Jack of Diamonds by Bryce Courtenay

Author:Bryce Courtenay
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction, Azizex666, General
ISBN: 9780857960306
Publisher: e-penguin
Published: 2012-11-12T05:00:00+00:00

In early June 1942, the Royals Regiment boarded a troop train to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and arrived two days later, a train journey that normally takes half that time, but our train seemed to be shunted into every siding on the way to let everything else pass. Tired and fed up we embarked on the pre-war Cunard liner Queen Mary, now turned troopship and destined for Southampton in England. All we wanted to do was stow our kitbags and find a spot below decks before the grand old lady sailed down the harbour. Less than an hour out to sea the war proper started for me.

With fifteen thousand officers and men on board from various Canadian regiments, the medics were busy almost from the moment we left port. The men were weary and dehydrated from the long train journey and while the sea was no more than choppy, some of the men started almost immediately to feel seasick.

Seasickness is no joke in such crowded conditions. The men and their equipment were crammed below decks, each man allocated a bunk eighteen inches wide as his only personal space, each bunk stacked four high. The officers, of course, were given the use of the decks and billeted in the first-class and second-class cabins with the dining rooms now turned into messes. To add to our misery the ship had all its woodwork covered in leather to protect it. Perhaps it hadn’t been properly cured because a strange, nauseating smell pervaded below decks even before the first guy threw up. By the time we were two days out to sea, it had become a stinking miasma.

The medics and orderlies, together with the doctors, worked twelve-hour shifts as a matter of course, but when we hit truly bad seas four days out, I think we worked sixteen hours straight from then on. During this worst period of turbulence I received a message to report to the bandmaster, Sergeant Major Leo Leader, an NCO of the bristling moustache type who demanded perfection. Earlier, I had managed to rehydrate him sufficiently so that he was able to stand on his own two feet, but only just. When I arrived I was surprised when he apologised for keeping me from my work, apologies being contrary to his nature. He then handed me a note. ‘Read it, Lance Corporal Spayd,’ he ordered. ‘It came to me because they assume all musicians are in the band.’

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