Improbable Women: Five Who Explored the Middle East

22. War from Cairo to Baghdad

240 22 War from Cairo to Baghdad While with the caravan from Azzan to the coast, “My Old Uncle,” a bedouin, pulled an eighteen-inch lizard from his loincloth and presented it to Freya as a gift, “[a] scaly-tailed creature with blue gills and a crest, like a small dragon.”1 This vulnerable creature, whose only defense was to wrap himself in his tail and pretend to be a small thorn bush, found a gap in Freya’s defenses. She named him Himyar and devoted herself to his care. Because Himyar was not fond of civilization and as they sailed north was even less fond of the climate, much of Freya’s care consisted of efforts to keep him warm and relaxed. Boxes, a hot-water bottle, and eventually an electric light inside a suitcase were deployed for warmth, but the only thing she found that would relax him was to stroke him under his chin. It was a doomed relationship. She was advised to leave Italy as soon as possible and did on the 27th of September 1938 through Switzerland to Paris and on to London. There are, of course, less lizard-friendly environments, but this was sufficient, and Himyar died in early January 1939. “My poor little Himyar is dead . . . I can’t think or speak of him without crying . . . he and I were alike in lots of ways.”2 Himyar’s brief lifespan coincided with a rather successful year in the life of Adolf Hitler. In February 1938 he assumed personal control of Germany’s armed forces and essentially completed the Nazi revolution. In March he ordered the invasion of Austria, and Austria became a province of the German Reich. In September he signed an agreement with the leaders of England, Italy, and France, allowing the German army to enter Czechoslovakia on October 1 and occupy the Sudetenland by October 10. It was on the return War from Cairo to Baghdad • 241 from this occasion that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced that he believed it was peace in our time. Mussolini, in spite of the strange affinity between himself and Adolf Hitler, had yet to join in the Pact of Steel, but the pact was close. The war scare that had driven Freya out of Italy was just a scare, but tensions were high. Freya returned to Asolo to pack their most valuable possessions and give them to friends to be hidden. Then as Europe lurched from problem to crisis, Freya left to wander the hills and fields of Syria, examining ruins left by the Templars and the Assassins. By September she was back in London in the Middle East Propaganda Section of the Ministry of Information. Within two weeks she was transferred to Aden at the request of Stewart Perowne to be assistant information officer. Freya took advantage of the long trip to Aden to visit and renew contacts in the various British missions en route. In Ankara she met Sir Archibald Wavell, newly appointed as commander in chief, Middle East, a man who would become a lifelong friend and a significant influence on her life. In Cairo, where she had to wait several days for a coastal steamer to Aden, she renewed a stream of acquaintances and through one of them met Colonel Walter Cawthorn, an Australian in charge of the Middle East Intelligence Centre. The MEIC was chartered by the Committee of Imperial Defense and charged with gathering and organizing intelligence for the three service commanders in the region. By the time she left Cairo, she had been recruited to undertake an assignment in Yemen: an assignment unconnected with her duties in Aden, unapproved by her superiors in Aden, but potentially useful to General Wavell. On June 10, 1940, Adolf Hitler’s defeat of France was all but certain and this proved sufficient to lure Mussolini into the conflict. While the decision appeared to be a safe one for Italy, it posed a major threat to British forces in Egypt and the Sudan, where 9,000 British and Sudanese troops faced an Italian army of more than 200,000 men in Eritrea and Abyssinia. In the north, an even larger Italian force in Libya threatened the 36,000 British, New Zealand, and 242 • Freya Madeline Stark Indian troops defending Egypt. Thus Wavell was confronting more than 500,000 enemy troops with a force of little more than 50,000. He...