CHAPTER
TWO: A SON OF THE NILE
EPISODE
TEN
Although
I failed to graduate from Gordon College, my education was so much
better than that of most of my classmates that I completed my two-and-a-half-year
course at the Military Academy in eleven months. There were five classes,
each divided into two terms of three months each. Twenty-four hours after
entering the academy, I was promoted from the fifth to the fourth class.
Ten weeks later, after obtaining the highest marks in the fourth class,
I was promoted to the third. The First World War was then in progress,
and officers were so badly needed that the nine best students in the second
class were given their commissions immediately. I was one of the six best
in the third class who were advanced to the second to take their places.
In January 1918, I passed my examinations with an average of 97-7.
A month later, because of another shortage of officers, I was graduated
as a second lieutenant and assigned to the 17th Egyptian Infantry Battalion
in Sudan.
Although
I was happier at the Military Academy than I had ever been at Gordon
College, I would have been happier still if I had not been graduated
in such a hurry. I was given no time to perfect either my horsemanship
or my marksmanship. Although I was able to do so later, in my spare time,
I would have preferred to do so at the academy, as `Aliy was able
to do. Above all I had wanted to be the sergeant major of my class and
to be given a chance to win the engraved sword and other honors to which
my high marks entitled me but which, for lack of time, I failed to receive.
I was so disappointed that I wept on the day of my graduation.
"Don't
worry," said Herbert. "You'll have plenty of time to win
distinction later on. The important thing now is to learn to be a good
officer. I've graduated you ahead of your class because I think you're
destined to succeed. I want you to have all the seniority you can get.
You'll need it if you ever try to become a general."
Herbert
was right. My seniority would prove to be more important than any honors
I might have won at the academy. Even so, I was acutely embarrassed the
day `Abd Allah Khaliyl invited me to go hunting with him near Khartuwm.
`Abd
Allah was to become not only the first native brigadier in the Sudan
Defense Force but also the first president of his country's legislative
assembly. He was then a first lieutenant and already a famous marksman.
On our hunting trip he kindly offered to let me use his new automatic shotgun,
a -303- I was terrified the first time I fired the gun for fear
of missing my target. With a trembling hand, I raised the gun and fired
it at an ibis in a nearby field. The bird fell as if in answer to the silent
prayer I had uttered as I raised `Abd Allah's gun.
"You're
very accurate," `Abd Allah said in English.
For
the first time in my life I understood what "accurate" meant. It
was a word that I had often used when speaking English but until that moment
I had thought that it meant "correct" or "normal" rather
than "exact". Although I speak English far better than any foreign
language, having learned it as a child, I have never been sure of the exact
meanings of many English words. Even today I am frequently surprised to
discover that certain words have different meanings from those that I had
been giving them. I am therefore inclined to be tolerant of international
misunderstandings, for I know from personal experience how difficult it
is to render one's meaning exactly in a foreign language.
The
17th Battalion was encamped at Wad Bannagah just
below Khartuwm. For the first few months I had so little
to do that I began to study French. Later I studied Italian and German,
and as late as 1949, as I was recovering from the wounds I received
in Palestine, I began to study Hebrew. I was so disturbed by our lack of
translators during the war that one of the first things I did after taking
office in 1952 was to add Hebrew to the list of languages taught
at the Military Academy and at the universities of Cairo and Alexandria.
My first military assignment in Sudan was not military at all. I
was attached to an infantry company whose task was to move a railway track
that was threatened by the rising waters of the Nile. Our soldiers
were each required to move six cubic yards of earth per day. They
were paid nothing for the first three yards and a piaster
each for the fourth, fifth, and sixth, provided they maintained
their daily quota. It was forced labor disguised as military service. For
months we broke rock and built embankments at a fraction of what it would
have cost the Sudan Railways if a private contractor had been employed
to do the job. I often thought of Ibrahiym `Urabiy
and his prediction, which seemed to be coming true, that I would never
be anything more than an overseer for the British. I began to wonder if
my father had not been right and if I would not have done better to become
a lawyer or an engineer. I accordingly bought some books and began to study
for my baccalaureate in order to be free to study law or engineering later
on.
In
1919,
I was transferred to a Sudanese cavalry squadron that was garrisoned at
Shindiy
between Khartuwm and
`Atbarah,
`Aliy, who had
just graduated from the Military Academy, was attached to the same squadron.
It was at Shindiy that I finally perfected my horsemanship
and learned how to play a passable game of polo. But I found it impossible
to get along with my British superiors at Shindiy and I was
eventually transferred back to the 17th Egyptian Infantry.
In
the meantime Sa`d Zaghluwl and several other Egyptian nationalist
leaders had been banished to Malta. In 1918, following the
armistice,  Zaghluwl
had requested permission to lead a delegation
(Wafd) to Paris to
lay Egypt's claim to independence before the Peace Conference .
In spite of Wingate's favorable recommendation, and in spite of
the fact that Syria, Hijaz (now part of Saudi Arabia),
and even Cyprus were sending delegations to Paris, the British
Government refused Zaghluwl 's request. It refused even to
receive an Egyptian delegation in London. The result was the abortive
revolt of 1919 Bloody rioting occurred all over Egypt and
in some parts of Sudan. Zaghluwl and his principal
lieutenants were arrested and Wingate was replaced as
High Commissioner
by Viscount Allenby. Lord Milner was later sent to Egypt to
investigate the causes of the riots and eventually, at
Allenby's
insistence, Zaghluwl was released and the Wafd was
allowed to function as a political party. In 1922 the British grudgingly
recognized Egypt's nominal independence. Fuw’ad, who had
succeeded Husayn as our Sultan, now became our King.
It
was because of these events and my own bitter experiences with the British
that I joined the White Banner in 1923, I had been sent to
Cairo in 1921 to be trained as a police officer, but I so disliked
the work that I was transferred at my own request to the 13th Sudanese
Infantry Battalion in the province of Bahr al-Ghazal,
on the border of Belgian Congo. I took advantage of my stay in Cairo,
however, to pass my examinations for the high school diploma that I had
failed to obtain in Khartuwm. Now I was sent to Malaqal
the capital of the province of the Upper Nile, to take a training
course in the use of modem machine guns. Once again I found myself in difficulties
with the British. The chief instructor, a Colonel Knapp, at first
refused to admit me to the training course on the ground that it was intended
for Sudanese and not for Egyptians. But I stood up for my rights as an
officer in an Army in which Egyptians, Sudanese, and Britons were supposed
to be on an equal footing, and I was finally allowed to take the course
after Knapp had consulted his superiors in Khartuwm.
In the end he commended me as the best of all his students.
Before
long I was recalled to Cairo to impart my knowledge of machine guns
to the Royal Guards. In the meantime I had completed my studies for my
baccalaureate, which I obtained in Cairo in 1924. In the same year
I also became a first lieutenant. But I was advancing so slowly and was
so unhappy as a member of the Royal Guards that I began to study law in
my spare time with the thought of resigning my commission and becoming
an attorney and, possibly, a politician.
(To be continued)
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