大象传媒

People in story: Kenneth Hulbert, Royal Army Medical Corps
Location of story: Sudan

Taken from the diaries of Kenneth Hulbert (1912-2003)
Served in the Royal Army Medical Corp, World War II

This is the third instalment in a series of excerpts from the war diaries of my father, Kenneth Hulbert, adapted for 鈥楾he People鈥檚 War鈥� website. Kenneth Hulbert served as a lieutenant, then captain and finally a major, working for hospitals in Egypt, the Sudan and India. I edited his diaries and published them as a book 鈥業 will lift up mine eyes鈥� just after he died in May 2003.

In August 1941 Captain Kenneth Hulbert (Royal Army Medical Corps) received
orders and warrants to travel up the Nile to the Sudan. After several days sailing on a Nile river steamer, he arrived at Wadi Halfa on the Egypt-Sudan border.

Standing in the station was a beautiful white train 鈥� the Khartoum Express. Kenneth found his berth on the train 鈥� a single cabin with wash basin and electric fan, all spotlessly clean. It was very hot, but the tinted windows inside the train made it cooler. This was the railway built by Kitchener prior to the Battle of Omdurman. It ran from Wadi Halfa across the desert and the great bend of the Nile to Abu Hamed where the River Atbara joins the Nile.

A military ambulance was waiting at Khartoum station and Captain Kenneth Hulbert was taken to the British Military Hospital, which was sited next to the military headquarters and barracks on the banks of the Nile. It was a thick, walled building with stone floors, verandas and electric fans that were whirring constantly. Just between the hospital and the Nile was the stone marking Gordon鈥檚 Ramparts. Khartoum was laid out like a Union Jack, because it enabled a few machine guns, strategically placed, to control the town. At the centre of the 鈥楯ack鈥� was the famous statue of Gordon on his camel, and behind it was the palace and the cathedral.

As medical orderly officer at the British Military Hospital much of Kenneth鈥檚 job was to administer inoculations against yellow fever. Work started around 7am, with a siesta every afternoon when all hot air was shut out of the room and everyone lay under a fan. After tea they worked until about 8pm and then had dinner.

On 14th August Kenneth was sent to Wad Medani, the capital of the cotton growing area known as the Gezira, situated on the land between the two Niles about 100 miles south-east of Khartoum. He was to replace a doctor who was going on leave.
At Wad Medani was a POW camp full of several thousand Eritreans and Abyssinians (Ethiopians) who had been serving in the Italian army. The British army, with a large contingent of Indian troops, had defeated the Italian army, plus the Eritreans and Abyssinians. In February 1941 the British campaign in East Africa had begun with the attack of Italian Somaliland and by May 1941 Mussolini鈥檚 East African empire had largely been destroyed.

The prisoners were locked up in areas called 鈥榗ages鈥� 鈥� big barbed wire enclosures with tents, huts, latrines and cookhouses inside. Kenneth was working with four Italian doctors. Many of the prisoners had granuloma of the gums which was eventually found to be scurvy, so they were all encouraged to eat fresh limes. When they all refused, the RAMC orderly stood over them until they ate them. A lot of the POWs were also suffering from diarrhoea due to pellagra. Treatment was vitamin B and the doctors decided to try and get them to eat ground nuts that grew locally rather than wait for a shipment of Marmite to arrive from home. Arranging meals for a camp of prisoners that included both Christians and Moslems was tricky.

The Abyssinians are Coptic Christians and they wear leather armlets on their arms or on their foreheads containing parts of the Bible. Some of them can read the Amharic language and have larger leather-bound Bibles, which they read to each other. They are very difficult to feed because they are fanatically anti-Moslem and will not eat anything touched by Moslem hands. The only way to feed them is to drive in a flock of sheep into the cages and let them get on with it. They slaughter them themselves with the animals鈥� heads facing Jerusalem. They also cook a kind of oatcake made of oats mixed to make a thick porridge, which is then poured on to a hot iron plate.

By now Kenneth had been allocated a car and a Sudanese chauffeur. The daily morning routine was, first, a visit to the military hospital, then to the POW camp, then the civil hospital and finally, the adjutant鈥檚 office. Afternoon was siesta time. Supper was served by a tall, black Sudanese waiter, called Smiler, who used to stand in the corner at meal times, silent and motionless like a grandfather clock, smiling broadly.

27th August.
News of the invasion of Iran (Persia) by British and Russian forces.

On 10th September Kenneth was sent to from Wad Medani back to Khartoum where he was posted onto an ambulance train.

The train was a series of converted Sudan railway coaches, coloured fawn, with a red cross on the side and the usual sun blinds on the outside. There were three or four converted second-class coaches with a double row of bunks, upper and lower, lengthwise along the coach. The toilet was a hole in the floor, as in most trains. There was a kitchen coach with sleeping quarters for the Sudanese cook and his assistant. Other staff on the train were a sergeant, a lance corporal, two privates and a Sudanese driver. I was in a first-class coach with individual sleeping compartments. At the end was a surgery compartment, and right at the back was a wagon with stores and equipment.

The next day the train was loaded up with 90 Abyssinian POWs. Dinner was taken in the compartment and then Kenneth did a 鈥榳ard round鈥� of all the patients. Conditions were uncomfortable, but there was the odd bit of luxury 鈥� the occasional drink of iced lime juice (a real treat) with a railway engineer in his saloon. As the train chugged out of Khartoum station the smoke from the engine, which was fuelled by cotton seed instead of coal, produced a thick, pungent, black cloud.

For the next four months, the ambulance train went back and forth across northern and eastern Sudan. The route varied. Sometimes it headed north to Shendi and Atbara across semi-desert 鈥� savannah country, with tall grass and short trees, where the occasional camel or gazelle could be seen. Then it went east across the desert towards Port Sudan, before turning south across more desert to Kassala and Gedaref, near the Eritrean border. Here, the branch line, specially built in the Eritrean campaign to supply the army, turned off to Tessenei in Eritrea. The track was not very firm, so they proceeded slowly, crossing the frontier into Italian East Africa. This part of the railway from Tessenei to Kassala had been built in record time with Sudanese labourers laying the track in competition to see which would get there first. They also built a bridge over the River Gash, which was in flood for two months of the year. By the time it was finished the war in Eritrea was all over.

Another route the ambulance train took was south-east from Khartoum to Wad Medani, then east across the Sennar Dam, built across the Blue Nile to provide irrigation for the cotton fields of the Gezira. Out of the window, on the north side of the dam, there was a placid lake with several crocodiles basking in the sun on its shores. Yet another route was north and then east, across the desert towards Port Sudan.

The desert is quite frightening 鈥� sand, sand, sand and not a green thing in sight. Every so often a great barren rock rises up out of the desert. We found that a wonderful brew of tea could be made at the halt by taking the pot up to the engine and putting it under the steam exhaust. The driver then pulled a lever, shot super-heated steam into it and produced a perfect cuppa.

The main tasks on the ambulance train were to pick up patients and transport them to the nearest hospital, treating those who were very sick on the train. If a patient died the doctors had to unload the body at the nearest station to a hospital because there was no refrigeration on the train. The alternative was to simply dump the body on the station 鈥� not the most dignified or respectful task, but necessary given the sanitation risks. The makeshift mortuary was a carriage at the back of the train and the operating theatre was another carriage. There was no electricity and instruments had to be sterilised by boiling up water on an oil-fuelled stove. It was quite an art to carry out delicate operations while the train was rattling along. On one trip to the Red Sea Hills there was one Italian patient who was very ill with dysentery and Kenneth had to put up a drip of saline 鈥� a difficult procedure because of the motion of the train. But he did it. Alas, the patient died and at the next halt they had to put his body in the wagon at the back.

Most patients were sick, suffering from disease, rather than wounded. There was no longer any fighting in Eritrea, but there was plenty of diseases that needed to be dealt with. Venereal disease was widespread. On one run to the borders of Eritrea, 40 Sudanese patients with VD boarded the train. They ended up in the military prison instead of the hospital because VD was classed as a self-inflicted condition and therefore an offence against military law. Gonorrhea was also common and the cure was M&B (the pills manufactured by the pharmaceutical company May and Baker). Small children used to run alongside the train holding their hands shouting 鈥楳 and B鈥� because they could sell the tablets for 2/6 each in the souk. Kenneth also saw a condition he had never seen before called kala azar (actually a parasitic disease called leishmaniasis) that causes the spleen to enlarge.

In November, between journeys on the ambulance train, Kenneth started working as an anaesthetist at the British Military Hospital in Khartoum. By now the weather had cooled down and was like an English summer. Most evenings were spent at the club, but sometimes there was a good film. One was 鈥楾he Great Dictator鈥�, starring Charlie Chaplin. There were services on Sunday in the cathedral or at the church in the hospital.

20th November
News of a new offensive in the Western Desert under Auckinleck 鈥� the British Commander-in-Chief in the Middle East who succeeded Wavell.

7th December
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. The USA declared war on Japan.

11th December
Germany and Italy declared war on the USA.

Kenneth spent his 29th birthday, Christmas Eve 1941, on the ambulance train picking up patients at Atbara and Shendi. The aim was to clear the Sudan of sick POW patients.

25th December, Christmas Day

It was a cloudless sky when the train arrived back in Khartoum on Christmas morning. Kenneth attended the morning service at the cathedral, taken by the bishop of Egypt and Sudan, the Rev. Llewellyn Gwynne, who always came up to Khartoum from Cairo for Christmas. During the First World War he was Deputy Chaplain General on the Western Front and after that he came back to found the diocese of Egypt and the Sudan. He was a remarkable, but formidable old man who rose at 5am every morning to spend two hours in prayer in the cathedral gardens. A blue-blooded imperialist with no apologies, he said that God had sent General Gordon to the Sudan. And he added, 鈥淚 believe that God sent the British to India鈥�. The cathedral was built over the well where Gordon鈥檚 body was thrown down. On one side was the Gordon chapel with his prayer mat on the wall and the altar frontal made from the gold of his epaulettes. On the other side was the Kitchener memorial chapel. Kenneth sat on the back row with some very tall, black, southern Sudanese soldiers, all in their very best uniforms and shared a hymn book with one of them for 鈥楬ark the Herald Angels Sing鈥�. The cathedral was packed and the Governor-General and his wife were in their special seats at the front. Everyone had lunch at the British Military Hospital and then listened to the King鈥檚 speech on the radio in the afternoon. In the evening they followed the usual army custom with the officers waiting on the men for their Christmas dinner. Then early to bed and thoughts of home.

26th December
Woken up by our orderly, Smiler, with a cup of tea and two rows of white teeth. Then walked into the town and sent off a New Year telegram to all at home. Had a hair cut at the Gordon Saloon. Attended a party in the evening at the sister鈥檚 mess and had a good Christmas dinner.

Kenneth鈥檚 last two weeks in Sudan were spent at the Military Hospital treating mostly bashed-in faces and cut heads, seeing patients at a clinic over at Gordon鈥檚 Tree, and on the ambulance train dealing with patients who had dysentery, malaria, tuberculosis, bilharzia and VD.

On 14th January he left Khartoum by train for Wadi Halfa. It was mid January and, once again, he was travelling on a Nile steamer, only this time it was downstream. The river was much higher and wider because, now that the flood was on, the sluices at Aswan had been shut, allowing the level of the river to rise. The palm trees on the bank were now half submerged and appeared as tufts of palm leaves standing up out of the water. When the boat reached Aswan, the Temple of Philae, which had been partially submerged when he first saw it in August, was now almost entirely under water.

On 18th January Kenneth arrived in Cairo and went to the RAMC depot to receive posting orders and railway vouchers to travel to Number 18 General Hospital at Kantara on the Suez Canal. This was not a fixed building. During the war RAMC officers were grouped into 鈥榟ospitals鈥�, each one with a number. When the hospital moved, as many of them did because they were tented, it kept the same number.

His next assignment would take him east, to India.

More about this in the next instalment.

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