James Dalton, VC Memorial Parade 21 January 2024
The annual MOTH James Dalton, VC Memorial Parade is on Sunday 21 January 2024 at 10:00 at his grave in Russel Road Cemetery, Port Elizabeth.
SAMHSEC’s first quarter 2024 field trip is to include attendance of this parade and James Craig, VC’s grave in St Mary’s Cemetery, Port Elizabeth.
SAMHSEC 11 December 2023 meeting
Dylan Fourie told us about U-boat operations off the South African coast in 1942.
By 1942, Allied anti-submarine operations in the North Atlantic had restricted the deployment of German submarines in that theatre. Because of the amount of Allied shipping rounding the Cape of Good Hope, Operation Eisbar was launched to disrupt shipping off the South African coast. By December 1942, Operation Eisbar had sunk an estimated 310 000 tons of shipping. Dylan’s presentation covered the organisation of Operation Eisbar and accounts of some of the sinkings.
The recording of Dylans talk is in the SAMHS zoom library.
SAMHSEC 8 January 2024 meeting
Mac Alexander is to tell us about Chilean Commando training.
SAMHSEC RPC meeting 29 January 2024
SAMHSEC Requests the Pleasure of your Company to talk about military history on 29 January 2024.
RPC meetings are opportunities for you to share your knowledge of a military history subject or book with fellow military historians. Presentations should last approximately 15 minutes to allow time for sharing the pleasure of one another’s company. You can do any number of RPC presentations per year. Please contact André at andrecrozier@gmail.com if you want to share your knowledge.
Note: you can join using the meeting IDs and passcodes. The passcodes are the date/time groups (ddtttt) of the start of the meeting.
Book review
The December newsletter included a review of David Katz’ book General Jan Smuts
and his First World War in Africa, 1914-1917. A reader responded with another
review of the book and commented “I do what I can to ensure myths and
inaccuracies are not perpetuated.”, see
https://thesamsonsedhistorian.wordpress.com/2022/09/12/review-general-jansmuts-
david-brock-katz/
Scribe’s note: Discussion of newsletter content is welcome, if only because it comforts the scribe (me) to know that someone is reading them!
2024 Membership renewal
Please remember that membership is per calendar year, so your 2024 subscriptions are due on 1 January. Subscriptions for 2024 are R300 for single and R320 for family membership. Payment details are on the SAMHS website, see
https://www.samilitaryhistory.org/applic24.pdf
SAMHSEC