As a military policeman, Doug’s beat included the pyramids and the ‘Sweet Water Canal’ (Ismaïlia Canal).
A time capsule in a small leather pouch: thanks to my cousin Kathleen Finlayson I’ve been able to read a letter that my father wrote in the YMCA in Jerusalem in the final months of World War II. Doug – Robert Douglas Bell – was then aged 25.
Doug’s niece, Kathleen Bell, as she then was, was aged 14. She hand-stitched the pouch herself when leather became available again at the end of the war.
Those initials after his service number indicate that Doug was:
CSM: a Company Sergeant Major
SIB: in the Special Investigations Branch
CMP: of the Corps of Military Police
MEF: part of Great Britain’s Mediterranean Expeditionary Force
1432272 CSM Bell RD
SIB, CMP, MEF.
24 Jan 1945
Dear Kathleen,
I hope you will excuse me for writing in pencil and also if the writing becomes a little unintelligible.
The reason is that I am writing in the Y.M.C.A. Hostel in Jerusalem. All the writing tables are in use so I am writing in an easy chair whilst balancing the pad on my knee.
Well, I am now on the 5th day of my leave, but as it took me a day to get up here, it’s only my fourth day in the Holy City. Like most places it has a modern side as well as new. The old city is still surrounded by a wall and has to be entered by various gates. The streets are very narrow and cobbled, and being built on a hill are very steep.
In Cairo
On Monday, which was my first full day in Palestine, I went to Bethelhem which is about eight miles away. I saw the Church of the Nativity and the Bethlehem Xmas bells, also the native craftsmen who work in pearl, ivory and silver. Their work is really skilled, having been handed down from one generation to another.
Mother of pearl brooch from Bethlehem which Doug bought for his mum, Jane Bell.
I don’t know whether this will arrive before the letter I sent home, but I have sent your Grandma some sets of photos which show the various places around here. She will show you the snaps of Bethlehem and Jerusalem, etc which will show you the places far better than I could ever express in words.
An earlier set of Will’s Cigarettes cards: Garden Flowers New Varieties (Series 2). 1939.
It is very cold here, but the air is very pure and clear so that visibility extends for miles. Before my leave’s over I hope to visit the sea and the Dead Sea. I enclose a few flower cards which I thought you might like. Perhaps you will give Dorothy one or two. Well, I must close now. I hope you are still enjoying your job.
Please give my best wishes to all,
Be seeing you soon,
Doug
Later that year, on the 23rd May, 4 years and 232 days since he enlisted, Doug left the Middle East and according to his record he was ‘HOME’ the next day. He’d arrived in the Middle East shortly before the outbreak of World War II on 24 August 1939.
Impending Release
He was given a glowing reference on his impending release from the army:
A very smart and competent W.O. who has been of great service to the Corps. Has a very high organising ability and has handled his duties with tact and skill. Has a very marked aptitude for man management and could be employed to advantage in a supervisory capacity.
My father, Robert Douglas Bell trading with the Bedouin, colourised version. Bedouin tribesmen rescued my dad when he got trapped behind enemy lines when trying to rescue a wounded comrade during the Siege of Tobruk.
Tonight on BBC 1 there’s the first of a drama series about the origins of the SAS which, according to the Radio Times includes a punch-up in a bar in Cairo in 1941 between British Commandoes and Australian soldiers. Sounds pretty tough and, as SAS Rogue Heroes is written by Steven Knight, who also wrote Peaky Blinders, I’m sure that it will be staged with plenty of swagger.
So, when guys as tough as this get into a brawl, who do you send in to restore order?
Well in real life, this man, my dad, Robert Douglas Bell. A sergeant in the Royal Artillery, he evidently had to skills and the character to take on drunken SAS men and, for that matter, the local drug dealers too.
I’m still getting into colourisation using the neural filters in Photoshop and I’m not convinced that everyone wore blue – I feel that the tank top should be bottle green – but I do think that the process brings a small black and white print vividly to life.
Colourisation brings this corner of Cairo to life.
The stamp reads: ‘W P WORTH, OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPHER, CASSA LA . . . ‘ (last word indecipherable).
When he sent this photograph back home to Sheffield, my father, Robert Douglas Bell, then a sergeant in a light anti-aircraft unit, stationed in the Western Desert, North Africa, wrote on the back:
‘The Egg Market (remember) taken in Feb. 1941’
Years later he told me about setting up this pop-up trading post. He’d been an accountant before his call-up and a keen sprinter and footballer, so he, and his unit, realised that the best way to barter with the locals was to be organised and scrupulously fair. Other units preferred to haggle and to try to get the better of the locals, so they soon found themselves sidelined and a queue formed at the packing-case desk that my father’s team operated.
My father is manning the desk and it looks as if he’s hung his shirt on the end of the bargeboard before getting down to business.
It’s amazing to have this photograph of ‘The Egg Market’, which my late mother thoughtfully added to a family history album.
Peter and Parts were puppies adopted by the unit. ‘PETER. when 3 mos old. Taken Dec. 1941. One of the best photos I have had taken of myself.
On a Balcony in Cairo
The following year, in Cairo, my dad was transferred to the Military Police.
‘The moustache is not really as untidy as it may appear,’ he wrote, ‘It’s slightly bigger now.’
Thank you, father, that’s just the sort of nugget of information which will be so useful to future historians. He rose to be colour sergeant major in the Special Investigations Branch of the Corps of Military Police, Cairo. His beat included the Pyramids and the Sweet Water Canal (which was anything but, he told me) and he had some input into security for the November 1943 Cairo Conference, attended by Franklin D Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek. Roosevelt and Churchill went on to meet up with Josef Stalin in Tehran two days later.
The Spoils of War
In my childhood years, we had a battered light-tan leather case which had been confiscated from hashish smugglers and I still have father’s sergeant’s baton. My mother used to keep it handy by the back door on top of the three coat-hooks in the porch, in case she ever had to beat off a doorstep attacker. Fortunately she never had cause to use it in anger. She could easily control us with a well-aimed tap with the back of the Hush Puppies brush.
My father was born one hundred years ago today on 29 October, 1918, just a couple of weeks before the end of World War I.
Link
Corps of Military Police, Cairo, 1939 Sept.- 1940 Dec., The National Archives, Kew. Do records for 1942 – 1945 still exist? Please let me know if you’ve been researching the subject and you can point me in the right direction. I’d love to read some of my father’s case-notes, if they still exist.
