The Suez Canal Zone.
The personal experiences of a National Service Medical Officer.
By:  Doctor Percy Round

I began my National Service in September 1952 after completing my 12 months of hospital 'house jobs' and doing a short locum job in General Practice in Shropshire.  The first 2 weeks were spent at the RAMC Depot in Crookham where I suppose I was taught what soldiering was all about. I did some 'square bashing' and learnt how to fire a rifle and a revolver, how to lay out my kit, how to polish boots and perform other soldierly duties, including a route march.  Actually, I already knew some of this, having spent some time in the Army Cadet Force while at school.  I remember that several of us (I can’t remember how many) lived in a Nissen Hut, which, even at that time of year, we found perishing cold in the night.  The coal fired stove didn’t seem to help at all. The next fortnight was spent at the Army School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in London where we were taught, among other things, how to construct urinals and deep trench latrines out in the field.  We also learnt about tropical diseases and hygiene, as you might expect.

The last two weeks were spent at the Field Training School at Mytchett, where all sorts of uncomfortable things were laid on, including an assault course.  We were also taught about how and where to set up a Regimental Aid Post and Field Dressing Station under Active Service conditions.

After Embarkation Leave, I found my way, via Goodge Street Transit Camp (a disused London tube station) to Stansted  Airport, where, on a bitterly cold December morning, with the snow cleared from the runway, I boarded a RAF Avro York plane (very noisy!) and was flown to Malta for the plane to be refuelled.  Bliss!  Warm gentle rain!  The RAF crew changed into civvies, because the flight was to take us into Egyptian air space.

I don’t remember where we landed (it may have been RAF Fayid), but my first impression was of the heat, the smell and the flies. I eventually got used to the smell and the heat, but I hated the flies! A 15 cwt. truck took several of us along the Canal Road to Moascar. I was somewhat amused to see one side of the Canal Road with a footpath and signs saying “Walking Side”, while the other side, with no footpath, displayed signs saying “Suicide”.

I was deposited, somewhat unceremoniously, at the Military Families Hospital (MFH) in Moascar, where I reported to the Adjutant.  He told me that I would work in the attached Military Reception Station (MRS), where I would hold a Sick Parade every morning and carry out FFI (Freedom From Infection) inspections on new Egyptian labourers and a few British Army units in the area.  The Sick Parades were awful!  Dealing with Army and NAAFI personnel was no problem, but dealing with sick Egyptian labourers certainly was.  Most of them had no knowledge of English and I certainly had no knowledge of Arabic. I won’t tell you how an Egyptian indicated that he had diarrhoea!

One morning, an army officer, whose rank badges I didn’t see because he was wearing a camouflage jacket (now called a combat jacket, I believe) bypassed the waiting room, walked straight into my “consulting room” and proceeded to tell me his symptoms. I politely asked him to return to the waiting room and await his turn.  When his turn eventually came, he removed his jacket and revealed the rank badges of a Brigadier.  I apologised for not realising who or what he was, but he told me I was quite right to make him wait and he had been able to see what a difficult job I had.

A less comfortable encounter I had with a high-ranking officer was on a Sunday morning, when, accompanied by his ADC, the C-in-C BTE (British Troops, Egypt) walked in for a consultation.  I was having a bit of a lie-in, but General Festing thought I was unwell.  When I explained that I wasn’t, he said, “Then you had better get up, and bloody quickly, too!”  I did.

On another occasion, a soldier was brought in to me under MP escort to see if he was fit to stand trial by Court Martial.  When I asked him why he was to be tried, he replied, “I shot an Egyptian (he didn’t actually use the word Egyptian) stealing copper wire.  I challenged him, but he took no notice, so I shot him.”  “Did you kill him?” I asked.  “Of course, sir”, he replied, pointing to the marksman badge on his sleeve,  “I don’t wear this for nothing.”  I never found out what happened at the Court Martial, where he stood trial for murder.

The MRS was pretty close to the British perimeter.  I had my own toilet and shower and was reasonably happy there.  When things began to hot up, a Lance Corporal was admitted to the hospital with a gunshot wound in the abdomen, but, as we had no resident surgeon, he had to be transferred to BMH Fayid, where he was successfully operated on.  At that point, I thought it might be a good idea if I drew a revolver for self defence.  I had had it for only a few days, before learning that, if I lost it or had it stolen, I would be Court Martialled.  I hastily returned it!  Very soon after that, one of the Para regiments (I don’t remember which) came to camp between the MRS and the perimeter, so I felt much safer.  The powers-that-be, however, decided that I would be safer still if I moved out of my quarters to the other MOs’ quarters in the hospital grounds.  No more private toilet and shower, there.

I remember a Subaltern (Lt. Goodwin, I think) being brought in after being run over by a tank transporter with a tank on it. He was in agony and pleaded “Put me out, Doc.”  Despite all efforts to save him, he died and is buried, I believe in Moascar Cemetery.*

Another tragic death involving vehicles occurred when an army truck broke down.  The driver got out in order to direct other traffic round his vehicle. Unfortunately, he forgot standing instructions and positioned himself against it on the off-side.  The driver of an on coming heavy army vehicle probably misjudged the distance between his and the stationary vehicle and the first driver was crushed to death.  I had to take a mate of his to the mortuary to identify him. The poor lad was shattered at the sight and broke down.

One day, a soldier was brought into the MRS with suspected rabies.  A colleague and I dealt with him and sent him on to BMH Fayid, where he later died. As the only way of catching rabies was supposed to be from being bitten by a rabid animal, usually a dog, we were surprised to be ordered by the Assistant Director of Medical Services (ADMS) to have a course of anti-rabies serum.  This involved 10 daily injections of a volume of serum too large to go into the arm or buttock.  It therefore had to be injected under the skin of the abdomen.  Most of these, we gave ourselves, but occasionally, we chickened out and asked someone else to do it.  The injections caused considerable itching in addition to the soreness that usually follows any injection and we were glad when the course was finished.

When things were beginning to look really ugly, HMS Chequers (the Duke of Edinburgh’s old a ship) anchored in Lake Timsah with, I understood at the time, its guns trained on Ismailia.  I got a message to say that one of the ratings was ill and needed a doctor.  The ship had no doctor on board, but the medical orderly was very competent.  I had to be taken to the shore of the lake in an ambulance with another ambulance in support.  On board each was a guard armed with a Sten gun.  A launch took me to the frigate. I was piped aboard and, remembering the etiquette I had been taught, duly saluted the quarterdeck.  I examined the ill rating and said I would arrange his admission to BMH Fayid the following day.  I was then invited into the Wardroom for “a drink”.  I had previously been warned by a Scots colleague not to not to get whisky-drunk.  I didn't heed his warning and liberally accepted the Royal Navy’s magnificent hospitality.  I later regretted my indiscretion. Fortunately, there was someone to take over from me when I got back.  I vowed never to do anything like that again and have been sober, but not TT, ever since.

I had two medical orderlies in the MRS.  One a corporal who spent much of his off-duty time reading law books with the intention of becoming a barrister and the other an Irish Lance Corporal whom I will call Murphy (not his real name in case he doesn’t want to be identified in the tale that follows).  As I have said earlier, dealing with Egyptian labourers on Sick Parade was very difficult.  One day, a Sapper major, the DCRE in fact, rang me to ask what I had done to one of his labourers, as he was rolling in agony on the ground with diarrhoea.  I couldn’t remember seeing him, so I sent for L/Cpl. Murphy to see if he knew anything about it.  “Oh, yes sir” he said,  “He was complaining of constipation, so I gave him a “pink gin.”  This turned out to be two layers of castor oil and two of cascara arranged alternately in a medicine glass. This was a pretty vicious concoction of purgatives and I had to ban its use there and then.  I informed the DCRE that his labourer had reported sick with constipation. “Christ!” he said,  “He hasn’t got it now!”

Not long after I arrived in the Canal Zone, I went into “Ish” (dressed in civvies, of course) to look at the shops.  I was approached by a “gully-gully” man who assured me that there was a Turkish pound note in my wallet.  After some hesitation, I took out my wallet, opened it and, yes, found a Turkish pound note.  I also noticed that an Egyptian £5 note was missing.  When I told the gully-gully man about this, he became stroppy and said, as a crowd began to gather, “Are you accusing me of stealing, Mr. Officer?”  Not wanting to cause an international incident, I walked away.  A few weeks, later he appeared on my sick parade, with some trivial complaint, and I organised treatment.  It is surprising how painful an intramuscular injection of sterile water can be!
 

I suppose most, if not all of us suffered now and again from home-sickness, but I certainly did when I had to accompany the very ill wife of a serviceman to Port Said.  She had been admitted during the night with a serious heart problem and needed emergency treatment.  The next day, the Medical Specialist came up from BMH Fayid to see her.  He decided that she ought to go back to the UK, so, as the troopship Dunera was due in Port Said from the Far East any day, a berth in the ship’s Sick Bay  was arranged.  It fell to my lot to look after her in the ambulance during the journey to Port Said where I handed her over to the ship’s MO. Seeing the happy, smiling faces of service personnel on their way home, including some newly-embarked from the Canal Zone, I was sorely tempted to board the ship and hide myself until she set sail, but common sense asserted itself and, with a lump in my throat, I climbed back into the ambulance to return to Moascar. During my tour (if you can call it that) Cuthbert Bardsley, Bishop of Croydon and Chaplain General to the army visited the Canal Zone.  He gave a wonderful sermon at a service in Moascar Church.  I had never before, or have ever since, heard such a powerful preacher.

We didn’t have our own Mess at the hospital, so we used the Officer’s Mess at 3 L of C Regiment Royal Signals.  We had to walk up the road from the hospital, between a quarter and half a mile, I suppose, for our meals.  If we were lucky, the OC of the hospital gave us a lift in his Standard Vanguard.  It was in this Mess that I first tasted lentil soup and found it delicious. The waiters were all Sudanese, with their tribal scars on their cheeks.  Ali, the Head Waiter, I suppose you would call him, spoke very good English and I once had a long conversation with him about Sudan’s desire for independence from joint British-Egyptian rule, mainly British by this time.  He was most interesting.  Well, they got their independence.  I wonder what Ali thinks about it now.  I hope he doesn’t live in Darfur.

Mike, one of the Subalterns in 3 L of C bought a dodgy car which he would drive to Lake Timsah’s French Beach, (I think English Beach was out of bounds at that time,) taking friends with him for a swim.  On the only day I went with him, the car ran out of petrol in the French Quarter of Ish.  While Mike and one passenger walked to the nearest filling station with an empty petrol can, the other two of us stayed in the open car and I must say that, as we became surrounded by Egyptians, I was scared that one of them would stick a knife in us, isolated as we were.  It didn’t happen, probably because we were in the French Quarter. The local population didn’t seem to dislike the French, but I was mightily relieved when Mike returned with a full can of petrol.

In July 1953, Alf, another National Service Signals Subaltern and I realised we were due for a spot of leave and decided to have a week in Cyprus, with our base in the beautiful port of Kyrenia from where we would tour the island.  We teamed up with Alf’s former Drill Sergeant (who once told Alf that he would hammer him into the ground with his pace stick!) and with another chap whose name I don’t remember, hired a car for a brief look at this beautiful island, where snow still lay in the Troodos Mountains.

Refreshed by the leave, I returned to the MRS, only to be told that I had been posted to Cyprus to serve as MO to 49th Field Regiment, Royal Artillery, which was stationed just outside Famagusta.  Within a few days I was back in paradise, feeling pleased at the thought of my new posting and, at the same time, guilty at escaping from a posting generally regarded as a “hot spot” while others stayed to endure the difficulties.  But that’s service life, isn’t it?  You go where you are sent, like it or lump it.

I recently received my Canal Zone Medal.  As I examined it, I asked myself what I had really done to deserve it.  I had been in the Canal Zone long enough to “get my knees brown”, but had hardly been “at the sharp end” as others were.  But still, “They also serve. . . ….”

Have I ever regretted doing part of my National Service in the Canal Zone?  Certainly not. I am proud of it.  At least I was doing something in the national interest.  I often wonder how the football yobs of today, who travel abroad merely to pick fights with innocent citizens of other countries would behave if they were put into uniform and subjected to military discipline.  Conjecture of that kind gets you nowhere, doesn’t it?

©  2005. Doctor Percy Round.
* Yes, Second Lieutenant J A W Goodwin is included in the CWGC list as being buried in Moascar War Cemetery. RW.)

With our thanks to Suez Veteran Doctor Percy Round for sending us his Canal Zone recollections to include on the Web site.
Richard Woolley and Jock Marrs.
February 2005