Grandad Williamson sails off to South Africa

Then the time came to say goodbye to all that and sail the Irish sea once more back from Dublin to Holyhead then by train to Southampton to board the R.M.S Goorkha of the Union Line and on to our destination, South Africa, to replace men of our 1st Battalion who had been transferred to the Army Reserve.

First of all let me tell you about the ship.  She was not one of the old Biscuit and Salt Junk troopships, she was a mail and passenger carrying liner sailing between England and South Africa.  Never in my two periods of service did I eat such good food as I got on that ship.  She was commanded by an R.N.R. Captain and he was strict on cleanliness.  Most days he would come down into the holds where we ate and slept.  I was orderly man at one of the tables down there and I overheard him say to the Military Officer in charge of troops aboard, “My word Major, these decks look different now than they do the times I have third class passengers from Eastern Europe in them”.  Basins and plates with ration tins had to be laid out on the scrubbed tables every time for his inspection; that was one of the duties of the orderly man of the table, others of my duties were serving food to the seventeen other privates allotted to the table.  Doing this and keeping the deck floor swept made my day, I had no other duties or parades to attend.

The voyage after we got through the Bay of Biscay became very pleasant.  We were leaving the cold behind and our first stop was Las Palmas.  When we had dropped anchor there the fruit sellers came aboard and we spent a little of our wealth on fruit.  Round the ship were small boats with expert swimmers and divers aboard calling us to throw our spare pennies into the water.  They would watch them sink then dive and fetch them up.  I think we stayed in that port two days.  We privates were not allowed ashore; they might have lost one or two if they had let go of us.

Our next call was St. Helena.  Here we dropped the mud hook again and spent some time gazing at the rock 365 steps up.  No going ashore here but who wanted to climb those steps to see a little more sea than could be seen from the deck we were on?  In fact it was not until we reached Cape Town that we were allowed ashore to stretch our legs and it was then in the form of a route march with an officer in command.  It was a wonder we did not have to Climb Table Mountain.  That would have been more like the Army Schedule, but no, the march was confined to the town.

Three more stops.  Algoa Bay, where we anchored outside  Port Elisabeth, East London, where we got stuck on the mud entering the Harbour and where  we had another march, then on to Durban, our destination, by sea where we disembarked by lighters to a lovely town – fruit and flowers in abundance.  Our stay here was the shortest.  Somehow we did not seem to get on well with the colonials – perhaps it was because we were too free with the natives.  We fell in by the seashore and marched to the station where we entrained and were swished up to Pietermaritzburg.  It reminded me of a lecture I once attended as a Sunday School scholar.  It was given by a returned missionary from India.  He quoted something from Kipling which went:

“It’s Tommy this and Tommy that

And Tommy get out of the way

But it’s good morning Mr. Atkins

When the band begins to play”