MY BROTHER HUGH Born 5th October 1920 died 9th May 2006
To start with I took things quite easy. It was the end of October and I went and met Mike at Bradfield, visited old haunts and met up with old friends who had survived the war. Most of my boxing mates had been killed but Shelley was very much alive and came to visit me at the flat in London. Mike too came over for the first big Post-War Pageant, The Wedding of Princess Elizabeth to Prince Phillip of Greece. Everyone queued all night but we left the flat at 8 am, caught a tube to the Mall and walked down, to see crowds yards deep. We found a young Plane Tree, and with the help of some others, wedged ourselves in the branches and had one of the best views of the whole spectacle, as the beautiful bride rode past in an open carriage, followed by all the dignitaries in limousines . We watched as the Russian Foreign Ministers car drove in the procession and the crowds threw stones at it. We had Christmas in the flat, Helen was difficult and did not approve of my girlfriends who I would entertain at Churchill’s Night Club in Bond Street. So there were rows as she was very straight laced and I had come from the wilds of the colonies. Finally in the New Year of 1948 in Mid January, I said goodbye to Mike on the pavement outside our flat and it would be 12 years before we met up again. We had both enjoyed each others company and it was hard saying Goodbye!
5. Arrival in Africa & the Journey South
In February 1948 I left London to fly on a York which was a rare form of travel in those days. Owing to a severe fog we could not take off from London and so drove to an airfield at Herne Bay by coach. It was still bad all night but by the morning it had thinned sufficiently and we were able to take off for Bordeaux. The York was an adapted Lancaster Bomber built for RAF Transport Command and was powered by 4 powerful but noisy Merlin Engines. The normal cruising altitude was 10,000 ft and the plane was not pressurized and the speed was a slow steady 190 knots. Going above this normal altitude, oxygen masks would be worn and plenty of warm clothes! The advantage of the flight was that one had a most glorious birds eye view of the ground and could clearly see towns etc in detail and cars and other vehicles going about their business, which is impossible in modern Jet Travel. Also there were lots of re-fuelling and overnight stops that gave a far more sedate and civilised adaptation to the challenge of Air travel. In the afternoon we flew over the Mediterranean to Cairo where we spent the night and enjoyed the day in the city departing in the evening for Khartoum. It was once we were in the air from Cairo a Grand Tour of the British Empire in East Africa.. By dawn we were in Khartoum where we refuelled and had lunch somewhere over Juba in Southern Sudan. Just as we were finishing our lunch, the plane lurched, and my coffee was flung into my lap as it rose and we were tossed from side to side. We had now hit Tropical cumulus and the pilot went up to 20,000 ft and we all put on our oxygen masks as we headed for Kenya. We refuelled at Kisumu on the shores of Lake Victoria and slowly flew over the Rift Valley looking down into the crater of an extinct volcano.
Once in Nairobi as I was by now short or cash and cars were expensive, I bought an old motor bike to get me around. I went and looked Wilfred Retty who was the leading shareholder in The Uva Ceylon Tea Company which owned Glen Alpin where I had worked, and he now was diversifying his interests in starting tea in upcountry Kenya near Kericho on lovely rolling fertile land, but much drier than Ceylon. He offered me a job in his new enterprise, and probably I should have accepted it, but the call of the bush beckoned and I wanted to see more of Africa before I was pinned down into a cubbyhole.
So I made a decision to drive from Kenya some 2,000 miles south to the Rhodesias which I heard were fantastic. I fitted the bike out with about 200 lbs of gear, tent, gun ammo, food, warm clothing etc. It was all put into a suitcase, two hold –alls, a kit bag, bedding roll, two gallons of spare petrol and a gallon of spare oil. To start with all went well until about 100 miles south of Nairobi. There was a terrific storm and the heavy rain on the black cotton soil. The time was about 10 pm and suddenly I was in a 30 yard skid with the bike with its heavy load sliding to the right whilst I ended up on