Trooper to the Southern Cross

by Angela Mackail Thirkell

  All was going fairly well till we passed the heel of Italy, when a wind came down the Adriatic that fairly laid us all out. All those who had been sick before were for it again, and those who hadn’t now got what was coming to them. Luckily Celia and I kept pretty fit and we did what we could for others. Celia was wonderful with little Mrs Howe, going every day to her cabin to cheer her up, and getting her up on deck when she could. However, when we got under Crete we were sheltered from the wind and next day everyone came down to breakfast. I noticed the old tabby, Miss Johnson, looking pretty sour that morning, but I was so used to that that I didn’t do anything about it, beyond saying good morning. Presently she leaned over the table at me and said: ‘Do you know, Major Bowen, what those children have been doing?’

  ‘Search me,’ I said, for you never know what kiddies have been up to.

  ‘They climbed up the partition in the ladies’ bathroom and looked over into my bath,’ she said, ‘and I shall have to report it to the captain if you don’t punish them.’

  ‘You’d better tell their parents,’ I said.

  ‘Aren’t they your children, then?’ she said.

  ‘Good Lord, no,’ I said. Then the humour of the situation struck me so much that I had to begin to laugh. After all the kiddies were only kiddies, and what harm it could do to look at a skinny old maid in her birthday clothes, I don’t know. Of course it isn’t everyone’s taste, and certainly wouldn’t have been mine, but the kiddies weren’t old enough to know better. She looked as if she would have liked to bite my head off, but for the life of me I couldn’t keep from laughing. The story of course got all round the ship and many a good laugh was had. When Mrs Jerry heard what the kiddies had been up to, she told them off, but it took more than that to get young Dick and Mary down. Also there was considerable ill feeling between Mrs Jerry and the old maid for some time. I must say I didn’t laugh so much when, in the Red Sea, those two young devils bolted all the lavatory doors from the inside and then crept out under the doors — you know the way those doors in a ship are about a foot from the floor. The stewards had to climb over, or wiggle in, to get them unbolted again, and the two kids were not popular for the next few days. But what can you expect from kiddies? We were just as bad.

  One morning early I looked through my porthole and saw a kind of fringe of palm trees across it, so I knew it was Port Said. We tied up soon after breakfast, not far from the mole, and looked forward to going ashore. But at ten o’clock a notice was put up to say women and civilian passengers could go on shore for the day, but there was no leave for officers or troops. I was as wild as a meat-axe. I had been looking forward to showing Port Said to my little missis and buying her some things at Simon Artz’s. However, she fixed up to go with Mrs Jerry and the kiddies and Mrs Howe, and off they went in a row-boat. I went down to the surgery to do the morning’s routine. Higgins came in and saluted.

  ‘Well, Sergeant,’ I said, ‘more dirty work at the crossroads?’

  ‘That’s right, sir,’ he said. ‘The men are all going ashore and some of the prisoners have gone too.’

  ‘What in the hell is the Colonel doing?’ I asked.

  This I know I should not have asked, for I am a great stickler for discipline, but Higgins was an old soldier and knew the game, which was more than the Colonel did, and anyway the Colonel wasn’t there.

  Higgins grinned.

  ‘He’s holding an officers’ meeting, sir, to decide what to do.’

  ‘That’ll do,’ said I. ‘Next case.’ And for about an hour I was pretty busy with sore fingers, trench feet and other troubles which I will not mention and which an excursion to Port Said would probably not improve. It was stifling hot. All the ship was shut up for coaling. Nowadays the liners all take in oil from the tanks lower down, but we only burnt coal and we were tied up just below the landing stage. The gangways were all out, and the Gippos were going up and down to the portholes with little baskets of coal on their heads, singing a dismal kind of tune. I wouldn’t have been below trimming the bunkers for something. Coal dust was sifting in everywhere. You breathed it in with every breath and you couldn’t touch a thing without getting black. The orderly had left a tin of babies’ food open and there was thick coal dust on it, and I went for him bald-headed. I was sorry for those poor fellows in the cells, but reflecting that most of them weren’t there, I soon stopped. The saloon was fairly empty for lunch, which was a change, for we were having two sittings at lunch and dinner every day. But with nearly all the wives and kiddies and the few civilian passengers ashore, there was plenty of room to sit where you liked. I sat next to the English naval officer who was in command of the ratings. His name was Stone, a lieutenant he was, a short, stout, cheery fellow, and he had a second in command called Anstruther. I’ve never struck a man with such luck as Anstruther. Whatever he touched was lucky. He won the sweep on the ship’s run about three times a week. He couldn’t pick up a poker hand without four aces in it. When we went on shore at Fremantle he went up to the pony races at Perth and won fifty pounds. Stone lifted his elbow too often, but he was a good sort. They were both pretty fed up at being on the ‘Rudolstadt’. I couldn’t blame them. Their men and our men weren’t on speaking terms, except at the boxing competitions, to which I shall come later. Some of our bad eggs had tried to go through the naval ratings’ quarters and had been well and truly told off. But I found that Stone and Anstruther had been in the Dardanelles, so we had much in common and had a good yarn about old days. Stone had been in the old T.B.D. ‘Colne’ that helped to cover our landing at Gaba Tepe on May 4th. They asked me to their cabin and I found they had a case of whisky and were quite ready to help in putting it down.

  So then Stone said he would get his men to do our washing. This was a real godsend, for there was considerable difficulty about the washing. The Captain’s orders were that no washing was to be done in the cabins, but of that no one took any notice, as you may well imagine. Naturally all the mothers with kiddies were washing half the time and most of the cabins looked like the back yard on Monday. The diggers had a kind of laundry and were coining money by taking in washing, but they hadn’t much idea of it. They had rigged up some lines across the well deck and hung the things up to dry, and it was as good as a play to see all the things hanging out with the wind puffing them out, and to hear what the diggers were saying. It was not very literary and I shall not repeat it, but you may imagine that the sight of half a dozen pairs of pants blowing in the wind caused much amusement, even if not of a very refined kind. However, I arranged with Stone that one of his ratings would come twice a week and fetch our things, so we had as much clean stuff as we wanted all through the voyage. I am wonderfully particular about being clean in every way. A lot of officers got into very bad habits on the voyage. The poker school, as we called them, who were all day long in the smoke-room, mostly didn’t wear collars at all when we got past the Canal, and they had their shirtsleeves rolled up and wore shorts. But though I believe in being comfortable and do not believe in a man’s being all dolled up or wearing a boiled shirt, yet I feel a certain respect is owing to women, and I had a clean collar every day, besides shaving regularly.

  Also Schultz had now got the pipes fixed up properly and Catchpole got me my bath every morning, and I often got a sponge down before dinner too, which was not official, as we had notice to be careful with the water. It was this day, while at Port Said, that we had trouble with the pipes again and the lavatories all got choked up, which was a great mistake. The Old Man gave Schultz hell over it, and the diggers gave everybody hell, till Schultz said he would connect up the pipes the sailors used for washing down the decks with the boiling salt water, and turn it on them. He got it all right before we left Port Said that night, and as all the women were on shore much trouble was spared, but old Schultz said if ever he met a German engineer again he’d chuck him down the main sewer. Schultz was actually an Australian Scotsman, coming from Brisbane, where they had no sewage system but only septic tan
ks, so naturally he was a bit self-conscious on the subject. When the diggers found this out they had another song, ‘Have you seen the drainpipe?’ They had a great sense of humour, but the words were unsuitable.

  All day long the Gippos were going up and down those gangways. You couldn’t call it singing, the noise they were making, but it went on all day, and the men were playing house on the promenade deck, and the voice of the fellows calling out the numbers was nearly as bad as the Gippos. It began to get dark and the big searchlights were mounted on the front of the ship. Presently Celia, Mrs Jerry and the kiddies came back, having had a very happy day. They had had lunch at an hotel and taken the kids along the breakwater and then tea at another hotel, besides doing a lot of shopping at Simon Artz. Mrs Jerry had got topees for the kids to wear in the tropics and Celia had got me some khaki silk shirts. She is a thoughtful little woman, and I greatly appreciated those shirts when the hot weather came along.

  The ship was like Broken Hill after a dust-storm, only it was coal instead of sand, and the kiddies were black all over in two minutes. Young Dick got mislaid and I found him on the boat deck, in a lifeboat, looking like a Gippo. I got him out and spanked him and took him down to Mrs Jerry. The cabins were all shut up still, and the heat was terrific, and there was no water for the baths, because we took in salt water for them, and the water at Port Said, though salt, was not suitable. Here the Old Man was right. If I knew that a Gippo, with flies round his eyes and anything you like to think of on the rest of him had been near any water, I’d give that water a week to get over it.

  So Mrs Jerry went right off the handle and ticked Catchpole off, not that it was his fault, and finally he pinched some jugs of water from the Captain’s private supply and the nurse got the kids washed and put to bed.

  Celia and I got some dinner and I introduced her to Stone and Anstruther. Later on we went up on to the boat deck. One of the deck stewards, a nice old fellow we called Daddy, got a rag and cleaned up a bit of the rail so that we could lean over and watch what was going on. It was a bonzer night. The coaling had at last stopped and the sailors were washing down a bit. Away behind us was the old Europe where I had seen so much. Gallipoli, Sed-el-Bahr, Gaba Tepe, the British battleships, France, Pozieres, Bullecourt, Villers Bret, St Quentin, Salisbury Plain, London, Leeds, all gone into yesterday. I’m glad I saw them, but I don’t want to see them again. Good old Aussie will do me every time. On the right was Port Said where I had done my dash in the early days of the Canal fighting in ’14. All its lights looked very pretty under the dark sky. I thought of the shops there, little scent shops where they offer you a cup of coffee and something else if you want it, curio shops where you get your eyes opened about certain things, the mean hotels that the skirts invite you to, the funny back streets where I’ve seen things I wouldn’t have believed. A couple of troopships homeward bound from India had tied up a little further down, and the men were singing such popular songs as ‘Over there’ and ‘Three hundred and sixty-five Days’. All their ports were lighted up and they looked liked floating palaces. Little boats were going up and down with lights at the bows and stern, motor boats and row-boats. Dozens of our fellows were coming off from shore with Gippos to row them, all laden with parcels. Simon Artz must have been pretty well cleaned out that day, not to speak of all the little shops. Most of the diggers seemed to be a bit merry. We watched one boatload come alongside. There were six diggers, with two Gippos. When they got near the ship there was a row about the fare. I saw one man by the light of the big arc lamp and recognized him as Cavanagh.

  ‘Ten shillings, Mr Macpherson,’ said the Gippo.

  ‘Ten shillings your foot,’ said Cavanagh. ‘Here’s half a dollar, Johnny. Napoo. Mafeesh.’

  The Gippos pulled away again from the ship and went on asking for ten shillings. You can’t get a Gippo to see that honesty pays. About the time they had got down to eight and sixpence, two of the diggers knocked them into the bottom of the boat and took the oars to row back to the ship. Of course as no leave had been given there were no ladders out from the men’s quarters, but their friends on board seemed to have plenty of rope. Cavanagh was standing up in the bows with his back to the ship, telling the world he wasn’t going to be cheated by a bloody Turk, when the boat hit the ship with a whack and he fell into the water. All his cobbers in the boat reached over to pull him out, and most of them, being pretty tight, managed to fall in after him. The Gippos got up, and I saw them go through the pockets of the remaining men, who were quite dead to the world. Then they tipped them out and rowed away. I haven’t seen such a commotion since the day the leave train was turned back for the last offensive, and our boys finished the journey on the roof of the train because they had left nothing inside to sit on. Half the ship’s company were hanging over the edge giving good advice. The diggers that were sober were swimming around, tying ropes on to the ones that were too drunk to look after themselves. The digger is a wonderful swimmer, especially the Sydney men, and here they hadn’t any sharks to look out for. I remember at Coogee beach, before they put up a look-out, seeing a man brought out with both legs nipped off by a shark. He looked a bit upset. They say you feel nothing till you come out the water, but I wouldn’t like to put my money on it.

  Anyway they got all the men on board, and by that time the noise was so bad I thought we’d have the Port Police down on us, so I told Celia to buzz off to bed and I went to find Jerry. He and Jack Howe had joined the poker school in the smoke-room and hadn’t heard the row. That is to say, they weren’t on duty that evening, so they had no wish to take on other people’s troubles. I passed the word to them to come out, as there appeared to be some mis-understanding going on, and told them what had been happening.

  ‘Where’s the Colonel?’ I asked.

  ‘In bed, I suppose,’ said Jerry. ‘Nancy has been dancing about on the lower deck telling the men he’d fetch the Colonel, till one of them picked him up by the seat of his pants and put him out. Then he went to bed too. The men have been bringing beer on board all day.’

  ‘Who is down there now?’ I asked.

  ‘Search me,’ said Jerry. ‘It’s the Colonel’s job, not mine. If he comes and gives an order, I’ll carry it out.’

  Well, anyway we went down, because we thought we’d better. There was Cavanagh, pretty sober by now, telling the diggers exactly what he thought of the Gippos and the Colonel and the Adjutant and a few more. Jerry and I listened in admiration, for Cavanagh had us cold as far as language went. Then up came little Higgins, as cool as if he was on parade, and snapped out:

  ‘Prisoner, ’shun!’

  And will you believe it, Cavanagh just said ‘Christl’ and went off to his cell as quiet as a lamb.

  ‘Can you beat it?’ I said, and off I went to see that he got some dry clothes. But Higgins was seeing to that all right, and when I left them Cavanagh was trying to kiss Higgins good night. As I say, there is no harm in the digger if you take him the right way. I went back to the well deck and found Jerry had the situation well in hand.

  ‘Now you’d better go to bed, boys,’ said Jerry, ‘or you’ll be losing your beauty sleeps.’

  Well, a lot of the things the diggers said wouldn’t bear repeating, but they had had their day out and all the beer they wanted, and they went off by twos and threes, quite peacefully. We all went back to the smoke-room and had some ginger ale.

  ‘Ginger ale to drink, and an old woman to command,’ said Jack Howe.

  ‘And Nancy to run the errands,’ I said.

  ‘Well, God bless Higgins,’ said Jerry and then Stone and Anstruther coming in, we finished up in their cabin. About midnight I went up alone to the boat deck. The ship was moving quietly along the canal, with the searchlight making everything very black and white on the banks. The diggers were singing quite melodiously now, ‘Annie Laurie’ and ‘Loch Lomond’, and it sounded pretty. The canal stretched away in front with that look it always has of curving away over the edge of the world, reminding
me of some lines of Tennyson I once read and cannot remember. And then I saw what many will say you don’t see till you are in the Red Sea, but that is just want of observation, namely the Southern Cross. I thought of waking Celia to show it her, but I then thought I wouldn’t, so I went quietly down and got to bed.

  5 – The three-berth-cabin Joke

  When I came on deck next morning I found that we weren’t far down the Canal. We had tied up soon after midnight and had only just begun to move again. It was a wonderfully peaceful day. The diggers were as pleased as anything by their day ashore and had mostly settled down quietly. Some of them were hanging over the rails, chiacking the Gippos and the Arabs on the banks. It was a lovely sunny day and I can tell you it was good-oh to feel the sun in one’s bones again. Jerry and I got quite sentimental, passing the scenes of the Canal fighting. I could point out the very place where the sappers — 3rd Field Company I think it was — put a temporary bridge over the Canal. It was a smart piece of work too. It was like old times to see the line of trees along the Sweet Water Canal, and Ismailia on the other bank. When we were there in ’14, Ismailia was just a little township, but now I believe it is a large place with a railhead. Things do change.

  A few more passengers had come on at Port Said, though how and where they were fitted in you can search me. There was a Mrs Henley, a big handsome kind of woman, on her way to join her husband in China. She was only going as far as Colombo, where she had to change boats. She had a wonderful deck chair, a kind of cane and bamboo affair with an awning that you could lie or sit in. This she had brought up on to the boat deck, and spent most of her time there. Then there was a man who seemed to be a great pal of hers who came on board at the same time. He was an officer in the Indian army, so he told us, going to Australia for some reason or other. He was a queer fellow. A story got round in the smoke-room, the way these things do, that he had been captured by Afghans up on the North-West frontier and tortured, which had affected his mind a bit. One never knows the truth, and it is surprising the way things get about, starting no one knows where, but he certainly was a bit queer. A big man he was, about my height and build, very light on his feet. This is also like me, for I have always been a bit of a boxer and I have sometimes very much surprised people by the quick way I can move around if necessary. He was always around Mrs Henley. I can’t remember his name now but if I call him Smith that will do. ‘No names, no pack drill’, is a good motto. Some of the officers’ wives tried to get off with him, but he didn’t so much as look at anyone but Mrs Henley. The only other new passengers were a couple of priests going to Colombo. Frenchmen they were, great big chaps with long black beards. They chummed up with the R.C. padre.