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This contribution was submitted by Owen Cleaver to Edgar Lloyd and is added to the site with his permission.

There was a transit camp at Kumalo on the outskirts of Bulowayo and the only remarkable thing there was we got off the train and we were told we had a rugby match against the local schools ..so the first question was “Who plays rugby” and like idiots we put our hands up. Well the station hadn’t got fifteen pairs of boots…they had seven pairs and the rest played in gym shoes. And we had to play rugby against these 17 or 18 year old South African boys…and you know what they’re like. The parents had their cars all round the ground. And every time they scored they were on the horn continuously. We used to lose 70 or 80 to three…nobody knew each other. We’d been on boats and trains for so long and we were very glad when we left Kumalo because of getting beaten up in schools rugby. But Kumalo was near to Bulawayo which had some quite good shops. We all bought watches because we hadn’t seen any really prior to that….they were cheap. Bulowayo has wide streets, you could turn a fifty bullock cart around in them. We went out again on detachment to an RAF camp Heaney which was about 15 miles outside Bulowayo it was an SFTS - service flying training school . These either flew Harvards or Oxfords or Anderson and were the first planes we saw since our days on the Tiger Moths. We were there for two weeks, there were five thousand people on that base and one lorry went into Bulowayo each night. They had a very good cinema with a film every night of the week…in the canteen there were Polish WAAFs and they were crackers, they really were - all of them. And they had three little churches…the Roman Catholic, C of E, and OD. The Roman Catholics they filled theirs, the C of E not really but the OD he filled his church and had tannoy up outside and half the camp used to go there to listen to him on a Sunday evening! He was very, very good….interesting! After a fortnight there I went to RAF Mount Hampden which was 15 miles outside Salisbury (now Harare) and that was EFTS and we were to fly Cornells. They were single fixed undercarriage aircraft…a bit more advanced than a Tiger Moth. It was ten weeks we should have done there…we were on the course about two days and they came and said there are too many on this course you’ll have to wait until the next one. That meant I had to wait five weeks. So they said: “You can be in charge of the air crew library”. I went to see what the library was like. It was the usual local style hut - thatched roof and wattle, mud sides. Nicely furnished inside - carpet, easy chairs and setees and things. It was like a rest room. I didn’t see any books. Anyway, that was the aircrew library and I was in charge so I went there and I don’t know what my duties were. I know there was a cat which kept making a mess on the furniture so I had to clear that up, but apart from that I don’t know that I did very much. While I was there it was the time of the 1945 election, we had a radio - so people kept coming in and wanting to know what the score was.

While there I shared my room with a gentle giant…Bill Bach. He was a tremendous fellow, but was as gentle as could be. He was doing flying training. The flying you did there…you either flew from 6 -9, 9 - 12, 12 - 3 or 3 - 6. If you got the early morning one you were up at 5, but if you weren’t flying during a morning or afternoon session you had lectures or things like that. But if you were flying, up at five, you had breakfast and you would be taking off about six o’clock. It had only just got light and it would be freezing cold. You’d be wearing your blues ….but by eight o’clock the sun would have come up and it would be up in the nineties and you’d be sweating like a pig up there until you came down at nine o’clock.
On the early morning one you never knew whether to be in your khaki drill - shorts and shirt - or to be in your blue battledress with everything. During this five weeks I used to laugh at this Bill Bach getting up at five o’clock - so glad I didn’t.
After five weeks I got on the next course and I don’t know how long I was on it…maybe ten days or two weeks. I know I flew somewhere between 16 and 20 hours - I did about three and a half hours solo , circuits and bumps, which was the standard. And that was August 16th and two days afterwards all flying ceased. So that was it stopped.... unless you signed on to say you’d stay flying for three years….and as far as I know only one chap did. So that was the end of the flying. We were there for another few weeks. We had a swimming pool and tennis courts …the facilities were good on the site. The food was good. I never really had bad food ever…and the one place that really impressed me was Heaton Park in Manchester. It was the canteen was on top of a hill with a glass roof which was where the tables were. When you went up there for lunch there was a tarmac road about ten feet wide and you would queue up - you’d be about ten deep. And they served 3,000 meals in half an hour. You’d be just shuffling along at ten, turn the corner and you’d be two deep going along there and you’d be walking quite fast. Then you’d go into two corridors….up the canteen past the tables and you’d be at a run, and if you didn’t catch it at the end you’d lost it. But despite the speed it was excellent food there…I think anyway.

It was quite good fun when the flying stopped …the RAF was obviously going to get out of Rhodesia so they joined up with the BSAP(police)…a bunch of us and we used to go round the surrounding villages, reclaiming the RAF equipment…beds, tables, cooking pots, anything. You’d go in the huts ….they didn’t take much notice anyway. When you went into the Ascaris huts - they were like the native police - and you wouldn‘t find a better kept place anywhere in the guard’s depot at Caterham or anywhere….everything would be polished and glistening. You could tell one of their huts. We saw the old witch doctor he brought his bones out and gave us a demonstration. But we never had any problem….other than that we only had contact with the local natives in the camp.

We went to Capetown by train and went into the transit camp. We could go into Capetown…it was alright to walk to the main road during the day to get the bus. But by the gates of the camp was the glasshouse and if you walked back along the road at night they walked you straight into the glasshouse for a week. Because Every night of the weekend there were people mugged and killed on that road after dark. We used to get a taxi back…they didn’t charge a lot.

We were in the transit camp for about ten days and the outstanding thing there was there were about 15 flights of us. I was in flight 12 and was way back from the front. And we had a Warrant Officer who used to do a parade in the morning and he used to inspect us…and he’d go: “Haircut! Haircut! Haircut!”…and he’d go along and by the time he got to about the tenth flight there’d be a few odd bods standing round and the rest were at the side for a haircut. And he’d say there’s too many for today the barbers won’t be doing more. So we were allowed out and they had to get a haircut before they were allowed a pass to get out. And it happened every day…one fellow had three haircuts in three days. I didn’t have one because luckily we were at the back. I don’t know why he never twigged!

We got a boat back the Reyna del Pacifico…that was quite a famous troop ship we had hammocks there. Fourteen days up the Atlantic …called in at St. Helena and at Freetown where the yellow men got on…all the troops who’d been on mepa-cream and we came on back…it was pretty rough across the Bay of Biscay, but when we were coming into Liverpool we anchored off Red Wharf Bay for 24 hours because they didn’t think we’d get over the Mersey Bar. There were a lot of people who weren’t very happy…on the boat there were people who’d got their wings but hadn’t got their stripes…that was remedied later….and there was a lot of people who’d been SFTS and if it had lasted another fortnight or something they’d have got their wings, but they didn’t …so they sent us to RAF Bircham Newton near Sandringham and who do we find as the officers who are in charge of us but all our old mates who were navigators and bombers and things like that - who didn’t have to wait for their courses - had been to Canada or wherever and back and were there as Flying Officers they were in charge. So it was rather an astute move to put our old friends in charge of us, who’d be responsible for what happened.

But most people were just glad it was all over.

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