Under the Red Sea Sun

by Edward Ellsberg

  Next morning, the show started off at nine as scheduled—there were three battalions of Sudanese, Bengalis, and Sikhs, all lined up on the parade ground in front of my electric shop, with our one large American flag, somewhat faded and dusty by now, proudly displayed above them. In front of them were all the naval officers, British and American (twelve British and one American) from both naval stations. Then there were Colonel Sundius-Smith, and various British and American Army officers, all except Morrill and Woods, who were having their hands full in the shops, instructing both the foremen and our borrowed sailors.

  It was damned hot out in the sun; to avoid being knocked out, I was wearing my khaki sun helmet over my whites, reserving my white naval cap till the last minute before the Duke showed up.

  Nine-thirty rolled around. The news of who was to be received was passed out to all officers. It caused quite a stir—among the British because of their natural respect for the Royal Family; among the Americans because Dukes were rara avis to them.

  Ten o’clock came but no Duke nor any sign of him or his cavalcade. Meanwhile, here and there men in ranks, though all allowed to stand at ease, were keeling over one by one—a startling thing considering they were all colonial troops, brought up in the tropics. Evidently neither India nor the Sudan was any proper training for the Massawa sun in July. I thanked God I’d had sense enough to be non reg for a while and wear my khaki sun helmet, otherwise I should myself long since have collapsed.

  At 10:20 A.M., a British dispatch rider raced in on a motorcycle to inform us the Duke would be along in a few minutes, would we be patient? The Duke was late, but it wasn’t his fault; he had started in plenty of time from Asmara. Unfortunately, he was being transported in a British Army Ford, brought from the Libyan Desert and fitted out for desert service. But that Ford never knew what deserts were till it struck the Massawa desert this side of the mountains. Then its radiator water had all boiled out, the engine had frozen up, and with all its pistons seized in the cylinders, the engine had curled up and died in the middle of the desert. After vain attempts to unfreeze it by pouring in a fresh charge of water while the Duke cooked inside the car, the attempt had finally been abandoned, the Duke had been taken aboard Colonel Chickering’s Chevrolet, and the procession had started again, abandoning the Duke’s Ford. He should shortly arrive.

  He did. At 10:30 A.M., I hurriedly tossed aside my khaki sun helmet and donned my white cap, as amidst appropriate flourishes, the Duke himself descended from his borrowed American car, and my conscience ceased to trouble me about all my borrowed accessories. Apparently even Dukes could borrow under sufficient necessity.

  Everything went off beautifully. The colonials (that is, those still left on their feet) paraded in amazingly soldierly fashion, considering the long preliminary roasting they had received. However, all hands were even that way, for the Duke had baked in the desert while we had roasted on the parade ground, and he looked it, with his khaki shirt unbuttoned well down from his throat and thoroughly soaked from head to foot in perspiration.

  After the parade, I escorted the Duke through all the shops, where he gazed with great interest at the previously sabotaged machinery and at our all-nations workmen, busily attending their machines. Morrill had done a splendid job in the shops, backed up by Woods. In every shop was presented a scene of native and Eytie workmen so thoroughly engrossed at their tasks they hardly looked up at the Duke as he slowly passed through, asking how this or that damaged machine had been repaired, and being introduced to the American superintendents who had done it. Meanwhile, my borrowed bluejackets were leap-frogging magnificently; one would never have guessed there wasn’t a permanent American naval guard in every shop.

  After the shop inspection, we moved briefly over to the Royal Naval Base where at the Officers’ Mess, lunch was served for the Duke and the senior officers.

  That over, back at my Base, we shoved off in the boat borrowed from Captain Lucas, disguised at the stern with a small American boat ensign. Fortunately, there was a little breeze, and it was cooler out on the water. I’m sure the Duke appreciated it.

  By this time I had seen enough of the Duke to conclude he was a very unaffected human being, in no way trying to be regal, and honestly interested in what was going on. He manifested tremendous enthusiasm over our achievements on both the Liebenfels and the salvaged Italian dock, insisted on boarding both, laughed over how the Persian dry dock had been finessed as a prize of war, and was as startled as I had been at first viewing the rows on rows of scuttled ships with which the Nazis and Eyties had festooned the harbor waters.

  About the middle of the afternoon, we came back to our Base and the Duke was ready to leave. But he had had enough of traversing the desert outside Massawa, so while we were inspecting the Base, a plane had hastily been flown down from Asmara to the little-used Massawa airfield to take him back to Asmara. The Duke didn’t say farewell; instead he invited me to fly back with him to Asmara to have dinner there with him as his guest, and later to attend an evening reception he was giving.

  I accepted with great pleasure. While the Duke was being transported to the airfield, I rushed to my room to get an overcoat lest I freeze in Asmara, then joined him at the airfield.

  The plane ride I thought was a great improvement; in twenty minutes we had covered the forty airline miles to Asmara, instead of putting in at least two and a half hours on that terrible seventy-mile combination of desert and mountain road. And the more I saw of the Duke of Gloucester, the more he seemed to me to resemble his brother, King George, whose coronation five years before I had attended.

  The conversation at dinner ran mostly to the story of Massawa. At the reception afterward, I saw little of him, for all British and American officialdom in Asmara was there. Late in the evening, I managed to squeeze through the crowd about him to thank the Duke for his interest and to say good-by. On his part, he thanked me for my help to Britain and promised that if ever he might put in a word to help us, he’d not forget Massawa. I was quite willing to believe that; never would he forget Massawa, if for no other account than what he had suffered there.

  CHAPTER

  39

  THE LAST FEW WEEKS OF JULY moved unexcitedly along while endlessly we labored and sweltered. We got the barracks building finished for the men and moved all the American workmen—the slight Naval Base force, the contractor’s men, my salvage crews, and the South Africans—into it, where they also could get the blessings of air-conditioning. Our cases of hospitalization for prickly heat immediately dropped sharply.

  Out on the Persian dry dock, we were pushing ships through steadily, one every day and a half. My major troubles on that dock were now meeting religious requirements—I had to furnish a goat every five days to the Persians to meet their necessities and it seemed to me that every day was the Sabbath for some group on that dry dock—I never knew there were so many religions in the world.

  Lloyd Williams, assisted by Bill Reed and his divers, and by Cunningham and the South Africans, was repairing the salvaged Italian dry dock as fast as his skimpy stock of steel allowed. All of us were going around the Naval Base now with our eyes glued to the ground, looking for odd scraps of steel plate or bars we might somehow use. And I had one more American ironworker, Horace Armstrong, who, five months in transit by sea, had finally arrived as an additional salvage mechanic. He was, according to Williams, another tough guy, more pugnacious even than Cunningham, who was pugnacious only when he was drunk, while Armstrong tended toward pugnacity all the time. But he showed himself to be a good ironworker, and I could pardon much for that. He and Cunningham now worked as a team.

  Then there was the Liebenfels. Her hull was repaired, but her boilers, her engines, and her electrical outfit, submerged in the Red Sea more than a year, had all to be cleaned and her machinery dismantled, oiled, and reassembled before she could steam again.

  For this task, a terrific one, I took Hudson, the English engineer on the Persian dock, and put him in charge
of all machinery repairs on our salvaged wrecks, helped by such miscellaneous Italians as I could spare and a few Danish, Jewish, and Greek engineers as could occasionally be hired off some ship coming into Massawa. I never had any Americans at all on that task.

  Hudson proved to be a wonder—a hard worker himself, a fine engineer, and a good leader. Under him, considering the few men he had, we started to make excellent progress in getting the machinery of the Liebenfels ready for sea again.

  Finally aside from everything going on in the naval shops, there was the Intent working on the Frauenfels. I visited her every few days, made a few dives to inspect her damage, and left the rest to Brown. There was nothing novel on the Frauenfels—just the day by day torture of working on her under the July sun, undersea and on the surface. Brown and his men kept steadily at it.

  For well over two months, I had been bombarding Cairo to get me more workmen for repairing my salvaged wrecks—first, for the Italian dry dock, then for the Liebenfels also. America swiftly passed the problem to the British; the British said they couldn’t help. But now with the Naval Base at Alexandria shut down, it seemed to me there must be men from there available to be sent to Massawa, if only temporarily, and I had commenced a second barrage of requests along those lines.

  Seemingly I was getting nowhere with this either, and I began to get morose, particularly with everybody’s personal troubles, native or American, being landed in my lap for solution.

  For instance, Mrs. Maton complained to me about the Sudanese laborers in the carpenter shop. They were parking the goat for their Sabbath dinner right alongside the office building all through the week and then slaughtering and roasting him right there in the open. As she had to be in the office all day long, smelling that goat all week, not to mention witnessing his piteous demise and the ensuing rather savage feast, she felt that after three goats, she was fed up. Couldn’t I do something about it?

  A cursory investigation showed Mrs. Maton was in nowise exaggerating, so I declared a moratorium on all goats ashore within the limits of the U.S. Naval Repair Base.

  Then Doc Kimble, diver, came to me to complain that the circulation of air in the corner of the barracks where he now slept didn’t suit; would I do something about it? Of course, for a diver I’d do anything. I personally investigated that corner and had the fans changed.

  Then Bill Reed, salvage master, had a complaint also. It appeared that he had only a station wagon to haul his men about, while one of the contractor’s superintendents ran around in a sedan. Bill felt there was no justice in that situation. I agreed with Bill heartily on that; he was as much entitled to a sedan as that construction superintendent—more even, maybe, for he certainly worked harder—but where could I get the sedan? All I could do (and did) was to tell Bill he could use my sedan whenever I wasn’t (which was most of the time).

  Then Mohammed Ali, with God alone knows how many children and wives, needed a job to keep them all from starving. Mohammed, of course, came to see me about it. I hired Mohammed.

  Next Garza, my Somali chauffeur (who had long since superseded the Italian driver I had originally) felt decidedly aggrieved over his rate of pay and I must do something about that. Garza, as a Somali, was on the payroll as a native at twenty-five lira a day. Garza assured me that he had some European blood in him, and was consequently entitled to be paid as such—say, at fifty lira a day, the same as the Italians. I looked at Garza, but I was stumped; what he said might well be true, but who was I to pass on how much European blood, if any, Garza had in his veins, and what between twenty-five and fifty lira a day that entitled him to? For once, with great glee I passed a problem on to the ponderous board of bureaucrats sitting on wage matters in Asmara—let them struggle with that one.

  Then came Buck Scougale with fire in his eye and a fist full of figures to prove to me that the paymaster was trying to gyp him out of some of his money due for dives made, and would I please wring the paymaster’s neck for him. Seeing all the trouble the pay office had once caused, I should once have been glad to oblige Buck, but now could I see his figures anyway? I was under the impression that under a new paymaster the pay office was doing better since the strike, which was before Buck’s time in Massawa. I audited Buck’s figures. Undoubtedly Buck was right; I knew he had made the dives he claimed; his pay envelopes failed to show any pay for them. I promised Buck I’d see the paymaster did right by him. Buck left, a little skeptical. Buck was naturally a pessimist; till he actually had his hands on his money, he’d remain dubious. He’d heard too many tales about that pay office.

  Then along came Ahmed Hussein, my own Sudanese houseboy, dragging an interpreter, through whom I heard a lugubrious tale of woe from Ahmed, also involving the paymaster. Ahmed claimed that for two weeks he had gone unpaid; Allah would bear him witness that all that time he had been always on the job; there was no reason why he should not have been paid. Leaving Allah out of it, I knew that except for the hours spent shining my car (which to Ahmed was pleasure, not work), I could bear witness myself that he had always been sleeping across my doorstep, which was about all Ahmed ever did to earn his pay.

  Still, since he had faithfully been doing that, there was no reason why he should not have been paid as usual and I was perfectly willing myself to bear witness to that. Here was a case that could quickly be settled, so with the interpreter tagging behind, I escorted Ahmed into the pay office, to see what was the matter. We had a new paymaster since the strike, Ed Mahoney, a very energetic, a very capable, and a very co-operative person, who in my mind made only such errors as even the best of human beings make. I explained Ahmed’s case to Ed. He started to thumb his pay sheets—he had only about two hundred Ahmeds on his payroll; most of his other native laborers went by the name of Mohammed.

  Finally Mahoney’s finger came to Hussein; he looked at Ahmed puzzled. The pay sheets indicated that for the two weeks in question, Ahmed had drawn his pay. Through the interpreter Ahmed was taxed with this: why was he trying to draw his pay twice over?

  Ahmed stood mute. He had nothing to say in explanation, but Ed Mahoney who, like a good paymaster, had been scanning Ahmed closely, didn’t stand mute.

  “Captain,” he averred finally, “that black boy is also on my payroll under the name of Mohammed Bayumi. I recognize him.” He thumbed through the Mohammeds till he came to Bayumi, who had also been paid for those same two weeks.

  I looked at my houseboy in horror. Apparently Ahmed was not as dumb as he looked, or perhaps he was even dumber, trying to push a good thing entirely too far. Through the interpreter, Ahmed was taxed with this duplicity. Why had he been trying to cheat Uncle Sam? Ahmed still had nothing whatever to say, so he was fired on the spot for a payroll fraud, and promptly (with what pay was due him for the current week) escorted out the gate by a sentry. Never would Ahmed darken my doorstep again, over which I shed no tears. No longer would I be in danger of stumbling over his black torso when I came in late off some salvage job; and as for shining up my car, it could get along with Garza’s attention. I decided for the future to dispense with any houseboy.

  Finally there came the worst problem of all. Lieutenant Winfield, who had come down from Asmara to help Morrill drill the civilian volunteers, had also been assigned Intelligence Officer and Provost Marshal at the Naval Base. He came to me one day with a red-hot situation.

  It appeared that the warehouse foreman, an American employee of the contractor, Barton (which wasn’t his name), was about to marry an Italian girl (a bleached blonde, as is usual in such cases) working as his warehouse typist. Winfield pointed out it couldn’t be done—she was an enemy alien, and all fraternization with enemy aliens, let alone marrying one, was strictly forbidden by Army regulations in wartime.

  To make the situation worse, the girl’s dossier, which Winfield had checked in the British files in Asmara, showed a very disturbing state of affairs. That girl, according to the Italian records, which the British now had, had come to Eritrea in 1935 as one of a batch o
f Italian prostitutes sent by Mussolini to serve with the Fascist army in the campaign against Haile Selassie. That service completed, she had settled down in Asmara as the mistress of an Italian civil official, an ardent Fascist, now in an Eritrean concentration camp. She herself was suspected of being a Fascist transmission belt, if not an active espionage agent. That was the girl Barton wanted to marry.

  “Tell the damned fool he can’t do it, it’s against the law,” I ordered Winfield. “He’s under military law here, civilian or not, and he can’t do it without my permission as Commanding Officer here. I’ll not give it.”

  That, I thought, ended it, but it didn’t. Barton swiftly came to see me to get my permission.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” I told him. “The rule’s sensible. I’ll not waive it. Besides, don’t you know that girl’s record?”

  “Lieutenant Winfield told me. I don’t believe it.”

  I looked at Barton. He was certainly well over thirty and old enough to have more sense; I had seen that Italian girl in the warehouse, and from her bleached hair down, she matched her dossier. But there was no use, apparently, arguing with Barton.

  “No permission will be given you to marry any enemy alien. That settles it. I don’t care whether you believe it or not. Now get back to work,” I ordered him. Barton left.

  But it didn’t settle it. A few days later Lieutenant Winfield advised me he had learned via the underground, that there was more to the case than he had suspected before. Barton was arranging secretly to marry the girl at 4:00 P.M., the coming Sunday, permission or no permission. The girl was pregnant. But to complicate matters, the friends of her Fascist paramour who was sequestered in a concentration camp, were threatening to knife Barton if he married the mistress of their temporarily out-of-circulation associate. On the other hand, the Italian friends of the girl were threatening to knife him if he didn’t marry the girl he had made pregnant.