January 1943

No doctor could ever prescribe a tonic for me equivalent to that which I received this morning when at 6 o’clock I hurriedly jumped out of bed and looked out of the porthole. There was Durban Bluff standing brazenly out of the early morning mist and gradually coming nearer. I rushed up onto deck and after a few minutes I was able to distinguish the different buildings on the beachfront. It was 9.30am before we tied up on the wharf side and who should be there singing away in welcome to us but “The Angel” (as she is known to everyone). The self same woman who sang to us as we steamed out of Durban harbour 13 months ago. We were eventually off loaded into ambulances and taken to Springfield Hospital, which is situated just outside of Durban. Naturally the first thing I tried to do was get in touch with my wife through the medium of the telephone but try as I might it was impossible to get a trunk call through although I endeavoured until late tonight. How disappointed I am in failing that as it would have been a wonderful new year indeed for her to hear my voice once again. Indeed for me too.

My first task this morning, even before I had any breakfast was to get on the phone once more and book a call to my wife for 8.30am. I thought it best to get in early before the line filled up and incidentally I had no trouble whatsoever. Then, as the telephone booth only a three Penny box it was necessary for me to obtain seven and nine pence in “tickeys”. This I accomplished by standing on the roadside and stopping a couple of busses, much to the annoyance of the drivers but nevertheless they were able to oblige me. Oh! I am terribly excited. I actually spoke, after all this time I really and definitely spoke to my dear wife. For the minute I was disappointed as the exchange told me that my wife was not at the number I had given, but some thoughtful person however had the call transferred to my sister’s house where my wife and son are spending the New Year. Once more this afternoon we were again on the move, this time by hospital train to Pretoria but I don’t mind as I know each mile brings me nearer to my wife. As we travelled through the beautiful countryside of Natal everything seemed so strange to me. Here were hills and valleys with beautiful green grass and vegetation, fruit in abundance and “mother nature” dressed in her very best. Are my eyes deceiving me? Should not all this be sand and desert? And gradually my thoughts began to stray. Stray right back to those past horrible months of hardships and endurance. Right back to that limitless desert, to Matruh, Gazala, Tobruk, Alamein, yes Alamein. The bloody and gentleness of that very name, the tragedy and anxiety, the suffering of those days and nights lying in the trenches half way between insanity and death itself – the solitude. Yet here I am at this moment passing though a countryside of peace and beauty and gradually those black thoughts fade like a dream from my memory and I live once more in the present. How little the world knows, how utterly ignorant she is at large, those poor men still up there suffering in that which I have just left and now here, this beautiful countryside.

I can find no more suitable conclusion to this diary than this third day of January 1943 for was it not today that I filled my obligation, my greater desires and my one sole ambition.