New member
Welcome aboard Peter Greeff, we look forward to the pleasure of your company.
Walmer War Memorial restoration
We appreciate the Port Elizabeth branch of the SA Legion’s coordination of the restoration of the Walmer War Memorial which is the venue for Port Elizabeth’s annual Service of Remembrance.
SAMHSEC has funds to contribute to military related causes which promote national unity and has decided to support the SA Legion in this undertaking. Some SAMHSEC members have indicated that they are willing to make private contributions.
Please contact Malcolm by private message if you are available as SAMHSEC’s contact person with the SA Legion regarding this project.
SAMHSEC RPC 27 February 2023
Ian Copley shared the experiences of national serviceman Corporal Mervin Ward, who served under Ian’s command in the 1960s:
“Mervin Ward called up for National service, September 1960.
The ‘Dominos Test’ for mechanical aptitude - sent to RAMC!
Basic Training -‘stick’ man on parade, invited to stay on as a drill sergeant – declined, ‘too much irrelevant nonsense’.
Posted to 24 Field Ambulance in Nairobi, part of the ‘Fire Brigade’ on standby for deployment in Africa or the Middle East. On arrival B section away on adventure training expedition climbing Kilimanjaro. He took bus to Arusha, in Tanzania, hitch-hiked to Moshi, walked up to Marangu Hotel, arrived at dusk, given a meal and a room; too dangerous to pass through jungle belt at night. Next morning he walked up to Bismarck Hut base camp at 10 000 ft. He proceeded through the giant heather to the limit of the grassland at about 17 000 ft. and met our 4 summiteers returning.
Adventure training - indent for food, transport, equipment.
The section undertook a water conservation exercise to Lake Natron. Staff pub at the soda works washed away our aim!
New recruits who could swim were in my section for Nairobi water polo league.
An expedition to Point Lenana, Mt Kenya.
June 1961, Brigade deployed to Kuwait. Summer temperatures -50º +, 40ºC at night; humidity 16ºC - strict heat rules - casualties minimal, one death - heat stroke
RAP dug in on the Al Mutla Ridge astride tar road to Bagdad. Later R&R at Mina al Ahmadi, sea temperature 34ºC. Also RAP at the Technic College outside town.
Swim at university pool declined - water polo? Only play on permission from Minister of Education. Lost 11 - 1 to Olympic team; return match, 22 -2. Soccer team, playing at night, lost to fresh team in the second half. The Minister, Sheik Abdulla Jaber al Sabah, invited the polo and soccer teams to tea at his palace.
British forces withdrew, replaced by the United Arab League, Cpl Ward stayed behind for 2 weeks looking after army patients still in hospital; foreign nursing staff; no Kuwaitis.
He took part in brigade exercises, deployments by air, RAP tentage, after many practices, had to be erected within 30 minutes. There was an opportunity to swim at Buffalo Springs in northern Kenya. Friendship with the OC’s driver allowed tours of the Nairobi Game Reserve. He had a relative teaching at Kenya Girls High School in Nairobi. Service people were not very welcome to local Europeans - instances of theft and other abuses of hospitality. Occasionally an hour’s gardening at my house followed by a section swim in the pool was appreciated. Thus Cpl Ward was familiar with the house, occasionally baby-sitting.
Cpl Ward returned to UK in 1962, posted to Middle Wallop, small RAF, training station for light aircraft, helicopters. Blue berets, RAMC badges.
Later, in Durban I built a house in Westville copying the Nairobi house. Mervin now in Durban built a house next door in 1995. Thought the house looked familiar, asked if the Copleys lived there!
After retirement Mervin and Revonica moved to Villiersdorp.”
SAMHSEC Field Trip 12 March 2023
The insights shared during SAMHSEC’s field trip on 12 March 2023 to the Bain Memorial at summit of the Ecca Pass on the Queen’s Road between Grahamstown and Fort Beaufort, Fort Brown and Fort Double Drift are to be presented to the SAMHSEC zoomeeting on 10 April.
SAMHSEC AGM 13 March 2023
A quorum of members attended SAMHSEC AGM on 13 March 2023.
Please contact Malcolm by private message if you are available to fill the positions of Scribe and Field Trip Coordinator previously held by Ian Pringle.
SAMHSEC 13 March 2023 meeting
Alan Mantle told us about Leonardo da Vinci as a military Engineer.
Leonardo is a familiar icon notwithstanding the five century’s that have passed since his death. Although an artist and sculptor by disposition and endowment, he uniquely represents the polymath Renaissance man.
He researched and innovated, leaving extensive documentation on painting, architecture, hydraulics, mechanics, geology, botany, music, optics, astronomy, and even philosophy.
His work in the military arts, the subject of the talk, is just another application of his creativity and part of an astonishing multitude of his talents. As a consummate innovator he not only invented war-machines, but even conceptualized them many centuries before some of the materials or even the mechanics or propulsion methods existed.
Leonardo was born into the unstable warring European world of the 15th Century and the political background in Italy was a conditioning factor for Leonardo’s choices and his subsequent life story.
Alan’s talk described his early life and work and the apparent motivation that brought him into the field of Military Engineering. It traces his activities, his movements and his role as a Military Engineer in the differend periods of his life. These are the lesser-known details of his work, acting for the powerful rulers at that time. These patronage relationships included the Duchy of Milan and that of Urbino, the Republic of Florence and the Maritime Republic of Venice and finally, the Papal state under the Medici and with Francis I, the young King of France.
Leonardo’s famous notebooks and manuscripts in which he wrote and sketched almost daily about the multitude of scientific disciplines he followed, are discussed.
This enormous prolific output, that represents a map of his mind is the famous legacy that he left to posterity. From these journals the talk illustrated many of his military creations for defence and attack and his numerous designs that anticipated by centuries their actual realisation.
The recording of Alan’s presentation is in the SAMHS Zoom library.
In response to a question from the floor on Leonardo’s pacificism, Alan replied:
“I looked through my research notes to find the references I had of Leonardo being a closet pacifist. What I did find wasn’t exactly my specific source, but here are two relevant references:
“According to some sources, Leonardo da Vinci had a pacifist view of war and hated violence. He once wrote that "nothing is so much to be feared as evil fame acquired by warlike deeds". He also depicted the horrors of war in his drawings, such as the Battle of Anghiari, which shows four men fighting over a flag on raging horses. He also expressed sorrow and pity for the victims of war in his sketches of old soldiers and refugees.
However, he also worked for various rulers and patrons who were involved in wars, such as Ludovico Sforza, Cesare Borgia, and Francis I. He offered his services as a military engineer and adviser, and created many designs for weapons and fortifications5. He also followed some of the armies as they waged war across Italy, but he did not fight on the frontline.
Therefore, it seems that Leonardo da Vinci had a complex and contradictory relationship with war. He was fascinated by its mechanics and strategies, but he also abhorred its consequences and suffering. He was both a master of war and a lover of peace.”
And another …
“Leonardo detested war and harming people and animals in general. He was actually one of the first vegetarians in history. He would often buy birds in the marketplace and set them free after studying their wing structures.
He is also quoted as saying “As long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men.”
Unfortunately for Leonardo, he often had to pander to the levels of his bloodthirsty and power-hungry patrons to receive work. Although Leonardo was famous even during his lifetime, he was by no means a wealthy man. He also had several apprentices to care for later in his life. This would sometimes mean using his outstanding intellect to design machines capable of inflicting damage upon many men.”
SAMHSEC RPC 27 March 2023
In session 1, Dylan Fourie told us about the Battle of Drøbak Sound in the Oslofjord in southern Norway on 9 April 1940. It marked the end of the "Phoney War" and the beginning of World War II in Western Europe. The fortress defences worked flawlessly, sinking the heavy cruiser Blücher and forcing the German fleet to withdraw. The loss of the German flagship, which carried most of the troops and Gestapo agents intended to occupy Oslo, delayed the German occupation long enough for King Haakon VII and his government to escape from the capital.
The recording of Dylan’s presentation is in the SAMHS Zoom library.
See the SAMHS Zoom library recording of Barry Irwin’s presentation on the evacuation of the Norwegian gold reserves after the German invasion http://rapidttp.co.za/milhist/zoomvideo/norwaygoldpt1.mp4 and http://rapidttp.co.za/milhist/zoomvideo/norwaygoldpt2.mp4
In Session 2, Anne Irwin gave a resumé of the well-researched book by Lucy Adlington entitled The Dressmakers of Auschwitz: the true story of the women who sewed to survive. While the context of the book is mainly the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Adlington focuses on a group of 25 mainly Jewish women who worked in the Upper Tailoring Studio, a fashion salon established in Auschwitz by Hedwig Höss, wife of the camp commandant. These women worked in a basement room where, Adlington writes, “This group of resilient, enslaved women designed, cut, stitched and embellished for Frau Höss and other SS wives, creating beautiful garments for the very people who despised them as subversives and subhuman; the wives of men actively committed to destroying all Jews and all political enemies of the Nazi regime. For the dressmakers in the Auschwitz salon, sewing was a defence against gas chambers and ovens.” The Upper Tailoring Studio was so successful, and the garments produced there so desirable, that commissions were received from as far away as Berlin. Orders from the Auschwitz SS women received priority, however, and any order from Hedwig Höss naturally took precedence. Garment fittings were supervised by an SS guard and at noon on Saturdays the men would collect their wives’ orders. As the author emphasises, “These were men whose names were synonymous with violence, tyranny and mass murder.”
It is through Lucy Adlington’s meticulous research that we get to know a handful of these women whose backgrounds she was able to flesh out from diaries, letters, photographs and interviews. Readers get a glimpse of them as ordinary human beings with families and ambitions before they had been reduced to numbers. All of them had been seamstresses of one kind or another before the war.
On Wednesday 17 January 1945, the dressmakers were informed it was their last day of work. Through their connections with prisoners working in Kanada, they were able to organise underwear, shoes and coats in addition to the striped prison jackets issued by the SS. They were mustered along with 30 000 others the following day to leave on foot towards an unknown destination. The group kept together as best they could, with some managing to escape from the marching columns while the rest continued to Löslau. Not all survived. Others from the group escaped by train while the rest, “to the accompaniment of shrieks, beatings and shootings” were loaded onto open coal wagons, 180 women to a wagon, headed for Ravensbrück.
Lucy Adlington visited the last surviving dressmaker of this group, Berta Kohút, who was 98 at the time and living in California. She wanted to hear her story and describes her as a “small resilient woman [who] has faced deprivation, deportation, starvation, humiliation, brutality and bereavement.” She died of Covid-related complications shortly before her hundredth birthday.
Anne's lecture is recorded in the Zoom video library on the Society website.
SAMHSEC 10 April 2023 meeting
Pat and Anne Irwin are to present the insights they shared with SAMHSEC’s 12 March 2023 field trip to the Bain Memorial at summit of the Ecca Pass on the Queen’s Road between Grahamstown and Fort Beaufort, Fort Brown and Fort Double Drift.
SAMHSEC Requests the Pleasure of your Company to talk about military history on 24 April 2023.
SAMHSEC SAMHS website: www.samilitaryhistory.org
SAMHSEC