I knew nothing about the Scouts other than they were a small Arab force with British officers whose role was to keep the peace between seven sheikhdoms in the Persian Gulf. Glubb Pasha ran a similar force in Jordan called the Arab Legion. I had visions of Beau Geste and Lawrence of Arabia and the romance of the hot desert sands. My heart started pounding – it was something that I had to do. Without making any proper enquiries, I went to the adjutant’s office and volunteered.
‘With the sword of truth and the shield of love, victory is assured.’
I had no real idea what to expect, nor what was expected of me. I was bewitched by the glamour and acted entirely on impulse. But was it impulse or intuition? In hindsight I would say more intuition. I had always felt an affinity with Egypt and the desert. Even now when I think of Egypt I feel a warm glow, but when I think of Roman times I get a grey feeling. I must have had a good life in Egypt, but not such a good one in Rome.
Within three weeks I was on embarkation leave and then two months after that I was travelling to Portsmouth to board a ship bound for Cairo.
Aboard the SS Dilwara was a battalion of the Leicestershire regiment heading for a tour of duty in Cairo. I was the only officer not of their regiment and found myself the object of much curiosity. ‘I suppose you can’t talk about what you’re doing. Cloak and dagger stuff, eh?’ one of their officers said to me. I didn’t disillusion him, as I wasn’t too sure of the nature of my work myself. Also the air of mystery that surrounded me meant I was left to my own devices and I enjoyed the freedom.
There were just two incidents on what was otherwise a pleasant and uneventful journey. Three of the officers’ wives were not accompanied by their husbands, for some reason which I now forget, and we took to having drinks and dining together. There was nothing untoward in this and it was generally accepted to be no more than it seemed, but I was summoned to the CO’s office one morning to be told that I was causing ‘alarm and despondency’ and would I ‘not socialize with the wives’. Although it was innocent, it was apparently upsetting someone, and so these pleasant meetings came to an end. It was just as well that I didn’t realize that this was to be my last contact with women for two years, or I might have been tempted further.
The other incident was the court martial of one of the privates in the Leicestershire regiment for having thrown all his kit out of a porthole. There were always three officers on a court martial and I was ordered to be one of them.
I was a lieutenant at the time and the other officers involved were a major and a captain. The procedure was that after all the evidence had been heard, which in this case was very little, the junior officer would give his verdict and punishment first. The army treated misuse of kit very seriously and I thought my two colleagues would be pretty severe on the private, although I didn’t think that it was the worst crime in the world. His evidence had been that he thought the porthole was a cupboard, but clearly he had had a few beers too many.
I thought that I had better give a more severe punishment than I would like so as to be in line with the others. ‘Three weeks’ jankers,’ I said, basically giving him three weeks of detention. It was with a mixture of embarrassment and relief that I listened to the others saying that that was far too severe and three days would be enough. So the private was not unduly punished.
We landed at Port Said and I was picked up by a small army vehicle and taken to a place called Faid in the Canal Zone.
Unfortunately we were not allowed out of the camp, so I missed an opportunity to see the pyramids and the Sphinx, but I did see the Nile. They say that if you see the Nile you will always return. This hasn’t happened yet.
I had particularly wanted to see the mysterious Great Pyramid of Cheops, the only one of the Seven Wonders of the World that still exists. I have since read some esoteric writings on the pyramid and they all say that it was not built as a tomb, but as a storehouse of information and energy. The King’s Chamber was an initiation chamber, where those who were ready could reach full enlightenment and be able to operate out of the body and on the astral plane. It was built by adepts with a mastery of mathematics and levitation. These masters were from Atlantis and were storing information in an indestructible form, as Atlantis was being destroyed by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and floods.
Atlantis was a highly civilized society that was technically and spiritually advanced. Its centre was situated in the Atlantic and many storehouses were built in the outer regions and are still to be seen today, the pyramids of Mexico and Stonehenge being two of them. Atlantean technology was in its own way just as advanced and sophisticated as our own, but greed and pollution caused its destruction.
The first, and worst, pollution is the pollution of thought, followed by that of gas and chemicals and, of course, that all-inclusive polluter, war. Most people don’t think of thought as a polluter, but the power of thought cannot be overestimated. Everything that exists started as a thought. And every thought that we have travels into the ether, followed by energy, takes shape and eventually returns to us, loaded with more of its kind. So is it any wonder that for the most part we are surrounded by a chaotic mist? And you can see how we get back what we send out.
The Earth’s atmosphere is now chronically polluted by negative thoughts and a lot of hard work is needed through prayer and loving thought to dissipate this pollution. There are groups of people who do this, but we should all send loving thoughts to the Earth whenever we can. It is a wonderful living being. The arrangement is that it is there for our use and enjoyment, and in return we are to give it respect, care and love. This agreement has not been kept and after ages of abuse the Earth is now in a serious state of pollution. It will only take so much and then it will cleanse itself.
This is what brought about the fall of Atlantis. It was a very sophisticated civilization and technology had stormed ahead, but the people hadn’t developed spiritually. They finally reached a point where greed and wrong thinking were so strong that the Earth had to cleanse itself of the pollution. So there were volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and floods, and Atlantis went down. A lot of its people died then, but not all. Some escaped and kept the knowledge that they had gained and passed it down. We are now in a similar state to that of Atlantis when it went down.
I didn’t know all this when I was in Egypt, but I was still sorry not to see the pyramids.
After three weeks in Faid I was flown to Bahrain. From there I was put on an old clapped-out Anson for the flight to Sharjah, which I now knew to be my final destination.
They called the twin-engined Anson the cow of the air, as it was a wonderful worker whose parts could be replenished endlessly. The wings were a metal framework with cloth stretched over it, and on a subsequent journey back to Bahrain with the brigadier, who was Irish, a piece of the cloth ripped off and hung there, flapping in the slipstream. The brigadier shouted, ‘My God, the cloth’s coming off!’ Amazingly, my overriding feeling was not panic or fear but fascination at the depth of his Irish accent.
On my first flight over the desert we were soon crossing endless but rather beautiful sand dunes. For a long while there was no sign of habitation. Then I saw a tiny grouping of huts made out of woven palm leaves and a piece of flattened sand marked out with old oil drums. That was the airstrip. I later found out the palm-leaf huts were known as barusti huts. As we came in to land we saw that they were laid out in a square around an area of well-flattened sand. This was apparently the drill square.
I clambered out of the Anson and was starting to walk towards the huts when I saw a slim fair-haired man walking towards me.
‘Welcome, Captain Roache. I’m Colonel Johnson. Come into my office.’
He turned and led the way to one of the bigger barusti huts while I pondered two things: first, he had called me ‘captain’ but I was only a lieutenant, and second the fact that my commanding officer was again called Johnson.
This Colonel Johnson was very different from the first, however. There was an air o
f dedication and vocation about him. He could have been a priest. Sitting opposite this slim man with strong blue eyes in his bare office was very different from my Jamaican experience.
‘We don’t have any officers here under the rank of captain,’ he told me. ‘So your promotion has been authorized with effect from today.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘You will be taking over B squadron.’
Again, I thought. That was where the similarities ended, though.
‘The squadron is made up of 140 Arabs, none of whom speak any English. You have a week to get to know the language. By the way, the previous commander was shot by his own men. Any questions?’
Yes, I thought, what am I doing here?
And yet strangely I knew that I was in the right place and that everything would work out as it should.
Not everyone was as enthusiastic about it, unfortunately. Kath wrote to me breaking off our relationship, saying in effect that anyone who wanted to go to a place like that must be a bit mad. She did have a point – I was going to be in the desert for two years, almost completely cut off from the rest of the world, with no leave at all. She could tell she wasn’t my priority. And she wasn’t. I was fond of her, but had no thoughts of settling down, and I really felt I had to go to the desert. It was a very strong impulse and was part, I think, of my past-life recapitulation. So she was absolutely right in what she did.
In the next week I learned as much basic Arabic as I could – words like ‘food’ and ‘water’, phrases like ‘Where is…?’ and of course the main greeting, Salaam aleikum (Peace be on you). Before I could draw breath I was in a Land Rover driving over the dunes to Mirfa to take command of my squadron.
The reason they were known as squadrons was because the command structure was based on tank regiments, which I presumed was due to the great tank battles that had taken place in the Western Desert in the Second World War. My squadron was mainly made up of Bedouin who had been sent to us by their sheikhs and told to obey us. There was also one Arab junior officer who could speak a little English (though he left after about a month), one sergeant major, four sergeants and six corporals. But none of them had been in the army for more than a year and they were all home-trained.
I am not a disciplinarian and favoured a laid-back approach. Fortunately for me, this was the right way and I was soon accepted by the men. The commander who had been shot had apparently made a lot of enemies by trying to impose strict military rules.
One thing I did notice was that if I gave an order to a sergeant, sometimes he would consult a private before carrying it out. Eventually I learned the reason for this. The Arabs’ tribal hierarchy was very important to them and in that hierarchy a sergeant could sometimes be lower in rank than a private soldier. That was something you had to keep in mind.
Not long after I had taken command of my squadron we were told that a hunting party from Qatar, which was not part of the seven sheikhdoms, had trespassed into Oman. I had to track them down and to ask them to leave.
Taking about five Land Rovers full of men with me, I set off to look for the hunters’ camp. Eventually we located it. I thought it best not to alarm them by arriving with all the soldiers, so I left most of them behind a sand dune and drove up to the camp with just the sergeant major and three men. The hunters greeted us respectfully and acknowledged that they had entered the territory of another sheikhdom, but when I formally requested that they leave, they stood their ground. They weren’t being aggressive in any way, although they were heavily armed with rifles and daggers, but I was painfully aware that this was a delicate political situation and I didn’t want to have an international incident on my hands.
Fortunately, at that moment the other Land Rovers suddenly pulled up. The sergeant I had left in charge had decided on his own initiative to come and back us up. I was very grateful that he did. At once the hunting party got into their vehicles and drove away.
Looking back, I think this situation was a lot riskier than I realized at the time. However, it passed off peacefully with both sides retaining their dignity, which was always of great importance to the Arabs.
The only other troublesome military incident occurred when two opposing groups laid claim to the Buraimi oasis, the only source of water for hundreds of miles. On that occasion we were actually involved in a battle, though it was rather a small one. Unfortunately both sides were dressed in civilian clothes, so it wasn’t easy to tell them apart, and things got quite chaotic. We were supposed to be reclaiming the oasis and calming down the situation. We sent a few mortar shells up over the heads of the combatants and that did it – they surrendered. It was hardly the British army’s finest hour, but the Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, did write to congratulate us.
Most of the time life was a lot quieter and in the evenings I enjoyed sitting around chatting to the men. Well, there was not much else to do. I didn’t have a very good command of the language, but I could get by.
On one of these occasions I was trying to find out the Arabic for ‘crab’, as there were plenty of them scuttling around on the edge of the Gulf. I asked in my halting Arabic, ‘What are those things with eight legs that scuttle about on the sand?’
To my surprise and dismay one of the men replied, ‘Yehudi.’ Jew.
‘Have you ever met a Jew?’ I asked.
‘No,’ came the reply.
How was there ever going to be peace between the Arabs and the Jews when these Bedouin who had never travelled out of their country were taught that Jews were monsters?
We were on the edge of the Rub al Khali, the Empty Quarter of the Arabian peninsula, and I also enjoyed going out into remote areas on my own. I would sit down on the sand and be filled with a wonderful feeling of peace. There was always total silence out there and I would relax completely. My mind would clear and it would seem that I could solve all my problems – overcome my fears of death and infinity, understand the purpose of life, even work out what to do with my career. I could sit there for hours and still not want to move.
I realize now that this was a type of untutored meditation. Had I known how to meditate I would have been able to use those surroundings much more effectively. But it was not until I was living in London many years later that I learned the art of meditation.
‘You can struggle, have difficulties and battle, but you can still have tranquillity and peace.’
Meanwhile we carried on doing our patrolling and peace-keeping. It was a very basic life – sleeping in a tent or a barusti hut, eating the same food as the Arabs and only seeing another British officer once a month when he came with food supplies and pay. There was no entertainment, no alcohol, and the food was very frugal. Mainly it was rice flavoured with basil, and ghee, a kind of clarified butter. There was meat occasionally when a goat was killed. This was something that I always avoided seeing.
The Arabs would eat any animals that they caught. Once one of them brought me a jerboa in a trap, expecting me to have it cooked. That I was not about to do. A jerboa is a rat-like animal but they are very sweet, they eat with their hands like squirrels. So I made a little cage and kept it as a pet, which undoubtedly made the Arabs think I was a bit odd. Later another brought me an owl with an injured wing. I kept him in my tent while trying to make him better. He used to sit on my desk, but sadly one day he got into the cage and ate the jerboa.
Later the Arabs found a desert fox with his paw caught in a trap. Desert foxes are smaller than ours and a lot lighter in colour. This one had a delightful little face and lovely eyes. I got on very well with him, though he would snarl if anyone else went near him. I made a collar for him out of some cloth and a lead out of wire. We became so friendly that he would sit by me and eat from my hand. Unfortunately, he ate the owl.
One night I was woken by a scuffling and gasping noise and found that the fox had got his lead twisted around the tent rope and was choking. Half-asleep, I picked him up to unravel the lead, but in his fright he bit me on the end of the nose.
The bite was deep and the whole tip of my nose was hanging loose. I rushed back into the tent and lit a hurricane lamp to see how badly I was injured. I was the squadron’s doctor as well as the commander, so I grabbed the medical kit. All I had was some old penicillin powder in small sealed bottles, which I think was supposed to be made up for injections, but I sprinkled this on and then stuck my nose up with some lint and plasters. It was stinging, but I had done all that I could.
I wasn’t a pretty sight, and in the morning I told the sergeant major to give the men the day off. The Arabs were very formal and on hearing of my injury every one of them came to my tent to wish me well. It was a formality that I could have done without, sitting for half an hour saying, ‘Aleikum salaam’ (and also on you) in reply.
The nose was healing but still had a dressing on when I was in my tent one morning pouring some water from a canvas water carrier into a glass and my hair suddenly bristled and stood on end, just like a dog’s. It was a very strange sensation. Oh no, I thought, hydrophobia!
Fear of water is the first sign of rabies. And I knew that once the symptoms had started, there was no cure.
I was terrified, but I couldn’t show it to the men, so I went out into the desert and walked and walked until I was so tired that I just collapsed. I slept for a while and when I woke up I felt all right, but I was still sure that I had rabies. I pulled myself together and thought, Well, I’d better get through to the colonel and get a doctor.
I got on the radio to the colonel and in a very calm and polite way told him what had happened. He understood my concern, but said that it would take four days to get a doctor out and that I would have to meet him halfway. So I had four days to carry on with my duties, knowing all the time that I was going to die from rabies.
‘You cannot control your experiences, but you can control how you react to your experiences.’
Soul on the Street Page 8