Joyce's War Read online

  We got into Suez the night before last, ships of all sizes and nationalities in the bay around us, including two destroyers and four other hospital ships – Manunda (Australian), Tyreah (British), Manganni (New Zealand) and the Llandovery Castle (British). We didn’t go ashore until this morning. Mona and I went across in the launch to Port Tewfik, ostensibly to see if we could get on board the Manunda, only to learn that she had sailed for Australia early that morning. So we went walking through the tree-lined street of the little port, a perfect day with flame trees and oleanders and frangipani. While I was admiring the flame tree, an Egyptian passing by came over and, grinning, said, ‘You like it Missus?’ And thereupon snapped a small bunch off and presented it to me and went on his cheerful way. It wasn’t his tree, of course. They are awful rogues these Egyptians but likeable often times.

  We took on coal at Suez. It was a fantastic scene to watch in the evening light. The great barge, flat and still and low in the water, the natives seemed more incredibly filthy than anything one has ever imagined, clad in the most amazing collection of rags possible, each with a gleaming silver identity disc on his wrist, gifts of a grateful coaling company I suppose! Raking the coal into large raffia baskets on the floor of the barge, they hoisted them onto their heads and walked up a long standing plank to the barge’s side, then along the narrow ledge, their feet pattering over the sharp fallen coal and along another plank which led onto the ship’s hold, then down again to begin all over again.

  It reminded me of something I can’t quite remember, a frieze, an old painting, a scene from an opera, even a ballet: the little ragged filthy procession, pattering endlessly up and down. It had a certain artistic effect, the odd colouring among the rags they wore, the quiet sky, the green oily sea and the great ships lying around at anchor. Not to mention the incessant chatter and screaming and arguing that went on among them every single moment of the many hours they were there.

  May 28th 1941

  Off again at 6am, bound as far as we know for Aden, but no patients thus far at least. Getting awfully bored.

  The news is rather depressing this morning, except that the Bismarck has suffered the fate that she dealt out to HMS Hood. The Germans appear to be establishing a foothold in Crete although we are, it seems, sending reinforcements. The New Zealanders appear to be doing some counter-attacking but with what success it is difficult to ascertain yet. The king of Greece has escaped to Egypt. The Germans have forced us back a short distance at Sollum also. I hate the thought of moving away from it all with nothing to worry about: safe with every comfort. How I loathe it all … I never wanted to come on to a hospital ship and certainly not this one. Besides, it is very difficult indeed with prevailing attitudes to the Indian personnel. Well I suppose it will have to be endured for six months at least.

  July 4th 1941

  Bombay

  More than a month has passed since I wrote herein. Now the first fine careless rapture – if there ever was one – has passed long since, and I expect lots of things have happened that I shall forget to record.

  To return … we reached Aden on June 2nd: Aden with its grim barren cliffs and the sun pouring down relentlessly. We went ashore in a launch in the morning and I nearly passed out with the heat. We were told it was 125 degrees the previous day and it couldn’t have been much less that day. I bought some cotton material and made it into a frock on returning to the ship. Mona and I went ashore again in the evening with Bruce and Major Ramchandani to the open-air cinema. It was rather lovely sitting there with the starry black night above us and all around, high above the walls, the fascinating corrugated peaks of the mountains. The picture was an old one with Jack Colbert and pleasantly silly.

  We left next day and about midday had some mild excitement when a native craft hailed us and asked for water. There were about 40 Somalis who had lost their direction and had run out of water. It pleased me to think we could stop and help them, it was so hot to be in an open boat and to be without water would be dreadful. It appears that ships are not really allowed to stop in war time but I liked our captain the more for doing so. After all we were a hospital ship and should be above rules of that sort.

  Next day we ran into the monsoon and from then on until we put into Bombay, there was no peace or comfort anywhere. I wasn’t seasick at all but the dining room didn’t see me for quite four days. The smell of cooked food and the sight of the knives and forks chasing each other across the table were too much for me and I knew it. The old ship creaked and groaned, lurched and tossed and rolled – in short, did everything possible except sail completely upside down. At night, in bed, one was either standing on one’s feet or alternatively on one’s head. Distinctly unpleasant. Then on deck, one struggled out and flopped into a chair and stayed there until it was absolutely necessary for some particular reason to get out of it. We were completely fed up with it after a week. The news at this time was depressing too. Crete has been evacuated and at what a price. As usual no protection for the troops from the air. I am told the Welch regiment was there among others and goodness knows how many Australians that one might possibly have known. It doesn’t bear thinking about. A bad raid on Alexandria also makes me think about Bill and the rest of my friends.

  We reached Bombay on June 9th and that evening went ashore with Bruce and Frank to a cinema and Chinese restaurant for dinner. Next morning, avec luggage, we left the ship and got ourselves established in the Majestic Hotel, where I am now writing this. We would have preferred the Taj but, ‘malesh’! This isn’t so bad except that the one and only lounge is very public and everyone drifts in – for all the world it would seem – for drinks, any time between now and midnight. Mona and I, as usual, have a room together, a large one, with a little writing room annex and a bathroom, which is a great comfort to us. The weather for the first fortnight was hot and rainless, and then the monsoon broke and the rains began. It comes down in sheets, and then suddenly clears, but it never gets cooler, only stickier and hotter and steamier than ever. We go to the cinema quite often and usually on Friday or Saturday and, if asked, to the Taj for dinner and a dance afterwards. We went to the Kanday beach on one occasion for a swim and we’ve been for the odd drive and a cocktail party at Major Ramchandani’s.

  The market claims a good deal of our attention and we get odd frocks made as we live in mufti here. We live on advance pay from the paymaster but have managed to get the remainder of our accounts transferred from Barclays at Alexandria and that helps us through. We have spent lots of money as we always do in a new country and with nothing special to do with our time, it is always fatal! Bombay is a fine spacious city, with wide clean streets and lots of trees and some noble buildings. I am interested in the Congress men who wear white hats. I always feel they have the utmost contempt for us, when they pass us by. And well they might. I respect them for it, because I feel deeply sympathetic about their grievances, which are very real. Good luck to them: they’ll have home rule in India before many years are out and I hope they make a better job of it for their people, especially the poor of the land, than we have ever done. It shouldn’t be too difficult.

  Russia is in the war now. How crazy it all is. Things don’t seem to be going too well for her either, from today’s news. America is helping us as well as she can with supplies of all kinds and I expect she’ll come into it completely when she is ready. We have got back Damascus and Palmyra from the French (Vichy) and there have been very few raids over Britain for many weeks, for which thanks be!

  Only three letters since we arrived and those addressed directly to the ship and sent by air. One from Hooper and Johnstone (shades of Hut 7) and one this week from Bill Williams who is sorry we went our ways so soon after meeting again in Alexandria. I wish I could hear from home as it’s about eight weeks since I heard from Mother. I sent a small book to Bruce today – he’ll be grown up before I see the lad. Too bad.

  We are all getting fed up with each other. Scotty is remote and too intent on a social lif
e. Wright gets strange passions on any writer she may be reading. First it was Jane Austen, and then it was Katherine Mansfield, then Gertrude Bell. She talks on and on endlessly and no one gets a chance to say a word. Anyway it’s not without effort of trying because she only cuts across you before you’ve finished and you trail off weakly and wonder why you began. Mona has inspired lifelong devotion in the breast of the conductor of the hotel orchestra, who asked her to marry him the second time he saw her. He is an Austrian and bangs around looking soulful and miserable by turns, because she had to decline, with thanks.29 I, it seems, quite unbeknown to me, have inspired a similar feeling in a man called Potts who wears glasses and who comes morning and evening, sitting solitarily at a table, somewhere in the lounge. One glimpse of the glasses and I pass by, aloofly, like Beatrice. All very romantique. So do we waste our days.

  We are supposed to sail about the 15th of the month – but time will tell. Matron is still away on leave, and Goodridge, I am sorry to say, isn’t rejoining the ship but is being stationed somewhere in India. 11pm now so I must get to bed … to sleep, if I can, i.e. if I don’t lie awake scratching as I’ve done the last few nights. I’ve had awful bites on my legs from some mysterious creatures I’ve never seen – bugs, sand flies or ants. If I have any trouble tonight, I’m going to get into the bath and stay there until morning.

  July 5th 1941

  Another night of scratching. I didn’t get up for breakfast, being too exhausted after thrashing about all night. It was a really bright moment, however, when Mona brought in an airmail letter from home, which included one from Dad also. My sister Mona, it appears, is on the brink of being called up.

  July 21st 1941

  HMHS Karapara

  We came aboard again on Saturday, 7.30pm. Yesterday we spent the entire morning packing and unpacking and I took a short – or rather I should say prolonged – course of ‘death’ as Miss Tyndall calls it, until it was time to get up and go to dinner. We played over our newly acquired records on deck before retiring for the night, then bed, but I don’t seem to be sleeping at all well. Perhaps the bed is too narrow or it might be the ants – I had an enormous bite from one on my right shoulder blade the night before – quite three inches across and red and swollen. And such a minute ant too!

  But these are minor events compared to all that has happened during our last week in Bombay. Momentous happenings and decisions in a very few days … and without tempting fate too far in these precarious days, I can at last record herein that I have become engaged to one Kenneth Hannan Stanley. This was decided upon on the 14th July, but we decided to break the news to Mona and Harry Wright the next day.

  We had a somewhat hilarious party at the Taj Harbour bar on the Wednesday night and went on to Green’s for dinner afterwards and danced a little before Ken and I left to spend the rest of the time left to us together. Next morning we had breakfast together and I went down with Ken to the docks to see him safely installed. I didn’t want to see the ship depart – neither of us could have faced that – and so I went back in a taxi in a complete daze and Mona and I went out and drank iced coffee – I think – and did some last-minute shopping, including at the market, where I bought some materials to keep me occupied on the ship and which, with any luck, will form the nucleus of my trousseau.

  Ken’s ship was very small and looked extremely uncomfortable, especially for negotiating monsoons, so I expect the poor darling will be feeling rather unhappy for various reasons. They thought they were calling at Aden and then making for Port Sudan. Now we hear that we too are calling in at Aden and it’s just possible, if they stay there a day or so, and they do fewer knots than we do, or hope to do, that we may contact them again. But that seems much too good even to imagine so I am not allowing myself to think about it. (Of course, I could write volumes about ‘us’ and all we mean to do après la guerre but this isn’t the place). We are at anchor now, some distance from the shore but we can still see the gateway and the Taj. We expect to leave this afternoon and I shall be glad to get away in the circumstances but shall always welcome the sight of Bombay in the future as all our letters will be collecting there. Our mail did arrive about three days before we left. I had more than 25 letters and magazines from Mali: letters from nearly everyone – several from Mother, Glyn, Clwyd, Gwen, Mali, Gwerfyl, my Ruthin cousins, General, Leo (who sadly is in a sanatorium), Bob (presumably in Tobruk), Arthur Green living in a cave, PO Strong from Alexandria and Deaney and many others. What a lot of good friends I have in so many corners of the earth and how much richer life is as a consequence.

  Russia seems to be holding out very well, and we appear to be doing things in France and Germany through the RAF. Otherwise there seems to be a lull in the Middle East.

  August 6th 1941

  We arrived in Aden on July 27th – a Sunday and Mona’s birthday. Fortunately, the monsoon treated us very well on this trip apart from some pitching, which didn’t affect us at all, although most of the staff, including Mona, seemed somewhat upset. She and I were sitting on the portside of the ship in the afternoon and a ship passed us quite closely. It seemed to me that it looked like the Rahmani but I decided that it wasn’t as it looked rather larger than she appeared to be in the docks. She went by, and a few minutes later, when she was still in sight, but too far to do anything about it, one of the officers informed us that that it was Rahmani. I felt so mad to think that I had been unaware of it, as she passed, particularly as Bruce, who had been on the bridge, told me that he had seen someone waving frantically on deck.

  I feel sure Ken would have known he was passing the Karapara as we were the only hospital ship there that day. It seemed incredible that we had only anchored here about an hour and that the wretched ship should decide to go away, just at that time. Well of course even if we’d both been using glasses and had seen each other we could have done no more than wave across the intervening stretch of water – I know that. But to think that we had been so near, and that I didn’t realise it, was what hurt me so much. I knew only too well that he was going off into the unknown and it might be months before we should meet again. Oh well … I watched the ship with glasses until it became merely a smudge on the horizon and then with a wisp of smoke it was gone.

  We are still sitting on the same spot of sea, having been in once to coal, but neither Mona nor I went ashore. I have been doing some sewing and reading but generally speaking it is hot and breezeless, especially today. Ships from all over the world come and go, as noiselessly as the smoke that escapes from their funnels – British, Norwegian, Swedish, American, Dutch, Egyptian, Greek, Free French, Belgian and many more. They lie around for perhaps an hour or two, or perhaps days, and then next morning when we get up, they are gone and only the wind knows where. There have been many cruisers in and out as well including HMAS Australia, and an aircraft carrier which we heard was the Formidable, well known to us in our Alexandria days. I’ve just counted more than twenty ships on our starboard side and, by raising my head, I can see quite twenty five or thirty to port.

  The new Dutch hospital ship which has been handed over to the Australian and New Zealand governments, an enormous ship with lovely modern lines which makes us look thoroughly insignificant in comparison, has been and gone. The South African ship Arva came and went too, presumably both to Suez, and today the Aba came in.

  This seems, with Bombay, to be our spiritual home. Actually, we are hanging around here until the Vita arrives, which should be in about five days’ time – or so we hope. We have heard that there is some mail on shore and as soon as they can get the launch across, it is ours. But there has been a swell on these last two days and so far we wait and not without impatience. There is a cocktail party tonight to celebrate the first anniversary of the sailing of the ship as a hospital ship. Instead of dinner, a cold supper will be served at 9pm, which is more sensible. And thus we serve, who only stand and wait. The war drags slowly on. German troops are still trying to get into Leningrad but so far the Russians
seem to be putting up a good effort and have escaped heavy casualties. Libya is quiet but Alexandria and the coast as far as Suez have had bad raids these last moonlit nights. On the wireless last night it was announced that 70 people had been killed and 150 wounded. So I suppose we ought to be glad we aren’t sitting around in Suez, but such is human nature, we aren’t a bit pleased at our good fortune.

  August 11th 1941

  Heading for Bombay once again! Quite suddenly on Friday evening (8th) word came that we were to sail for Bombay. The captain, 3rd officer, two engineers, Major Ramchandani and various others had gone ashore to get the mail, after breakfast. They made one attempt to get back by midday, but it was too rough to get the launch alongside so they returned to shore. It wasn’t until just before 7.30pm that they were able to come on board (the swell was still bad) and then the captain was told by the first mate that the orders had come. We weren’t told when we were to sail so Mona and I feverishly wrote to John and Ken, thinking this might be a chance of getting them away before we left Aden. But alas for our zeal for when we awakened next morning, we were well out at sea and Aden far behind us. We are also led to believe that our course has been changed and that we are now to be taken over by the Indian army. There is great speculation as to what will become of us. It certainly appears on the surface that we shall come this way no more. Half of us think it will be the Far East run, Penang or Singapore. Well, well, whatever next, I wonder. I don’t think anything will surprise us ever again. So near Australia and yet so far.