Aud Schønemann scares the Americans.
In May 1968 I had no knowledge of the riots that took place in Paris. The street fighting between students and police that named my generation passed unnoticed by in the place where I spent themonth of May 1968. This was in Mombasa, specifically Kilindini harbour, where I served as an ordinary sailor aboard a war-built American standard ship belonging to NAL. There was a harbour strike in Mombasa and ships lay outside each other by the quay, and in clusters in the harbour basin. Most were, like us, merchant ships waiting to load and unload, but there was also a significant amount of naval vessels there. A large American troop transport ship on its way to Vietnam and its escort provided an electrically charged atmosphere. (Why did they not use the Suez –I do not know). Groups of healthy young farm boys with uncomfortable thoughts of possible premature death marched in sideways groups up and down the main street, looking for an opportunity to demonstrate toughness.
Which irritated a few Brits fromthe Royal Navy, who in the former colony were allowed to wear civillian clothes and whose numbers therefore were unknown to the Americans - but that is another story. It was something that did not concern us Norwegians much. Other things were more important. A great number of days in port had severely depleted our purchasing power. Most of us were now unable continue to down Tusker Beer and enjoy"shorttime", never mind "longtime foki foki" with the girls at Anchor and Sunshine bar, and that included me. So I gladly accepted the job as a night watchman when I was offered it, earning overtime money by sending them back on the quayside those who trundled aboard in mistaken belief that ours were their ship. There were not many ships ahead of us, just inside the gate lay a British “Empress” from which emanated distant cries of “Bingo” semingly 24 hours a day. Aft of her lay a black-hulled Welma Lykes, with damaged railings on the forecastle, and combs of running paint beneath the “LYKES LINE”. Maybe there were two three more ships ahead of us, but whatever the reason, I received a lot of disoriented visitors that had to be escorted off the ship.
Nearing midnight, a couple of Russians arrived, both sober, impeccably dressed, quiet and polite, for whom I immediately felt great sympathy. And when they asked for “showers”, I showed the two enemies of Western civilization our rows with shower faucets, deeply saddened by their lack of such amenities, and nearly crying at my own magnaminity. “No, no, shower officer, shower officer!” protested the two. Okay, so I found the first mate awake and handed the two to him.
The next thing that happened was that the face of Norwegian comedienne Aud Schønemann, fifteen meters times twenty, appeared in the middle of the harbour pool, accompanied by hysterical Russian laughter. They showed the film "Hurray for the Andersens" projected on the front edge of the midship house, and they did it every night, and with their laughter thundering over the water every time Schønemann appeared. The mate told me that when he understood that it was films they were after he had offered them "Billy the Kid" with Paul Newman, borrowed from the Lykes liner, but in this movie they were uninterested.
This nightly ”shower”went on the nerves of the Americans in naval uniform. I remember when a Russian ship, maybe it was the same one as our”shower” loving one, aimed to tie up outside an American warship.This resulted in some sort of alarm signal, “uunk, uunk, uunk through the loudspeakers on the American. And they now probably were certain that this spectacle was entirely staged by the KGB. At the destroyer right above us, an officer lay on his stomach on the deck and with big binoculars constantly aimed at "Mrs. Andersen's" appearances.
This story is not much of a story if you cannot visualize Kilindini harbour at night, absolutely propped with ships, and with the giant face of Schønemann with her rasping voice screaming in Norwegian and reverberating across the still water. But I will have to confess that the Russian reaction to the lady turned out to be less mysterious than I had thought. Many years later I learned that “Hurray for the “Andersens”, a story of simple folks battling the bureaucracy and winning, had been extremely popular in Russia, So they probably laughed at more than the mere face and voice of our Aud.