Page 66 - Personal Column (Charles Belgrave)_Neat

wife in 1940 and work was being done on the swing-bridge spanning the every possible way. For the Europeans it was a very difficult period. Many
deep-water channel connecting the two ends of the causeway between
Manama and Muharraq. This was not completed until the beginning of
1942 as twice the steel, which was being shipped from England to
Bahrain, was lost owing to enemy action at sea. We engaged a British
Director of Education and started what was later to develop into a
Secondary School, also a British headmaster for the Technical School
which had been, and continues to be, a problem, as most of the young
Arabs regarded as infra dig. any instruction in manual work. The
Women’s Hospital was staffed with a Scottish woman doctor and a
| number of trained Indian nurses; Dr R. H. B. Snow, who is still Senior
Medical Officer, came later, before the men’s part of the hospital was in
action. At first it was difficult to persuade Arab women to become in­
patients, though they flocked to the out-patients’ dispensary7 in thousands;
the change in their point of view is shown by the fact that today 120
babies arc being born every month in the fine new women’s hospital
which was opened by Shaikh Sulman in 1958. Even in this very up-to-
date building accidents do occur. A mother from one of the villages was
being taken up to the labour room in the lift, accompanied by one of the
Indian nurses. The lift stuck, for over an hour. In the meantime the baby
arrived, in the lift, and the birth was dealt with effectively by the nurse.
The mother, who had never been i'l hospital before, was not in the least
surprised but assumed that the lift, which has a large compartment, was
the normal place in which babies were bom.
At first the Arabs were not much interested in the course of the war
in Europe. Few of them realized the tremendous issues which were in­
volved, in spite of newspapers and radio propaganda. Propaganda from
Berlin had some effect, especially when it was put across by Yunis Bahri,
who was known in Bahrain; his lively, rather dirty, style went Hbwn well
among the Arabs, although for accurate information they listened to the
• much duller B.B.C. We did not allow enemy broadcasts to be relayed in
coffee shops and public places, but knowing that we could not prevent
it we made no attempt to stop people from listening to any broadcasts
which they wished to hear in their own houses. As a result few of the
villagers heard any direct propaganda, because they had no electric power,
but now there is electricity in almost every village.
When the' war began the Shaikh declared himself and his people
wholeheartedly on the side of the Allies; he made a generous gift to war
funds and, later, contributed handsomely to the fund which was started
in the Gulf for buying Spitfires, and he offered facilities and help in
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of the younger men wanted to go home and join the Forces, but they were
told that they were needed in Bahrain to keep the oil industry running;
there was, too, a certain amount of friction between the Americans and
the British, but this did not directly concern the Government. In June
1940, when France collapsed, I cabled to Marjorie to join me, with our
son, in Bahrain. They got a passage in the P. & O. Strathnaver. The
voyage from England to Ceylon took over a month, during which they
were attacked by bombers and chased by submarines. It was a horrible
experience. Having got as far as Karachi my son, who had started measles
during the long train journey from the south of India, was put into the
municipal fever hospital in Karachi bazaar, not a salubrious place, but by
pulling some strings and because I was the Commandant of Police in
Bahrain, a quasi-military post, he was admitted to the Military Hospital
where I found him when I went down to Karachi to meet them.
Hugh Weightman left Bahrain for Delhi in August and subsequently
became Foreign Secretary to the Government of India. I and many others
much regretted his departure. Both he and, later, E. B. Wakefield, who
also served in Bahrain and then in Delhi, were very valuable friends at
court; they did much to keep Bahrain on the map and helped us to
maintain a supply of food from India. In October there was a night attack
on Bahrain by Italian aircraft, which came from the Dodecanese islands.
After unloading a few bombs on Bahrain and one or two in Saudi Arabia
they flew on across the desert and the Red Sea to Italian East Africa. As a
flight it was a fine achievement, but as a raid it was a complete failure;
the bombs were intended for the refinery, which blazed with lights like
a Christmas tree, but they fell on the desert some distance away. Most
people in Manama knew nothing of the raid until next morning and
when they heard they were more indignant than alarmed. This was the
signal for all American women and children to depart, which they did
with no delay. Enemy propaganda put out a story that the raid had been
made by British aircraft on the American oil company in order to bring
the Americans into the war; perhaps, too, this explanation was in order
to cover the failure of the attack. After the war the Italian officer com­
manding the raid wrote a book in which he implied that he had been
dispatched on what was thought to be a hopeless expedition because it
was Mussolini’s intention that he should never return.
After the raid we had to impose a ‘Black Out’, which was difficult to
enforce.and unpleasant to endure as living in one’s house in the summer
with the little amount of air kept out by curtains was almost unbearable.
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