Friday 5 June 1942 or so
Had a tremendously busy time – too busy to write – but exciting Two or three days ago – made a smashing speech on Education – been receiving congratulations right and left. Most flattering consequence – invitation to sit on the Brains Trust
Just think – to be selected as one of the seven brainiest persons on the boat. Nor was I outfaced. I take enormous joy in speaking – and have spoken with ease and eloquence that astonished myself – spoke on astrology – then initiative in Forces – then low moral tone during war and finally jumped in and made a beautiful speech on Basic English – wallop! An AC as prominent as anyone else – NCOs, officers, all in!
More congratulations! Recognition by all the officers – and a commendation from the CO. Tomorrow I have to speak in another debate, and the next day I am invited to sit on the Religious Brains Trust!
So the voyage ends with recognition.
Notes
1 Fred had done much of his basic training in radar on the Isle of Man.
2 Rabble.
3 Women in the Voluntary Aid Detachment – usually nurses.
4 ‘The pitcher is taken to the water so many times that in the end it breaks.’
CHAPTER 3
Cape Town, the Suez Canal and Cairo
Saturday 6 June 1942
First views of South Africa – up early in morning – just before dawn – up above the sky a deep deep blue – fading to azure – forget-me-not, lemon – gold and beautiful dusky red – silhouetted against the sky – a bold fine outline with Table Mountain as plain and level as in my imagination (Figs. 2 and 3). Far above it – that enormous glittering star we see at early morning – all the breath of the morning, the colour, the glittering star – magnificent.
Later in the morning we saw the coastline more clearly – a tumultuous, majestic range – high, shadowy, cliffed, precipiced – steep the slopes, soft the foothills – hard and craggy the upper mountains – patched here and there in mysterious white. Then the city – very white and attractive – white- and cream-walled houses, with dark red roofs – the red suddenly sprang into view. More seagulls than for months, and seals basking in the bay – and so we came into harbour and docked.
My greatest excitement was in the morning hours, up on the forecastle deck – drawing closer and closer to the coast – seeing the outlines changing – revealing more cliffs and houses built around foot of hills – above them – grassy slopes with a duller verdure than we see in England and then pine trees or trees resembling conifers – then hard rocky hill tops – it looks to us a mountain-ringed bay.
Saturday evening – in Cape Town
Sunday – spent with Mr and Mrs J. H. Eakin, Fish Hoek, Cape Province (Fig. 3)
Monday – deplorably wet – museums, opera
Impressions of Cape Town
Extremely fine city – new in appearance, most of the houses or buildings in town centre are imposing, clean and modern – white or cream dressed so that they shine in the sun – streets well kept, fairly wide – well lit – shops modern in design – whole gives impression of up-to-date cleanliness which cannot be matched in England. Perhaps in USA – the town has an American rather than an English appearance – trolley buses – clean and comfortable, well equipped – most of cars on streets are American. Plan of town etc. seen from the postcards I have. Black population and Cape Coloureds, Malayans, Indians – far more Cape Coloureds than pure natives. Mr Eakin had lots to say about the white man’s failure to educate the native.
Monday 8 June 1942
Airgraph sent home
What a bind – 10 days before my birthday
A few days ago – told to move from B Flight accommodation on J10 to berths aft – immense confusion – no mess tables available, no sleeping spaces, no cups or plates – no hammocks. We had to do as best we could for two nights and days. Then at last orders to move. Up at 5 o’clock, on parade on fo’c’sle deck shortly after eight. Then a long long wait of over FOUR HOURS in full kit! Four hours on an open deck with all that harness and clothing! We lay down, slept, talked, nodded – anything to pass the weary, weary time.
At 12.30 pm began to move. But it took us an hour to get 200 yards – on to our new boat. From now onwards the officers deserted us. I’m afraid they often do in crises like this. We were directed to a foul spot deep in the boat’s hold where hundreds of hammocks were slung in compartments where bugs and insects ran – the ex-home of Italian prisoners from Libya. And sauve qui peut! Half of us had no hammock. No one had blankets. We shirked the problem of finding places to sleep and wash, and went ashore.
That night I was fortunate. I fell in with soldiers who had a spare bunk in their cabin – soldiers on their way home from the desert. I was home by 8.30 in the evening – enjoyed the wonderful luxury of a semi-bath – teeth cleaning, underwear changing, clean hankie finding, nail scrubbing, talcuming, hair brushing, boot blacking – an orgy of cleaning. Then a cigarette, a book and bed!
But the others – poor others. They slept in the open air – without blankets – froze by 2 in the morning – were up by 3 – and slept on the floor below decks in that awful atmosphere till morning.
What misery – and now, five weeks from home, we are still waiting, waiting.
Where do we come from? Where do we go?
Very hasty notes on Cape Town
1. People in Cape Town seem extremely prosperous – cars are large and in good condition – suburbs extend for many miles around the coast. Holiday resort in the summer for people from all over the hinterland. Yet amusements etc. not outstanding or on large scale. Prevented from developing into a kind of Blackpool by the puritanical activity of Dutch element. Afrikaaners do not like the least suggestion of dissipation – dancing, card playing, Sunday cinemas etc.
2. Cape Town matches and cigarettes are poor. Beer tenpence a quart, matches a halfpenny, cigarettes 20 for tenpence or less. Brandies and wines cheap and excellent.
3. The silver leaf tree on Table Mountain – the silver leaf is a Cape Town souvenir – tree grows on Table Mountain only – is in danger of dying out.
4. Old tree – now stump only – in a square where slaves were bought and sold
5. Museums – wonderful furniture in Koopmans–de Wet1 – importance of stinkwood as a furniture wood – excellent stuff. Ought to get some (Write to Woolworths, Plein Street, Cape Town for it)
6. Interesting things in South African Museum
Native weapons, utensils
Display of glorious savannah animals
Those stones that early travellers used to cut to put over their letters
The Conquest pillars made in Portugal and carried specially on board ship to erect in Africa
Bush paintings and rock etchings (chipped out of rock)
Remember physical qualities of Bushmen
7. Area 62 – but have never seen it!
8. Winter climate in Cape Town – I did see that. Rain every day of our stay.
9. Books are very dear, watches, jewellery extremely cheap – food in abundance – Woolworths there
10. A most wonderful Post Office – with a personal collection service I haven’t seen anywhere else
11. The unusual vegetation seen on the mountain slopes at Muizenberg – all new, foreign and bushy – gay-coloured flowers even in winter – thick stunted tough vegetation.
The New Amsterdam
I must describe something – and this cabin on the New Amsterdam will do. This is how it must have been in peacetime. The cabin is the size of an average sitting room – two very wide and spacious bed bunks – made like beds, equipped with excellent mattresses etc. – middle of cabin wide and spacious. Dressing table cum writing table fitted in wall – two excellent cupboards – big central light – a heater, a fan, two devices for blowing air into room – hot, mixed or cold as desired – an excellent hat and coat stand – plug for electric heaters etc. – sprinkler valves (a fire bursts the valve and sets water spraying on
wherever the fire is) – two large portholes – and a little bathroom attached, with excellent handbasin, lavatory and shower. A little radiator fixed beneath towel rail for drying towels, clothes etc. Fitted up for wartime work – now carries 6 not 2 in a cabin like this. I’ve now had experience of two boats – this and the Highland Monarch. This is certainly a superb boat.
Getting mobile
This is a history of the changing and chopping we have gone through in the last few days.
1. Evacuated B Flight on J/10 and moved to A Mess Deck – chaos and confusion – no allocation of sleeping places or mess tables – officers missing – sleep where you can, eat where you can.
2. Two days later – reveille at 5 am – parade 8.30 am – wait on fo’c’sle deck for four and a half hours. Evacuated J/10 and moved to New Amsterdam – more chaos – again sleep where you can etc.
3. Two days later – evacuated New Amsterdam – entrained to Retreat (Fig. 3) – marched to camp – IFTC (Imperial Forces Transit Camp) – tented down – dug trenches, tidied site, built drying lines etc.
4. Two days later – evacuated tents and moved to others 50 yards away. Some soldiers who were in our convoy left J/10, went to a camp, were washed out the same night, returned to J/10, were moved to New Amsterdam then out to the camp again. Poor buggers! All this futile beating up and down from pillar to post is terribly disheartening. Still this camp is enjoyable.
Sunday 14 June 1942
The transit camp
On a wide acreage of sandy flats, flanked on the south by high craggy hills where the sunshine strikes in the early mornings, and on the north by a low coniferous wood. We wash in long sheds, letting the water run from the taps on to slanting sheets of corrugated iron – and the lavatories are long rows of oriental-looking pots, flanking long chests with holes and covers. We mess in a big wall-less shed, hastily constructed with pine logs and boards – and sleep in brown tents. The accommodation is primitive enough – yet living here is in the main enjoyable. It is fine to smell the fresh air in the morning, the lovely fragrant freshness of a countryside, to see the morning mountains wreathed in cloud – then see the far splendour on the distant evening hills – beauty melting tenderly down the sky. It is fine to sit in the tent after dark, in the light of the hurricane lamp, lying warm on the blankets, laughing and talking – to lie and smoke and speak our minds by the hour.
Eight is an excellent number for a group – not too big, not too small. Big enough for life to be always bubbling somewhere, but small enough for the shyest to make his voice heard. There’s Strawbridge, who talks about his wife in a charming way for so poorly bred a boy. ‘Look ’ee, I love my wife that much that I’d give anything for’n. I’d give my life for’n, I love her that much’ – and Ken Smith, a fine earnest fellow whom I like very much, and Charlie Stapleton, irrepressible and a great raconteur, Rupert from Montreal, Tony Harrington, quiet, girlish, youthful, George Buchan from Brechin, a mine of inaccurate information about everything, Ivor Harding (now replaced by another Canadian) and myself.
What do we do, and what do we talk about? Dig trenches, titivate the tent, organize oil lamps, dustbins – cookhouse fatigues – and the conversation runs from wives and marriage to being frightened, to exciting experiences – to the ways of animals and insects. I enjoy it all – most of all because at last I have fallen among friendly men, with whom I can go walking, drinking, talking.
Rain
Day after day passes and we are still in this dreadful camp. For the last three days, it has rained more or less steadily, and we are waging a losing battle against the damp. The floor of the tent is fairly dry, because the canvas is strong and of good quality. But the dampness from the ground outside is slowly seeping down and under and up again beneath our beds. My palliasse is wet, my blankets are damp – and nearly all my clothes wet. I am writing this dressed in khaki shorts, blue woollen sweater (the one that Gwen made me). My overcoat is wet, my trousers are lying to dry between the sheets of a newspaper, my shoes are sodden.
We are all in the same miserable boat – wet, idle, dispirited, sneezing and coughing. Every day the weather grows more and more inclement – the warm rain douches down unendingly on the canvas. Some mornings we have to work out in the wet – taradiddle jobs, putting up tents which blow down the next morning, route marching – work that serves merely to make us more sodden and wretched than ever. For the rest of the time we doze in the tents, play cards, talk inertly, or go out to sit in cool cinemas in wet clothes.
Like weather, like accommodation. Eight to a tent is room enough in dry weather, but no go on a wet day. The rain falls in on my bed which lies near the door. Like accommodation, like food. Twice a day, we have burnt stew and bread and butter. Like food, like spirits. I do not think I have ever felt duller and more dejected – more in need of artificial stimulation – never less eloquent and alert – never so benumbed – ‘bewitched, buggered and bewildered!’
We left for our overseas station in the last week in April – April 26 or 27. Now it is June 17 and stalemate in Cape Town! Nearly eight weeks of snail-slow progress! At this moment General Ritchie is in need of reinforcements in Libya,3 and British soldiers are here, picking up paper on a camp site.
Saturday 20 June 1942
After a week of calamitous rain, a fairly dry day – walked over the hills from Retreat to Kalk Bay (Fig. 3) – disconcertingly unfamiliar landscape – first a walk along shady lanes, joining farm to farm, by vineyards with little vines all neatly planted in rows – by willow-like trees and conifers – to lower slopes of hillside – clothed with shrubs and ready-made rockeries with little leathery-leaved bushes – heathery-like shrubs – not the soft turfy slopes we enjoy in England. The hillside strewn with boulders big and small. Higher, the shrubs grew less closely, giving way to patches of heather, mostly burnt so that only blackened stalks showed – sparse rough trees – thick-leaved plants – in sheltered places dwarfed but tough-barked thickset trees – the path sandy with white rough sand, eroded from the bare rock which showed everywhere. Flowers in plenty, but strange to English eyes, and nameless to me.
I had a good walk (and certainly a good meal at the end of it at Muizenberg) (Fig. 3) – at times it was like walking over our own moors at home. But the main feeling was one of walking in a dream atmosphere, where everything was unfamiliar and unreal.
The meadow at Philhope
When Gwen was evacuated to Makendon,4 I stayed with mother5 until the end of term; and these four weeks before the summer holiday were very lonely weeks for me. I had never been parted from Gwen for any length of time since our marriage, and I did not realize how I should miss her presence. No bridegroom waited more impatiently for his wedding day than I for the day of our reunion: and every evening before sleep, I would lie and yearn to hear and touch her, and fall asleep with the faint sickness of longing.
The first day after the end of term, I packed and went to meet her; and by teatime I was waiting in Harbottle for the car that would take me to Blindburn. McDougal, who owned the car, was pleasurably prompt, and there was still an hour or two of daylight left when he set me down at Blindburn to walk the last three miles over the moors to Makendon. On any ordinary workaday evening, that was a lovely walk – along the left bank of the Coquet to the dipping pens, over the shaky footbridge, by the right bank with the water splashing and the trout darting, to Philhope Farm – and then a twisting climb by Philhope House and through the meadow. But that evening it was memorable. I walked easily, lingering out the pleasure of being near to Gwen, watching a heron and two cuckoos on the knoll behind Blindburn, letting my eyes rest on the gracefully-moulded flowerless hill slopes. I did not expect Gwen to meet me. She would be busy attending to Gillian, smoothing her hair for me, tying her ribbon for me, waiting before the fire for me…
So I came to Philhope meadow and began to climb through it up to the brow of Philhope Edge. It was a small, uneven field, irregular in shape and surface. Here a straight stone fence ran a
long it, there it curved outward and in again making bays and corners; and here and there were knolls and hollows where neither reaper nor scythe could get. Little hay came from it, but the scant pikes6 that were won there were dear to the Philhope shepherd. No heather or fern or thistle was allowed to stray into it from the moor around – it shone like a minature green island in the waste of brown heath – a tiny acreage of greenery in a world of brownness, sown with the fragile and scarce moor flowers. By the side of the track nodded the harebells, wet, tenuous, quaking with every breeze: deep in the greenness of the grass, the little mountain strawberry, daffodil yellow – best of all, fields of the tiny heartsease, the wild pansy, yellow and purple, lifting their human-like faces above the bents.7 From the hills, lowering now in the wet close of the day, all sweetness came flocking and gathered in the meadow.
I stopped in the meadow to catch the fugitive scent of the thyme and look at the heartsease, when I heard the gate above me knock back against its post. Gwen was running down through the meadow to me, running with her hair blowing in the wind and her grey cloak streaming behind her. The magic of that moment! Down from the sky’s edge she came, like an angel descending, with an angel’s grace, an angel’s beauty, an angel’s gospel presence. In the little meadow where all the tender things sought refuge from the bleakness of the hills – in that meadow of heartsease, I met her again.
Written on my 32nd birthday, 21 June 1942, in a tent at Pollsmoor (Fig. 3), fifteen miles from Cape Town, with the sun shining at last outside, and Jack Putnam lying asleep at my side.
There is no record of Fred’s journey from Cape Town to the Suez Canal, though we know that his boat, the Highland Monarch, docked at Suez, presumably Port Suez (Fig. 2), on 26 July 1942.8 The narrative of his journey continues in the ‘Black Book’, as follows. Editors
War's Nomads: A Mobile Radar Unit in Pursuit of Rommel during the Western Desert Campaign, 1942-3 Page 9