Whatmore Family History

Sometime ago I posted an extract from my father’s war memiors which described how he had narrowly escaped being killed when German bombers attacked the troop ship he  was on. I thought that readers might enjoy a further extract - this time about a wartime trip into Iraq.

If anyone would like a copy of the complete memoirs on CD ROM, please send me a CD ROM sized jiffy bag with your address and a 55p stamp, with a note saying what you are requesting. My contact details can be found at www.genfair.com Look under ‘Browse Suppliers’ for ‘Whatmore Family Publications’ .

One day I had to report to an Officer at a Jordan Crossing, I don’t remember which crossing it was, whether it was the Allenby Bridge crossing, or one further up north. So I expected it would be a day’s job, convoy work as per usual, with an officer in charge, and I left by motorbike with the usual amount of equipment and clothing, and crossed the width of Israel to get to the Jordan. I got a move on and   it must have been towards mid morning when I arrived at the river and drove  down the steep incline to the crossing.  There was a long string of the oldest, most ramshackle and antiquated vehicles as you could ever see.  They were certainly not army vehicles.  There was one army vehicle at the rear containing boxes and what looked like cooking equipment. 

An officer came along, furious, saying that I had delayed the convoy and asking where had I been, and my explanation that I had had to get across the country had no effect on him at all. He informed me that I was responsible for the feeding of the Arab and Jewish drivers of these vehicles, and also for the re-fuelling of these vehicles and that I would be an outrider for the convoy and responsible to him.  We were going to

Baghdad or to the outskirts of Baghdad.  The Officer drove to the front of the convoy and we started off.

The River Jordan   Copyright: Rhys Whatmore

Most people know where Baghdad is, somewhere alongside the banks of the Tigris or Euphrates, which is east of the Jordan.  This meant crossing the country of Trans-Jordan, and driving through Iraq, which was apparently in a state of insipid rebellion against its masters, whom I think had been put in position by the British after the First World War.  You can imagine my feelings, faced with an estimated four or five day trip with minimum equipment and a load of responsibility I shouldn’t have had. Later on somebody told me that the trip was a punishment for the officer, for using vehicles or petrol without permission. It was just something pushed on me without any option, and I wasn’t very pleased as you can imagine.  A lot of these vehicles looked as though they were tied together with bits of string. 

Anyhow, we set off, across the Jordan, this long column of private vehicles, Arab and  Jewish, and up the other side and on to the main road and into Trans-Jordan. This was a country set up by the Allies in the First World War as an Arab Kingdom.  It had it’s own police force and army.  The army was trained by English Officers, and it was very efficient.  In fact years later when the Arabs were trying to clear the Jews out of Palestine it was this Jordanian Army that did most of the systematic fighting and held the Arabs together, and prevented the Jewish Irregulars, or Army, from gaining a full victory.  The heroism of these Jewish civilians fighting a war against these well-managed Jordanian troops is something that should never be forgotten.

This officer tore along in front of this convoy and the ‘made’ road petered out after a time and we took to the sand of the Jordanian desert heading straight across eastwards towards Baghdad, far away in the distance.  I don’t know what the distance was in total  - possibly 400 or 500 miles or more than that.  This convoy struggled along at its own free will, more or less in a line, with me riding alongside.  By the way, this is a very very hot, stifling desert.  Believe me, I found it worse than the Western Desert.  Being civilians the Arabs and Jews stopped if they felt like it, for no good reason apparently.  If one stopped I had to chivvy him along to get going again, and obviously this was no set convoy where you could order and

discipline.  The officer never stopped the convoy to find out if things were going along satisfactorily, he just kept on going.

After two or three hours the first signs of trouble for me started.  The motor bike engine just coughed and stopped, and there I was left behind. This convoy had picked up its pace now and was streaming along away, the wind blowing the sand in all directions. I could ride motor bikes very well but I didn’t know how to do any repairs.  I had earlier asked for a course of workshops, both on engine maintenance and on motor bikes in general, but was ignored.  I could see the carburettor was flooding, so I stopped for about a quarter of an hour, wiped it round and let it dry out.  I kick-started the bike and got going again. It became obvious later on what the trouble was – the needle in the carburettor was sticking. I had no means of taking the carburettor out, and didn’t know to repair it or how to set it, so I was stuck with this thing.  I caught up with the rear of the convoy after some time. The motorcycle broke down at intervals during the whole journey both out and in, and there was no way of saying how long the carburettor would take to clear, and when the engine would start, and the more you fiddled and messed with it the worse it got.  So it was a question of sitting back and keeping patience and waiting to let the darn thing dry out.  It didn’t always kick-start then satisfactorily and that became a menace.  You couldn’t be quite sure whether the damned thing would ever start again. When daylight faded the convoy stopped for the night and I had had a breakdown with this motorcycle and I was tired by the time I caught up with it for the night.  I was covered in sand, messed up, weary, sick and fed up. 

Eric Whatmore on his motorbike   Copyright: Rhys Whatmore

When I did catch up with them there was a rations vehicle with the driver, sitting in the cab looking into space, and all around it a horde of these Arabs and Jews shouting and screaming for something to eat with the driver taking no notice.  So I thought, ‘Hello, situation bad again!’ The Officer was a few hundred yards away taking no notice of anything.  He had a driver, and presumably he had his own rations and sat there comfortably.  He never came back to inspect or to bother to see if  the men were being fed.  So I, very courteously and kindly as is my usual way, asked the driver of the rations vehicle what the hell was going on.  He said, ‘I’m no cook. I’m not doing anything about it.’  I said, ‘Well, neither am I. Just get yourself outside.’  I must agree I had to use a few hard words.  I said, ‘Get yourself outside, get the ironmongery laid out, and at least get those cans down.’ 

There was a system of heavy iron oval pots with iron handles which you filled with water to boil tea in and there was an iron frame on which they fitted and a petrol burner.   I had not seen this contraption before.  You  filled the burner with petrol. It had a pump I think.  This chap was afraid of this, and I wasn’t so blooming sure.  So I told him to get the stuff out at any rate and lay it out and to fill these pots with water. I got around the side of the vehicle and climbed on to the body of it.  This was a truck the same as we had in our own company with slatted sides.  These civilian Arabs and Jews were pushing their arms trying to reach stuff inside, and I thought, ‘Well this is another occasion when you take command – you’re either on top or you’re underneath.’  This occurred after I had been promoted to full Corporal, and as a full Corporal you had a 38 revolver instead of a rifle.  So I climbed on the back of this lorry, and stared down

at the shouting and just shouted, ‘Be quiet!’,  and produced the revolver.  And they did, they shut up and waited, and I opened the tops of some of these crates, which contained 8 ounce cans of bully beef, and packets of biscuits and milk. I don’t know what else was there, there can’t have been very much else.  The cooks had round tins like salmon tins, flat ones like you buy now in shops.  These had fatty bacon inside them in rolls - separated by rice paper, so whether were some of these as well, I can’t remember. So I waved my arms and said, ‘Arabs on one side and Yehoodis, (another name for the Jews), on the other. I reckon there must have been about  70 or 80 of these bods. There was a hell of a crowd and I had a hell of a situation on my hands, to prevent a riot.  Well, obviously there was going to be no cooking, no attempt at cooking.  I was ready to lie down for the night.  So I picked up a tin of corn beef and a packet of biscuits.  I said, ‘You and you’, and I passed it down to them, to the waiting arms and I pointed to a couple of them. ‘You and you’, and gradually dealt with it on that footing.  I was too tired to want to eat anything myself. 

They all quietened down.  I don’t know how the hell they opened the tins, or what they did with them, but seemed to satisfy them anyhow.  They perhaps weren’t accustomed to much delicacy in the way of eating.  Of course, this method of distributing food took a lot more rations than would have been normally the case, if we had cooked them, or issued them on the basis of slicing the stuff up but of course there was no cook.   I couldn’t force the driver to act as cook and the officer wasn’t bothering.  At least I had forced the driver to get out and prepare pans with water. He came out with the contraption, petrol inside it, but he was scared to light it, so I said, ‘Give it to me’, and we pumped this thing and I threw a match at the end of this thing sticking out of it, like a watering can nozzle only it was more horizontal and a flame came out.  Eventually the water boiled and I shouted over to these civilian drivers.  We threw some milk in and some sugar and they all came and had some tea.  When that was settled I just lay down on the back of this vehicle and went to sleep.  There was no comradely conversation with this driver. He got on his seat and laid down across it. I think it was a bench seat.  Anyroad, I didn’t bother where the hell he was sleeping and that was the first day. 

Next morning I got up, swilled my face round and looked around all these vehicles.  The men were moving around, getting ready, so we dished the rations out in the same way as the previous night and, as you can guess, these rations were becoming rather depleted.  We lined up and moved off, and what were laid on apparently in this desert were petrol stations.  Each had a few men, belonging to a petrol issuing unit, with 40-gallon drums of petrol, which had to be given out to service convoys crossing the desert.  We halted at one of these for the vehicles to be supplied with petrol.  The officer then nicely came back and told me I was responsible for seeing that the vehicles were properly filled with petrol, and believe me the time it took, I’m sure that some of these vehicles had second tanks, hidden away.  I think they must have been giving themselves a nice surplus of petrol, for when they resumed whatever civilian jobs they undertook. 

I took the opportunity to have a quiet word with this officer.  I said, ‘The rations are giving out.’  He said, ‘What!’  He screamed his head off and

said, ‘Those rations have to last four days to get us back.’  So I said, ‘I’m sorry but they won’t.  I’m not a cook and the driver won’t cook, and there’s nothing we can cook on really easily. I’ve dished them out the best way I can. If you can do it any better’ – actually I said it a bit more discretely, ‘if anybody else can do it any better – well they are welcome to have a go.   But as far as I am concerned, those rations will not sustain us to finish the journey and to get the vehicles back to Palestine.’  Well he had to accept this. He didn’t go and count up the stuff and weigh it up, he had to take my word for it, which was accurate.  I don’t recall whether there were supplies that could be signed for at this place where the petrol was being dished out or whether these were at  a station later on, but the officer had to sign  for a long list of supplies to keep us going, which suited me fine.

Eric Whatmore    Copyright: Rhys Whatmore

The following day the same sequence of events took place.  This damned motorcycle kept coughing, spluttering and stopping.  I used to fall miles back and then to have to catch the convey up.  In one instance, during a spate of dusty wind blowing, they were well in front. I tore after them through this wind and found out they’d gone through the centre of a collection of hamlets of what looked like bee-hive huts.  They must have taken this convoy straight through this collection of huts because the occupants were milling around and muttering and looking very angry. As I was following them to go through this collection of huts the damned vehicle stopped again, much to my cost.  There I was in the middle of this very unpleasant looking situation. We certainly weren’t well liked after the way the convoy had gone through the huts and I wasn’t very well liked either.  I was just the one left there. Admittedly I’d got a revolver,

and these Arabs - we must have been in Iraq by then presumably - had no intention of being very friendly.  As I remember they started closing in on me, not to a very close distance, but gradually edging in, and as I remember it now, fifty years afterwards, they started throwing things.  So I thought the sooner I get out of this the better, otherwise I’m not going to finish this journey at all.  Fortunately, I stamped on the old starter and the engine responded first time, and believe me did I get out of that area quickly! 

At the end of the second day, when we stopped for the night, I believe we were close to a settlement called Habbaniyah.  This, I believe, was a settlement of English officials, with their families at an oasis outside Baghdad.  I think the intention was for this convoy to rest up inside this settlement.  The convoy stopped and the Officer went to make enquiries, I think, but apparently they wouldn’t allow us in.  There was an expectancy of an insurrection in the country and I think they were safe guarding their own interests. I never saw the place really but just heard of it as a name – Habbaniyah - obviously there was water there for them.  I can’t say how many miles it was from Baghdad, not very far, I’m certain.  Anyhow I was left there with this convoy and this officer took vehicles away, whilst I stayed behind with our army vehicle.  I think they went away in groups and off-loaded whatever it was they were taking.  I never bothered to see what was on the blooming lorries, I’d got enough on. Possibly it was oil barrels for making roads, or helping civilisation on in some way or other. The lower ranks were treated as name and number and just given orders to carry out.  We were never normally told where we were going and unless you could find out by some means or other, you were just left waiting for somebody to give a precise order, whether it was good, bad or indifferent.  Well of course as I say those conditions didn’t suit me, but I tried to make the best use of the situation, to make sure I survived in a fairly reputable condition.

After all the vehicles had been unloaded we turned around and came back, and of course we came back a damned sight faster than the other way.  I was still stopping and starting and, when we got to within about 20 miles from the Jordan valley and the river crossing, this motorcycle packed up and wouldn’t start.  All the vehicles streamed off, and the officer never looked behind. I never saw him again and even our army vehicle streamed off with the others, going like bats out of hell. I was just left with this blooming awful motorcycle.  I was sweating, and sticky and covered in sand and grit.  I did the usual business, wiping the carburettor clean and waiting for it to clear itself.  Of course, the thing is that there was nobody there who could possibly give me a hand as far as I could see.

After 2 or 3 hours of waiting, over the horizon I saw an open backed little 15 hundred weight vehicle coming along with 4 or so men in it. I thought, ‘Hello! Are these friends or are they not?’  I couldn’t do much in any case with just a 38 pistol if they weren’t friends - against two or three in the back and the couple in the front.  They just drew up, without a word of English and I’d got no Arabic.  It would have been nice to have had lessons in Arabic had there been anyone to teach us. Nobody had the thought to include things like that in the training. Without a word they pulled up alongside, opened the tailboard of this little vehicle and lifted my motorcycle on to the back of it.  I jumped on the back without any more words, except kind smiles, and they just drove me right to the Jordan crossing.  I lifted the motorcycle off, and said thank you and off they went inside their own territory.  I kick-started the motorcycle and would you believe it, the damned thing started up and I drove down the slope from the Jordanian side, across the bridge, and up the slope on the other side. 

On the other side the civilian vehicles were still there and the drivers were all grouped around trying to get at several crates of corn beef and oddments that were still unused in the back of this vehicle -  the remains of the new supplies we had obtained on the journey.  The driver still sat in the front cab doing nothing.  The officer had gone of course, so what would you have done?  The driver of this vehicle wasn’t from my company.  He had obviously picked up the rations for the outward journey. These sort of things were worth a fortune if they were disposed of into the wrong hands, and that sort of thing must have gone on.  Anyhow, I climbed on to the back of this army vehicle, and stamped on a few hands that were stretching too far and were trying to pick up a few tins that were in reach. I opened up a box of tins of corned beef and I ladled out some of these remaining rations to the civilian drivers – all wrong I suppose, army rations.  I didn’t get anything back monetarily but the way they lived was shocking, these poor Jews and Arabs! They weren’t in the state of enmity towards each other which developed later on. They seemed to work alongside each other without any animosity, at least on this trip.  So I passed quite a few items of food out them, to waiting hands and then told the driver to report back to the depot he’d come from and to hand the remaining rations back in, and to make no mistake about it.  I said, ‘You be sure you hand them back in’,  and off he went. 

I got back wearily on the motorbike and drove across the width of Palestine again to Haifa, put the motorcycle back into workshop section and reported to somebody there that the damned thing needed repairing, and walked up the hill to my hut and laid down, and had another doss.