had no wish to visit the holy places; they just moped around in the daytime waiting for the hot spots to open in the evening.
It was decided that we should visit Bethlehem on the first morning after the day of arrival. So after breakfast on the morning of Saturday, August the Fourth, we four, that is Padre Minns, Sergeant Jolly, Sergeant Holmes, Sister Chadley and myself set out at 9 a.m. in the Army truck, driven by Padre Minns’ batman.
On our way we passed several places having biblical associations. The first place of interest was Holman Hunt’s seat. I remember reading somewhere that Holman Hunt, the famous painter of scenes of the Holy Land, had a favourite view of the land from the road near Bethlehem, and I suppose this seat marks the place. No doubt the hot forbidding vista of the Jordan Valley from this point suggested to his mind the idea of that well-known picture ‘The Scapegoat’. After covering five kilometres we came to the Well of the Magi or Wise Men, where they saw again the star which had guided them during their long journey from the East.
One kilometre further on stood the convent of Saint Elijah. Legend says that the building stands on the site where Elijah rested in his flight from the vengeance of Jezebel. At the seventh kilometre mark we passed the white-domed Tomb of Rachel, which is venerated by Christian, Jew and Moslem.
Then we approached Bethlehem itself. It is a town on a hill, a site not unlike that of Llandeilo, both towns having hills and mountains in the distance. I am sure that everybody has some picture in his mind of the town of Bethlehem. Everyone can see pictures of it on Christmas cards, everyone used to hear colourful descriptions of it by eloquent preachers. Indeed I had a picture, although rather unclear, of a small village in the country, small white-washed thatched cottages, green fields all around, and all things associated with a Welsh country village. But it was not like that when approached, and yet it had a placid and pleasing beauty but the beauty of a fiery sun flashing its rays of light from a blue cloudless sky on the white stones and red tiles of the houses, the land red without a blade of green grass and the olive trees white with dust. H.V. Morton makes this comment:
‘The Palestine of reality is always in conflict with the imaginary Palestine, so violently at times that many people cannot relinquish this Palestine of the imagination without a feeling of bereavement. That is why some people go away disillusioned from the Holy Land.’
The truck stopped outside a solid-looking building that had rather a rough appearance. With Padre Minns as our guide we were able to push our way trough a mob of scruffy-looking Arabs clamouring to become our guides without having to enlist their services and paying them their ‘baksheesh’. We had decided before setting out that we were going to be independent of guides and would depend wholly on the ‘guide books’ we had bought. The main advantage of this is that you can view at leisure.
Much has been said and written about the commercialisation of the sacred places of Palestine. On the whole it is the worst aspect of this that has been described. It is quite true today of all historical places in every country that postcards are being sold and a large number of souvenirs are being pushed upon people.
Having pushed our way through the clamouring mob, we came up against a massive wall with a small low door leading through it. It was so low that you had to bend well down in order to enter. They say it was made low like this to prevent the infidel from riding into the church and slaying the worshippers.
Once in we were inside a large Roman basilica or church with a nave and aisles on either side – not a chair or seat in sight. The Church of the Nativity, like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, suffers from divided ownership. A policeman was always on duty to prevent disputes between the Greeks and Armenian priests. On one of the pillars in the nave there are three nails, one on which the Latins (Catholics) may hang a picture, one on which the Greeks may do so, and a neutral nail on which no sect may hang anything.
The sight of the interior of the Church was rather unexpected, as the churches of Palestine are very ornate, full of many costly adornments. H.V. Morton’s descriptions again is very interesting.
‘I expected the usual ornate church, the dark burdened altars, the confused stairs and passages of a reconstructed building, and here I was in a cold, austere Roman basilica.’
The church is built above a cave, and to get down to this cave you have to follow a flight of steps immediately underneath the altar. Again disillusionment! I entered a cave about fourteen yards long and four yards wide in the shape of an L. Fifty three silver lamps, hanging from the ceiling hardly lightened the gloom of the place. The walls were covered with tapestry, reeking of stale incense. In the L part of the cave was a slab of marble and in the centre of this was a golden star and underneath this the inscription ‘Hic natus est Iesus Christus e virgine Maria’.
How different was this dark little cave under a church from the manger and stable of one’s imagination. I always thought of it as a thatched white-washed barn-like building having a wooden trough full of oats and hay, and the Wise Men kneeling down to adore the new-born child.
A very interesting ceremony took place in the grotto when we were inside – a young mother, accompanied by her mother, having her baby blessed by two Greek Orthodox priests, the spitting images, both of them, of Archbishop Makarios, who was so much in the news during the war of Enosis between Greeks and Cypriots. The baby was laid down on the star, the very spot, according to tradition, where Christ was born.
There are other grottos in one of which a chapel is dedicated to Saint Jerome. It was here that he translated the bible from Greek to Latin, a version that that is know as the Vulgate. We went out through what was called the Milk Grotto, on the floor of which drops of milk were supposed to have dropped from the breasts of the Virgin Mary. Women of all religions, it seems, go to this grotto after child-birth in order to promote more milk.
After leaving the church building, feeling full of awe and yet feeling disappointed, it was a relief to breathe the fresh air and to open our eyes to the clear sunlight. We then came to a Franciscan convent, the House of Saint Joseph, and we were invited in by the nuns. We were led upstairs to the flat roof of the house, and then we feasted our eyes on a beautiful panoramic view of the countryside. Behind us the church and immediately beneath us the Fields of the Shepherds and, further on, the country of Naomi, Ruth and Boaz, then the Dead Sea about twenty miles further away and beyond the Dead Sea the mountains of Moab, a forbidding-looking wilderness.
We returned to St George’s Cathedral Hostel in time for lunch. Then in the afternoon we visited the tombs of the Kings situated on the Nablus road, quite near the Cathedral. This was a huge pit of about the same dimensions as the Cattle Market in Llandeilo. On one side was a wall about twenty feet high and inside the wall there were the tombs that were supposed to have belonged to Helen, Queen of Adiabene in Mesopotamia. Helen had been converted to Judaism and came to Jerusalem in 44 A.D. where she caused a sepulchral monument to be built in which were to be laid her remains. But this is the interesting point, and this is where another disillusionment comes in.
In the centre of this wall was a round hole, just enough for a man to enter through it into a small square room, in the middle of which was a sarcophagus. At the side of this hole there was a round flat stone, in the shape of a mill-stone, which could be rolled easily along a groove to cover the hole. Here to me was the obvious answer to the problem of understanding the moving of the stone from Christ’s grave. The picture in my imagination had been of a huge unshapely boulder, which was miraculously moved.
After tea Sergeant Jolly and I went to see the Old City. There is a very high thick wall surrounding the Old City, and the only way to enter was through one of the gates, eight of them, the Herod Gate, Damascus Gate, New Gate, Jaffa Gate, Zion Gate, Dung Gate, Golden Gate (now closed) and Saint Stephen Gate. Damascus Gate was the nearest to St George’s Cathedral and it was through this that we entered the Old City.
What a change! What a contrast! It was as if in a few moments one had made a leap back in time of many hundreds of years – narrow, cobbled streets full of all kinds of seemingly odd people. Hardly anyone could be seen in European clothes. One could see only Arabs in their long robes, some white and black, looking very clean, while others were in dirty rags, their skins covered with sores and their eyes looking inflamed and diseased. The women too were in beautiful multicoloured robes, some brilliant red and shining purple, and again women in ugly and filthy garments.
Pushing your way through the mob in the narrow streets was no easy job, and it was not only the people who made it difficult but hordes of donkeys and sheep, and even camels. Our main purpose that evening was to find the place where Jesus Christ was crucified. Sgt. Jolly had been there on the previous day, but he wanted to find the way to the Hill of Calvary once again without help from anyone else. But it was still not easy to find the place because the streets were so narrow, so much alike, and such an intricate maze. But we found the place in the end without seeking any help.
Here again the imaginary picture I had created in my mind was completely shattered – the Hill of Calvary and Joseph of Arimathea’s garden both of them inside a church, and that one not so spacious! The place where Christ was crucified and the place where he was buried both within twenty yards of each other!
After entering the church through the main door you could see a kind of large bed on the left-had side and half reclining on it a tall aristocratic looking man, having a small pointed beard, on his head a black turban, and his dress a long flowing robe. He was one of the guards of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and obviously not a Christian. He was indeed a Moslem; one of the relics of the time when the church was in the hands of the so-called infidels, the Moslems or Mohammedans. Another strange fact with regard to the Church is that it is not in the ownership of one sect of Christians, but it belongs to the Greek church, the Latin church, the Armenian church and the Coptic church. This divided ownership, it seems, has been the cause of many a quarrel.
A great deal has been researched and written about the authenticity of the site of the Church. There are, of course, certain authenticated facts about it. First of all, the Old city was burned down by the Roman Army under Titus in 70 A.D. Secondly, the place of Christ’s burial, that is the Hill of Calvary, was outside the City wall. This fact led General Gordon of Khartoum to designate the site as being outside the present city walls in what is now known as Gordon’s Garden. But, as the walls of the city were ruined and rebuilt several times it is quite probable, according to most authorities, that at one time the Hill of Calvary was outside the City wall.
A very interesting and thrilling experience was following some of the different sects moving from chapel to chapel to perform their worship. I was really charmed by the rich deep bass voice of the cantor of the Latin choir, and, of course, by the Latin text. This was an experience I was able to enjoy to the full from being able to wander round at leisure without the unwanted interruptions of a guide.
When we made our exit from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Sgt. Jolly and I decided to follow the way along which Christ had to carry the cross from the Palace of Pontius Pilate to the Hill of Calvary. This is called the Via Dolorosa – the Way of Pain. It was a comparatively easy task to follow this route, since the fourteen stations of the Cross are all marked out. It is the Catholics who have done this. On every Friday afternoon they hold a procession along the Via Dolorosa, stopping at each station and performing there a particular ritual.
After all this there was still time to see more before nightfall – you can see lots of wonderful sights all in one day when you are in Jerusalem.
We went out of the Old City through St. Stephen’s Gate, the spot where the first Christian martyr was killed. We came out into the Valley of Cedron, the valley between the Old City and the Mount of Olives, and at the bottom of the valley was the Garden of Gethsemane. The garden is owned by Franciscan Fathers, and it is beautifully kept. It is walled around, and a path leads through it through some old olive trees, one of which is claimed to have been there in the time of Christ. Some of the trees are just stumps propped up by railings, like the Old Oak in Carmarthen.
At the end of the path leading through the garden is the Church of all the Nations. This church acts as a cover for what is called the Rock of Agony, where Christ was finally betrayed and handed over to the Roman soldiers. The church, having been built by the Franciscans as late as 1925 on the foundation of a fourth century basilica, is airy and beautifully adorned.
When I entered the Church of the Nativity I was shocked by its huge bareness and almost unfriendly atmosphere, the church that should really represent the joy and happiness of the birth of Christ. When I entered the Church of the Holy Sepulchre I was shocked by its dilapidated state, its murky, dingy, cavernous appearance with its pervading smell of stale incense.
When I entered the Church of All the Nations, I was struck by its unusual beauty. In the middle was a bare unshapely rock, with a wooden rail all around it. On the floor was a beautiful soft carpet, no furniture at all, but the colours!! I have never seen more beautiful colours, and these were reflected from the brilliantly coloured windows, through which the sun, now slanting low in the sky, shone its rays. The predominant colour in the windows was a darkish blue, and it was this that gave a kaleidoscopic effect to the rock in the middle. Seeing this in the cool of the evening made me feel very satisfied with my first day’s experience of Jerusalem.
The next day was Sunday. What were we to do? Fortunately for us we had our wise counsellor and helper at hand. Padre Minns told us, Sgt. Jolly, Sgt Holmes, Sister Chadley and myself, to go immediately after breakfast to High Mass at the Church of the Dormition of Our Lady, and then explore the area in which the church stood. The Church of the Dormition is where the Blessed Virgin is said to have spent the latter part of her life and peacefully passed away. It was a very interesting experience watching the Benedictine monks performing their very involved ritual. It was wholly in Latin, but their pronunciation of Latin made it very difficult for me to follow.
After the service we came more or less by accident on the Sanctuary of the Cenacle or the Coenaculum – the room of the Last Supper. When we went to enter, we were confronted by an Arab, who charged us for entry. Many of the so-called holy places belong to the Moslems and are used as mosques. It is rather ironical that they, not being Christians, should cash in on the credulity of tourists and visitors. Sgt. Jolly and I hesitated a while, wondering whether it was worth paying I forget how many piastres to enter a plain ugly-looking building to see the place where Christ and his disciples had the Last Supper – one of the most moving episodes in the life of Christ, so beautifully represented in Leonardo da Vinci’s famous picture, although the long row of disciples all on one side of a long table could hardly be a true representation.
The Coenaculum was rather a disappointment, but the next place proved to be very interesting – the Church of Saint Peter in Gallicantu – Saint Peter and the crowing of the Cock – the spot where Peter was supposed to have denied Christ three times. Inside the church a deep cavern is shown, where Christ was supposed to have been imprisoned during the night before his crucifixion. But the interesting thing about this church was the large number of crowing cocks that could be heard around. We spent a very pleasant half hour sitting on a slope looking down on the Valley of Hinnom, or the Valley of Gehenna, or the Valley of the Last Judgment, and listening to these cocks.
We returned to the hostel through the Old City past several places of biblical interest. We went through the Armenian Quarter past the Church of St James the Less, the Armenian Cathedral. Here St James, the brother of St John, was beheaded in the year 44AD by order of Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great.
After lunch we were taken by Padre Minns in his truck to what I thought to be the most beautiful spot that I saw in Israel – a village called Ain Karem. Ain Karem is the birthplace of St John the Baptist. There are three churches there, all connected with John the Baptist – the Church of the Visitation, where Elizabeth the mother of John the Baptist met Mary, the mother of Christ – the Church of St John the Baptist- and then a most interesting old Russian church, full of ugly-looking bizarre icons. It had the atmosphere of a place that had seen better days, and that’s what it was. After the Revolution in Russia in 1917 the Russians ceased to believe in Christianity and drove out all religion from the Soviet Union. The result was that the church ceased to be supported by the Russians, and the only occupants at that time were two old Russian women, both over eighty years of age.
The most interesting place in the village was the well. The well plays an important part in the narrative of the Scriptures. This was the meeting place of the women, and indeed that was what it was in Ain Karem. It had walls built around it and a roof overhead. The floor was covered by about a foot of water, and it was there in the middle that stood the barefooted women and children, some washing clothes, some gossiping and others filling vessels with water to be carried to the houses.
It was a scene reminiscent of biblical times, but there was one phenomenon that to me shattered the romance of the place and reminded me forcibly of the modern civilisation of the West. Instead of seeing beautifully poised young women carrying earthenware pitchers of water on their heads or shoulders, you saw big blousy women carrying on their shoulders American Army petrol tins!
The landscape on one side of the village added to its beauty. You looked down upon a deep valley with steep slopes on either side. These slopes were neatly terraced and carefully cultivated.. It was an ideal site for the growing of the vine.
In the evening of that day, Sunday August the Fifth, we climbed to the top of the high Y.M.C.A. tower in the middle of the city, and had a glorious panoramic view of the whole city, Old and New, and very much of the surrounding country. We could see the Mount of Olives, the Dead Sea and the mountains of Moab in the far distance, Bethlehem and many other sights, all designated on an orientation table.
The next day was Monday the Sixth August. That morning Sgt. Jolly and I joined a trip to Jericho that had been arranged by the Y.M.C.A.. There were six of us in a taxi, with an Arab driving – a young man who could speak English fluently. We travelled down the Cedron Valley then up to Bethany, about 3 miles from Jerusalem. There we saw the grave of Lazarus. After leaving Bethany, we started a long descent, with an awesome sight in front of us: mountains and valleys completely bare and grey, not a strip of green in sight, the road a white ribbon encompassed by a barren desert. It was easy to realise why the way from Jerusalem to Jericho had been a haunt for thieves and robbers. We were shown the spot where a man was waylaid by robbers, and thought of the Good Samaritan story in the Gospels.
This spot was very remote with the surrounding country a wilderness where the robbers could flee without fear of being caught. The only building in sight on the 20 miles from Jerusalem to Jericho was a square grey building called Khan Hathrour, that is the Inn of the Good Samaritan.
The city of Jerusalem is situated 2,000 feet above sea level, while the Dead Sea near Jericho is 1,500 feet below sea level. Try and think what this really meant, especially on a day at the beginning of August – the sun scorching hot when we started the journey and indeed while travelling in the car we felt the heat becoming more and more oppressive all the way. You could see the effect of such heat in Jericho from looking at a Military Policeman we saw on duty at Allenby Bridge, a comparatively new bridge over the River Jordan, and leading to Transjordan and the mountains of Moab. The only clothing he had on was a pair of shorts and stockings and boots. His body was so suntanned that you could almost take him to be a native Arab.
Allenby Bridge was the first place in Jericho that we visited. As it was a newly built bridge, it held no historical interest for us, but running underneath the Bridge was the river that has impressed its name more deeply on the minds of people than say the Amazon, the Mississippi or any of the world’s largest rivers. But again my imagined picture was completely shattered. There is a well-known hymn in Welsh, whose first two lines are:-
‘Ar lan yr Iorddonen ddofn rwy’n oedi’n nychlyd
Mewn blys mynd trwy ac ofn ei stormydd enbyd.’
A rough translation would be:- ‘On the banks of the Jordan I wait trembling and longing to pass through, but in fear of the perilous storms.’
In my imagination the Jordan was a wide and deep river, at the least as wide as the Thames and much wider than the Tywi. I also imagined it to be clear and clean as it was the river in which Christ was baptised. But it was not so. It was a comparatively small river, smaller than the Tywi near Llandeilo. It was a greyish white colour and very muddy. But, of course, it must be admitted that it had not rained in these regions for 4 months; the surrounding land was scorched and covered with dust.
Halfway between the Bridge of Allenby and the place where the river Jordan runs into the Dead Sea there is a very small church built on the spot where Christ was baptised by John the Baptist, and strangely enough the caretakers of this little church are Abyssinians.
On the edge of the village there is a strong running well of clear fresh water. It is this well that produces almost all the greenness and fertility that can be seen all around Jericho. Water is such a precious asset that it is understandable why wells in the East, and even in wet Wales, are generally venerated as holy places.
We left Jericho in order to go down near the edge of the Dead Sea before returning to Jerusalem. The northern side of the Sea was like any seaside place in this country – European-type houses, a modern factory, a Café, and a kind of Lido. The factory was built in consequence of the war. There are valuable mineral deposits in the Dead Sea suitable for the manufacture of ammunition. These valuable deposits are found because the River Jordan, a fresh water river, runs into the Sea from which there is no outlet. So with the vaporising action of the hot sun the Dead Sea has become a heavily salted sea, much saltier than any other sea in the world.
Swimming in the Dead Sea is a strange experience. You cannot sink in it because of the density of the salt. I have a picture somewhere of a man sitting on the surface of the water holding an umbrella in one hand and a book in the other, reading at leisure. But woe betide you if you happen to swallow a mouthful of the water. It is also essential for you to wash yourself with clear fresh water after bathing in order to remove all the scaly salt from your body, and in the Lido there are showers for this very purpose. After this strange experience it was time to return to Jerusalem over the same deserted road through the terrifying wilderness.
In the evening Sgt. Jolly and I went over to the Mount of Olives down the Valley of Cedron, past the Garden of Gethsemane and the huge cemetery of the Jews. On top of the Mountain we saw the church of Pater Noster. For us Welsh people there is one feature of great interest in this Church. On its walls there are very many tablets having the Lord’s Prayer inscribed on them in different languages and thanks to a Welshman, Richard Hughes, who lived in Jerusalem at that time, the Lord’s Prayer in Welsh can be seen on one of the tablets.
Tuesday morning Sgt. Jolly returned to Beirut. I was very sorry to lose his company. However, I was determined to see as many sights as I could on the two remaining days of my leave. So on that morning I went to the Y.M.C.A. to see what trips had been arranged for the day.
I joined a party that was going to visit the Old City and the area of the Temple. We entered the Old City through the Jaffa Gate and followed the Street of King David. I am sure that the word street conjures up the picture of a broad and busy road in an European town. Well this street was a strange one: the most important street in the Old City and yet not more than about six yards wide – not wide enough for motor cars but wide enough for camels, donkeys, and sheep and then almost along its whole length women sitting down on either side with their baskets full of every kind of produce. It was quite an adventure, but an interesting one, for some twenty of us to push our way through the jostling humanity that was moving along or standing or sitting in King David Street. It was interesting to study the rugged faces of the women who were selling their wares at the side of the street, to study the different types with their different dresses.
We made our way through this seething crowd to the Temple, the Temple of Solomon, then the Temple of Herod and after that the Temple of the Mohammedans, and that is what it is now- the Temple of the Mohammedans, the Mosque of Omar, or the Dome of the Rock. It is far from easy for someone like me who has no great literary capability to describe the beauty and the magnificence of the Temple. It is a large octagonal, building, while its dome, like that of St. Paul’s, can be seen from several directions and from afar. The Arabs enter their mosques barefooted, but we were allowed to go in after putting some kind of slippers over our shoes. And, as usual, there were about twenty Arab children trying to push these slippers on us and to put them on our feet in order to win a few millemes or even piastres.
If the sight from the outside was wonderful, the sight inside was still more wonderful – a large section of dark rock surrounded by a low wall and tall pillars. Perhaps the best way for me to give you a picture of this is to get you to imagine a circus tent with its ring in the middle but in the temple instead of the saw-dust was a large section of rock, the top of Mt. Moriah, and instead of the ringside seats an empty space covered by a beautiful Persian carpet. Walking on it was like walking on velvet.
Beneath the rock there is a cell or cave. There is a hole leading down to the cell from the top of the rock, a channel, it is said, down which the blood of the sacrifice could run. This was the Mountain of Moriah where Abraham was going to sacrifice his son Isaac.
There is another mosque in the area of the Temple – the Mosque of El Aqba – very unlike the Dome of the Rock, a less ornate building and much more airy and bright. But what made the biggest impression on me was the structure outside the mosque, that had been built so that the worshippers could wash their feet, hands and face. It was a kind of circular water tank built of concrete, with all around it, every yard or so, water taps, and in front of each tap a seat made of stone. The worshippers sat on the seat, turned on the tap, and then washed their feet, hands and face.
It was no wonder that the Pharisees were so adamant about the necessity of washing before eating. We in this country have very little experience of dust – we have so much rain, and also macadamised roads. But in Palestine both the roads and the fields are covered with dust. Water too is a scarce commodity.
After entering the mosque, we could understand why such cleanliness was so important. The whole surface area was covered with a beautiful deep-piled Persian carpet like that of the Dome of the Rock. So the washing had two purposes: one the maintenance of body cleanliness – ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness’ – and the other not to dirty the fine carpet. The worshippers could be seen here and there on the carpet, bare of furniture, kneeling, bending and praying in the manner of the Moslems.
We made our exit from the Temple area by a different gate from the one by which we entered. Then we made our way to a very significant part of history to the Jews, the Wailing Wall. The wall is about fifty yards long and sixty feet high, and the lower courses are of enormous blocks of brownish stone – one of them sixteen and a half feet long, and thirteen feet wide. This is believed to be the only fragment of the Temple wall which the soldiers of Titus did not destroy after the siege of 70 A.D.
Round the corner is a police box, where a British policeman is on duty to prevent trouble, for the Wailing Wall, which was owned by the Moslems, is one of the danger spots of Jerusalem. It must be kept in mind that I am describing the Jerusalem of 1945, when Palestine was under the Mandatory rule of the British. So my descriptions will hardly tally with those of the modern tourists.
The last day of my leave, Wednesday 8th of August, came much too soon. There were still many sights that I had not seen, and one of these was the Sea of Galilee. So again I decided to find out in the Y.M.C.A. whether a trip to Galilee had been arranged for that day. I was told that I could join two old American ladies in a taxi and that the trip would cost me a pound. I was rather doubtful about the prospect of sharing the journey with two brash American women, but I need not have worried. They were very interesting company, and so was our Arab chauffeur, who had a fluent command of English.
We proceeded along the fiery land of hills past several flocks of sheep led by their shepherds. It seems that the reason why the sheep and the shepherd are on such familiar terms in the Holy Land is that sheep are kept chiefly for wool and milk and therefore live longer and exist together as a flock for a considerable time.
About sixteen kilometres from Jerusalem we came to a place called El Bireh. It was here that Jesus’ parents noticed that their son was missing, when they were on their way back from Jerusalem. On returning to Jerusalem they found him sitting in the Temple surrounded by the teachers, listening to them and putting questions.
We descended from the hills to the Valley of Shechem where the town of Nablus is situated. The people here are fanatical Moslems and amongst them are the strangest sect in the world – the Samaritans. These people have remained absolutely pure in blood for two thousand five hundred years. They claim they are the only true representatives of the Children of Israel and they hate the Jews almost as much as they did in the time of Christ.
Before arriving at Nablus we came to Mount Gerizim and stopped at Jacob’s Well where Christ met the Samaritan woman. The picture I had had of the well was again shattered. I had imagined, and indeed I had seen in a picture in an illustrated Bible women carrying water in pitchers from a source of running water. But what I saw was a small Greek Orthodox church built over a deep well sunk into the ground. The church was in the charge of an Orthodox priest who told us that the well was 80 feet deep, and this he proved by putting a lighted candle in a bucket attached to a winch and letting it down a very deep walled well.
From Nablus we proceeded to a small village called Jenin, the Biblical Ennganim. I remember our stop here very well for the reason that we stopped near a stall of the most luscious fruit, oranges, melons and grapes. We all bought a quantity of these luscious grapes at a ridiculously low price. Our driver too bought a melon but only after he had felt and thumbed it several times, explaining to us at the same time what qualities to find in a sweet and juicy melon. Then on to Nazareth, Christianity’s most holy town. Here Christianity began about two thousand years ago. The house of Joseph and family is where the Church of St. Joseph has been built over caves, cisterns and silos. These really present a graphic impression of the conditions in which people must have lived then.
Further on the way to Galilee is Cana, where Jesus performed his first miracle – the turning of water into wine. Then on to Galilee. The road begins to run steadily down-hill. The air grows hotter as it descends to the Sea, 700 feet below sea level. You come to the palms, the greenness, the blue lake water, and the white roofs of Tiberias. There is a small hotel by the Sea, and this is where we stopped. We parked ourselves round a table with a sunshade on the patio outside and had a full view of the glorious scenery around, the blue sea dotted with the occasional fishing vessel, and the wild and barren mountain of Gadara on the other side. We had a snack meal on the patio and it was here that our driver decided to try the melon he bought in Jenin. He drew a knife from his pocket, and demonstrated the art of cutting a melon. That must have been the most juicy and most tasty melon I have ever eaten.
In addition to seeing Tiberias, we saw the old cities of Bethsaida and Capernaum and on the return journey the Mount of Beatitude was pointed out to us. We also saw some Jewish settlements, or Kibbutzim. The kibbutzim contrasted vividly with some of the Arab villages. The kibbutz was busy and thriving, and the land around was fertile and productive, while the Arab village illustrated the Arab attitude of resignation to fate and poverty.
On my return from Jerusalem to Beirut I met in Haifa Capt. Davies, the officer-in-charge at the Beirut H.Q., and was asked to drive back to Beirut the Army truck in which he had travelled. As usual the sun was scorching hot and with the breeze blowing hot in the open truck, I burned my lips badly. The burn turned into an ugly scab. I felt very conscious of this, and, as I thought that the sergeants at their meals in the Sergeants’ Mess were eyeing me as if they thought that my lips might be carrying an infection, I asked the Mess waiter to give me the same knife, fork, and spoon for every meal. However it became very doubtful whether this instruction was being carried out so I decided to pay a visit to the M.O..
The M.O., after a quick look, got hold of the ugly scab with his fingers, and with a sudden pull, took it right off, leaving just bare flesh. Then he dabbed some ointment on. I asked him what ointment it was, and he replied, ‘Penicillin’. That was the first time I had heard of Penicillin, and indeed this was soon after the magic ointment had been brought into commercial use. But what a marvellous cure! In just a few days my lips were restored to their normal condition.
I returned to Beirut on the Ninth of August. The first atom bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima on the Sixth and the second atom bomb on Nagasaki on the Ninth. Then Japan surrendered unconditionally on the fifteenth. But the Government had decided before these events to begin demobilising the troops.
This time the shambles that occurred at the end of the First World War was not to be repeated. There was no order and no definite plan for demobilisation then. Every unit was clamouring to be demobilised at the same time. The difficulties of transport and many other factors prevented quick demobilisation with the result that there were many mutinies among the troops.
This time demobilisation was to take place in an orderly way. All troops were divided into groups according to age and length of service. Group One would be demobilised first and then groups of up to one hundred and more would follow one another, when the arrangements could be made for each group to be demobilised without undue problems. My group was the twenty fourth, and it was anticipated that this group’s turn would come in November or possibly December.
So if the call for A.E.C. work was unenthusiastic and spasmodic before, it was now almost non-existent. All units were busy dismantling and getting ready for disbanding. I too lost all enthusiasm, with my mind concentrated on returning home and picking up the threads again. This attitude must have been obvious to the officers-in-charge at the Hospital, who had decided that the need of the hospital patients was occupational therapy rather than preparation for rehabilitation in civilian life.
So, to my surprise, an A.E.C. sergeant with qualifications in Handicrafts, who had been stationed in Reading for a brief period before I was sent abroad, arrived in the person of Sgt. Corbin. I had already had personal experience of Sgt. Corbin’s expertise, and had produced a soft toy, a penguin, for Nest. Eventually it was decided that there was no call for two A.E.C. instructors in the Hospital, and so I was transferred to Cyprus. More about this later.
If the British showed no enthusiasm for education, there was on the other hand some show of educational activity among the West Africans who acted as orderlies in the Hospital wards. There was a big contrast between the West Africans, who were mainly Ibos from Nigeria, and the East Africans attached to the Hospital.
The Ibos were very intelligent and eager to improve their lot; they were eager to return to Nigeria, not to take part in agriculture where, in the opinion of the Europeans, they were needed most, but to become engaged in administrative work. The East Africans, mainly from what at that time was Tanganyika, were of very low intelligence and had been recruited to the Pioneer corps to perform menial jobs. One of these menial jobs was to clean the buckets used as toilets in the billets. These buckets could be moved from the toilets through holes specially built in the walls at the back of the billets. It was a disconcerting, but maybe amusing, experience to have the bucket whipped away from underneath as you were sitting on the lavatory seat in the early morning.
Several of the Ibos were following correspondence courses run by unknown and less reputable American Universities. One of these students was Prince Omoigo. At any rate he claimed to be a Prince. He came to me one day saying that the University, with which he was following a correspondence course, required him to sit an examination and that it wanted a reputable person to receive the examination papers and to supervise the examination. So it was arranged that I should take that responsibility.
So the day of the examination was arranged and a room allotted for it. If I remember rightly, it was a three hours paper and was duly started at 9.30 am. After about half an hour had passed it became obvious that Prince Omoigo found it impossible to answer the questions. After a while he asked permission to leave the room in order to go to the toilet. I asked him whether he had to go, and when his answer was, ‘yes’ I told him that under such circumstances it was the usual practice for a responsible person to accompany the candidate to the toilet so that any cheating could be avoided. Well, I was obviously the responsible person in this case, and so I accompanied him to the toilet, but felt that I should have to be content with staying outside the closed door.
I waited and waited, and so in the end I decided to open the door, only to find him still with his pants down and sitting on the toilet. I told him that he could no have more time and must return to the examination room immediately. After returning he settled down and this time began to write. However I kept an eagle eye on him and grew suspicious when I noticed that he was now and again furtively looking down at this knees. So I jumped on him, and asked him to give me what he had on his knees. It was a sheet of paper, full of relevant notes, which he had obviously managed to produce in the toilet. Being used to keeping strict standards of honesty in public examinations, I told him I would have to cancel his papers and would have to make a report to the Examining Body. He begged and begged me not to do this, even descending to offers of a bribe. Of course, I carried out my threat even though I received a begging letter from him soon after. This letter I still have in my possession.
I had decided to make the most of the time while waiting for demobilisation. I was going to have as much enjoyment as possible, although I must admit that at times I had pricks of conscience over neglecting those duties for which I had been sent abroad. I visited the town of Beirut quite often in order to see how the Lebanese lived, what kind of shops they had, what museums were there, and indeed how it contrasted with a modern city in England and Wales. One difference was evident, as indeed is to be seen in all Middle Eastern cities – a tremendous difference between the rich and the poor. Even in those streets where there were expensive shops, the poor could be seen with their begging bowls, and in the late evening could be seen lying down in doorways preparing for a night of what must have been a fitful sleep.
At this time of the year it was so hot in the afternoons that all business and all work was stopped for a siesta from midday to five o’clock. But several of the Hospital staff took advantage of this lull in work to go swimming off one of the beaches in Beirut. A truck was laid on every afternoon, so I decided to join the party. But the spot chosen out of long stretches of sandy beaches was in the middle of rocks with a pebbly surface to the edge of the water, where poor swimmers like me could bathe. The majority of the party were expert divers and they spent all the afternoon diving from the rocks into deep and clear narrow stretches of water between high rocks. I decided that his arrangement did not suit me. So I soon discontinued accompanying the party.
During this time small groups of the staff became eligible for demobilisation. Actually, there were very few who qualified for the lower groups, such as 1 to 12. But however small the number who came in these groups, a farewell party was arranged by the nurses every time a group was announced to be due for return to the home country.
The nurses, during their service in the Hospital, had accumulated large funds, and now that there was every prospect of the Hospital being disbanded in the near future, they had decided to spend their funds on farewell parties for all the Hospital staff. There was an almost unlimited supply of alcoholic drinks and for me, who indulged in these very sparingly, it was not easy to refuse the drinks that were pushed on every one present. However, I had made up my mind that I was not going to be drunk. I adopted a plan of campaign. I accepted every offer of a drink, took a sip, and then surreptitiously poured the rest into the many flower pots in different parts of the room. In that way I remained perfectly sober, while many who drank all that was offered to them became paralytically drunk and could be seen lying stretched out on the floor.
I was soon informed that my services as an A.E.C. instructor were no longer required in the Hospital and that Sgt. Corbin’s services as an occupational therapist were preferable. I wondered whether I should be transferred to a location where my work would be as little demanding as in Beirut, and where I could spend the expected short period before demobilisation in an equally desirable place. This time again, good fortune was on my side. I was transferred to Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus.