Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 315
Primary tabs
Transcription
[Page 315]
155
the last few miles into Kangavar in the dusk, the column of steam that had been shooting from his uncapped radiator had long since vanished. It seemed a certainty that this engine would seize up when it cooled. We spent a cold cheerless night in the empty marching-post, and I could hardly sleep for worrying about that maltreated engine. In the morning when he found it impossible to turn the engine with the starting handle, the little Burmese Corporal, a cheerful super-optimist, took the vanette in tow with his own serviceable vehicle, dragging it around and around a big circle and getting the driver of it to let in the clutch from time to time. This expedient continued for about half an hour with no success, then suddenly, as if by a miracle, the engine fired and roared into action, but with rattling, banging and misfiring was a frightening noise. I had no hope that it would pull the heavy load to the village of Bisitun, over twenty miles away. But it did, and we slept there that night in a native house. And the next day it functioned for nearly another twenty miles, on a much better road, to Kermanshah, where we arrived at noon and turned it into an Army Motor Workshop for urgent repairs. Later we were told that all the main bearings (and those of the big-ends) of that engine had nearly vanished. Ever since that experience I have had a great respect for Ford motor machinery.
On our arrival at Baghdad a few days later, I said farewell to my Major friend, and went off to stay at the big camp there and await further instructions regarding my movement down the Tigris to Basra, and on to India or Ceylon to join a troopship going to Australia. Such instructions were slow in coming, and no one in authority seemed to care how long we "rotted" in Baghdad. So two other impatient officers and myself decided to cut the red tape and "jump" the freight train that left nightly for Kut al Amara down river. We were quite successful in getting ourselves and our baggage into an empty box-car and lay down in the dark to rest on our folding stretchers. Around midnight the train started off, jerking and jolting, and two or three times the door slid back a little and a light flashed on our recumbent forms before it was closed again.