Royal Corps of Signals

Dud's Army.
Chapter 11
The Med

With a second kayak built, Jack and I expanded camp boundaries coastwise, hugging the shore for a sea mile or two east and west of the swimming hole. The southern sea-edges of the Cape were interesting and with a waterline of less than six inches above the boat bottom our kayaks were able to penetrate the shallowest of sea entries and inlets. The water was so clear one could spot any edges or ridges likely to tear at our hulls and we soon grew familiar enough with the shifts of the sea to avoid getting into trouble. To the west we found high-domed sea-caves penetrating some distance under the cliffs into which one could easily swing the boats. Towards the lighthouse we came across an all-but-concealed, narrow-entranced cove that would provide secure anchorage from any and all wind directions, with room enough to raft up at least half-a-dozen thirty-footers. But all was deserted. No people, no sign of people. No-one fishing, no-one out for a recreational afternoon, no terrorists.

We even rounded the lighthouse on one journey and beached for a rest on Limassol sands. The boats looked so good hauled up on that curve of shelving, hard-sand beach I took a photograph. Coming there felt as primitive an action as traversing a strange sea to discover a new land. If we’d had a Union Jack we‘d have been tempted to plant it for queen and country. The thin beach curved away into the hazy distance, deserted and silent, the desert scrub nudging at its edges. So it might have looked in Roman times.

We usually took off on our explorations soon after breakfast, the whole day ahead of us and we as carefree as Huck and Tom. What Jack probably didn’t realise was the degree of delight I experienced at playing like this, like a child, even though I was now twenty-two. Play during traditional working hours was novel to me.

The Mediterranean usually cooperated, offering moderate-to-calm seas and little wind through eight months of the year. Storms in the winter months found us in camp and making sure the tent was pegged and everything snug and bristol. If when we were out the sea did get up a bit, because we did not have the Eskimo skirt covering the cockpit we would inevitably take water in over the gunwales and eventually fill. One then simply floated out, rolled the vessel over allowing the shipped water to empty leaving the kayak floating on a trapped air bubble, bottom-up. We would then swim with the boat back to shore and set all to rights in the shallows.

Lacking a tutor in kayak building and sailing we approached the art like cavemen, but one stayed alive by being a caveman, taking no chances. Both kayaks had rounded bottoms which required one to flex at the waist against the tendency to roll over. The boats were in fact unstable if one remained wooden-trunked like a toy soldier; then one would be sure to capsize. But staying upright was no more difficult than riding a bike and Jack and I quickly became adept. A few of the other fellows would ask for use of the boats, and of course we allowed them out freely. But in each case, having gotten them aboard without mishap we would presage their venture with the caution to “swim back in with it to this shallow place when you tip over.” There was never any “if you tip,” always “when you tip.” The nonchalant inevitability implicit in this remark together with the many times they did tip over seemed to limit the requests to a minimum.

As a small boy, whenever I fell into my Welsh grandmother’s clutches, not dissimilar from a witch’s clutches I used to think, I would be delivered a ten-second Victorian sermon. One of her more memorable cautions was “Fire is a wonderful servant but a terrible master.” Off Cape Gata, “sea” could be substituted for “fire” with equal validity. We only ever sailed when the Med. was in a servile mode and never beyond swimming distance of the shore.

Occasionally, after a storm somewhere offshore between us and North Africa, a succession of widely separated, heavy rollers would heave in. They came silently, turquoise-shouldered, for their eventual fling at the land. On striking the rocks they broke with a noise like thunder, exploding water in all directions. The land shook underfoot from the impact and we would add our shouts of approval to the general uproar. Some of the more venturesome fellows, Fred, our Signals lineman, very much to the fore, used this occasion to dive from one particular sideways cliff edge into an advancing wave. The drop was off the side of a gulley with the water driving well past the diving spot before breaking up further in. If the diver’s timing was on he’d have no more than a twenty foot fall to the advancing water but a mistimed effort could see the water receding from him as he came down, requiring considerable control to achieve a clean entry by the time he’d catch up to the lowering water. I was too chicken to even try it.

Such a lumbering sea came rarely but when it did Jack and I took advantage. Providing we could launch the kayaks from the shallows without swamping we’d paddle out to experience some improvised roller coasting, traversing the line of wave at various angles, for example, as the water tried in vain to get a grip on our hulls. But like the smooth-bottomed dory, our kayaks offered the roiling water no holds, a happy accident of design. We’d skitter the waves like insect water-striders, sliding up, over and down as they drove in. For a moment I’d see Jack as he crested a wave and then he’d be gone from sight and I’d be alone amongst the jumbled hills of water. Other times we’d crest adjacent waves simultaneously, hollering across the gulf at each other for the fun of it, then slithering down diagonally for one of us to cross the other’s wake in the trough. In a larger sense, to feel at first-hand the power of the ocean’s draw and lift beneath one was to experience the universe. In comparison to these shifting hills of water, we were little more than insect water-striders.

By the time we came ashore our legs, arms and upper bodies would be caked with salt. As we sat in the shallows and washed it all off we‘d feel pretty pleased with ourselves. Like George Formby sings it:

Out in the Middle East you can have a lot of fun.

Out in the Middle East near the Mediterranean.

We were in the Middle East alright, and as near to the Mediterranean as could be. It was around this time I received a letter from Dennis Higgins, complaining about the rain of Germany and his Signals unit’s seemingly endless succession of mud-caked, cold-war manoeuvres.

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