Vehicles of the Royal Army Service Corps stationed in the camp near Suez. Text and Photos by Sam Zebba

Sam Zebba recounts some vivid scenes he experienced as a soldier serving in the British army stationed in the Suez Canal.

"Nex’,” shouts the Egyptian impatiently behind the counter, and slaps the palm of his hand noisily onto the surface, “What you want?” He is all business, and his defiant eyes say it all: ‘the morning break is short, the canteen is full, no time for long selections, you Englishman.’  Not that there was much of a choice anyway. It is tea or lemonade.

No sooner does the customer utter his wish, and the Egyptian, at the top of his voice, hollers a long “uahad shaay” (one tea) or “uahad lamoun” (one lemonade) to no one in particular.  Completing the financial side of the transaction, the palm of his hand hits the counter again, and another “Nex’” is hurled at the queue.  The scream of the order, however, does not go unnoticed.  A terrified little boy, the Egyptian’s son or child laborer, deftly fills his master’s commands, though never gaining as much as a glance of recognition from his irate boss.

When my turn in the queue comes up, I save the Egyptian the dialogue and yell out, in my best guttural Arabic, an extended “uahad lamoun,” followed by a loud slap of the right change onto the counter.  The Egyptian is flustered, but not for long.  Calmly he turns to the kid, jerks his head in my direction and allows, almost in a whisper, “Ha’ateenhu uahad lamoun,” (pass him a lemonade).  

Except for the wooden shack of the NAAFI canteen, and the tin shower-house built on a cement floor, with running water for one hour in the early morning, the rest of the camp is tents and trucks.  The camp is surrounded by barbed wire, though inside and out, as far as the eye can see, the landscape is the same – flat empty desert.  Not the graceful sand undulations one might expect, but a hardened, depleted patch of naked planet.

We are in the Land of Goshen, a strip of Egypt not far from the ramshackle town of Suez, which marks the southern end of the famed canal that bears the town’s name.  Surgically separating Africa from Asia, yet strategically linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, and thus to the Far East beyond, this masterpiece of French ingenuity and English diplomacy ensures that the sun, as the saying goes, never sets on the British Empire.  

Uninhabitable as the land is, compelling events took place here at the dawn of history.  Goshen, according to the Book of Exodus, is where the Israelites, led by Moses, crossed the Red Sea from Egypt to the Promised Land, from bondage to freedom.  Miraculously, the Israelites walked across the waters safely on dry land, while the Egyptians, chasing them in their chariots, got clogged down in the rising waters and were drowned.

Since childhood I had been familiar, like any kid, with this dramatic yet implausible tale, recited every year in great wonderment on Passover night.  Growing up, however, one wondered whether the myth was a product of pure imagination - the poetic license of a religious ideologist, or of some kind of natural phenomenon that gave rise to the legend. 

I was forcefully reminded of the Exodus tale when I first visited the town of Suez.  The town was not out of bounds for military personnel, and if you got a pass and a ride, you could reach Suez in less than half an hour.  The road leading to the town was, for the last mile or two, an elevated stone causeway – with nothing but sand on either side up to the town’s first houses in the distance.  Astonishingly, the second time I traveled this road, the causeway was totally surrounded by water on both sides.  The Gulf of Suez ends in a shoal at its northern end which is dry at low tide and immersed during surge.  Could it be that this precise and awe-inspiring astronomical clockwork was behind the Red Sea tale? 

The task of Company 167 of the Royal Army Service Corps was to provide mobility and land transportation on the road along the western bank of the canal, from Port Taufiq - the naval installation at Suez – up to Ismailiya in the north, halfway to Port Said.  Keeping a large fleet of lorries in working condition was no trifling assignment, but thanks to cheap local labor - many of the hired hands arriving from Suez incredibly, on foot - the job got done. The enlisted men’s function was converted to ruling over a hapless mass of bedraggled oil changers, tire inflaters and water adders.    

The personnel of Company 167 were mostly British, but a few Jewish soldiers from Palestine were there when I arrived, and even Arab ones.  Palestine, a British Mandate, could not conscript, but was allowed to take volunteers, and for the Jewish community, joining the British army to fight against Germany was a matter of national priority.  In view, however, of British policy prohibiting Jewish immigration to Palestine, one was trapped in this duality of allegiance. Ben Gurion had famously defined the paradox, “We shall fight against the Germans as though there was no White Paper, and we shall fight against the British as though there was no war.”

Leaving the canteen, an airless wet sauna during the NAAFI break, I am overwhelmed by the dry sauna outside, which evaporates body liquids swiftly and mercilessly, much perhaps as a human soul evaporates from the body of a dying man.  But there is something else in the air: music, at full volume.  Speakers, newly mounted on the illumination poles throughout the camp, are shrieking out a simple little tune, repeated endlessly.  It is the national anthem of Egypt:

“King Farouk, King Farouk,

Taa  di daa di daa di daa,

King Farouk, King Farouk,

Taa di daa di daa di daa.”

What is this?  Are we celebrating Egypt’s Independence Day?  Or is a local technician with a biting sense of humor ‘testing’ the new sound system?

No.  The anthem is played by authority.  Trouble has developed in the civilian cinema at Suez, where at film’s end the Egyptian anthem is played and the populace stands to attention.  Typically, servicemen in the audience ignore the occasion and walk out, often raucously. Unhappily, when questioned, the excuse given by the men was ignorance of the tune.  Hence the free music lesson forced upon the camp.     

The tug-of-war between soldiers and commanders has surely existed since armies were invented.  In our tent, one fellow who planned to attend Cambridge after the war, helped the others appreciate the difference between officers and men.  Men sweat, he instructed, while officers perspire.  This was to be applied to a variety of other bodily functions, always with two appropriate and contrasting verbs. I must admit my English and my knowledge of anatomy improved markedly.

One of the Arab soldiers at the workshops, a jolly fellow who said he was from Palestine, approached me for a small loan.  Believing in maintaining friendly relations with our Arab neighbors, I loaned him a few pounds.   Strangely, from that day he was no longer seen around, perhaps ill or posted elsewhere.  One Sunday afternoon I went looking for him, passing among tents where Arabic was spoken. Entering one tent, there he was reclining on his cot, surrounded by a bunch of laughing buddies.  A sudden silence fell on the group.  The Arab comrade got up and declared, “You are not my friend.”  Starting toward me, I thought this signaled trouble, when he continued, “You are my 'brudda',” and embraced me in front of all his friends.  Was this a traditional ‘Sulha’ ritual - a forgiveness ceremony, or an improvised performance of a sharp conniver?  The debt was never mentioned again. 

I was promoted to lance-corporal and became a motorcycle rider on the Suez-Ismailiya Road.  My job was to halt our company vehicles and inspect their transit papers to make sure the trucks were not being deceptively misused.  I liked the tropical architecture of the Suez Canal Company buildings along the road, airy wooden structures with broad verandas dating from the Canal’s opening days in 1869.  I also discovered that the higher the motorcycle’s velocity, the cooler the temperature for the rider.  I liked those hours on the road, away from the camp and the local labor.

I remember once, in the noon hours of a particularly scorching day, a whispered rumor circulated through the camp: there’s water in the showers.  The message sounded unlikely, but indisputably deserved examination. One by one those in the know approached the shower-house and entered stealthily.  Incredibly, the rumor was true - a veritable miracle of an unseen modern-day Moses.  Instantly we were naked and under the sprays.   In a flash the shower-house filled up, everyone screaming for joy, caution thrown to the winds.

Suddenly the sergeant-major was among us, shouting desperately to be heard.  Enraged, he catches one of the naked fellows and addresses him as befits his rank and the occasion.  It is my Arab brudda who is caught.  Undaunted, he raises his arms innocently and says apologetically, “Me no English.”  To everyone’s disbelief, he turns away calmly and continues his douche.  Absurdly, the audacious ploy worked.  At once, none of us could fathom what the poor sergeant-major was trying to say, and like a wounded animal, humbled and seething, he stormed out.

No time to waste now.  In an instant we are dressed and fleeing, hiding at a safe distance to observe further developments. Indeed, here comes the sergeant-major again, gesticulating, the CO and a bunch of officers and interpreters in tow.  Triumphantly they enter the shower-house, then reemerge, visibly baffled.  They linger for a while, and finally disperse.  Any trace of water on the shower floor had most certainly evaporated before they arrived.     

Months passed.  The tiny puppy dog raised furtively by the Cambridge fellow in our tent came of age, and one morning half the dog population of Suez was there, flying through the barbed wire unharmed like trained circus animals.  For a full day and night the deafening, vicious orgy swept unpredictably, like the core of a tornado, throughout the camp.  In the end the young bitch ran off with the pack, probably to live happily ever after in the garbage-strewn alleys of Suez.  It was a day to remember:  Germany had surrendered.  The war in Europe was over.

Less than three months later, Clement Attlee was elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, ousting Churchill.  Sipping a 'lamoun' in the canteen that evening, I pondered the quirks of fate, as Chaucer had once put it, ‘of him that stood in great prosperity and is y-fallen out of high degree in misery.’  The canteen was almost empty.  Gently I woke the Egyptian sleeping behind the counter, and bought a standard stamped air letter form.

The next morning an orderly came to summon me to the CO. I knew, of course, what this was about, but did not share my hunch with the inquisitive messenger who accompanied me to the HQ tent.

It would be my second time in the CO’s presence.  The first time, soon after my arrival in Suez, I was on ‘stick orderly’ duty one night, hanging about HQ mainly to bring the CO a cup of tea from time to time.  I had just brought a fresh cup from the canteen when the sergeant-major, handling the change I carried back, accidentally dropped a few coins into the CO’s tea cup.  For a moment we shared a bit of a smile.  I suggested I’d go and bring another cup, but the sergeant-major rejected that.  With two fingers he started fishing the coins out of the opaque hot brew.  Judging by the man’s black-rimmed fingernails, he must have been a mechanic some time in his early life.  But when he finally retrieved the coins, the rims of two of his fingernails were a perfect white.  “Let me fetch another,” I put forward, but he said “No,” and ordered me to carry the vile potion in to the CO.

This time as I entered, the sergeant-major stared at me as if I had gone completely mad.  Without a word he motioned me to enter the Holy of Holies. I walked in and saluted, then remained at attention.  The CO sat behind a simple wooden table, one that might have been ill-crafted in Suez, bare but for a letter-opener and a stamped air letter next to it, light blue.  The address was handwritten, in my handwriting.

                                                Sir Winston Churchill

                                                10, Downing Street

                                                London, England

 “At ease,” said the CO, and I complied smartly, staring at an eye level point in front of me, above the CO’s head.  After a pause, he lifted the air letter and inquired, “Did you write this letter, lance-corporal?” 

Never before did my rank sound so lowly.  “Yes, Sir,” I replied.

Patiently he explained that in the army, if you have a complaint, you don’t write to the Prime Minister, you go to your corporal.

“Yes, Sir,” I agreed.

“Do you have a complaint?”

“No, Sir.”

There was a brief silence.  Then he lifted the letter opener.

“Do you mind if I open it?”

To this day I wonder what he would have done had I said, “Yes Sir, I do mind, Sir.  Letters ought to be opened by those to whom they are addressed.”  But even if his question was rhetorical, or even nasty, I could not but admire the sense of fairness he displayed.  He waited for my response.  For a moment I felt remorse for colluding with the sergeant-major in the tea episode long ago.  I could not, then, have disobeyed the sergeant-major, but I could have conveniently stumbled, fallen flat on the ground and spilt the loathsome liquid before delivering it to the CO.

 “No Sir, I do not mind,” I said.

Carefully he cut the letter open and read.  In it, I expressed gratitude to Mr. Churchill for conducting and winning the war. I likened Sir Winston to the Biblical Moses, leading the Free World from tyranny to liberty, from bondage to freedom.  And sadly, like Moses himself, he was now barred from entering the Promised Land. 

The CO took his time before he spoke.  He’d received a request, he finally said, to send a suitable candidate to an instructors’ course in the Army Education Corps.  Would I be interested?  I said I would, but that in truth my aspirations were eventually to seek a commission.  If I go to the course and do well, he said, he’d recommend me to an Officer Selection Board.  With that, the interview was over. 

“Thank you, Sir,” I said, saluted, and withdrew.  On my way out, the sergeant major followed me with a look of genuine pity.

The CO kept his word.  I was sent to the Army Education Corps, and following that to the Officer Selection Board at Maadi, near Cairo, where I made the grade.  By troopship from Port Said to Toulon, via British Cyprus and British Malta, and by military train through France which lay in ruins, and across the Channel, I finally reported to the famous Officer Cadet Training Unit at Aldershot, England and began my military education.  I never saw Suez again.

Not long after the war, in a military coup, King Farouk, the British proxy, was deposed and forced to abdicate.  Brashly, revolutionary Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, and although it was twice wrenched from her in battle, Suez was twice returned.  One by one, exotic crown jewels served by the canal - Aden, Bahrain, Singapore, Hong Kong, not to mention India, Nepal, Ceylon, Burma, Malaya, even Cyprus and Malta - dropped off the Empire tree like overripe fruit falling to the ground.  

The British sun East of Suez had set.  It rose no more.