麻豆官网首页入口

Several weeks were spent in Durban and we were entertained most royally by the townsfolk of that city. Four of us went with a family to a most glorious house overlooking the harbour. For the first time we saw Jacaranda trees in full bloom, the purple of their blossom being almost lost in the bright sunlight. Hibiscus hedges, flame trees, tulip trees and many other beautiful flowers, trees and hedges were seen. We really thought we had arrived in paradise! We were fortunate to have some five weeks in Durban. The one thing that was noticed, as soon as dusk fell, was the sound of some sort of humming. At first we thought it was the sound of the overhead electric wires for the trains but then we realised that it was the sound of insects. They were Christmas beetles. In all the many years, when we lived in Africa and later in Bermuda, there was always the similar sound of the Christmas beetles or, especially in Bermuda, the treefrogs. However we had a job to do and we could not stay in Durban indefinitely and the time came for us to depart.All the budding aircrew had disembarked, leaving the troops on board to proceed to Egypt and the war in the Middle East, which, at that time, was in a precarious state.
The weather in Durban was beautiful and hot and we wore our tropical kit to full advantage. Consequently we were wearing our khaki tropical kit as we entrained to head inland from Durban on the overnight train to Pretoria. No-one had bothered to tell us that, through the night, we should be climbing to over 5,000ft. In the middle of the night many of us woke up. We had just one blanket each and, believe me, it was cold. Next morning we detrained at Pretoria. Our ''blues'' were in our kitbags and we lined up on parade ready to be put on another local train to take us to Lyttleton, near Germiston. We just shivered with cold! Why didn't someone tell us at school that it is not always hot in Africa?
We arrived at Lyttleton personnel reception centre, and on the first morning, I was somewhat embarrassed as my nose started to bleed and I found myself at sick quarters. It was the altitude!
During the two weeks at Lyttleton there was an attack at the nearby camp of Potchestroom which was a South African Airforce flying training camp using Harvards. A car slowed down by the guard room and sprayed those there with a machine gun.This was the effort of the Nazi orientated Ossewa Brandwag.
Now came the time for separation. Those designated to train as pilots were to go north to Southern Rhodesia whilst those of us for Navigation training would be scattered around various Air Navigation Schools being set up in South Africa.
Several of us were told that we would be training at the new Air Navigation School at Queenstown in the Cape Province. We collected our belongings which were beginning to grow in quantity. When we reached Lyttleton our pay had caught up with us. Back in London we had only been paid as Aircraftmen 2nd Class and all the back pay, from the time when we had first arrived at Regents Park, several weeks ago, was available. We had already spent quite a bit in the mess and also when we had gone into Johannesburg for one weekend. This payment came in very useful! Fortunately we had not been required to pay for any board and lodging during one other weekend as we had been given tremendous hospitality by the Jewish league Club. On my first Sunday in Johannesburg four of us went to the Methodist Central Hall. We were given a fantastic welcome by the two deaconesses there. They were both extremely nice girls, one in particular was very pretty and I have wondered how long they remained Deaconesses if, as in the UK, they could not stay in that position if they married. When they knew that we were going to Queenstown we were given the names and addresses of folk at the Queenstown Methodist Church. One South African Airman who lived there said that he would tell his parents that we would be coming.

At the end of November 1941 we entrained at Pretoria and chugged southwards, on a most enjoyable, two and a half days journey, passing through the Orange Free State and Bloemfontein before eventually reaching number 47 Air Navigation School at Queenstown in the Cape Province. They had been quite correct when they said it was new. It was so new it wasn't even built by the time we arrived! There were about 40 or 50 large ex First World War South African bell tents. Some were up; others had to be put up. Those of our group who had been in the Scouts proved extremely useful! We were put four to a tent, each with a collapsible bed. Collapsible was the operative term. Everything went under the bed as there was no other storage space. This was often helpful in stopping the beds collapsing completely to the ground! Perhaps choosing South Africa rather than Canada was not such a good idea after all. Instructional lectures were held in two corrugated iron 'buildings'' in which were some wooden long tables and some rather rickety wooden chairs. One afternoon, we were having a meteorology lecture in the corrugated iron building and the temperature must have been in the mid 90's with the sun blazing down on the metal roof. I must have dozed off and I awoke with a crash as my rickety chair rolled over backwards. The instructor simply said ''I've been waiting for the last 10 minutes for that to happen''. Our dining room and mess was a largish marquee, also probably a relic from the First World War.
Red South African Air Force logbooks were issued in which to maintain the record of our flying hours. This always was a source of interest in squadron days as all the other logbooks were the regular blue RAF issue.
Two days after arriving we were to have our introduction to flying in an Avro Anson, a very reliable twin engined aircraft but with a fabric skin heavily covered in dope. On December 5th we had our first flight, of one and a quarter hours; a map reading exercise. As we flew over the veldt there was not a lot to map read although the twisting railway lines stood out like great arteries. This flight is shown as my first entry in my South African Air Force logbook. My Tiger Moth flight back at Ringway was long before the logbook was available. Again on the 6th we had another map reading flight. On the evening of the 7th someone dashed into the mess and shouted that the Japs had attacked the Americans at Pearl Harbour and we could expect to have the Yanks now with us in the War rather than sitting on the fence. I am not convinced that the attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbour was really because they had got wind that I was on the way! We hadn't a clue where Pearl Harbour was, except that it was somewhere in the Pacific; someone went down to the local school next day to borrow an atlas! On the first Sunday morning at Queenstown we were paraded for a church service in the town. The OD's (Other denominations鈥攏ot Anglican, Jews or Roman Catholic) were marched to the local Methodist Church. A couple, called Mr and Mrs Day, sought me out after the service and took me to their house. They were the parents of the lad I had met at the Johannesburg Central Methodist Hall a couple of weeks previously. Whenever I had a spare hour or two I went to their house and Mrs Day was like a mother to me. Still at home was Dad, who owned the local drapery and general store at the Hexagon, the centre square of Queenstown. Their younger son Jack, aged 16, and a daughter Margaret, who was about 13, completed the family. Every Sunday a colleague, whose name I cannot recall, and myself, visited the Days. Mr and Mrs Day were both of English extraction and they were extremely committed to supporting England. There was no conscription in South Africa; indeed no South African service personnel were sent outside North Africa unless they volunteered. .
During these first weeks life was pretty uncomfortable in the camp but we watched the builders putting up the new quarters and lecture blocks. One night there was turmoil in the tent; one of the lads saw a scorpion on his bed and jumped a mile. I cannot remember much about the ensuing commotion but eventually we got back to bed and to sleep. Another night, shortly before we moved into the new brick quarters there was an almighty storm. The lightning flashed and the thunder rolled and we heard a commotion outside. Thank the Lord that one of my colleagues had been in the scouts. Unknown to us he had gone out, when the heavy rain started, and slackened the guy ropes. Our tent stood erect whilst many others were collapsing as the guy ropes tightened and pulled the pegs out of the ground. Bodies were crawling out from under the collapsed tents, to become rain sodden and all their belongings became saturated.
The toilet facilities were primitive in the extreme. They were simply a corrugated iron cover over a trellis surrounding a long plank with a series of 8 'bum' sized holes set about 18inches apart. You could read your neighbour鈥檚 book if you shared the facility! Underneath was a row of buckets that were emptied every morning by a fellow with a donkey cart and tank to receive the contents. If you were there in a sitting position and you heard, or, more likely, smelled, the arrival of 鈥渢he lavender cart鈥�, you made a pretty quick finish and getaway. If the wind changed from the normal direction and crossed over the latrines and towards the camp the stench was horrific and life became somewhat difficult!
At Christmas, 1941, the townsfolk invited all the personnel from the camp, including the Commanding Officer, down to the Town Hall for a Christmas party and banquet. There was food in abundance and plenty to drink. By every place setting was a bottle of Castle lager. There was a bit of manoeuvring to get seats near three of us who were known to be teetotallers, so that our neighbours could have our bottles! They were quite happy to exchange their bottles of minerals!

Early in January the new quarters were ready. With joy we moved out of the bell tents, to make way for the next intake, whilst we moved into the new accommodation! Even the toilets were brick built and had water flush closets, albeit there were no doors for several weeks.
On four weekends whilst at Queenstown we were given 48 hour passes and there were invitations to many places for hospitality. Two of us, David, (his surname forgotten), who was a Salvationist, and I were taken to a fantastic farm of several hundred acres at a small village called Cathcart, some 40 or 50 miles from Queenstown. Mr and Mrs Ella were our hosts. A stream, which became a river after prolonged rain, ran through the farm. Transport was by bullock cart. It was slow and very bumpy but quite an experience. There was a very good grass tennis court and some of the daughters from the local farms joined with us. There was no shortage of tennis racquets. After the games we would sit and talk over a braavelais prepared by the Ellas and other farmers. Farming was mostly cattle ranching but plenty of oranges, grapefruit, pawpaws and other fruits were grown. There was no public electricity supply but a generator charged a series of batteries for lighting.
Mr Ella had been in the South African Army during the First World War and had been to a Services Reunion at the Albert Hall in London in 1938. He had kept, as a memento of his visit to London, a shirt which he had sent to be laundered whilst in his hotel. He said he would never wear it again as it had been so beautifully returned to him, immaculately packed and just as new. I have often wondered how the Ellas have managed over the succeeding difficult years since the end of the war. They employed over 300 workmen and office staff and they treated them as part of their extended family.Their own children and those of the workers played together without any signs of racial tension. It was always sad when we returned to camp after a weekend away but the Days were always there with their other church friends to take us in hand and give us a home away from home on our other weekends.
Our flights started getting longer and, with some trepidation, our pilots stopped relying on their knowledge of the surrounding areas and tested our navigational skills. There were two trainee navigators on each flight, one map-reading and the other one navigating by DR, (Dead Reckoning), which means continually checking your airspeed, windspeed and direction and your maintained course. (This is where the triangle of velocities comes in as you set your course and airspeed--your velocity--with the wind speed and direction---the wind velocity---and plotted that to give you your resultant track and ground speed.). We always had to radio our ETA to base when we still had about 30 minutes to go. If we were a bit behind time we would ask the pilot if he would be good enough to open the throttle a bit more! If, however we were going to arrive at base before our ETA we would start to wind down the undercarriage well before time. That had the dramatic effect of slowing the aircraft considerably. I do not recall how many turns of the handle were needed to wind the undercarriage up and down but it was a hell of a lot and your arm ached terribly if the other trainee did not give a hand! No hydraulics were available on the Anson for this chore!
Toilet facilities on the Anson were rather primitive and consisted of a funnel sticking out of the side of the aircraft to be used as required. No doubt there might have been times of apparent rain below even although there were no clouds in the sky! Fortunately no females were ever on board so there was no embarrassment.
Our navigational training required us to learn how to determine the wind speed and direction by various methods. The bombsight was the main item of apparatus for this as we checked the drift across the ground. This was fine, so long as you could see the ground and you were not in cloud. Also, for night flying, we learned astro navigation; taking star shots, with a bubble sextant, of recognisable stars, and applying the readings taken, using the air almanac provided, to enable us to plot our position. This entailed the use of spherical trigonometry to determine the sub-stellar point and your distance from it. Applying readings from two stars gave you a fix over the point on the earth at the time of taking the star shot. The fact that you could only take one shot at a time meant that you had to carry forward your first result on your track according to your ground speed and then apply it to your second result to pinpoint your ground position. This was all very well as long as your pilot maintained a constant course and speed. Needless to say, some of our navigation instructors were ex mariners who had practised this art at sea, albeit at much slower speeds. Some of our first efforts at taking star shots were found to be very difficult, but, with practice, I reckoned I could fix my position at night within about two or three miles which was sufficient, hopefully, to identify a visible landmark below and then, visually, home on to the target or landing area. The two prominent landmarks to help us on our way home were Hangklip mountain and the new Bongolo dam
Mercator projection charts were used on which all lines of latitude are horizontal and lines of longitude are perpendicular. Any straight line, representing your course, (direction of flight), will cross all lines of longitude at the same angle and will be your course in degrees. (This is known as a RHUMB line).
On the domestic front almost all our spare time was spent at the Day's. However it is with some bowing of head that I have to mention the occasion of my 20th birthday. Mrs Day had prepared a bit of a party and as a special treat she had produced what, today, is one of my favourite dishes, Macaroni cheese. To my continuing shame I have to say that I did not like it and I did not have any! OH DEAR.

The next part of this story can be found at: a5389293

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.