Kids behind barbed wire

Between 1949 and 1951, my mother, sister Hazel

and I lived in a small transit camp at El Ballah
about a mile from the Suez Canal. The camp was
surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by
British soldiers. Whichever direction you looked,
there was nothing but flat hard sand and the
occasional ship passing by on the Suez Canal .
For adults, it must have been sheer hell and the
only thing they had in common was a longing to
be anywhere but El Ballah. For us kids, however,
it was fantastic. We only went to school in the morning and, in the afternoon, were
allowed to swim in the canal. We lived in shorts or swimming trunks and only tidied
ourselves up for church on Sunday. I could spend hours just watching the cargo ships
and passenger liners passing up and down the canal and dreaming about what it
would be like to work on them. The area had once been a huge shallow saltwater lake
which filled with water from the Red Sea and shrunk at certain times of the year. The
sand there was full of tiny seashells. Many biblical scholars now believe that Moses
led his people to the promised land through El Ballah and that the ‘sea crossing’ took
place just to the north of the camp.

Our mother worked in the camp school but that was for smaller kids. Our school was
about 20 miles south in a large military camp close to the town of Ismailia on the
shores of Lake Timsah. Timsah is Arabic for crocodile but I never saw any. Lake
Timsah had a real beach and there were some sail boats which we could use. We
would travel to Ismailia in a canvas-covered three ton lorry or a small jeep with
wooden benches for seats and there were no seat belts. Once aboard the lorry, the
tailgate was bolted securely and you kept away
from it in case the driver braked suddenly.
Sometimes the drivers would let us climb
through and sit up alongside them as there was
little or no traffic on the desert roads. I even
got to drive the lorry though my feet could
barely reach the pedals. Occasionally, the
military police would pull us over because they
were bored and we would scoot back to our
seats so the drivers would not be put on a

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charge. On one occasion, we were stopped because a film was being made. It was
called The Cairo Road and was about drug smuggling. The two main stars of the
film, Lawrence Harvey and Eric Portman, were standing by the side of the road as we
passed by.

The road between the two camps ran alongside

the Suez Canal, a railway line and smaller canal.
The small canal was known as the Sweet Water
Canal and had been dug originally to bring fresh
water to the men excavating the main canal. If
there was one rule we never broke, it was to
swim or enter the Sweet Water Canal. The water
was anything but sweet and contained many life
threatening bacteria. The locals may have
bathed, laundered and defecated in it, but the Europeans had to avoid it like the
plague (which it probably carried). In contrast, the Suez Canal was quite safe with a
slow current flowing south from the Mediterranean. Another rule we never broke was
to stroke stray dogs, especially when they were foaming at the mouth.

The highlight of my life in Egypt was a visit by lorry to the Pyramids and the Sphynx
many miles away at Gizeh. I remember going right into the centre of the Great
Pyramid and climbing up the large sandstone blocks outside. The Sphynx was
practically buried in the sand, and Cairo was just visible on the skyline. Visiting
Egypt forty years later, I was amazed to see that the city and its slums had spread
until they were just a stone’s throw away. The camel drivers and souvenir sellers,
however, were just the same. Even as I write this, someone will be shouting at some
British tourist, ‘Hello Johnnie! You want to buy naughty postcards? Where you live
in England? Arsenal? Sheffield Wednesday?’

Once a month, a library came from one of the larger camps

and we could also order books from the UK. One book I
remember was ‘Scouting for Boys’ by Lord Baden-Powell.
From it, I learnt how to track footprints in the sand and how to
work out which way a bicycle was being ridden from its tyre
marks. A wobble will produce two tyre tracks which gradually
merge in the direction in which the bike is travelling. I
discovered how to carry secret messages in a cleft stick and
how to hide when you have to spy on people. Did you know
that liars always walk with their feet splayed out. What a
book! The man was either a genius or a complete nutter.
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It wasn’t always paradise. One of the teachers in our
school was a popular American nun called Sister Anthony.
One day, an Egyptian entered the school with a gun, she
asked him to leave quite firmly and he shot her dead. At
about the same time, a Major living on the camp took his
family on a shopping trip to Port Said, a town at the
entrance to the Canal. They were attacked by a mob and,
although the family escaped, he was murdered and dragged
through the streets. This was one of Britain’s ‘forgotten
wars’ in which many soldiers and civilians lost their lives, and not always at the
hands of the locals. We often made friends with the camp guards and I remember one
in particular. He used to give us comics and make jokes. When an official vehicle
approached the camp entrance, he would lift the barrier and cry. ‘To your posts, men!
Here comes the stage coach from Deadwood City! Watch out for them Indians!’ One
night when he was off duty and drunk, he stumbled into the barbed wire of the
perimeter fence. He ignored the commands of the young guards sent to investigate,
and believing him to be an insurgent, they shot him. The two guards had to guard his
body that night until an ambulance came from another camp. Later, they told us what
a terrible experience it had been for them. We missed him.

! The barbed wire fence Soldiers tents

My hero in the camp was a former prisoner of war whom we called Armenian Joe.
He managed the soldier’s canteen and shop and lived in a small room to the side of
the building. Some evenings we would sit outside his room and listen to his tales
about the war. He had served in the German Navy and had been shot in the leg. On
special occasions, he would show us the bullet wound and we would gape at it in
awe. Armenian Joe was a kind man, generous with his time and money. We always
felt safe in his presence and he was the closest I ever got to having a father.
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But the main purpose of this trip into the past is to tell you about some of the things
we kids would get up to. There was a gang of us and the girls could join in as long as
they didn’t want to play kiss chase. I cannot imagine what today’s Health and Safety
laws would make of some of the things we did. As a guide to our activities, I’ve used
some of the rules we had to obey; we must have broken every one of them.

Children should be protected from the sun and wear suitable footwear

What a sensible rule, for the daily temperature could reach 46° and soldiers often
died of heat stroke. In India, we wore pith helmets (topees) which made us look like
mobile mushrooms, but they weren’t issued to us in Egypt, so we ignored it. As for
the footwear, well if the locals could shuffle around in bare feet, then why not us?
Walking along the side of the Suez Canal, I slipped down the sloping concrete edge
and cut my foot on a piece of broken glass. As I hobbled back to the camp, I made an
interesting discovery. At first, the blood came pouring out of the cut but within a few
minutes it had completely stopped as if nothing had happened. Our feet must have
become very hardy for a deep cut to heal so quickly.

Children are not to interfere with military activities

I’m not quite sure what they thought we would do. I know that we changed the
direction of signs around the camp in order to confuse visiting military personnel, and
sat in the trees firing catapults at the soldiers on parade, but apart from that we
generally kept out of the way. There was, however, one area of the camp that
fascinated us. Two disused aircraft from WW2 lay close to the perimeter fence at the
back of the camp, and were used for training purposes. Wearing heavy kit and rifles,
the soldiers would climb in and out of them whilst being barked at by a sergeant
major, whose surname, incidentally, was Major. The aircraft with their torn fuselages
were off limits, but that didn’t worry us, and we spent hours climbing all over them,
sitting in their cockpits, moving levers and twiddling knobs. Invariably, we would be
chased away and fled like rats across the desert and back to the camp.

The wrecked planes inspired one of the most bizarre things we ever did and almost
ended in disaster. We built our own plane, a glider, from fruit boxes and sheets of
plywood for the wings. Our flying machine had two wheels and a tail plane, and I
have never forgotten the day it was launched from the sloping roof of the hospital.
I don’t remember why we used the hospital roof; perhaps it was an insurance policy?
And why I was chosen to be the pilot? The plane was supposed to slide down the
corrugated iron roof and glide gracefully to earth. Unfortunately, it just slid over the
edge of the roof and plunged to earth where it buried its nose in the sand. I was
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catapulted out but the sand was soft and deep and cushioned my fall. After that
unsuccessful maiden flight, we switched from aeronautical engineering to show
business. We converted our aircraft into a Punch and Judy stall, and put on a show for
the little kids.

Children will not fraternise with the soldiers or civilian staff.

Now this one was really unfair. I know we fired our catapults at the soldiers but they
were really good fun and taught us lots of interesting skills which we didn’t get at
school. For example, they showed us how to cheat at cards, how to load a rifle, and
which pedals to use when driving a three ton lorry. We also learnt how to pronounce
important Arabic words and phrases and the gestures that should accompany them.
The Sudanese workers were particularly friendly and taught us how to play native
drums and finger drumming techniques. I must have driven my mother mad
practising them on the dining table. Then there were the Captain Marvel comics
which the soldiers gave us. Captain Marvel put Superman in the shade as he didn’t
have to hide in a phone box or wear underpants outside his
jump suit. No, Captain Marvel just yelled SHAZAM! and
his clothing changed by magic and he flew to rescue of the
World. There was Mary Marvel for the girls and there was
Captain Marvel Junior who, as we were reminded in every
edition, was ‘just a poor cripple’. When confronted by a
villain, Captain Marvel would shout ‘Holy Moly!’ and that
became our war cry; we even whispered it in church
instead of ‘Amen’. A court case by the publishers of
Superman put Captain Marvel out of business, but the
artists were all recruited because their work was superb. I
can still see those piles of Captain Marvel comics lying
around the soldiers’ tents. Today, they are worth a fortune.

Children are not to enter certain buildings without permission.

Now that was like waving a red rag at a bull. We explored every inch of that camp
and any buildings near the Suez Canal. We discovered all sorts of interesting things
when no one was around. I remember we broke into a room above an assembly hall
and discovered a cache of maps. They were all stamped Top Secret and looked jolly
interesting so we nicked a few to swap for marbles at the big school in Ismailia.

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Children must be accompanied by an adult at the camp cinema

! ! ! ! ! ‘Cinema Paradiso’

Well, that was a non-starter. The camp had a cinema close to the main gate and films
were shown two or three times a week. We would sneak in for free, and at the end of
the programme, collect up all the empty bottles which the soldiers had left littering
the floor. The bottles had a deposit of one piastre (1p) on them and an agile scavenger
could make a tidy bit of pocket money. At the start of the show, I would go up to the
projection room and put on the one record in the cinema’s collection. It was a rousing
march called Semper Fidelis (Always faithful) by the American composer John Philip
Sousa and I handled that old 78 rpm record as if it were gold dust. By law, the
cinema had to play the Egyptian national anthem and display a picture of King
Farouk on the screen at the end of the film. I must confess that the soldiers did not
treat this with the respect it required and sang a rather bawdy song in Arabic to
accompany the anthem. We picked up the words very quickly.

Children must be supervised when visiting beaches and behave themselves

Yes, yes, we know all that. Now what we really liked to do was
dig large holes and cover them with pieces of cardboard and a
layer of sand. Then, it was great fun watching people walk
along the beach and disappear suddenly into our hole. Or, we
would get some little kid to volunteer to sit in the hole while
we covered him with sand. ‘You will dig me out afterwards,
won’t you?’ We didn’t and just sat hurling rubbish or fruit
skins at the strange little head sticking out of the sand.

There were always one or two objectionable older kids who would pinch our drinks
while we were out swimming. The best solution to this problem was to fill our glasses
with a certain fluid that is also a pale yellow but tastes nothing like lemonade. Then,
when the thieves helped themselves to it, we just couldn’t help laughing as they
gulped it down and spat it out in disgust.
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Children are strictly forbidden to swim across the Suez Canal

Even the soldiers were forbidden to do this because

the other side of the canal was not under the British
mandate, and it still contained mines laid during the
recent war. A little thing like that didn’t stop us and
we regularly made excursions to the other bank and
make rude gestures, and used some of those
important Arabic phrases, to the soldiers who
shouted angrily at us to return. By the time a launch
was sent to remove us, we had all returned safely.

When these escapades were brought to our mother’s attention she sent us to the camp
chaplain or to the commanding officer to be punished. We were absolutely terrified of
the RC chaplain who was a drunken bully, but found the camp commandant, Captain
Hall, a very decent fellow. The former would rant and rave and threaten us with all
kinds of beatings whereas Captain Hall would send us out with his son, Carl, to
collect litter. Hazel was very keen on his son, so this was hardly a punishment for her.
To avoid the priest, we begged our mother not to send us to Captain Hall, and of
course she did. Later, he was sacked from the Army, but that wasn’t our fault.

Children are to keep away from ships passing through the canal.

Now what they had in mind was the

danger of our being sucked into the
propellors or injured by the wash which
followed a ship up the canal. But if we
saw an American naval ship heading
our way, there was no stopping us.
‘Give us some gum, chum!’ we would
shout as we paddled in the water, and
be showered with sweets from those
generous yanks. Occasionally they
would shout ‘Hey, where are you guys
from?’ and in our best English we
would reply ‘We are Egyptians. We live
here.’ I always wanted a US navy sailor’s hat (pork pie), but whenever they threw
them, they were sucked under the propellors and, although I searched in the ship’s
wake before the next ship could plough into me, they never resurfaced.
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Our most exciting day was when all the
traffic on the canal came to a halt
because of a collision to the south. Ships
moored up to the side of the canal with
large hawsers and gangways were
lowered for the benefit of crew members
who wanted a swim. It was a heaven sent
opportunity and we made full use of it.
An Amercan cargo ship, the Cape Race
of the Isbrandsten Line, moored almost
opposite the camp and we dashed a mile
across the sand to inspect it in closer
detail. Cape Race was what was known as
a Liberty Ship. These cargo ships were built quickly and cheaply during WW2 on the
basis that many of them would be sunk by German submarines. Despite their cheap
construction, they survived for many years after the war. Seeing the gangway
lowered, we leapt into the water and struck out for the ship. Observing us paddling
around at the foot of the gangway, the Captain invited us aboard and we spent an hour
or two inspecting every inch of the ship, talking to the sailors and asking loads of
questions. The American sailors were puzzled by our accents. ‘Gee, you kids speak
such good English.’ This time, however, we did not pretend to be Egyptians and
happily accepted their generous gifts of sweets and chocolates before heading back
for the shore. Thereafter, I was hooked on ships and was determined to work on
them, which I eventually did.

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Now here’s an odd little thing. As our father had been a captain in the Pioneers (a
labour corps which included two thousand Germans), we were allowed to live in the
officers’ quarters. Sometimes, other children in the quarters would confront us and
with braying voices announce ‘Your father can’t have been an officer. You don’t
speak like officers’ children. You both speak like riff raff’. How mother fretted over
her feral offspring when she overheard that blunt remark. A year later, I was
watching a football match at Hillsborough in Sheffield and made a comment about
the game to some lads next to me. ‘You’re not from round ‘ere are you?’ asked one of
them. I replied that I wasn’t and asked how he knew. ‘Cos you talk right posh.‘

With the passage of time, Hazel was sent to a boarding school in Cairo to improve
her behaviour and become a young lady. But the Suez Canal Zone was not a safe
place to live; the British military presence severely irritated the Egyptians who rightly
wanted more control over their canal. The camps were being attacked and people
were dying. I was sent to a military school in England where most of the boys were
orphaned or their fathers were absent. At the military school, I met up with a boy
from the camp. When one of the masters discovered that we had lived in Egypt, he
made us sit cross-legged in front of each other at an assembly and conduct a
conversation in Arabic. Initially, we greeted each other warmly with the usual
pleasantries, Salam! Kaifa Haloka? Then we became more adventurous and began
to exchange all those important Arabic phrases that we had picked up from the
soldiers, plus, of course, the gestures that went with them. Everyone was impressesd
and our performance was warmly applauded by our audience. If only they had known
what we were saying, particularly about the master, we would have been grounded
for life.

But after the freedom of a desert urchin, it was like being sent to prison. Wearing
heavy boots and an uncomfortable khaki uniform, I shivered in the cold rain and
longed for the warmth of the desert sun. Abroad, I had discovered that the British
were not universally loved: at school, I was to discover why. I made up my mind to
leave that place at the earliest opportunity and go to sea.

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The camp at El Ballah today. Egyptian Army warehouses have replaced the original British Army
buildings but the general outline of the original camp is still visible in the desert sand. The Suez
Canal lies off to the right and is half a mile nearer the camp! This is because a short loop was added
to the canal some years ago to allow convoys of ships to pass each other

Sunday Best at El Ballah The ‘Riff raff’ on Lake Timsah

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