Convoy of Fear

by Philip McCutchan

  The doctor laughed. ‘I wouldn’t let them use the ship’s facilities, anyway. But that’s not the point I’m making, quite. If it comes aboard, then every precaution will have to be taken to prevent a very, very fast spread. All those troops, and so little space. It could be worse than a dozen bombs.’

  ‘And the actual chances of it coming aboard?’

  The doctor shrugged. ‘Very hard to say. Any orders for fresh fruit and vegetables should be cancelled, or if the stuff’s essential, and of course I agree it is ideally, then it must be washed in Condy’s Fluid. Very thoroughly. Of course, I’ll be having words with the ship’s surgeon and the medical staff embarked with the brigade.’

  It turned out that the doctor was in charge of military hygiene in Alexandria. Epidemics were his speciality; he elaborated a little more and made it sound as though the ship was doomed. Kemp asked if the home authorities had been informed, and they had.

  Pumphrey-Hatton broke in. ‘You’re asking if there’ll be a change of orders, Commodore. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes, you are.’

  ‘There won’t be. My brigade goes where it’s ordered. It won’t be put off by a damn bacillus. There’s chaps waiting for us in —’ Pumphrey-Hatton bit off what he’d been going to say. ‘The other side of the canal,’ he finished.

  He was right, of course. There was a risk, but it had to be accepted like any other risk in war. The troops wouldn’t die in swathes like the Egyptians. A ship was a clean entity, and there was a competent medical staff aboard, and if the thing did strike then they would have to pack the untouched troops in even tighter so that space could be cleared for an isolation unit, but that was Bracewell’s worry, not Kemp’s. Of course, the shortage of fresh water wouldn’t help.

  The period of relaxation didn’t take place; Bracewell and his Staff Captain had much to do. When the visiting army officers went back ashore, Bracewell called a conference of his senior officers including the ship’s surgeon, the chief and senior second stewards also being called in.

  ii

  At dawn, with no response from Whitehall as a result of the cholera report, the Orlando weighed anchor and proceeded the short distance to Port Said. Already the troop decks were becoming unpleasant — far from enough fresh air was coming down through the mushroom ventilators. Already water was short, apart from salt water. Only salt water was now available for washing of bodies, the fresh being reserved for drinking purposes. Salt water, with no small basinful of fresh water to wash away the stickiness, left an unwashed feeling behind it. The complaints were many, and questions were asked only to be left unanswered: the word of the epidemic in Port Said was being kept from the men for as long as possible. But during the morning the senior RAMC doctor made a broadcast over the tannoy, speaking of cleanliness and care with the lavatory facilities and so on. This, without mentioning cholera. The brigade had not been east of Suez before and they put the pep-talk down to normal routine for passing through the Middle East, a part of the world not as clean as Britain.

  Petty Officer Ramm, however, was an old hand and he read plenty of what he wasn’t supposed to into the doctor’s talk.

  He button-holed Perryman as the ship passed the statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps at the end of the breakwater outside Port Said.

  ‘Funny,’ he said. ‘Unless it’s just on account o’ gyppo tummy. Which I doubt. Everyone gets gyppo tummy, first time through.’

  ‘What d’you think, then?’

  ‘Bloody anything’s likely. Dysentery, I s’pose, yellow fever —’

  ‘Not in Egypt. Yellow fever’s West Africa — Freetown.’

  ‘All right. Well, typhus.’ Then Ramm put his finger on it. ‘Cholera. But they can inoculate against all them perishing diseases now, can’t they.’

  ‘I reckon so, yes.’ Perryman belched. ‘You been done, have you?’

  ‘No. Only TABT back in Pompey.’

  ‘Me too, in Chatham. Nothing about cholera. Funny! That quack didn’t say anything about lining up for jabs, did he, on the tannoy?’

  ‘Probably left it all behind on the Clyde,’ Ramm said with his customary cynicism.

  iii

  Ramm didn’t know how right he’d been. The reason the RAMC doctor had made no mention of cholera jabs over the tannoy was simply because there were none available. There had been a military cock-up; the supplies that should have been put aboard the troopship off Greenock from the base hospital at Netley on Southampton Water had never arrived, and the absence had not been perceived until after the news of the outbreak had come aboard in Alexandria, when preparations were about to be put in hand for a mass inoculation process. By that time the army’s hygiene officer had gone ashore; when contacted, he refused point-blank to supply the ship from the shore stocks. He had his outfit to think about, and that outfit was a very large one and was poised for a breakthrough against Rommel. He was very sorry but there it was: he couldn’t deprive the army in North Africa just to plug the hole left by inefficiency and failure to check stocks and indents. Monty, for one — and a very important one — would never permit it. HQ would be in touch with Port Said, and, it was hoped, a consignment would be put aboard whilst the Orlando was awaiting canal entry.

  Dr Crampton, during the run from Alex, sought a consultation with the Master. He said, ‘I have a small stock, sir. Ship’s supplies.’

  ‘Not enough for the troops?’

  ‘Far from it,’ Crampton said. ‘We were relying on the army as always.’

  ‘Enough for our own ship’s company?’

  ‘Not all of them, no.’

  ‘Why’s that, Doctor?’

  Crampton said, ‘Because I found I had a mostly dud batch. I’m afraid I didn’t discover that until this morning. I’m taking the first opportunity of reporting it, sir.’

  Bracewell was icy. ‘How dud?’

  ‘Dud enough to be useless, or worse, dangerous.’ Crampton went into an involved exposition of how cholera antitoxin should be stored, the relevance of date stamping and so on, but Bracewell cut him short.

  ‘It’s done now and we’re landed with it, but for God’s sake, I’ve never come up against quite such a medical balls-up!’

  ‘I’m sorry —’

  ‘All right, Doctor. What do you suggest in the bloody wretched circumstances?’

  ‘I suggest I inoculate key personnel, sir.’

  ‘That’s going to look good to the unfortunates, isn’t it!’

  ‘Needs must, sir. There are men we can’t do without. You for one.’

  ‘You can leave me out of it.’

  ‘With respect, sir — no. That’s just not on. If you went down with it — well, I needn’t say more. Then the Commodore, the Staff Captain, chief engineer, chief steward say, as many deck and engineer officers as possible … and OC Troops and his orderly room staff.’ Crampton paused. ‘It’s the best we can do now, sir. I repeat, I’m very sorry.’

  ‘What about the naval party, and the girls? We’ll need the gunners, all the way through.’

  ‘Yes, sir. There should be enough. But it’s going to be a case of priorities.’

  Bracewell blew out his breath. He was furiously angry but there was nothing to be done about it. Except one thing. He said, Til see what we can raise from the escort. Glamorgan may be able to help out. I’ll talk to you again later, Doctor.’

  ‘Yes, sir. In the meantime, I’ll get everything ready.’

  As Crampton saluted and turned to leave the bridge, Bracewell stopped him. ‘Just one thing more. How long before the jabs take effect? What I’m getting at is, are we already too late in fact?’

  ‘No, that’s all right, there’s still time. I wouldn’t expect anything to show for quite a few days, and then only in perhaps one or two cases. But, frankly, I have to say that the cholera vaccine isn’t terribly effective anyway.’ Crampton went below to make his preparations with Mary McCann: she and he would each inoculate the other. Neither of them saw this as queue-jumping: the Orlando was going to need
all the doctors and nurses available.

  iv

  From the bridge, Kemp watched the familiar scenes slide past — the bumboats, now being kept well clear of the ship’s side by the bosun and his party with fire hoses, the occupants shaking their fists at the white infidels who were ruining their customary trade in cheap trinkets, fruit, corn cures — anything that used to sell to the peacetime liner passengers. The store of Simon Artz on the waterfront to starboard — Simon Artz where, on a larger scale than the bumboats, you could buy almost anything you fancied from a desert outfit, an Indian carpet or a case of the best champagne, to strings of cheap beads and useless mementoes of Port Said. Standing ready to take any signals the Commodore might wish to make to the port authorities, Yeoman Lambert looked across at Simon Artz, and looked with bitterness and regret. The last time he’d passed through the canal had been in peacetime, years ago, when he’d been in a light cruiser under orders for Singapore to join the East Indies. He’d gone ashore and at Simon Artz he’d bought that french letter. A packet to be honest, but he’d given the others to needy messmates. It was a wonder his hadn’t rotted.

  It just showed, he thought sadly. So bloody old, and never used. If only the missus could be persuaded to believe that …

  Kemp stood like a statue, feeling cold inside. Bracewell had given him the facts of the ship’s antitoxin supply. He had been persuaded to take the inoculation: his duty, Bracewell had insisted. The Admiralty, he knew, would say exactly the same. But he didn’t like any of it. He felt he was setting himself up as a kind of God, deciding his own fate and to hell with the unlucky ones. By now all the senior officers had had their jabs, except the Captain himself and those deck officers also required for duty until the ship was into the canal proper. So the brass would be safe. That they were so was being kept dark, for obvious reasons.

  The signal had been made requesting urgent supplies of anti-cholera vaccine. As Kemp and Bracewell had expected the answer had been a decided no. The ship was moving out of the danger zone; the local inhabitants and the British military and naval personnel were held to the port and must have protection.

  No help anywhere; but they’d asked for it, Kemp thought. He was in a savage mood. This convoy had not been a good one at all. Never in all his seafaring experience had Kemp had to contend with a serious epidemic aboard a ship. Minor ones, yes — the various stomach upsets that could strike and spread rapidly, flu and allied upsets, even measles among the children, or chicken pox. But never cholera.

  Cholera, in the close confines of an over-crowded troop transport with no ability to mount anything approaching a full-scale inoculation. Of course, it hadn’t happened yet. Maybe it never would. But Kemp felt in his bones that it was going to. There seemed to be a jonah around.

  Flies …

  Kemp swatted at them. Port Said was the home of flies, they were everywhere. Filthy, bloodsucking brutes, crawling over men and refuse — over food. Their legions would be below in the Orlando’s accommodation already, with their horrible hairy legs to which refuse from the gutters of the port could have stuck. They could spread the disease presumably, the dreaded disease that from time to time ravaged India and China and the Nile delta among other places. They were not going to escape it.

  v

  RSM Pollock, Bull’s Bollocks to his soldiers, was taking a look at Port Said through the orderly room porthole. He had passed this way before, one of the very few of the troops who had, on draft for Indian service aboard a pre-war trooper bound for Bombay. He knew a thing or two about cholera. In the old days of the North-West Frontier fighting, it had hit the regiments hard at times, very hard. Death by the dozen. Today they could fight it better, but it was still a real dirty threat, RSM Pollock, one of the senior warrant officers who’d had to be put in the picture, reflected on the lack of jabs. Bad, that.

  He looked sideways as Captain Archer came in.

  ‘Well, Mr Pollock.’

  Pollock kept his face blank. ‘Well Mr Pollock’ was just the sort of meaningless remark you came to expect from Captain Archer. He said, ‘Very well, sir, thank you. So far.’

  ‘Yes, quite. It’s nasty.’

  ‘Sooner die with the enemy in front of me, sir, and running. But it’s not for us to decide, sir, all said and done. We take what comes.’

  ‘It may not come, you know, Mr Pollock.’

  ‘No, sir, indeed it may not, and I know that. But the cholera has nasty habits, sir. As that Rudyard Kipling knew, sir.’

  ‘Kipling?’

  ‘A poet, sir —’

  ‘I know of him, Mr Pollock. Jolly good stuff!’

  ‘Then you’ll know what he wrote about the cholera, sir.’ RSM Pollock didn’t wait for a reply. He quoted, ‘“There aren’t much comfort ’andy on ten deaths a day.” You know it, sir?’

  ‘Not all —’

  ‘Then allow me, sir. What Kipling wrote was this: “We’ve got the cholera in camp — it’s worse than forty fights; we’re dyin’ in the wilderness the same as Isrulites. It’s before us an’ be’ind us, an’ we cannot get away, an’ the doctor’s just reported we’ve ten more today.” Sir!’

  ‘Ah …’

  ‘Mark what the poet said, sir. “We cannot get away.”’

  SIX

  There was a delay in Port Said, not for the first time in the canal’s history; no-one was quite sure why — again, not for the first time. Egyptian officials usually caused delays and it was often said that they did so in order to enhance their own importance. In Bracewell’s wartime experience, much the same could be said of the army. This time the belief was that both the Egyptians and the army in concert were responsible. In the event it was towards dark when the canal pilot embarked and was taken to the bridge.

  Bracewell asked him what it had all been about.

  ‘Shortage of pilots, sir. There’s a lot of us stuck at the other end, in Suez.’

  Bracewell snorted. ‘Surely I could have been told?’

  ‘They never give anything away, Captain.’

  ‘In case it leaks to Berlin, I suppose.’ Bracewell, like Kemp and all the other bridge personnel, swatted at the swarms of flies. ‘Well — let’s get on with it, then. She’s yours, pilot.’

  ‘Right, sir.’ The canal pilot was British; there were an equal number of British and French pilots, all of them with master mariner’s certificates and the majority of them ex-liner officers well used to the canal passage before they joined the pilotage service. Many Orient, P & O and Mediterranean-Australia Line officers had transferred to the canal company, mostly the married ones seeking more home life and the closer proximity of their wives. Neither Bracewell nor Kemp had sailed with the present pilot but there was always a lot of trust between the liner masters and the pilots. As his ship moved at dead slow for the canal entry, the last signals made to and from the port authority, Bracewell wondered what it would be like if ever the Egyptians took control of the canal and eased out the British and French pilots. Already, before the war, there had been a veiled hostility from the natives, and contemptuous gestures along the canal banks as the peasantry had watched the passage of the liners, so close at times to the banks.

  It was in fact evident again now, despite the fading light, PO Wren Hardisty was looking from her cabin port, head thrust out to catch a breath of air to relieve the stifling conditions below decks, when she caught sight of a group of Egyptian labourers quite close as the troopship moved past. They seemed to her to be wearing garments like nightdresses, long and flowing, some of them white, some of them striped. Funny, she thought, but there was no accounting for foreigners.

  Then, as though a signal had been given, there was a stir. The nightdresses were lifted high. There was a chorus of yells, and laughter, and indescribable things were taken in hand and waved towards the ship.

  ‘Well, I never!’ Miss Hardisty said, shocked to the core. Her face scarlet, she withdrew from the port and banged the glass and deadlight shut.

  ii

  Further
inoculations had taken place. The Commodore’s staff and the ship’s own gunnery rates had had their jabs. The women, the WRNS draft, had not. Dr Crampton had been the arbiter of the priorities, and he had felt it his duty to give that priority to essential personnel, which the Wrens were not. Had it not been for the surgeon commander aboard the Glamorgan, even the gunners would not have been protected. The flagship had her own ship’s company to consider, and the surplus had not been great. The surgeon commander had been forthcoming about inefficiency and Crampton, on his begging mission, had been mortified as he’d listened to a blistering tirade. Then, when he reported to the bridge, Commodore Kemp had hit the roof. To put women at risk was sheerly criminal. The Commodore, already briefed on the way the disease was transmitted, had asked for a full run-down on the symptoms and the general course the cholera would take.

  Crampton gave it to him, after, once again making the point that the vaccine was not always effective.

  ‘It usually starts with diarrhoea, sir. That alone makes it hard to diagnose in the first instance. It can easily be mistaken for plain gyppo tummy —’

  ‘But not this time, Doctor.’

  ‘Not this time, sir. We’ve had the warning.’ Crampton paused. ‘Then there’s vomiting, feeble circulation, coldness, cramps. Then perhaps collapse. Anyone whose intestines have been weakened by previous illness, or poor feeding, or are just very tired … they’re the most at risk. Also overeating and drinking don’t help.’

  ‘The progress is fairly rapid, isn’t it?’

  Crampton nodded. ‘It can be, sir. In just a few hours the stools develop the characteristics — a sort of rice-water appearance, thin and watery and colourless except that they carry quantities of white particles like rice. These are shreds of intestinal mucous membrane that have become detached. The body’s surface becomes very cold, though the temperature of the actual intestine rises way above normal. The patient gets severe cramp in the limbs and is then likely to go into complete collapse, not able to help himself in any way, though usually he remains mentally aware, quite clear-headed. The mouth and throat go very dry … this and the general physical weakness make the voice low and hoarse. That’s known as the vox cholerica. And the breath becomes cold.’