Four weeks on a troop ship: the bad part

Why four weeks, rather than the original six? By now it was two and a half years later and the engines were run in.
To continue, we were back on board the troop ship in the tropics, because the regiment was ordered back to the UK. It was still hot and sticky below decks and I was still sleeping below the water-line. Well I would have been if I had not chosen to avoid that fetid place. Much of the band decided to avoid the evil dormitory. We had learned our lesson coming out: below decks was too hot, too smelly, too crowded. Going back, we bagged a space on deck and slept there at night, after loosely guarding it during the day by always having a few people sitting there and of course smoking in the usual bored army way back then.

Bad stuff number one - the Lieutenant who robbed me of over a week’s pay.
Now for me this was a dreadful episode and I shall tell you more. There was an evening of Bingo organised, below decks so it was nastily hot and stuffy, but that was not my problem. My problem began when I was lucky and all my numbers came up. I had won the first game and of course I shouted “Bingo!” Where is the problem in that? After all, the prize was £5, which was more than a week’s pay for me. Definitely not a problem. I walked up to the stage, climbed up, feeling chuffed to little buttercups, and then some clown on the floor suddenly shouted “Bingo!” maybe thirty seconds or more after I had done the same and of course I had already won. The rules are simple and clear. The first to shout Bingo is the winner, once the card has been checked, as mine had been.
The poxy Lieutenant made someone check this other guy’s card and then he would not hand over my winnings. “Let’s make it interesting!” he said and brought the other fellow up on stage and forced us each to draw a number out of the bag. The largest number wins. I said this was totally against the rules and I had already won but, pulling rank, he forced us do it, despite my protests. I went first, drew something like 79, and so felt confident that I was still the winner. Then chappie number two drew 80-something, and suddenly me, the winner, had become me the loser. The lousy Lieutenant then gave my legitimate winnings to the other squaddie. All I could do was glower at him, as any other response from me would lead to me being punished. All I could do was to turn on my heel and walk down the centre aisle to the main door and then walk out. The entire hall was silent as they watched me go. Everyone knew that I had really won and then been robbed by a rule-breaking officer. No wonder some officers reputedly got shot in the back when advancing on foot during war
I was in a Guards’ regiment and all officers were all ex public school and also had to have a substantial private income. Up to the rank of Major, an officer was obliged to spend more in the Mess than he earned. This was a sort of rule of the regiment, perhaps invented by the Colonel, I do not know. I think Major was about the breakeven rank. Therefore, £5 meant nothing at all to the young Lieutenant but it was over a week’s pay to me. The lesson I learned? After having walked out in protest, I have never played Bingo again.

Bad stuff number two – the aftermath of the Suez Crisis.
As we sailed home, the Suez Canal crisis, when Britain, France and Israel invaded after Nasser nationalised the Canal, had recently ended. We were the first troop ship to enter the Canal after the mini war that we had lost. In its wisdom, the army told us to ignore each and every local person that we saw. The Military Police (the big rascals get everywhere) patrolled the decks to ensure we complied. As we moved along the Canal people on the bank would stop and wave at us. We were totally forced to ignore them on pain of “the L-shaped bunk”. The prison bit of the ship was way up front, in what was sometimes referred to as “the sharp end”, and rumour had it that it was so pointy that the front bed had to be shaped like the letter L. Probably untrue, but none of us was keen to discover the truth.
So there we were, forced to ignore friendly waves to the evident dismay of quite a few people. I felt then, as I do now, that if one wishes to alienate someone, effectively sending them to Coventry in the old phrase is a darn good way of doing it. So we the defeated British etc. troops metaphorically speaking thumbed our noses at the winners. “Reject all friendly overtures” was he order of the day. So we did.

Bad stuff number three – The sailors ensured that the soldiers suffered as much discomfort as possible.
Well why not? Regiments tend to dislike each other at best or sometimes hate each other if there was an earlier contretemps between the two. Like maybe two hundred years ago! I kid you not! I shall digress. People in the army half-look back. A common phrase in my regiment when anything went wrong was “The biggest f…. up since Balaclava!” A sergeant said this to me once and in my naive curiosity I replied, “What on earth happened there?” possibly in rather more robust military language, and he said “F…. knows, but something bad I imagine!” Half-looked not fully looked then as ever.
If regiments dislike each other, no wonder the different branches of the services are slightly at loggerheads.
End of digression.
We squaddies had to queue for meals along a long, narrow corridor. As there were maybe about 2,000 of us on board, this meant long queues for a long time. The sailors cunningly opened a door in the corridor that led straight down to the engine room. They then locked it open. Hot oil, evil aromas, a miasma of nastiness had to be breathed in while awaiting the meal. Perhaps a quarter of the soldiers had to race back up on deck in order to be sick. Luckily, despite the reek, I was not one of them.

However, I did learn something useful about vomiting on deck and maybe this should be Bad Stuff Number Four. Never throw up into the wind. I learned this while crossing the Bay of Biscay, when a lot of soldiers were seasick. I was standing on deck next to some other stalwart who, like me, was one of the few who did not feel sick. We were congratulating ourselves on this when this unknown soldier was suddenly overcome and threw up directly into the wind. Disaster! What did not land on him landed on me. It was one thing not feeling seasick. It is something else when I was suddenly coated in vomit and not even mine. The smell got me instantly, and I followed his less than illustrious example. They do say worse things happen at sea. They are right.

And that is about it for troop ship travel. In a phrase, this is best avoided.