General Mann (TAP 112) - Naval Cruise Book

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-A f PART III BREMERHAVEN TO FRENCH INDOCHINA In mid-Atlantic the radio dit-dahhed a message directing lis to proceed from Bremerhavcn to Oran. Algeria, to pick up French colonial troops. The message advised that the troops were chiefly Moslems to whom pork is taboo, and stressed the importance of rice and bread in their diet. .At Bremerhaven we loaded twelve tons of rice while parr ' ing questions of the curious on the beach. It later developed our estimates were long — that we could have fed our passengers nothing but bread, jam .ind meat and kept them happy. Leaving Bremerhaven for the second time on .Xugust 8th we retraced our course through the North Sea and the English Channel to a point opposite France ' s Cherbourg Peninsula. Here we turned to the soiuh- v ' est and passed close by the Channel Islands, Guernsey and Jersey, ' e skirted Brittany, crossed the Ba of Biscay, and paralleled the shoreline of Portugal. Portugal was only a dim outline in the haze. Those who looked intently saw the mountain that rises at the mouth of the Tagus River, marking the entrance to the waterway that forms the port of Lisbon. But Spain was another matter. .At 1045 on August 1 2th Cape Trafalgar was sighted, and as the ship headed east toward the Straits of Gibraltar we ran close inshore to the arid, brushy coast of southern Spain. The terrain looked like the coastline of southern and Baja California. The white buildings of Tarifa glared in the brilliant morning sunlight, their red tile roofs distinct against the background of the brown hills. Close ahead lay Gibraltar. Then suddenly off the starboard bow loomed the mountains of Spanish Morocco, huge and heavy and forbidding. Facing the Straits was a single sheer peak, rocky and jagged, its face slashed with deep clefts. And all the awe of Gibralt.ir was gone, banished by this single monstrous mountain that dwarfed the scarred fortress on the north side of the passage. Gibraltar looked like a small rocky island as we passed. The narrow spit linking it to Spain was barely visible. Leaving Gibraltar, and the more rugged southern Hanks of the Straits to the stern, we passed Ceuta, one of Spanish Morocco ' s principal cities. Like those of Tarifa, the buildings of Ceuta were almost uniformly white with red tile roofs. The central section of the city contained man - multi-storied structures, and a huge marine crane marked the dock area. Our introduction to the Mediterranean was pleasant. The skies were bright and clear and the weather mild. A spectacular sunset on the evening of August 1 2th tinted the ship green and spread a coppery sheen over the blue sea. Early the following morning we clipped past Oran and made for Mers-el-Kebir, a small battered town lying a few miles west of the big Algerian citv. Here splmdid concrete moles extend far out in the bay, providing excellent mooring facilities.

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And here wo were to siirfLMidcr tht ' peace and quiet that had been our good lortune ft r live days, and load the ho%vhng, youHng, most wonderfully confused mob the Maun ever carried. The troops looked Hke a horde of brown bugs as we approached the mole. Even at a distance we noted their different headwear. Some had white turbans, some brown, while others wore red fe es, and here antl there could be seen the semi-stovepipe caps of tlie Fr. ' nch officers. The troops were quickly embarked. The filed aboard, small thin swarthy men and boys clad in khaki shorts and wearing rope-soled sandals. A colorful Foreign Legion band, Algerian riHemen, and a French general participated in the farewell ceremonies. The Mtnni is a resilient ship. It has to be to accommodate itself to its customers. But the first few days out of Mers-el-Kcbir strained the most stoic eterans. Most of the troops had never seen running water or electric lights before coming aboard. To them, water was for washing or drinking, regardless of its vehicle. Indoor plumb-ng is luiheard of in the little coastal villages from which most of the soldiers were recruited, and a vigorous housebreaking campaign was necessary. Only about fifty per cent of the troops understood French, and each announcement over the ship ' s loudspeaker system had to be passed in three languages — English, French and Arabic. The effect was not unlike a marathon hog-calling. .Adding to the serenity was the .Arab ' s inclination to shout and wrangle with untiriiig vigor. The forming of their mess lines aft invariably looked like an incipient race-riot. Accompanied by the waving of clubs in the hands of the non-coms, shoving, shouting and pushing, eventually all made their way to the mess deck. Here it was necessary to instruct them in the use of the metal trays. By sign language we advised them that food will ride better when put in the concave compart:nents than when piled on the mounds formed by the bottom of the tray. But for all of their noise they were a cheerful, willing lot who worked hard at the tisks r iven them. The gathering of a working party was no problem. All we had to do was collar the nearest Arab and form some sort of a block. When enough of their countrymen w?re piled up behind this human dim all were turned to on the job at hand. The greatest difficulty was th? language barrier. Once the men knew what was desired, they pitched in gladlv. They were an emotional people. For an unknown teison one of their group jumped over the side near Port Said. Completely safe with a life-prest rver abo ' .it him, he paddled determinedly away from the ship. Aboard mass hysteria swept the troops. They wailed, ' ;mshed their teeth, beat their heads and wept. When our whaleboat crew plucked the escapee from the wate ; a wild ovation cheered the rescue. On another occasion a school of porpoise played n?ar the ship. The Arrbs laughed, clapped and shouted. They were like a lot of kids at the circus. Bv the time we reached Port Said there was organization v ithin the chaos. During most of the daylight and evening hours the loudspeakers continued to bl ire Alo! Alo! followed by announcements in nasal French and guttural Arabic: the wrangling, shoutin;; and h?iggling was a torrent of sound to which we had become accustomed; the Frenchmen still shook !iands with one another ten thousand times a day; and the appreciative character who came to attention and snapped off a salute each time he entered the cabin dining room continued to gladden the heart of our Sipply Officer with this dramatic tribute to American cooking. VC ' e transited the Suez, noting the green fields to the west and the sun-baked barren desert on the eastern bink. Camels foraged in the pastures, and people, donkeys, children and ducks moved about the little mud villrrgos. In the early morning of August 18th we entered Suez Bav, dropped our canal pdot and headed south toward the Red Sea. With each hour the heat became more intense. On both sides were rocky, steep mountains, the barren ranges of Egypt and Arabia. And then land finally faded from sight and we were in the Red Sea. The heat hung heavy and oppressive over the water, a visible, reddish-brown haze. For three days it was a punishing, brutal thing, leaving men sapped and wet and beaten. It broke a thermometer in the galle — a thermometer v ith a range of 120 degrees. The water injection went up to 92 degrees. Relief came on August 2Ist when we broke out of the Red Sea into the Gidf of Aden. There the seas increised and an epidemic of seasickness swept the Arabs. They suffered mightd . but not in silence. Prob- ably not in the history of tnal de wcr have so many bi ' en so splendidK smitten. Fallen warriors littered the decks and looked at us with agonized, bewildered eyes. Fortunately for the French cause in Indo-CJhina the seas subsided. The remainder of the trip across the Indian Ocean was placid. Placid that is, except for the usual racket and a brenk in the routine when the Arabs held boxing matches aft. The only threat they offered to one another during the course of the bouts was when they kissed at the end of the final rounds — trench mouth was rife among them. We made a binocular liberty at Colombo, Ceylon, on August 25th when the ship anchored outside of the breakwater there to await further routing instructions from the MSTS port office on the beach. The orders were quickly delivered to the ship and we were soon underway again, this time headed for Singapore where we were to pick up French liaison officers froni Saigon. Our course took us through the Malacca Straits. The high mountains of Sumatra and Mala a loomed close on either side. Nearing Singapore we saw many small houses built on stilts over the water. Jiniks plyed the passages between the small luxuriant islands that crowd the waters off the southern top of the Malay Peninsida. Unable to secure transportation, the French liaison officers radioded that thes could not keep their appointment with us in Singapore. So again we li.ul a whale s-e e view of an exotic city as we passed close (•ifshore. The ship turned northward and we crossed the lower reaches of the South China Sea. arriving at Ganh- Rai Bay, Cochin China on the morning of August ilst.