granted include gravity, magnetism, light, sound, radio waves and electricity, simply because we can measure them. However, those tools of God that we know about but cannot measure, such as our powers of thought and love, are substantially less in number than those of His tools about which we know absolutely nothing. These are the ones that control the stars, the air above, the rocks, trees and grasses on the surface as well as the oceans and the depths of the earth. Strangely, with all he said, including something about God’s dwelling-place, heaven, Dad did not mention Jesus. This is why the Anglican experience was entirely new to me.
While World War II was raging in Europe, Dad was in Air Force uniform in Rhodesia. Like all Rhodesians, Dad wanted to get to where the action was but the Royal Air Force needed his expertise in transport, right where he lived. This was to support the Rhodesian component of the vast British Empire scheme established to train badly needed aircrews. Dad was disappointed, embarrassed even, but Tony and I saw him as a star and revelled in the situations that the war had brought into our lives.
One of the RAF’s Rhodesian Air Training Group (RATG) stations, Cranborne, was just out of view from our house behind the carpet of intervening trees. However, the Harvard Mk2 training aircraft would come into view immediately after take-off. These noisy machines filled the air around us with their ever-changing sounds all day and night as they ploughed around the circuit.
With so many aircraft flying so many hours it was inevitable that mishaps occurred both at and beyond the airfield. On occasions, engine failures and student errors caused crash landings on and beyond the airfield. Some of the crashed machines came down where Tony and I could get to inspect them. Harvards, which still fly in many clubs around the world today and remained in service with the South African Air Force right up until 1996, possess amazingly strong airframes. Those that came down in the bush and farmlands around our home had all ploughed through trees before coming to rest. Though buckled and bent, not one machine we saw had shed wings or tail planes. The unique smell of those crashed aircraft was too wonderful and we clambered in and out of the cockpits at every opportunity. Sharing ultra-thick dry sandwiches and lukewarm tea with RAF guards and salvage crews added to memories that remain clearer to me today than yesterday’s happenings.
My mother’s three brothers all went off to the war in Europe. John Smith was an air gunner on Halifax bombers and was posted missing after the second 1,000-bomber raid into Germany. His body, along with those of his crew, was never found.
Eric Smith was killed in a most unfortunate accident while leading his Spitfire squadron back to Britain at the cessation of hostilities in Italy. This was a cruel loss considering he had survived many months of Offensive action in the Desert and Italian campaigns.
Bill Smith, incensed by the loss of his brother John, lied about his age to get into the Fleet Air Arm at age seventeen and saw active service in the latter stages of the war. Later he joined the auxiliary force in Rhodesia, which became the Southern Rhodesia Air Force. Dad’s only brother, Steven Bowyer, left his gold mining occupation in Rhodesia to join the RAF as mid upper gunner on Halifax and Lancaster bombers. He survived many missions, including the one on which Guy Gibson died
Tony and I could not fully comprehend the loss of two uncles. Even though we had known and loved both of them, we did not understand the enormous pain their deaths had brought to Mum and our grandparents. We only comprehended the glamour of our Dad in uniform, bringing home many high-ranking officers and gracious ladies to the Sunday swimming parties for which he and Mum were renowned.
Towards the end of the war Dad lost his arm in a freak accident. As Officer Commanding the RATG motor transport fleet, he had visited Thornhill airbase near Gwelo and was on his way to Heany airbase near Bulawayo. Along the way he realised that he still had a document that he should have left at Thornhill. As he was approaching a bridge on a steep downward slope he spotted an RAF truck, still some way off, coming towards the bridge from the opposite side. Dad crossed the bridge and pulled over just short of a point where the road commenced a right-hand sweep. He put out his arm and was waving down the oncoming driver with a view to handing him the document for delivery to Thornhill.
Unbeknown to Dad, the airman driver had been drinking and panicked when he recognised his CO’s Staff car. Instead of slowing down, he accelerated. The truck drifted on the corner and passed Dad’s car in a mild broadside with the tail sufficiently off-line for the extended number plate to rip Dad’s arm off just above the elbow.
The truck roared off into the distance, leaving Dad with not a soul around. He could not easily get the severed arm into the vehicle because it was hanging outside the door on a substantial section of skin. He leaned out with his left hand and managed to bring the arm inside. Blood was spraying everywhere in powerful spurts bringing Dad to the realisation that he would be dead in less than a minute if it continued. The door panel of his American Dodge was made of compressed hardboard. Through this panel he managed to drive the exposed bone and press the flesh tight up against the surface to stem the blood flow. He then drove like the wind for Heany. On arrival at the main gate, the duty provost marshal failed to understand Dad’s frantic calls to lift the security boom. Instead he ambled to the car, looked inside and keeled over in a faint. Dad had no option—he smashed through the boom and drove straight to Station Sick Quarters where he kept his hand on the horn until help arrived. Shocked and now in pain some forty minutes after the accident, he surprised the doctor and Staff by not only remaining conscious but for being fully articulate.
Reverting to me—the matter of what I wanted to do in life came early. Having passed through the usual stage of wanting to become a driver of the beautiful Garret steam engines that Tony and I loved to watch labouring up the long hill from Salisbury station or racing fast in the opposite direction, I settled for surgery. When I was about nine years old, the war having just ended, Dad and Mum told me that they had booked a place for me at Edinburgh University for 1954.
When I turned eleven and Tony was nine, our secure little world fell apart. We woke one morning to discover that Mum had left Dad. We loved our parents dearly and simply could not understand why things could not go on as before. In a relatively short time, in a blur of insecurity, uncertainty and confusion, Tony and I learned that Mum and Dad were divorced and that we were going to a boarding school in the Vumba Mountains near Umtali, as founder members of Eagle Preparatory School. When we checked into this brand-new school we found ourselves with another twenty youngsters ranging in age from nine to twelve.
Frank Carey and his small Staff had come from the Dragon School in Oxford, England, to establish Eagle School. He intended to emulate a style of teaching he knew and believed in. Our environment was wonderful so Tony and I settled in easily, and quickly regained lost confidence. The style of teaching was quite different from that we had known and new subjects, including Latin, French and trigonometry, were brought in immediately.
In our first year at Eagle, Mum remarried and moved with her husband, Group Captain Berrisford- Pakenham, to farm in Mkushi in Northern Rhodesia. Dad had bought a farm and lime-works near Cashel Valley in the foothills of Rhodesia’s eastern border mountains. Tony and I alternated our school holidays between Mum and Dad, which was fine for a while but we both hated being away from Mum for such long periods.
On return to school at the beginning of the second year we learned that Dad had married Joan Shevill who had a daughter of my age and a son of Tony’s age. Jennifer and John were in boarding at Umtali High and Umtali Junior schools, respectively. Our first holiday with the new family on Moosgwe Farm went well, though we were all a bit uncertain of each other. Thereafter relations became strained because Tony and I were only present on alternate holidays and because my stepmother loathed my mother, whom she never ever met.
Visits to Mum were too wonderful for words. Much of this had to do with the fact that our stepfather, Berry, had gained our absolute trust by never interfering in matters that did not concern him, but always giving sound advice and clear answers to any question we asked.
Berry had served with the British Border Regiment where he had risen to the rank of colonel. He then switched to the RAF, accepting a considerable loss in seniority simply because he wanted to fly. In the RAF he rose to the substantive rank of group captain. To have achieved the same level of rank in two substantially different forces was a remarkable achievement considering he was only forty-two when he retired from service and immigrated to Rhodesia.
