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Childhood. Naguib is a good man with a soldier's virtues. He is descended from fighters. His maternal grandfather, a lieutenant colonel, fought and died alongside Britain's famed General Charles George ("Chinese") Gordon, in the siege of Khartoum*; his father, Captain Youssef Naguib, marched with Lord Kitchener and a young British war correspondent named Winston Churchill to reconquer the Sudan from the Mahdi. Captain Naguib married a black-eyed Sudanese beauty who bore him nine children. Mohammed Naguib, 51, was the eldest of their three sons, born in Khartoum, but raised in the mud-walled village of Wad Medani, where his father was District Commissioner. Young Mohammed and his brothers, Aly and Mahmoud, splashed and scrapped in the germ-laden waters of the Blue Nile with the barefoot village boys, played soldiers in the muddy fields where the fellahin raised their cotton crops, and learned the timeless songs of the water-carriers :
In the pitiless glow of the shadowless sunshine,
We stand hauling water to make the field fruitful,
And when our hearts burst, there is none that will mourn us . . .
His pals called Mohammed "Ahbal" (Grind) because he so easily outdistanced them in the little classroom where they learned to chant the Koran. He redeemed himself by excelling at football and by punching his tormentors in the nose. Naguib's father wanted him to study law or become a teacher. But Mohammed had different ideas.
One night while his roommates slept, he sneaked out of school and made his way, on foot and by paddle steamer, to Cairo, 1000 miles away. His destination: the Royal Military Academy, Egypt's West Point. The Admissions Tribunal was impressed by his terrierlike energy, but Naguib fell an inch short of the required minimum height. Back home he performed stretching exercises after prayers, five times a day for a year. He succeeded in adding a half inch to his stature, but that still wasn't enough (Naguib still stands half an inch short of the required 5 ft. 7 in.). But because of his intelligence and spirit, he was finally admitted. Tougher and more determined than his fairer-skinned colleagues—who made fun of his swarthiness—in less than nine months he raced through a 2½-year course in tactics, discipline, military law and history. He was commissioned Mulazim Tani (second lieutenant) of infantry at the age of 19.
Army Career. Egypt's tiny army, a bare-bones auxiliary to Britain's Middle East garrison, had little to offer its peacetime subalterns except barracks-room blues and $1.65 a day. Promotions came slowly for those who, like Naguib, refused to kowtow to palace lackeys. So Naguib assuaged his boredom by taking courses in law and political economy. He also taught himself to speak German, French and Italian as well as fluent English. (He is currently learning Hebrew.)
In World War II, Britain's Desert Rats shoved aside the "Gyppos" (as they called the Egyptian soldiers) and themselves took over the defense of the Libyan frontier. Naguib was pinned behind a desk in the Adjutant General's office.