THE VOYAGE HOME

Korero (AEWS), Volume 3, Issue 12, 16 July 1945, Page 16

THE VOYAGE HOME

From “ Letter to a Soldier ” by

(Part I.)

Friday threatened to be something exceptional in the way of irritating, boring, tiring days. Breakfast was at 0600 hours, rather early considering that we were not to embus until 0815. We were scheduled to leave Maadi at 0830 for the short road journey to the Tura railway siding, where the train would leave (according to schedule) at 0945 hours. Again the wonder at an army movement, any of which appeared to be spent in just waiting. This practice of parading men hours before necessary, whether for leave or a unit move into a forward area, at first amazed me, but later became irritating. Perhaps one should have become accustomed to it, but whenever such a practice affected me (and that, praise be, was nowhere near as often as it might have been) I always thought that in the execution of a movement order, as in so many military institutions, the common sense factor could have been introduced with benefit.

But we were to witness one of those rare exceptions to the general rule, both of the Army and Egyptian State Railways, as, amazingly, the train pulled out of Tura ahead of time and rolled slowly past the British signals camp and across the road that leads from tree-shaded Maadi township, cool in summer, up past the oasis of that wonderfully hospitable Maadi Tent, to our old sandy, hutted and tented camp—N.Z. Maadi Camp, as it was known officially, home of base wallahs, home for the Division, wholly or in part, for more than five years ; cursed and

loathed, welcomed and liked, its lay-out printed indelibly in every soldier’s mind. The movement of the wheels and the slow passing of that familiar landscape seemed to give fragmentary significance to the words we had been speaking to ourselves and to each other for so long. “ We are going home. I am going home.” It was as though we were closely associated with some fantasy ; something delightful happening to some one, pleasant to watch, but something, of course, that could not possibly include us. “ This train journey is yet another stage in a comprehensive movement taking me nearer to New Zealand,” one thought, and might as easily have said, “ The khamseen will be here in a few days.” It seemed illusory, this knowledge—this dream coming true. To travel down through Italy should have initiated a solid character into this dream of so many hundreds of waking and sleeping hours ; but this series of journeys was completely devoid of drama. Perhaps it was that one had been away so long ; that one had been governed by routine so much for the last four years ; that HOME was still so many weeks distant perhaps any, or all, or more of such factors accounted for the lack of intense emotion one had imagined present in so many previews of the actual movement. To leave Taranto should, I know, have been an occasion calling for rows of wildly cheering men lining the ship’s rails, flinging hats in the air, whirling in extreme excitement. Instead, one or two quietly observed the obvious with “ Well,

we are on our way,” and many rather hastily and untruthfully agreed that the coast disappearing over the starboard quarter formed their most favourable impression of Italy. Perhaps because we were disembarking in Egypt, with the prospect of spending weeks there, accounted for this attitude of an almost resigned acceptance. Perhaps in the case of so many the magnet of Home had decreased in attraction against the powerful, indefinable pull of a comradeship in the hazards of war ; it had been so completely a separate life. But, in the main, I think it was that years of discipline, routine, and restraints, both physical and mental, had formed a shell too strong to be cracked by the significance of fact. It was to most of us just another army movement, continuing years of army movements, and even though one knew that one was starting on the long voyage home it did not seem, in army parlance, to “ ring a bell.”

But the train wheels as we ground slowly through the graveyards of the Dead City, along the line that runs under the towering escarpment ; while we rolled backwards and forwards through the main Cairo network, were steadily clicking the message through, “ You’re going home. You’re going home.” And acceleration came with the long, fiat stretches of rocky desert so that, detraining for a night in a transit camp a few miles short of Port Tewfikh (Suez), the trance of four war-hypnotic years had started to fade a little and one could say with less mesmeric bewilderment, “ I am going home.”

There is nothing spectacular in the actual movement of large bodies of men. A group is collected at one point by a series of sub-collections and eventually transferred to another point, but there is little to indicate the intricate, detailed administrative work behind such a movement. The organization needed to transfer several thousand men from Italy to a point of embarkation in the Middle East is tremendous. Beginning many months ago, when first the order was given for the repatriation of this particular group of long-service men, there had been a colossal sea of detail and calculation.

Apart • from such major issues as the availability of shipping, rolls had to be prepared, men withdrawn from, units, replacements found for key personnel ; men had to be assembled from many points and then, the whole roster of military procedure involved— inspections, kit inspections, inoculations, dental inspections, withdrawal of equipment, issue of clothing, balancing of paybooks ; parades, parades, parades—had to be carried out, first in Italy and again in Egypt. One' had little time, then, to realize more than remotely the purpose of it all. One knew, but it still meant next to nothing. Reflexes were still those of a soldier, an automaton used for military purposes. There seemed not to be anything personal in it all.

It was this vast, intricate network of administration that brought us at its peak to the small piers of Port Tewfikh, to a sight of dirty grey hulls in the roadstead, and from the last roll check to embarkation lighters. A warming spring sun shone beneficently over Suez waters, blue as publicity posters ever made them, kitbag and suitcase-laden, men clumsily negotiated steps and rails to the lighters’ decks. And it was in sober fashion that the men chaffed the garrulous, dirtygalabiehed rais, master of the lighter. He was “ George ” almost with affection. He was the representative of all “ Georges,” and, through him, in the chaffing that was almost affection, there was a farewell to the character of the galabieh, for so long kicked, cursed, caricaturedand liked.

We go aboard. There is a general settling into quarters. There is a general investigation of the ship, with the two vital questions, “ Where do we eat ? ’’and “ Where do we wash ? ” quickly answered. The bow points towards the desert, and it takes all afternoon to bring the luggage aboard.

We have exchanged tents pitched in whirling sand for cramped sleepingquarters between steel walls. “ This is to be home for the next four or five weeks,” one says.

A torrid Red Sea day gives way to sultry night. The air is filled with the threat of the khamseen, old terror acquaintance of desert days, reminder of sandgritted teeth, hair, tea, bread, blankets, eyes ; of dust-filled, hot, choking winds and nights when sleep was impossible.

All is calm. There is no sense of motion. The funnel and masts are still against the sky. Over the starboard quarter a shining golden path leads to a half moon riding low among the stars.

Seven bells sounds faintly. It is our first night at sea.

Rumours abound aboard this ship. They do on any troopship. In fact, rumours form a distinct part of army life anywhere. Many times some one heard of the Division’s move from some one who knew as a hard fact that some one had heard that the colonel’s batman had overheard a conversation. The majority of rumours, right from the time of mobilization in the long, long ago, bore what

was supposed to be a more or less official stamp —“ This came straight from the orderly-room ” —but the genuine hallmark of the class rumour was “ Keep this to yourself, Dig, but I’ve just heard . . .” Some one had " just heard ” something at almost any time on subjects ranging from the contents of despised M. and V. stew to the Division’s role in the Far East war.

Lacking an enthusiasm for statistics, and being somewhat intolerant of rumours since being compelled to listen to such a crop during our voyage so far, I have not kept a record of the constant variations in imaginative dinkum oils. But plenty have circulated.

We were to stop at Aden. We were not stopping at Aden. We stopped at Aden, there joining the other vessels of the convoy, together with our escort.

We were not calling at Colombo ; just the escort, for refuelling, while we marked time in the vicinity.

We were calling into Colombo because (a) this ship was short of fresh water, (&) one of the other vessels was short of fuel and had engine trouble, and (c) one of the vessels had to put ashore a patient requiring an abdominal operation and this could not be done aboard.

We tied up in Colombo, but were not permitted shore leave.

However, this provided the rumourcirculating concerns with an excellent field-day.

We were next calling at Fremantle.

We were not calling at Fremantle, but heading straight for Melbourne.

The presence of Australian air and naval personnel aboard these ships, together with the fact that the repatriation scheme was assumed to require direction from experienced Government officials who must join the ships somewhere, made a call at some Australian port a certainty. The rumours went on and on and on.

“ This ship is now bound for Melbourne,” said the voice of officialdom over the ship’s loud-speaker half an hour after clearing Colombo’s breakwater, and thus settled all doubts, at least for a time. A very good thing, that laconic speech.

Bound for Melbourne ! All doubts settled. Melbourne is very near home. How pleasing to contemplate ! How pleasant now to calculate. A ship’s officer had said ten days to Fremantle (or* the rumours said so). Ten days of Indian Ocean, crossing the equator again, through the tropics. I forget calculations and recall the voyage of four years ago, crossing this same stretch of ocean with the world’s two largest liners and three other transAtlantic leviathans forming the convoy. What a wonderful sight ; we on the great grey Mauretania to look across to where, steaming in line abreast, her big sister ships, the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth lanced blue waters with prows and stream-lined bulks. They were days of hot, calm weather with a flat sea tilting first to one horizon and then the other as the great ships rolled evenly on a miles-long, imperceptible swell. Day after hot day with vagrant breezes welcomed on sun-burned perspiring bodies. Day after day with the wet-brown, glistening bodies of porpoises playing follow-the-leader in a seemingly endless chain. Nights of pleasant cooling calm, with a hard deck the mattress. Night after night when the convoy glided on in a majestic silhouette of great decks, funnels and masts, its course traced by snow-white bow waves and creaming wakes which cut the ocean in broad, even swathes. And lying on the deck, drowsy with the rip of water along the giant steel sides and the drone of the ventilation system, to see the stars, the Southern Cross dropping further towards the horizon every night until it no longer appeared last familiar sight before the strange world ahead and the adventure of war.

It will be the same again—only the course is reversed. We are coming away from those four years.

So I count the ten days to Fremantle. It may possibly take five days to Melbourne from the west and five days across the Bight means probably the roughest weather of the trip, with wet decks heaving in the mist. It was not so bad when we crossed in 1941. The first day on a truly troubled Tasman had inoculated me against sea-sickness, and

the rolling, tumbling mountains and valleys of the Bight had not affected me. But sea legs do not come with weeks of calm in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, and I face the prospect of some discretionary fasting and resting, even though the atmosphere in “ B Deck Dormitory—2o Officers ” will not be the best for resting when everybody is doing it. But that is anticipating with gloom. There is a much better way of looking at it. Those five days will race by because the adjustment in time as we travel east has the satisfying illusion of making the journey quicker, and clocks move on some hours across the Bight. So there is a total of fifteen days to Melbourne. Without stretching our legs ashore since leaving Suez we hopefully expect one day’s shore leave at Melbourne while the convoy refuels. So far there has not been a rumour on the question of leave. But, assuming the convoy, leave or no leave, stays two days at Melbourne, I can count, so far, seventeen days.

Seventeen days. Then the Tasman. Four days to cross the Tasman. That makes twenty-one days. It is unlikely that we will go ashore and entrain the day we arrive in Wellington, especially if it is late afternoon or evening. So it will be the twenty-second day. Twentytwo days ! The fog of unreality begins to clear a little more. Twenty-two days from now I should arrive at Napier railway station.

Is it twenty-two days to heaven ? Perhaps.

(To be continued.)