1-3
ON TO JERUSALEM AND CAIRO
Even today it might
seem hard for a twelve and a half year old to make a trip as I did. However, in those days there was a
representative of the American Board of Missions for Foreign Missions in many of
the major cities of the Middle East.
Mother and Dad put me on train at a nearby station that took me to Allepo
in Syria. I am sure that Dad gave
the Conductor exact instructions on where I was going. Bill and the other kids had traveled
this way going back and forth to school so it was not new to the conductors to
have American kids traveling alone. I was probably the youngest to ever do
it.
I was met in Allepo by
a representative of the Mission facility there, which at that time was mainly a
school. I was fed and given a rest
before being taken back to the station to take a train to Beirut. Again,
everything was pre-arranged, and I was met by a Mission Board
representative. This was the day
after Bill had gone to Jerusalem so I was taken to meet with some other people
who hadn't managed to leave the day before, and I rode down with them to
Jerusalem by car. These people had
been told where the American Community School children were staying in
Jerusalem, so I joined them that night where they were staying in an old
hospital which was serving as a refugee center. I met Mr. and Mrs. Strong, teachers from
the American Community School who were acting as guardians for us kids on the
way to America. It was good to see
Bill and the Dewey kids from Gaziantep whom I hadn't seen since their last
vacation at Christmas. I was given
a bed in a room that became the girl's dormitory. The boys had a room as did the Strongs.
There were other refugees staying there who we didn't
know.
The day after I
arrived in Jerusalem, the border was closed and the expected war began. It had been apparent that the
Germans had been moving soldiers into Lebanon and Syria in the guise of
tourists, with the long range plan of taking over both countries so that they
could get hold of valuable oil in Saudi Arabia. The Germans had already invaded Greece,
Cyprus, and most of the Balkans.
Turkey was neutral. When the
French, who were responsible for Lebanon and Syria, did nothing to stop the
German tourists, the British, who had significant forces in Palestine, decided
they had no choice but to take over.
Their legal basis was that the French mandate under the League of Nations
required the neutrality of Lebanon and Syria. The British anticipated a difficult
campaign, because the Lebanese and Syrians were reputed to be sympathetic to the
Germans, who were promising them independence.
At the border between
Lebanon and Palestine there was a deep gorge with a river in it and only one
road and bridge across the Gorge.
The British expected the bridge to be blown. They thought it would take several weeks
to build a temporary bridge, during which time they expected the Germans to
bring in strong forces.
Fortunately, the bridge was intact, and the British were able to reach
the Turkish border in two weeks, safe-guarding the Middle East oil supply for
the time being.
There were no surface
ships going through the Mediterranean Sea because of German submarines, so the
only way to the U.S. was to get a ship in Egypt. With the fighting going on next door,
visas were slow and we settled in for a long stay at the old Hadassa Hospital,
now serving as a refugee center.
The Strongs felt this was a good opportunity for us to learn about
Palestian history first hand, so they organized tours nearly every other
day. We got to see the three
different places where Jesus is said to have been crucified, and also the
multiple places of his birth and entombment. (Such locations charged a few piasters
to visit.)
I think I enjoyed the
Mount of Olives most because it was cool and there were almost no other people
there. We also got to know some of
the Jewish customs from different parts of Europe. I really enjoyed a little rum cake sold
in a bakery right around the corner from the Hadassa Hospital. We had the right passports to go freely
back and forth from the Jewish sector to the Arab side. We also met some friendly young Arab men
who invited us to visit their olive orchard. I think their interest was mainly in
Lynda, who was becoming quite an attractive young lady. The Arab young men could not, of course,
meet socially with their own young women, so getting to know Lynda was a great
occasion for them.
The boys often went
off to the YMCA for sports, while we girls often sat around and talked or napped
in the afternoons, which were so hot. This was a liberating time in my life,
because for the first time I was being treated like a young lady and not a
child. The older girls included me
in their girl talk.
After about a
month of waiting, our visas to go to Egypt came through all at the same
time. There were so many of us that
the railway company put on a special train. It was a days trip to Cairo, leaving in
the morning. As I remember, our
train stopped at the Suez Canal. We
took a ferry across the canal and got on a different train on the other
side. That night we arrived at the
American University which was in summer recess. It was to serve as a refugee center
while we waited to get a ship. This
again promised to be a long wait because ships to America were few and far
between.
At the American
University, they gave us supper and showed us where the girls' dorms were on the
third floor of the main building.
The boys were on the second floor.
There was also a flat roof, as is common in the Middle East, which was
used for recreation. The library
was near the dining room and I spent a lot of time there because there were so
many books on so many subjects I had never been exposed to that I wanted to read
and read and read.
Sometimes the air raid
alert sounded and we all headed for the air raid shelter. Now that the Germans had been thwarted
in Lebanon and Syria, they decided to get to the Middle East oil through Egypt
and the desert war heated up.
Everything in Cairo was blacked out at night, including the headlights of
the cars. Because of military
censoring, we didn't know how serious the German threat from the desert was.
Actually, if Rommel could have received more supplies, he probably could have
taken Cairo while we were there.
One night there was an air raid, and we went up on the roof instead of
into the shelter. The sky was
criss-crossed with searchlight beams trying to find the German bombers. I think
it was a false alarm because they didn't find any, and we didn't hear any bombs
go off.
One of the older kids
had gotten hold of a pack of cigarettes, and shared them with the rest of us on
the roof one night where the adults would not see what we were doing. I choked and coughed and didn't like
smoking, maybe the reason I never took up smoking later in
life.
With a sense of
freedom of being away from our families, we probably went beyond what we would
have otherwise. Edward Dewey found
that the University cars were left in a carport with their keys in them. So we taught ourselves to drive at night
when no one knew we were taking the cars out. Because of the blackout, almost no other
cars were out at night but it was a little scary driving without lights. Of course we drove very slowly and not
very far.
One afternoon we
went into town and saw the movie, "Gone With The Wind", which had just arrived
in Cairo. It had, of course, been
shown in America much earlier. One
night most of the older kids went dancing at the famous Shepherd's Hotel. They said they felt out of place as most
of the other people there were old men wearing fezzes.
I particularly
remember the Fourth of July. Years
ago when there were not so many Americans abroad, many of the American Embassies
invited all the Americans in the particular country to a Fourth of July party.
We were looking forward to the occasion as we knew there were other American
kids from other places staying around Cairo who would be going to America with
us and it seemed like a good time to meet them. The party was in the afternoon and we
dressed up as best we could. At the
party it seemed that the majority of the participants were kids like us from
Beirut and two other places, Egypt, and the Sudan. We stood around in our own groups, a
little bashful to meet those we didn't know. Just as the Sudan group started to come
over to introduce themselves, the waiters passed champagne and cigarettes around
which we all accepted in the spirit of the party. The group from Sudan, who were all
Southern Baptists, changed their minds on seeing our unacceptable behavior. This just confirmed what their parents
had told them that we would be an evil influence to be avoided. The kids from Egypt were a mixed lot and
from backgrounds similar to ours.
Several days after the
party we were told to pack up and get ready to catch a special train to Port
Suez. There were two ships ready to
leave for America and all the Americans going were told which ship they would be
on, one going around Africa, the other by way of Australia. I think the trip to
the port took several hours. We
were to board that afternoon and sailed in the morning. It turned out that most of the Americans
were going by way of Australia.
Our ship was really a
glorified tramp steamer, the S. S. Kauser, with one deck of First Class
cabins. Bill and I were assigned to
Second Class which was dormitory style, six people to a cabin. It looked as if some of the hold area
had been converted to passenger use, really stearage. Both Bill and I were in cabins with
people who spoke no English. A
fitting evening the day before departure was watching another air raid without
airplanes. It was very hot, so most
everyone was up on deck. Most of
the deck space was for the First Class passengers. There was a small lower rear deck for
the other passengers. Of course, there was also the lifeboat deck, but it wasn't
covered. Bill and I found out that almost all of the English-speaking passengers
were in first class, so we decided to define ourselves as first class passengers
too. The American kids were just Bill, myself, Edward, Lynda, and Warner Dewey,
and maybe a dozen more, evenly divided between the Sudan and Egyptian
groups. In each group there were
adults responsible for the children who were all minors.
Perhaps the most
interesting group of passengers were American servicemen who had been
masquerading as Red Cross drivers, but had actually been fighting in the desert
with the British against the Germans.
They were going back to America to teach American army units all about
desert warfare. They had their
military equipment with them including rifles and
ammunition.
The rest of the
American adults were teachers, missionaries, oilmen, and other businessmen
trying to get back to America before the war expanded and included America. All the rest of the passengers were
refugees from Europe who had managed to stay one step ahead of Hitler's
soldiers. They were mostly of
Jewish extraction from Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland, and
Cyprus. Perhaps three hundred
passengers had been crammed aboard.
Most would get off in South America because American visas were hard to
come by.
The crew was as
motley. The deck seaman were
Indian. The engine crew were
Greek. The captain was English, but
all of his officers were from different countries, including from Turkey. The ship's owner was on board with his
family which included some children.
The reason the boat was going to America was because the owner, a rich
Romanian, had just purchased the ship to take his family to the United
States.