It was the end of June when the New Zealanders fought the delaying action at Minquar Quam. I was brought back to Cairo and made lieutenant of a new platoon on the twenty-ninth of August. The period of time which passed between these two momentous events was not only crucial for the British Eighth Army: in a sense it was also the most crucial period in the life of Evan Thomas. To be perfectly frank about it, I was scared half-silly during the entire time. It didn't matter whether I was serving on the line with a New Zealand Field Ambulance or twenty miles behind the line with an English C.C.S., or even enjoying a two-day leave in Alexandria---I was constantly "windy" about the present or the future and always on the verge of telling my superiors that I wanted to go far, far away.
I can remember that July and August were divided into three distinct periods. First my section served with the 5th New Zealand Field Ambulance until the middle of July; then we had forty-eight hours leave in Alex and spent a couple of weeks doing motor ambulance convoy work between a casualty clearing station and the Alexandria hospitals, and finally we worked for the 4th and 6th New Zealand Field Ambulances from August 1st to August 21st.
I liked the New Zealanders we worked with as much as I've ever liked any group of men in my life. It was probably due to the fact that I craved their respect so much that I managed to do a fairly decent job of work in spite of my low morale.
The Alamein "line" was not made up of a coördinated series of deep trenches, such as you see in pictures of the First World War. At first the only thing that gave it a semblance of stability was the inability of either belligerent to push the other back an appreciable distance. Later on, both sides laid out extensive minefields along the front and dug more or less permanent positions for the protection of men and guns, but there was always room for a certain amount of fluctuation, and the general type of fighting could never be termed trench warfare by any stretch of the imagination.
When my section first reassembled at the main dressing-station of the 5th Field Ambulance on the morning after the flight from Minquar Quam to Alamein, there was really no sort of line at all. We simply followed our brigade to a point some twenty miles south of Alamein and sat there waiting for the Germans to arrive. After a couple of days' waiting, the shooting began, and the Field Ambulance split into an A.D.S. and an M.D.S. The A.D.S. moved a few miles westward with the 5th Brigade, and the M.D.S. withdrew a few miles to the, east. Bill Nichols, with Ed Pattulo as spare driver (we had temporarily abandoned the idea of carrying orderlies), and Bob Sullivan, with me as spare driver, accompanied the A.D.S. company.
It didn't take us long to find out that we were off to war again. As we made our way westward, the brigade was strafed by low-flying Messerschmitts. It didn't amount to anything serious, since nobody got hurt, but it was a new experience for me and served to heighten the atmosphere of tension. A short time after the strafing episode our medical company drew up to wait while the brigade moved ahead to get established. As we were waiting, a Bren carrier came clattering up with a couple of Italian prisoners and a wounded Tommy. Apparently the carrier had been firing at some Italian trucks, and the unfortunate Tommy had been prisoner in one of them. We lifted him into Sullivan's ambulance, and then the medical officer made a hasty examination. He climbed out of the ambulance and shook his head. "No sense in sending him back to the M.D.S. He' s going to die anyhow. Just carry him along, and let me know if he's still alive when we get established."
We traveled only another mile before arriving at the point where we were to set up shop, and the soldier was dead by the time we got there, but it seemed a lifetime to me between the time that we first took on our passenger and the time he died. I was in an awfully morbid state of mind and I kept wondering whether I'd be able to "feel" the moment of his death without looking at him. The. terrible thing about that was that I imagined I did.
The dressing-station (two tents, a cook truck, supply truck, and ambulances) was established on a rise of ground. Brigade headquarters was in a gulley a mile to the northwest of us, and the battalions were strung out a couple of miles farther on. An artillery duel had started up almost immediately as the brigade came into position, and the captain commanding the A.D.S. decided that an ambulance should make a tour of the battalions right away to ascertain their exact location and see if there were any casualties. One of the New Zealand ambulances was detailed to do the job. The New Zealand driver asked me if I wanted to come along as "observer" for the A.F.S. drivers, so I grabbed my tin hat and climbed aboard.
The driver (his name was Cliff ) was a veteran of Crete and Greece. I'd come to know him quite well during the recent delaying action, and our friendship had arrived at the point where he was always joking with me about the possibility of "Collecting a packet." He had a rather macabre sense of humor. On this occasion Cliff saw fit to wax humorous over the fact that I was carefully adjusting my tin hat. "You can get killed just as easy with that thing on," said he. It wasn't long, however, before he reached for his own helmet.
Aside from the spasmodic pounding of our own artillery, our trip was a quiet one until we came in sight of the R.A.P. truck of the 21st Battalion. As the New Zealanders would put it, the 21st was "catching a bit of iggeri." It took us some time to get up alongside the truck with the big red cross because the truck kept shifting about in an effort to find a comparatively safe position.
While we were waiting for a chance to see if there were any wounded in the truck, we had the uncomfortable experience of having four enemy shells land in a pattern, in front, behind, and on either side of us. We were both feeling a bit nervous by the time we drew up beside the R.A.P. truck.
We reported to the battalion doctor, who informed us that he already had a few wounded to be carried back to the A.D.S. but would like us to wait around for a while in case there should be some more.
It was an unpleasant wait. Darkness was settling in quickly, and we knew that we were going to have a hard job finding our way back to the A.D.S. I was cold and hungry and unaccountably nervous. At odd moments a spray of machine-gun bullets would pass uncomfortably close, and Cliff would flop down behind a wheel, dragging me with him. He never seemed particularly worried about it all. He was an old soldier and had an old soldier's reactions. Once he broke out laughing and said, I guess you and I could do with a shot of courage to-night." The only time I ever saw Cliff really alarmed was when a wounded soldier pulled a hand grenade out of his pocket and started toying with the firing mechanism.
"Now, put that damned thing down," yelled Cliff and promptly disappeared under his ambulance.
As soon as it got dark enough to insure a thoroughly nasty trip back to the A.D.S., the report came through that all the wounded had been collected. We made our way back at the rate of three miles per hour---with me walking in front of the ambulance a good part of the way.
The next few days were marked by a series of memorable incidents. It was an odd coincidence that on the night of July Fourth I came closer to getting killed than at any other time during my enlistment in the American Field Service.
That night the 23rd New Zealand Battalion put on a feeler attack to test the strength of the enemy lines at a certain point. Two of our cars, Sullivan and myself in one and Jim Crudgington in the other, were attached to the battalion for the fireworks. The battalion medical officer had moved his R.A.P. truck right up on top of the infantry positions, and he advised us to find some deep holes and stay under cover until called on. The New Zealander 25-pounders opened the show from the rear with a fifteen-minute barrage. Since there was no counter-fire from the enemy during the barrage, I had a chance to visit the neighboring slit trenches of the reserve infantry company. I remember being very unhappily impressed by a remark passed by one of the soldiers. I had been tactless enough to ask an opinion of the possibilities of a successful attack---to which the reply was: "Oh, those bastards who do the thinking don't know what the hell they're doing. They just try anything. We're in for it again."
Ordinarily I used to make a practice of discounting and forgetting anything that seemed to me typical soldier griping, but this remark stuck in my mind. I'd venture to say that at that time almost any soldier in the Eighth Army might have voiced the same sentiments. The morale of the men and confidence in their strategical leadership had hit an all time low. But they kept on fighting.
By the time the barrage ended I was buried deep in a nice big hole which I shared with Sullivan. Suddenly everything became quiet and stayed that way for about five minutes. That was a bad sign, since it meant that the infantry had unaccountably failed to follow up the artillery preparation. I never did find out what went wrong, but I do know that the enemy found time to set up their mortars and machine-guns, and the attack was a failure almost before it started. The period of quiet was ended abruptly by a hail of mortar bombs bursting on all sides of us---and damn near on top of us. One bomb burst so close to the edge of our slit trench that a shower of rocks and sand came raining down on my tin hat, which I was thoughtfully wearing on the side of my face.
In the midst of all the excitement, the cry went up for an ambulance. Sully immediately jumped in behind the wheel of his car, and the battalion medical officer appeared out of nowhere and climbed in beside him. As the car gathered headway I got in the back. We drove about fifty yards toward the enemy lines along a decent stretch of gravel, then grabbed a stretcher out of the ambulance and hunted around an area of soft sand and slit trenches until we found our patient. We had a hard time finding him, because it was a very dark night and we kept throwing ourselves flat on the ground whenever anything exploded near-by. It was a bad night for walking, and we'd probably still be out there if a friend of the wounded man hadn't seen fit to leave the shelter of his slit trench and act as guide. We loaded the soldier on the stretcher and started back to the ambulance. It was a short stagger, but I'm certain that no two years of my life ever passed as slowly. This time we obviously couldn't flop without dumping our patient. We didn't dump him, either.
No sooner had we loaded him in the car and started back than a piece of mortar bomb came whizzing through the side of the car, missed my head by a couple of inches, and passed out on the other side. (I was sitting in the back on a side bench, with the patient on the floor at my feet and the doctor bending over him. That's how I know about those two inches.)
When we got back to the R.A.P. truck, the doctor decided it would be a good idea to move the R.A.P. and our two ambulances back about a mile to a safer position. We got to the safer position all right, but then that fool Sullivan had to go and volunteer to make a return trip to the infantry position. Of course, I was all for letting the regular battalion stretcher-bearers bring the wounded back on foot, but I couldn't say much about it. As we made our way toward the front again it was obvious that the attack bad been a failure; the track was crowded with weary soldiers, walking in the wrong direction. We managed to pick up some more wounded, but still the big Irishman wasn't satisfied. I believe he'd have kept on driving right up to the German lines if I hadn't persuaded him that we ought to get the casualties back to the doctor. I made up my mind then and there that Sullivan was bad company.
A couple of days after the Glorious Fourth I had another experience which came close to convincing me that I'd almost rather live the life of a slave than have any part in this war---or any war.
A column of supply trucks was parked a few hundred yards from our dressing-station.. We were sitting by the cook truck eating a lunch of bully beef and tea when a number of Stukas spotted the supply column and came screaming in for the kill. There was absolutely no anti-aircraft protection in the area, and the bombers had plenty of time to take careful aim and do a proper job. In a matter of seconds the trucks were completely obliterated from our view by a cloud of dust and gray smoke. By the time the dust cleared sufficiently to restore visibility, the gray explosive smoke had given way to the black kind that rises from burning petrol and rubber. Four vehicles had been completely destroyed, and others were damaged. The raid had scarcely ended before Bill Nichols was in amongst the column loading the wounded drivers into his ambulance. He brought in a number of casualties, and then Ed Pattulo and I drove back with him to collect the dead.
Now I had the most demoralizing experience of my life. One of the drivers had made the mistake of taking shelter under his truck---and the truck had been loaded with explosives. When we arrived on the scene with a stretcher the truck was still burning, and the body of the driver was lying a few yards away, where it had been blown by the force of the explosion. I'd seen plenty of dead men by this time but never one like this. His clothes had been blown completely off; there was nothing left of his feet, and his flesh was charred and roasted. There was nothing unusually terrible about this. The awful thing was that he had been burned so quickly that his features had been frozen into an expression too awful to describe. Instead of being characterized by the usual impersonal stare of death, this man's face portrayed an emotion and a personality that were as real as life.
I had had very little sleep in the past ten days, and I had been constantly tired, nervous, and frightened. This brought me closer to the breaking point than I care to think about even now. As a matter of fact, it had such a profound effect on my mind that I turned into an out-and-out pacifist and stayed that way for the next two months.
Fortunately our section was temporarily relieved within a few days, but before that time I spent an uncomfortable twenty-four hours in Ed Pattulo's ambulance attached to an advanced Indian tactical headquarters. The tactical headquarters was six miles in front of the New Zealand positions. It was under spasmodic shell-fire and was twice raided by heavy Italian bombers and once by a flight of twenty-four Stukas. The Italians bombed from a high level and didn't hit anything, but the Stukas came diving down out of the sun with sirens going full blast and effected considerable damage. At the time of the Stuka raid, Ed and I had just moved our ambulance away from the point where we had dug our slit trenches for the night, in an attempt to get out of the area that was being shelled. We were caught on hard ground with no slit trenches, and there was nothing to do but get under the ambulance---for psychological protection if nothing else. I had never heard Stukas using their sirens before, and I remembered thinking that the unusual amount of screaming combined with the whistling of the bombs indicated that a bomb was coming straight for me. I can still see myself lying under that ambulance, looking at Ed Pattulo, who had his eyes tight shut, and thinking: "Well, this is it." It wasn't. Actually, it was a lucky thing that we had moved. An English driver who had drawn up beside our old slit trenches when he saw the bombs coming was severely wounded by a fragment that hit him in the leg.
It was a great relief to be ordered back to the New Zealand M.D.S. (we had just been on loan to the Indians) and a still greater relief upon arriving at that blessed spot to be informed that we were clue for a forty-eight-hour leave in Alexandria.
Of the twelve sections that made up the two platoons of the Field Service company at that time, four had been serving with the various New Zealand Field Ambulances and eight had been temporarily cooling their heels in the Alexandria and Delta area. Also, a number of new boys had come from Syria to replace some of the "Tobruk veterans" and were yelling for action. Hence the quick relief.
We arrived in Alexandria in time to celebrate my birthday. It wasn't exactly the best birthday I've ever had, but it could have been a lot worse. We checked in at the Hotel Windsor a couple of hours before lunch and hired some luxurious rooms with big French windows facing the harbor. It was only a matter of minutes before I had taken a few tentative bounces on my beautifully fresh bed, stripped off my filthy clothes, and subsided into a hot bath. Somebody ought to write a poem about hot baths---or at least about that one. It provided that rarest of all sensations---happiness combined with complete relaxation. After the bath I spent a pleasant half-hour scratching at the friendly crab lice which infested the hairy parts of my body and then made my way down to the bar, where my friends had assembled to inaugurate a program of serious drinking. We interrupted the program to put away a five-course luncheon in the hotel dining-room, and then I went back to my room to take a nap and write some letters.
While I was writing I noticed that the room boasted one of those trick full-length mirrors with swinging sides. The mirror interfered a lot with my efforts at correspondence. There's something about a big mirror when you haven't seen one for a long time that's peculiarly distracting. I may be abnormal about that sort of thing, but I'm willing to bet that there aren't many people who wouldn't have given that mirror (and of course their own reflections) a good deal of consideration under the circumstances.
That evening Bob Sullivan threw a birthday party for me at the Café Excelsior. The food was terrible and the liquor was worse, but I think we had a pretty good time. I remember trying to get up my courage to dance with one of the girls that belonged to the establishment. I guess they weren't exactly prize winners, but they looked so glamorous to me that I was afraid to get that close to them.
The second day of our two-day leave I spent in bed, vomiting large quantities of half-digested food into a gilt-handled thunder mug. I didn't get much chance to inspect the city. All I can remember is that the streets were fairly empty, since a good part of the population had evacuated; that there was a special 11:30 P.M. curfew, and that the European quarter of the town looked fresh and clean, whereas the native quarter looked quite the opposite.
After our forty-eight-hour leave, we spent a couple of weeks attached to a casualty clearing station twenty miles behind the lines and ferried patients in to the Alexandria hospitals. It was easy work, and I should have welcomed the change if it hadn't been for the fact that at that time it was announced that most of the original sections which had been at Tobruk were about to swap jobs with the members of the two Syrian platoons. I was desperately anxious to return to the peace and quiet of Syria but didn't dare say so. As a result of my reticence, Lieutenant Geer continued to labor under the delusion (gained in Tobruk) that my section was made up of a bunch of fire-eaters and consequently promised that we would be especially favored with another tour of Field Ambulance duty. I really dreaded the prospect of going back to war but fortunately managed to keep fairly quiet about it.
There was something quite amusing about Geer's conviction that he was doing me a favor by giving me "another crack at it," As a matter of fact, I'm very glad now that I never did go back up to Syria, but at the time I looked at things differently.
I remember that just before we went back to the lines again, Andy said: I'll go up with you this time and well have some fun."
I also remember the surprised look on his face when I retorted: "Fun, hell! I'm perfectly willing to do the job we came over to do, but please don't call it fun."
Actually our second spell with the New Zealanders wasn't very terrifying, since there was a decided lull in the fighting, but I'd got myself in such an unnatural state of nervousness that I hated every minute of it. For some reason I expected the world to come to an end at any instant. This time I spent a couple of days hanging around the 4th Field Ambulance M.D.S., ten days with Jim Crudgington at an artillery R.A.P., and the remainder of the time at the 6th Field Ambulance A.D.S. Things were so quiet that the only times I ran into any danger at all were when the artillery was raided on three successive mornings by a small number of Messerschmitt 109's carrying anti-personnel bombs.
There was an empty gun pit a couple of hundred yards away from the R.A.P. truck which must have looked pretty formidable from the air. At any rate, it seemed to be the target that interested the German pilots. Crudgington and I developed a sorry way of life while we were attached to the gunners; we had hardly any driving to do, so we spent most of our time, when we weren't eating or sleeping, sitting in the front seats of the ambulance cursing the heat and flies and speculating on how soon disaster would strike the Allied cause. I'm ashamed to think about what a gloomy character I was then. Maybe it had something to do with thick black clouds of flies that were always settling on our legs, arms, and faces, giving us an extra dark outlook on life.
Fred Hoing, who had brought his platoon down from Syria, was the officer in charge of the cars attached to the New Zealand Division at that time. He used to pay us a call every morning and give a résumé of the radio news he'd heard at the M.D.S. It was invariably discouraging---so much so that we had visions of the Germans walking gaily over the Caucasus Mountains and into the Middle East through the back door.
One evening Major King, our commanding officer, paid us an informal visit which resulted in an interesting discussion. King was always on the look-out for a chance to increase the reputation of the American Field Service as the ambulance unit par excellence. For that reason he had been making a tour of the big guns in the medical hierarchy, to persuade them that the A.F.S. ambulances should not only be pushed to the fore in the infantry divisions but also used as pick-up cars with the active tank units. He was all for having as many Field Service cars as possible employed where the fighting was thickest.
I agreed with Major King in principle, but at the same time I was convinced, and still am, that there's such a thing as sticking your neck out too far. I had had a chance to observe the reactions of the boys who had just come down from Syria screaming for action and also my own reactions and those of my comrades in the original "Tobruk platoons," and I had come to the conclusion that the greatest mistake the A.F.S. could make would be to let the Field Service drivers get the impression that they were doing specially hazardous jobs, over and above what was expected of regular Field Ambulance drivers.
We had already had some slight trouble with the regular New Zealand drivers because the remark had been passed that they were leaving the dirty work for the A.F.S. ambulances. Now it was perfectly true that the New Zealand drivers didn't make a practice of rushing around with the youthful abandon which characterized the activities of our boys in their first flush of enthusiasm over being "at the front"---A.F.S. drivers used to appear at the scene of a bombing almost before the bombs had exploded---but it was also true that the New Zealand drivers had been doing a good reliable job of work for two-and-a-half years of warfare and would continue to work without question of relief as long as their services were required. On the other hand, we of the A.F.S. were prone to think of our periods of field ambulance work as special missions, to be performed brilliantly but not at length.
My idea was that the A.F.S. could be counted on to do a good job under any circumstances, provided that we took the job as routine work and not as a special adventure. Therefore I felt it was a great mistake to keep asking the medical authorities for these special adventures.
As I discussed my ideas with Major King, I had an uncomfortable feeling that perhaps I was simply rationalizing my own reactions. In any case, I was soon to have the satisfaction of seeing the members of my own platoon accepting field ambulance work as an everyday routine and getting a lot of work done while they were at it.
I was ordered back to Cairo some time before Rommel put on his unsuccessful September attempt at breaking the Eighth Army defenses, but before leaving I was attached to an advanced dressing-station long enough to be an eye-witness to the preparation of the Auchinleck-Montgomery trap. Few people allow any credit to General Auchinleck for the September defeat of Rommel's forces, but, as I understand it, the basic plans were drawn up by him before he was relieved by the Alexander-Montgomery combination. I have been given to understand that the commanders, Montgomery in particular, "toughened" the plan to such an extent that the westernmost line of troops was deprived of the alternative of a possible withdrawal: they simply had to hold their positions.
Here's the way the preparations were carried out. The veteran divisions holding the western defensive positions were to form an immovable wall running north and south. This wall was protected in the rear by a new series of minefields, large reserves of supplies were brought up, and Field Ambulance advance dressing-stations were moved in close to the lines. Then the area behind this self-sufficient wall, or extended box, was cleared of all such impediments as supply and transport echelons, leaving a free space for the armor to maneuver. The free space ran in a six- or eight-mile-wide strip from north to south and was bordered on the east by another line composed of new infantry and artillery units. The westernmost line was purposely weakened at a point to the south, and this was to provide a mouth for the trap. While preparations were being made, the armored divisions used to practise racing around in the open strip, so that the minute Rommel should stick out his head they could arrive at the proper point and time and spring the trap.
Just before I left for Cairo, our advanced dressing-station was moved forward into the extended box, unhappily jammed in with a lot of noisy artillery, and it was revealed to us in a special order that a big attack was expected, that there would be no retreat, and that every man would be expected to stick to his job with no thought of surrender.
My old friend Tom DePew arrived from Syria in time to take over command of the Field Service cars attached to the New Zealand Division during the September battle. For a time it looked as though we were going to have our long-sought-for chance of working together, but by the time the big noise started I was back in Cairo with a new job on my hands.
A lieutenant in the Field Service is a very strange animal. He's not a lieutenant in the American Army, or the British Army, or any army at all. In fact, he's not really a lieutenant. It simply happened that in working with the British it was necessary for the A.F.S. to organize along lines that the British would understand---that is, in companies and platoons, with appropriate officers commanding. Field Service officers are (or were) "commissioned" by an order from the officer commanding the A.F.S. in the Middle East (Colonel Richmond), with the approval of the Director General in New York (Mr. Stephen Galatti), and hold their commissions on an extremely temporary basis. It requires no court-martial to "break" an A.F.S. officer. The uniform is the regular British field dress, and the rank is indicated by a reasonable facsimile of British insignia.
No Field Service man is required to salute a Field Service officer or address him as "sir." In fact, the only difference between an officer and an "other rank" (British for enlisted man) in the A.F.S. is the fact that the officer looks something like a British officer, occasionally messes with the officers of the unit to which he is attached, and bears an extra weight of responsibility. Of course there are no differences in pay, since there is no such thing as pay in the A.F.S. In spite of the lack of obvious personal advantages to be derived from this type of commission, I must admit that from the beginning to the end my lieutenancy was not only a joy to my ego but also the source of the most valuable experience I have ever known.
The circumstances under which I was promoted couldn't have been more favorable. I was given command of one of two new platoons fresh from home and full of enthusiasm. A good friend of mine, Art Howe, who had been a sergeant in the desert, was given command of the other, and Andy Geer, who had been elevated to the rank of captain, was put over us as commanding officer. We were given the privilege of training our own men according to our own lights and were issued completely new equipment, from ambulances to screw-drivers. Furthermore, we were allowed to pick our own N.C.O.' s from among the veterans who had been serving in the desert. Altogether, the Field Service couldn't have provided us with a better situation.
Art Howe and I arrived in Cairo for a few days before our boys landed in Egypt and spent a short leave washing the dust from our insides and out, and collecting an occasional salute from the English soldiers, who were under the happy impression that we were genuine officers. As always when on leave I resisted the temptation to go sight-seeing and concentrated on the business of comfortable living. As a matter of fact, I never was particularly attracted by the "glories of the east" in any part of Egypt, since I had a loathing for the country and the people that would have been hard for even the most intolerant first-class tourist to match.
We met Andy Geer in Cairo and journeyed out to the R.A.S.C. mobilization center in time to get things ready for our men. On September 7th, Andy and Art went down to Port Tewfik to act as a welcoming committee, and I stayed around the camp to complete some last-minute details. I was sitting in my tent about tea time, wondering just what sort of an awful impression I was going to make on my platoon, when one of the N.C.O.'s came in to say that a hundred men were lined up outside waiting for some one to tell them what to do.
Up to this minute my newly-acquired status of acting officer and temporary gentleman had been pure gravy. Now I began to realize that I had a job on my hands. I felt terribly young and foolish; my knees were shaking, and I couldn't help feeling that the new men would probably mutiny at first sight of their new officer. Strangely enough, they were actually quite friendly and seemed willing enough to eat their suppers and locate their assigned tents without so much as a growl. I don't know just what sort of an impression I did make on the new men, but I remember being very favorably impressed by them. They were certainly a better looking lot than the original "Italian prisoners" contingent that had first disembarked at Bombay back in December, 1941.
Early the next morning Captain Geer made a welcoming speech to the assembled members of the "15th Ambulance Car Company, American Field Service" (our official designation), and we embarked on a program of three weeks' training. I was extremely fortunate in having as N.C.O.'s in my platoon seven men who had been in the original first unit, who had gone through all the growing pains of the winter in Syria, and had had experience in every possible type of ambulance work. Bill Nichols, Doug Atwood, Bob Murphy, Carl Keyser, Chick Leister, and Scotty Gilmore headed my six sections, and Jack Pemberton was platoon sergeant. (He was later sent up to Syria at the end of the training period, and Doug Atwood took his place.) Jack was the driving force of the platoon: a first-rate mechanic and a glutton for work, he was always rushing around on a motorcycle, attending to the countless details involved in assigning and equipping vehicles, issuing personal equipment, and rounding up people for the daily schedule of lectures, exercises, and instruction. The section N.C.O.'s handled the task of detailed practical instruction in vehicle maintenance, map reading, etc. I was therefore free to concern myself with matters of policy, general lectures, paper work, overall supervision, and the interminable grind of censoring mail.
During a typical day, I spent about two hours censoring mail with Art Howe, an hour lecturing in the mess tent, two hours trying to figure out official documents that kept coming in from our Royal Army Service Corps workshops, an hour listening to complaints about section assignments, and the rest of the time wandering about the ambulance dispersal area, wondering where in hell every one had disappeared to.
I rather enjoyed the lecture periods, since they gave me a chance to air some views I'd been carrying around for a long time. I was---and still am---hipped on the idea that volunteer ambulance drivers ought to get over the idea that they are gentlemen soldiers of fortune at the earliest opportunity. Ambulance driving is a wonderful chance for an essential and thoroughly worth-while type of service, but neither the nature of the job nor the relative responsibility involved entitles the volunteer driver to look upon himself as a trick officer engaged in a glamorous special mission. A good many people were sick to death of the spectacle of a few irresponsible men bringing disgrace on the generally good name of the Field Service in the Middle East by going around with a chip on their shoulder and the idea that they were God's elect---a class apart from ordinary soldiers who had to go on doing a dirty job day after day whether they liked it or not. I was, therefore, particularly anxious that the men in my platoon should understand immediately that, although unpaid voluntary service did entitle them to certain privileges not enjoyed by the British Tommy, still they were first of all ambulance drivers and could save everyone a lot of grief and irritation if they accepted the fact and didn't pretend they were anything else.
I did my best to explain that our primary duty was to be prepared at any time of the day or night to proceed to any given point, pick up the sick or wounded, and carry them off in a car that was properly equipped and in good running order. According to my way of thinking, everything else was incidental to that, the most important incidental being that we should go about our jobs in such a manner that we might cause a minimum of trouble for other people. In particular, we should make sure that no medical officer should ever have to divert his attention from his specialized job to worry about the problems of the ambulance evacuation, and no war-weary service corps driver should have his job made more difficult by a lot of fancy-driving Americans "showing their stuff" on the crowded tracks and roads.
Having explained my own general theories on the attitudes and duties of an ambulance driver I attempted in subsequent lectures to give some idea of British Army organization, evacuation systems, map reading, use of the prismatic and sun compasses, vehicle maintenance, convoy discipline, and life in the desert. I didn't have time to go into a great deal of detail, but I knew that I could depend on the MCA's to supply the deficiencies, and my main object was to give a broad picture with emphasis on the fact that there was nothing so tricky about the job of being an ambulance driver that a normal boy couldn't cope with it. I remembered bow frightened I had been when somebody had told me that I'd have to learn "desert navigation," so I made a point of trying to steer away from the trick phrases which are legitimate enough but quite unnecessary. I let it be known that no individual driver would be called on to do any complicated "navigating" and that even if he should be, it was a simple business of drawing a straight line between two points and employing an old-fashioned protractor. Fortunately the grid lines in the maps of the western desert run true enough north and south, east and west, so that it is not even necessary to compute variations. The effect of the vehicle on a compass may be reckoned by walking a few yards out in front and checking with a simple back-dialing.
Toward the end of our three weeks at the mobilization center, I took my platoon out on an overnight exercise in the desert. I got hold of a lot of maps, sun compasses, and prismatic compasses, and had each section take turns leading the convoy on a compass course. The exercise was a tremendous success. We covered over forty miles of unmarked desert, some of it rocky and rolling, some of it soft sand, and the new men kept well and truly to the accurate courses they had reckoned on the map with their own acquired knowledge. We came back to camp by road in order to get in some practice in keeping convoy discipline through traffic. It was with considerable pride that I viewed the line of ambulances strung out behind me---pride mixed with confidence that this platoon would be a credit to the A.F.S. and those of us who had a hand in its organization and training.
Aside from practical considerations, our overnight jaunt was particularly valuable to me since I had heretofore been a bit shy of getting to know the men under my command and had kept to my own tent as much as possible back at camp. Now that I was thrown in with them, I found that almost everybody was easy to get along with and could best be treated as a friend instead of as a subordinate. (One good thing about the Field Service was that no officer could get away with treating anybody as a subordinate for very long.) They were mostly normal young men who seemed anxious to learn and anxious to do a good job. Although there were quite a few college boys and boys just out of college, I think that, without exception, they had all worked for a living at one time or another and easily escaped the classification of gentlemen tourists. As a matter of fact, quite a few of them had given up good jobs to join the American Field Service and could not be considered "draft dodgers" by any stretch of the imagination, since at the time of their enlistment the draft boards had discontinued the practice of releasing men with 1-A classification to serve as ambulance drivers.
I remember rushing into Andy Geer's tent immediately after we returned from our overnight exercise and announcing that my platoon was about the best that ever lived, to which Andy replied: I think we've got a pretty good company."
And so we had. For one thing, the work of the other (original) Field Service company had had a lot to do with it, since the new men had an established example of good work to live up to and therefore had not been tempted to act as individuals who were too good for the organization as a whole. For another thing, the company had in Andy Geer a commander who obviously knew what he was doing.
Andy was something of a militarist about organizational matters, but it was all for the best, since he was the only officer in the entire Field Service who had taken the trouble to figure out just what made the wheels go round in the British Army. In working with the British, Andy knew just what to do and when to do it, and he didn't turn himself inside out to try to ape them. Quite the opposite. He was a story-book American, a great husky "Yank," though with less of a chip on his shoulder than most, and the British loved it. Andy's only fault was that he was a born sensationalist. But if you pinned him down and asked a straight question you had a better than average chance of getting a straight answer.
During our stay at the Royal Army Service Corps Mobilization Center, Andy and I were invited to take our meals at the commandant's mess, an invitation that we were obliged, and only too glad, to accept. It was quite an experience for me. I had never eaten in any sort of officer's mess before, and this was a very formal affair. Moreover, I was the youngest officer there and didn't know a soul with the exception of Andy and Captain Eric Waller who had instructed us on our first visit to the mobilization center and had been responsible for my invitation. At first I was very unhappy about the whole performance, and my knees shook perceptibly every time I went in to take a meal, especially if the old colonel was there, in which case I was supposed to click my heels, bow, and say: "Good evening, sir," or some such thing. But after a while I got so I looked upon mealtime as the high spot of the day. The food was excellent, about what you would get in a good boarding house---soup, meat, vegetables, pastry, and the ever-present tea---the company delightful, and the liquor well worth drinking.
Of course the company was the most important thing. The officers in the mess were probably rather average British officers, middle- or upper-middle-class Englishmen, but in the long run I found that I couldn't have hand-picked a more decent and likable group of people. It's very hard for an American to understand Englishmen, particularly English officers. Americans are far too prone to judge by superficial first impressions, and I'm no exception. To me the English officers had always seemed intolerable snobs who probably had very little to be snobbish about. In fact, at one time I had gone beyond social relations and imagined that the reason for Britain's current military set-back was the incompetence of her "high hat" young officers, who seemed to have very little genuineness underneath it all. I'm ready to say right now that I was terribly wrong.
I still can't say that I approve of a caste system so definitely established that different economic classes not only look different, but also speak different languages, but I can say that in his immediate personal relations the average British officer is about as decent a fellow as can be found, and on the battlefield there is no group of men in this world who can surpass the gallantry of the officers. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that British military set-backs might be partially attributed to too much gallantry and not enough thought on the part of senior officers, but never to a lack of "what it takes." I am inclined to believe the much-told story of a British colonel leading his tanks against a row of dug-in 88-mm. guns with the order to "gallop."
In this day and age it has become almost mandatory for intelligent people to look upon the "old school tie" with scorn, but I'm here to say that no matter what you say about the English public school system, it has given some otherwise quite ordinary people an extra sense of obligation to "never let down the side" (I am not using the phrase facetiously), which has proved invaluable to the British Empire.
Bravery is a strange thing. It is quite possible for an ordinary soldier to go on fighting, even though he may be wet with fear, because he has a self-imposed obligation not to let down his comrades-his own self-respect depending upon the respect of others. How much more possible, then, for a man to go on fighting if he has not only this primary obligation but also a greater one to which he has been bred and conditioned.
Of course, not all British officers are public school products, and I don't mean to imply that it takes a public school education to make a good officer. I do mean that in wartime the "old school tie" can be of real value in elevating a group which might not otherwise be at all exceptional.
At the end of our three weeks' training period we were ordered to a reserve area in the desert, and my platoon was attached temporarily to a light casualty clearing station. I had been issued a "fifteen hundredweight" Dodge pick-up truck before leaving the mobilization center, and spent a couple of weeks sitting in the back of it swatting flies and pretending to be busy, while the men of my platoon got some good practice evacuating the sick and wounded back to a base hospital.
The second week in October I was seriously tempted to leave the American Field Service and head for home with the members of our original unit, who were pulling up stakes at the end of their year's enlistment, but at the same time I learned that the big offensive could be expected at any minute, so I decided to stay with my platoon at least until the end of the initial action. This decision turned out to be about the smartest I ever made.