My National Service continued (3)
Chapter Five
Arriving at 3GHQ Fayid was like leaving a little village and coming to the big city. This was the headquarters of the Middle East Land Forces, with the facilities to manage troops at all the bases in Middle East countries. There were huge workshops, airfields, administration blocks, acre upon acre of storage areas for vehicles, tanks, and guns. The whole place was full of activity 24 hours a day. There was even a shopping centre, mainly for the married families there. There were cinemas (somewhat basic), numerous recreation clubs run by various charitable organizations, and a forces club on the edge of the great Bitter Lake where, on a day off, you could enjoy swimming or a bit of boating. When we arrived we were quickly allocated to a tent which fortunately carried a number, or I don't think we would ever have found it again. We weren't allowed to linger long - after a wash and a meal we were summoned to the presence of the major in charge of the GHQ telephone exchange, given our shift times and told to report as "observers" on the next shift. The exchange was some distance away and we were taken there by lorry. It was a vast building, and contained switchboards the size of which we had never seen before. It had 2000 internal lines and about 500 external ones. We weren't allowed to "observe" for long, we were given a headset and put onto the board. Despite it's size, the principle of operation was the same as any other board, and indeed it was somewhat easier, because if a lot of lights were coming up on your section and it was hard to cope, operators on other sections could take the calls off you onto their board. Although extremely busy, I found it more pleasant and interesting than the quiet switchboards - boredom never had a chance to set in. I remember that I had only been there about five minutes, when a red light flashed. We had been taught that these priority lights had to be dealt with in a fraction of a second, and I'm glad to say that reaction kicked in and I immediately took the call. I found afterwards that it was the "big man" in charge of MELF, so I would probably have been on an enquiry on my first day if I hadn't dealt with it quickly!
From then on it was regular shifts. Night ones were a bit quiet and occasionally you were allowed a bit of "shut-eye". This was a real bit of luxury really, because all the equipment needed to be kept at a constant temperature, so the building was air-conditioned. Real bliss in comparison to sleeping in the heat of the tent. Unfortunately too much sleep wasn't allowed off duty, for guard duties came round frequently. This was a sensitive area, and although there was a bit of anti-British feeling, it hadn't reached the real hatred that became apparent a few years later. Even so, we had to be vigilant and there were a number of episodes where arms were fired. Hopefully it was not ourselves that were involved, because every incident was fully investigated and a lot of paper work had to be completed. It was at this time that a changeover was made, and instead of the faithful rifle we were issued with the new Sten guns. These were very unreliable and totally inaccurate and scared us all to death when we fired them. It was when on guard duty with a Sten gun that the orderly officer approached me out of the darkness, and reprimanded me for not saluting him. I stood at attention, but informed him that as far as I was aware there was no known instruction as to how to salute with a Sten gun, which rather took him aback. He turned to his sergeant behind him, who confirmed what I said and he departed muttering to himself something like "What's the British army coming to?". As far as I know the issue was never resolved, so I would be very interested to know what would have happened if the CO had arrived to inspect the guard, and we were instructed to "Present Arms"!
After a couple of months on the board, the sergeant in charge of the shift informed me that he was pleased with my operation and was going to recommend me for the exalted position of deputy shift NCO, which meant I was to become a lance-corporal. Before I got too excited I was told that this would be, for the time being, an "acting" promotion, which meant that I received no extra pay for it! However, I liked the responsibility - I could now even throw my weight about a bit! What I didn't like was that I was to be sent to El Ballah on an NCO's course for two weeks. This was a bit like going back to basic training, but I found it worthwhile, but I always thought a lance corporal was neither one thing or another. A sergeant or a corporal could pass the buck down to you to undertake things, but you were stuck with it - nowhere to pass it! However it had it's benefits, and when that great increase in pay of a few shillings finally arrived I felt a rich man!
So life carried on in a routine manner - both work and spare time were pleasant, but there were changes afoot. Female members of the armed services were very rare in Egypt. I suppose it was because when we first got there it was classed as being "on active service" and in those days, female members were not in active service zones. So it was that we were taken aback to learn that the ATS were coming as switch-board operators, and the male operators would be going on other duties - except for the NCO's. We would remain in charge of the shifts, and would train the ATS in all the work of the GHQ switchboard. Within a couple of weeks I had a new female shift. Now I don't wish to appear unkind, but I don't think any of them would be entering glamour contests, some would be more at home putting the shot in the women's Russian team of the Olympics! The trouble was they were a few hundred females amongst thousands of men, and they intended to make the most of it! The only way to survive was to be really strict and horrible and keep their minds on their work. Now it was always the perk that the NCO's on night duty could put someone else in charge for an hour or so, and get their head down. All I will say is that I wouldn't have tried it if there hadn't been a lock on the door!
It wasn't long before we had done as required and the ATS NCO's gradually took charge and we too were surplus to requirements. I was sent to the Signals office, something entirely new to me and I found it somewhat boring. Boredom really set in later, because the clerk in charge of filing was off home for demob, and because for some reason an NCO had to be in charge of the files, I was put in this little office away from any other contact and was pushing bits of paper in files for a couple of hours a day, and then had nothing to do for the other six hours. I just couldn't envisage doing this for my remaining time in Egypt, so when I saw that volunteers were required for a "crash cipher course" my name went in like a shot. If I had gone in for this in England I would have gone to the War Office for six months training. Such was the shortage of cipher operators that this course was to cram it all into six weeks, and so it was off to El Ballah again - but getting there wasn't quite so easy a second time. I was given a rail pass to El Ballah station and told a truck would pick me up. I got off at this little station stuck in the middle of the desert - and no truck. I waited about an hour and the "station master" was shutting the place up ready to depart. This was the time when things had hotted up a bit between the Jews and the Arabs and twice trucks passed me by carrying Arabs waving guns around. I was even invited to jump up and they would take me to where I wanted to go - I declined! By now the light was beginning to go, and I felt I was in trouble. In the far distance I could see the barbed wire of what must be an army camp, so with my rifle and all my gear I hauled myself across the desert. Even when I got to the wire, I had to keep walking all around it until I found the gate and was challenged by the guard. In the guard-room the sergeant made a few phone calls, told me to go and get a meal and a truck would eventually come from my destination to pick me up. It turned out that on the camp that I was going to was an air-strip, and on that afternoon a private plane was being warmed up, so that King Farouk could flee the country if Jewish/Arab relations got a bit too hot. With all this going on the matter of picking up a lowly lance corporal got forgotten.
Chapter Six
The cipher course was very intense and pressurised. There was a lot to cram into those six weeks, and a lot of things to retain in ones memory. The chief instructor threatened me with failure, because one of the requirements was to be able to do proper touch typing. Unfortunately I had been messing about on typewriters before I went into the army, so of course I had devised my own form of fingering (not quite two fingered,but nearly). The instructor gave up in the end trying to get me to do it the proper way, and said he was turning a blind eye. His requirements of me were the speed and accuracy of my typing, and as I managed to type without error (something I can't manage now!) and still could beat the speed limit of the machine, he was satisfied that I would be able to handle cipher messages.
At the completion of the course I donned another stripe, and Corporal Jordan was assigned to GHQ cipher office. We had messages arriving in different coded forms, and we had books, perforated tapes and type rollers in teleprinter machines which were changed daily, to help us unravel the message forms. It wasn't always straightforward. All of these messages came to us via radio links, and reception from all parts of the world varied greatly. The easiest ones to decode were those received as perforated tape, which when run through a machine parallel with the "code" tape of that day, it would print out in recognisable words. That was the theory, but in practice two things happened. These messages should be in groups of four letters. Often there were only three and an imaginary letter would have to be inserted, or whilst the groups of four would be there, they were incorrect due to the transmission difficulties. Hopefully looking at the whole message you could make sense of it, but if there was any doubt you had to ask for a retransmission. Normally no problem, but every message had a grade of priority and if one of these was headed "Flash" all other work had to be dropped to rush this one out. And of course if luck would have it that it was one with all these faults ...........!
Our task was to produce readable messages, but of course we could not help taking an interest in the contents. It was not until I entered the cipher office that I realised all that was going on at that time in the Middle East. It was quite hair-raising to see how often we were on the brink of major problems, which without diplomacy could escalate so easily. At this time I said that never again would I believe what I read in the newspapers. We would have a day of frantic message decoding and knew all that was happening, and then next day I would read the paper. What I read there bore no relation to real events, and even today I never accept what I read as the truth. However, there is no doubt that this was my most interesting time of National Service. As well as the interest you felt that you were really doing something that mattered.
In early 1949 the period of service was gradually reducing. We had expected that we would be involved for two years but those getting demobbed were going earlier until it got down to eighteen months. One of the soldiers in my tent was due to depart for embarkation in two days when the whole camp was summoned on parade to be addressed by the Commanding Officer. He told us that there was a critical shortage of personnel to cover all the military tasks in the Middle East, and the War Office had ordered that all service would be extended by six months - and this was to take effect immediately. The next time I saw the soldier from my tent, there were tears in his eyes. His bag was packed, all the material issued to him for camp use had been handed in and now he wasn't going. There were a lot more soldiers feeling just a bit choked that day!
If there was a bright side to this, it still looked as if no-one would do more than two years and in fact at the end of July 1949 I received all my paperwork to proceed to Port Said transit camp to await a ship for home. Spirits drooped somewhat when it was found that those already at the camp had been waiting weeks to get onto a boat. The days there were dreary - we paraded every morning and the camp sergeant allocated us jobs for the day. So it came that one morning I was made orderly corporal for the day, the main task of which was to oversee the work in the admin. office. It was here that a little light switched on in my head, which made me do something that one is advised not to do in the army - volunteer for anything. I approached the sergeant and said that I realised his problem of allocating jobs every day, and if it would help I would volunteer to be the regular orderly corporal. So each day found me in the office grappling with lists of names to match up with places on various ships. There seemed to be no proper plan to take these names in any special order, so there was no problem ensuring that Corporal Jordan was on the list for the next ship out of Port Said! I have to admit that since that time I have had little pangs of conscience wonder how long some of my compatriots had to wait to get home, but I'm afraid it was every man for himself at the time!
Our first sight of England was Blackpool Tower on the horizon. We sailed past New Brighton and into Liverpool. We had a long wait to get through customs (what did they think impoverished soldiers would be bringing home), and were put on a train to Aldershot. Very speedily we were demobbed and given our rail passes. I don't know quite how it happened, but we were supposed to hand in all our uniform, but I came home in my army boots which served as good gardening boots for many a year. Planning the rail journey was a bit complicated, and I got as far as Leicester at 3 o'clock in the morning, and found that the first train to home was not for another four hours. This was "what the heck" time so I went out of the station to a taxi firm and another soldier and I shared a taxi for half of the journey home, he having a lesser distance to go. I never knew if my parents really appreciated being woken up so early to greet their returning soldier son, but it was good (and strange) to be home.
I had three weeks demob. leave due to me, but of course I had to think about civilian work, but that's not part of this story.
To be continued. Go to http://www.webspawner.com/users/melbray4/index.html
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Opening Chapters
Chapters 3 and 4
Final Chapters
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