me, I set off for the airport in the morning without my pistol, which was in the transit camp armoury, and so I missed my plane. You simply could not travel in those days without your gun; not that it was dangerous where I was going. It was just The Law. So I turned back for it, and the Movements Officer had a fit. Missing a plane was practically a capital charge. Apart from that, I couldn’t get another for several days, so they looked for something unpleasant for me to do while I was waiting.
“You can be O.C. train to Jerusalem tonight,” said the Movements Officer, with sadistic satisfaction. “Report to Victoria Station at twenty-two hundred hours, don’t be late, and this time take your blasted gun with you.”
So I had a bath, played snooker against myself all afternoon, and in the neon-lit Cairo evenfall rolled up to Victoria, clutching my little pistol in a damp palm. I fought my way through a press of enormous dragomans—huge, ugly people with brass badges who offer to carry your kit, and when you agree they whistle up some tiny assistant who shoulders your trunks and staggers off like an ant under a haystack. The dragoman doesn’t carry anything; he just clears a way, roaring, and demands an exorbitant fee.
The movements office gave me a great sheaf of documents, a few instructions on how to command a troop train, reminded me that we left at ten sharp, and waved me away. The place looked like a stock market during a boom, everyone was running and shouting and chalking on boards; I got out to the bar, where sundry wellwishers cheered me up with anecdotes about the Jerusalem run.
“Tell me they’re blowing one train in three,” said an American Air Corps major.
“Doing it dam’ neatly, too,” said a captain in the Lincolns. “’Course, most of ’em are British or American-trained. On our side a year or two ago.”
A quarter-master from the South Lancs said the terrorists’ equipment and stores were of the finest: Jerry landmines, piles o’ flamin’ gun-cotton, and more electrical gear than the G.P.O.
“Schmeiser machine-pistols,” said the American cheerfully. “Telescopic sights. Draw a bead on your ear at six hundred yards with those crossed wires—then, bam! You’ve had it. Who’s having another?”
“Trouble is, you can’t tell friend from foe,” said the Lincoln. “No uniforms, dam’ nasty. Thanks, Tex, don’t mind if I do. Well, thank God they don’t get me past Gaza again; nice low demob. group, my number’ll be up in a month or two. Cheers.”
I said I had better be getting along to my train, and they looked at me reflectively, and I picked up my balmoral, dropped my papers, scrabbled them up, and went out in search of Troop Train 42, Jerusalem via Zagazig, Gaza and Tel Aviv, officer commanding Lt. MacNeill, D., and the best of luck to him.
The platform was jammed all along its narrow length; my cargo looked like the United Nations. There were Arab Legion in their red-checked head-cloths, leaning on their rifles and saying nothing to anybody, A.T.S. giggling in little groups and going into peals of laughter at the attempts of one of them to make an Egyptian tea-seller understand that she didn’t take milk; service wives and families on the seats, the women wearing that glassy look of worn-out boredom and the children scattering about and bumping and shrieking; a platoon of long bronzed Australians, bush-hatted and talking through their noses; worried-looking majors and red-faced, phlegmatic corporals; at least one brigadier, red-tabbed, trying to look as though he was thinking of something important and was unaware of the children who were playing tig round him; unidentified semi-military civilians of the kind you get round bases—correspondents, civil servants, welfare and entertainment organisers; dragomans sweeping majestically ahead of their porters and barking strange Arabic words. Hurrying among them, swearing pathetically, was a fat little man with R.T.O. on his sleeve and enormous khaki shorts on his withers; he seized on me and shouted above the noise of people and escaping steam.
“Stone me! You MacNeill? What a blasted mess! You’ve got the short straw, you have. Fourteen service families, Gawd knows how many kids, but they’re all in the manifest. A.T.S. an’ all. I said we shouldn’t have it, ought to be eighty per cent troops on any troop train, but you might as well talk to the wind that dried your first shirt.” He shoved another sheaf of papers at me. “You can cope, anyway. Just don’t let any of ’em off before Jerusalem, that’s all. There’s at least two deserters under escort, but they’re in the van, handcuffed. It’s the civvies you’ve got to watch for; they don’t like taking orders. If any of ’em get uppity, threaten to shoot ’em, or better still threaten to drop ’em off in a nice stretch of desert—there’s plenty. Damn my skin, I’m misting up again!” He removed his spectacles from his pug nose, wiped them on a service hankie, and replaced them; he was running sweat down his plump red cheeks. “Now then, there’s a padre who’s worried about the A.T.S., God knows why, but he knows his own mind best, I dare say; keep an eye on the Aussies, but you know about them. And don’t let the wog who’s driving stop except at stations—that’s important. If he tries, don’t threaten to shoot him, just tell him he’ll lose his pension. An’ remember, you’re the boss; to hell with ranks, they don’t count on a train. You’re the skipper, got it?”
The loudspeaker boomed overhead.
“Attention, please, attention. Will Captain Tanner please go to platform seven, plat-form sev-en. Captain Tanner, please.”
“All right, all right,” said the little man, savagely. “I can only be one place at a time, can’t I? Where was I? Oh, yes, you’ve a second-in-command, over there.” He pointed to a figure, standing alone near the engine. “One of your crowd,” he added, looking at my tartan shoulder-flash. “Seems all right. Sergeant Black!” he shouted, and the figure came over to us.
He was about middle height, with the big spreading chest and shoulders you often see in Highland regiments; his chin was blue and his profile was like a Red Indian’s under the tilted bonnet with its red hackle. He was neat, professional, and as hard as a gangster, and he had the M.M. in front of the Africa and Italy ribbons. A pair of stony eyes looked me over, but he didn’t say anything.
“The run takes about seven hours,” went on the R.T.O. He stopped and shuffled his papers. He was thinking. “If you hit trouble,” he said at last, “you use your initiative. Sorry it’s not much help, but there you are. You’ve got some signallers, and the telegraph line’s never far away. You’ll be O.K. as far as Gaza anyway; after that there’s more chance of … well, anyway, it’s not likely there’ll be any bother.”
The loudspeaker crackled again for Captain Tanner.
“Oh, shut up!” he snapped. “Honest, it’s the only blasted name they know. Well, look, you’re off in about ten minutes. Better start getting ’em aboard. I’ll get a bleat for you on the tannoy. Best of luck.” He hurried off, and then turned back. “Oh, one other thing; there’s a captain’s wife with a baby and she thinks it’s getting German measles. I wouldn’t know.”
He bustled off into the crowd, and as he disappeared I felt suddenly lonely and nervous. One train, two hundred people—a good third of them women and children—seemed a lot of responsibility, especially going into a country on fire with civil strife and harried by armed terrorist gangs. Two deserters, a worried padre, and possible German measles. Oh, well, first things first. How does one start clearing a crowded platform into a train?
“Sergeant Black,” I said, “have you made this trip before?”
“No, sir.”
“Oh. I see. Well, start getting them aboard, will you?”
God bless the British sergeant. He flicked his bonnet with his hand, swung round, and thundered, “All aboard for Jerusalem,” as though he had been a stationmaster all his life. The tannoy boomed into sound overhead and there was a general move towards the train. Sergeant Black moved in among the crowd, pointing and instructing—he seemed to know, by some God-given instinct, what to do—and I went to look at the engine.
I’m no authority, but it looked pretty rickety, and the genial Arab driver seemed to be in the grip of some powerful intoxicating drug. He had a huge laugh and a glassy eye, spoke no