Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 271
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[Page 271]
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sunny day and steaming full speed towards Alexandria. This prewar P & O liner was already crowded with reinforcements, and a large number of nurses, going to Egypt. Many hostile submarines were taking toll of Allied shipping in the Mediterranean so total blackout of all lights was the order of the night; a very popular restriction with the cuddling couples of nurses and soldiers up on the boat deck. During this voyage we began Russian language lessons every morning under the tuition of English speaking Tsarist officers: the teacher of our group was a very charming and scholarly Baron Naudkin. I found it very tedious study, and it was fully two months before I became really familiar with its thirty-five-letter Cyrillic alphabet, so very different to our Roman one.
The "Malwa" arrived safely in Alexandria harbour on the third day. We spent the night on board, went shopping and sight-seeing in the city the next day, and in the evening entrained for Suez, passing through Cairo without a halt. Some Canadian and Russian officers who had not seen Cairo sneaked off early that morning to have a brief look at it, and caught up with us at Suez by another train. A score of officers and sergeants from various units serving in the Middle East theatre of war now joined us. A small passenger ship the "Nile" was waiting at Suez to take our Party down the Red Sea, along the South Arabian coast, and up the Persian Gulf to the tiny flat barren British Protectorate of Kuwait, whose vast hidden oil resources had not yet been discovered.
This was a slow voyage of twelve days in pleasant weather, the only contact with the shore being at Najem, in the Gulf, to coal ship. We continued our daily Russian lessons, had a course of instruction in the use of the Vickers machine gun and attended some lectures about Middle East diseases, customs and food resources, but still had plenty of spare time for conversation, reading or playing Auction Bridge. The only untoward incident was rather a mystery; the ship's second officer walked out of the smoke-room one night after some heavy drinking and was never seen again. There was a heavy sea rolling the