大象传媒

Chapter 5.

Ashore

The escorting destroyers left their stations at either side of us and led the way towards our port of disembarkation from about four hundred yards ahead.
Each minute seemed to open up new scenes of our future home as we crowded the rails to see what kind of country we were coming to. Miles away off the port bow a dim mass reared heavenwards, its slate-grey sides streaked with snow and its summit lost in the masses of clouds that swirled restlessly about it. It was seaboard terminus of a high range of hills that straggled inland and lost itself in the summer haze of the interior. To starboard was another range of hills, obviously much further away, for it was much lower on the horizon and barely distinguishable, but directly in front of us there was no sign of land at all, only the iridescent mass of gently heaving water.
As we drew nearer to port a long, low line of golden brown appeared off our starboard bow, and it seemed to grow out of the sea, getting gradually longer and wider as we progressed, until it resolved itself into a vast stretch of beach which sloped down to the water's edge from a summit of green-covered sand hill. The verdant slopes behind it were dotted with irregular clusters of whitewashed houses with bright red roofs, and further away still, three blue-grey wireless masts rose Iike slender streaks from a small group of white, dwarf like buildings at their base. The strip of land terminated in a peninsula, at the western edge of which stood a gleaming white lighthouse with its base in the sea.
As we passed this silent sentinel the black-painted troopship swung suddenly away to port and headed in a north-westerly direction, escorted by one of the destroyers. They entered the glassy waters of a fiord, where two other ships rode at anchor. That was our last contact with our fellow traveller.
We steamed parallel to the coast, and the low-lying sand hills that were our first view of Iceland now surrendered to the rugged grandeur of a wall of snow-streaked, purple-brown mountains that rose sheer from the sea.
We should have turned in at 22.15 hours, but long after that time had passed we were still crowding the rails chatting as animatedly as schoolchildren on a day's outing as we watched the kaleidoscope of scenery gliding slowly past. We did turn in eventually, but with the greatest reluctance, only when the Orderly Sergeant came on deck and almost chased us below.
We did not sleep. The knowledge that we had reached our first foreign shore, and the excitement it produced, kept us talking until well after Lights Out. Loud whispers, chuckles and occasional bursts of laughter filled the mesa deck and, tired as we were, none of us had any inclination to sleep. It was the Orderly Sergeant again who, hearing the noise, eventually quietened us by threatening us with jankers for ever and a day if we didn't pack it in.
After that silence descended on the mess deck, to be broken only infrequently by a tired voice making an unanswered comment or asking an ignored question.
I seemed to have dozed off a dozen times, and when the Orderly Sergeant came down with the Orderly Officer and bawled at the top of his voice "Wakey, wakey, rise and shine, the morning's fine" I felt as though I had had no sleep at all. The crew were creating the devil of a noise up on deck and kept shouting through a square grating above us to get a bloody move on, interspersed with several other injunctions in the choice language known only to British seamen, to which we replied with equally choice language known only to the British Army.
A glance at my watch confirmed that we had indeed been only an hour or so between the blankets, for it was only forty minutes after midnight. Some of the men demanded an explanation, but received none. Orderly Sergeants can be heartless at times.
The Orderly Officer -a Second Lieutenant -called for silence and then issued instructions.
"You will fold your hammock and blankets properly and leave them in neat piles near your respective tables. Those of you who have palliasses will stack them over there,鈥� indicating with his walking-stick the forward end of the mess, which happened to be clear of tables - "then you will gather all your belongings and get dressed, and parade on deck in full F.S.M.C. in ten minutes' time."
A wild scramble to sort out our kit ensued, and when I had finally managed to sort mine from the jumble I was minus my respirator, water bottle and bayonet, but when I paraded on deck I had a full kit.
When we arrived on deck the reason- for the sudden activity became obvious. We were in harbour, and remembering the lamp messages we had read earlier we knew t was Reykjavik. Trawlers by the dozen were moored by the quay, and a short distance away were a U.S. patrol boat, two British destroyers -probably our escort -and a dirty-looking freighter. The rest of the harbour was dotted with yachts, motor cruisers and a varied assortment of small boats. The water was a sickly shade of green and was covered with large patches of flotsam. The whole place stunk of fish. The town, or what we could see of it, was an untidy cluster of unpretentious buildings with lower halves of concrete and upper halves of corrugated iron. The roofs were also of corrugated iron; and over it all lay a thin covering, of dirty-white powder from a local cement works. What a contrast to the lovely white buildings we had seen on our way along the coast. Les. voiced our unanimous opinion of the place,
'"What a bloody dump,!"
The disappointing' sight dampened considerably our initial enthusiasm at landing on our first foreign soil, but in spite of this early disillusionment we managed to retain our sense of humour and wise- cracks about the town and the harbour, and Iceland in general, were shouted from one group to another amid roars of laughter. The time passed quickly and pleasantly as we waited to see what the next move would be, and presently a neatly painted tug chugged slowly across the placid water of the harbour and moored alongside us. The steps were lowered and we were ordered to descend to the tug
It rejoiced in the homely Scott1sh name of "Nellie McGee" and could carry approximately fifty men on its deck at a pinch. On this occasion it took nearly three times that number with all our equipment and kit bags. We were packed so tightly together we could scarcely breathe. Those who wanted to smoke had to do without; there was not enough room for them to reach into their pockets. It was a repetition of the Greenock tug.
As we tried to get settled on the crowded deck Mick Sheridan asked me in a puzzled tone of voice if I knew the right time. After much wriggling I managed to extricate my arm from a mass of khaki and look at my watch.
"It's exactly half-past-two," I told him. Mick cussed loudly.
"I thought there was something odd. When we were shouted out of bed I thought it was Reveille and my watch had stopped, so I altered it to half-past-six. I make it half-past eight."
A roar of laughter greeted the comment and Mick struggled to make room for himself to put his watch right. There was every reason to believe the time to be much later than it was for it was still broad daylight and the sun was shining brightly. This was our first experience of the great difference between Great Britain and Iceland. Unfortunately, Mick was destined not to experience many of the differences between the two countries, because a few weeks later he suffered a heart attack and was evacuated back to England and out of our lives.
The "Nellie McGee", crammed as it was, swung easily away from the ship's side and nosed its way across the otherwise silent harbour. It seemed strange to me, squatting uncomfortably on the deck of the tug in broad daylight in the middle of the night that only four days ago I had been sitting in the warm spring sunshine on the lovely coast of South Wales.
An armed sentry stood beside a sandbagged lookout post on the stone quay and a little further along another soldier sat with his legs dangling over the edge of the quay trying to fish. His rod was an old broomstick and his line a length of string. He looked so despondent and woebegone, as if he had the cares of the world upon his shoulders, that we could not help but laugh.
We moored at the quay in a small inner harbour, swarmed ashore and lined up in columns of three in our respective platoons. Three small Lister Auto-trucks were buzzing about and one of them stopped near us.
"What are you -a leave party returning or a new mob just drafted out here?" the R.A.S.C. driver asked, with a friendly grin.
"A new mob mate," several voices replied in unison. Then someone asked. "What鈥檚 it like here?"
The driver's grin widened and he made an expressive gesture. "You'll be doing this before you've been here three weeks." And he placed his thumbs against his temples and waggled his fingers rapidly.
"As bad as that" someone asked, in a worried tone."
"You'll soon find out," the driver replied, still grinning, and he buzzed away.
We dumped our kit in a three-ton lorry another ramification of American aid -then stood about at the end of the quay for fifteen minutes until a sergeant arrived to march us to our billets.
The march around the first few blocks of houses caused us to cuss under our breath. The roads were pitted with potholes and as dusty as those so often portrayed in Western films. The main roads were not much better, for the tarmac had been chopped up and not replaced, and large stones were piled up at the roadside where the tarmac ended.
In spite of the discomfort of walking --we had been told to 鈥渕arch easy" because of the rough surface -we saw plenty to interest us. Most of the buildings were either entirely of corrugated iron or half corrugated iron and half concrete, as we had seen from the deck of the Polaski. The windows were flush with the walls -not one bay window did we see -and we learned later that there were no bay windows in Iceland at all, because the winter winds, which could sometimes attain a velocity Of a hundred and forty miles an hour, would blow them out. The street names, and the names on the shops and on the walls of a small factory were fantastically long and strange and completely unpronounceable to us. We always considered some of the Welsh names to be tongue-twisters, but these were much worse.
A smiling young lady wearing a bright blue and brilliant white skirt and carrying a large wicker basket full of gleaming white washing beamed down at us from a Persil advertisement at the top of a steel lattice mast, and nearby a young man who had obviously had a drop too much to drink was being forcibly propelled along by two stalwart policemen. Despite his violent struggles to free himself he might as well have saved his energy for all the effect it had. His captors had too firm a grip on him.
A bit further along another young man, wearing a grey herringbone belted overcoat, stood conversing with two young ladies On the pavement As we approached he turned towards us, raised both arms above his head, punched the air with his fists, and cried,
"I like you. I like you. I like England. Heil Hitler!" Evidently, he believed in having an each-way bet.
We wondered what kind of place this was, with people out on the streets at three o鈥檆lock in the morning. Did they live a kind of reverse existence; go about their daily tasks during the night and sleep during the day? It looked like it, from what we had seen so far. After walking along a few more roughly surfaced streets we headed up a long, dusty hill leading out of the town. The road was the worst we had so far encountered. It was nothing but a mass of loose brown rubble that might have been anything between hard clay and shale. The clouds of dust we stirred up settled on our perspiring faces and made us feel as though we had never known what a bathroom was.
"I'm so full of grit I could tackle Jack Dempsey," one man commented, in reply to one of his mates who asked him how he was getting on, and he inhaled another lungful of boot-stirred dust.
Half an hour's laboured walking brought us eventually to an area of mixed grass and volcanic lava on which were pitched a large number of bell tents and marquees. This, we were told by our Company Commander, Major Knott, was Faeroese Camp, and was to be our new home for the time being.
It looked anything but Fair Row Ease to us.

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