STEAM AT WAR 12




As the active war zone receded westwards and the North African ports became operable the desert railway ran out of work as a supply line but continued in use bringing out the vast quantity of war wreckage. Our 16th operating company was relieved from what had been a long and arduous term of duty, and withdrawn to the New Zealand forces base camp at Maadi.

I was joined to a small detachment of eight men to be transported to El Kantara on the Suez Canal to pick up a fleet of diesel electric locomotives and ferry them up to Beirut in Lebanon. There we were to establish train-loading schedules over the routes from Beirut to Haifa in Palestine and Beirut to Tripoli in north Lebanon near the border with Syria. We also had to train South African engine-men to operate the new diesels that were displacing steam engines that in turn were being sent to work in Turkey.

We were based in a beautiful campsite in an olive grove with fourteen American technicians who maintained the locomotives and sixteen South African engine-men. There was excellent comradeship among this specialised group and life was idyllic. The north and south runs were right on the Mediterranean coast and we were given the superfluous advice to not permit night-time lighting that could be visible from the sea.

After four months in this beautiful part of the world the four married men of our group were recalled to base to prepare for furlough to NZ. We held a farewell party and gave those who lived near our homes messages to our families. We remaining single fellows carried on in apparent isolation but we were not forgotten and a week later in some urgency we were commanded to return to the furlough embarkation camp at Giza in the shadow of the Great Pyramids. Thus, after a four-day train journey we arrived and divested ourselves of everything that we could not carry in our sea kit bags. Four days later we were transported by road to Suez, loaded onto the 37000 ton New Amsterdam and at 16.00 hours that day weighed anchor and commenced the thirty day homeward journey. There were more than 6000 troops aboard. We enjoyed three meals daily and those of us who gained possession of one of the 700 library books read the time away. A few of them were good and some utter rubbish, but the possession of a book meant that one exchanged it hand to hand for another. There were frequent appeals for the return of all books to the library under threat of cessation of further issues. As the library was empty we did not fall for that one. They got them back at the end of the voyage. We were billeted up on an enclosed weather deck in rather more comfortable conditions than we had experienced on the outward journey nearly three years earlier. We actually enjoyed reacquainting ourselves with hammocks. After two days sailing down the Red Sea we put into the port of Aden and lay at anchor for two days within the perimeter of volcanic peaks surrounding the huge crater harbour. We were not ashore and by the look of Aden with its barren surrounds we did not feel deprived. Our ship was joined by thee more to make up a convoy that changed in structure at various points of the journey.

We departed Aden and steamed across the Indian Ocean to pass off Colombo and head down the Australian West Coast. By day the convoy travelled at moderate speed pursuing a zigzag course and at night speed was increased and a straight course followed. The Dominion Monarch was stationed off our port beam. In some heavy weather we were to see her plough through waves cresting higher than her bridge superstructure. Frequently our escorting destroyers and light cruisers would turn off and disappear over the horizon and hours later or next morning were back in their normal stations. When we reached the Australian coast the warships went off elsewhere and Catalina amphibian aircraft took over the escort duties. We noted members of the crews visible in their observation blisters.