The South African
Military History Society
Die Suid-Afrikaanse Krygshistoriese Vereniging


Military History Journal
Vol 8 No 1 - June 1989

Activities/Aktiwiteite

by H W Kinsey

Both the Cape Town and Durban branches of the Society continued actively with their regular meetings at which excellent speakers were present, whilst the Society in Johannesburg continued to attract interesting speakers and good attendances at the monthly meetings. Owing to the illness of the speaker the November meeting had to be cancelled, and the lecture was postponed to the February 1989 meeting. The film 'The Great Escape' was screened at the December meeting, and a list of the lectures for the period January to June 1989, appears below/elsewhere in this issue of the Journal.

The Chairman, Mr Stewart Stiles, continued to act as Scribe, in addition to his other duties, and produced excellent summaries of the lectures in the monthly newsletters. Major Darrell Hall continued to present his delightful ten minute slide shows entitled 'Military Magazine', produced by 'Metro Goldwyn Hall', at a number of meetings during the past year, whilst both the Chairman and Mr Ian Uys also assisted with short preliminary slide shows.

Members were sorry to learn of the sudden death on 22 December 1988, of Mr Don R Forsyth, the first Chairman of the Society, and an Obituary appears elsewhere in this issue.

A successful visit to the Harrismith area, including Tweefontein (Groenkop) and Surrender Hill, over the week-end of 29/30 October 1988, was organized in conjunction with the Durban branch. The tour was under the guidance of Mr Steve Watt of the Durban branch, and gave both the Johannesburg and Durban members an opportunity of getting together. The Annual General Meeting was held on 13 April 1989, when the Chairman, Mr Stiles, was unanimously re-elected to the Chair for a second year of office. Mr Ian Uys, past Chairman for the period April 1986 to April 1988, requested, for business reasons, to be allowed to stand down from the Committee. His advice and guidance will be missed. The members whose names appear below were elected to the Committee:

After the meeting three short World War II reminiscence talks were given by Dr GA Christidis, Commandant O E F Baker and Mr Richard Dey which were much enjoyed by the audience.

The Roderick G Murchison Memorial Prize for the best contribution to the Military History Journal in any one year was awarded, in respect of the year 1988, to Colonel E S Thompson, ED, for his diary over the period January 1916 to February 1917, which appeared in the four issues of the Journal in 1987 and 1988 under the heading 'A Machine Gunner's Odyssey through German East Africa'.

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South African Military History Society / scribe@samilitaryhistory.org