A Barroom Shock!
Mission accomplished, Edgar Whitehead arrived in Salisbury in mid June. After reporting to Defense HQ. and booking a room at the Club he deposited his kit there and walked over to the Legislative Assembly. Godfrey Huggins was having tea on the lawn.
Huggins said to his colleague, "Look what's dropped out of the sky!" Turning to Edgar he said, "Come and join us. How long are you staying?"
Rhodesia seemed even further from the war than South Africa. Edgar dined out shamelessly on stories of the Blitz. His former colleagues were amused that the British army had accepted him despite his physical defects, and amazed at his promotion to Major in little over a year.
Edgar's successor in Parliament was an old friend, Ian Wilson (later Speaker of the Rhodesian and Federal Parliaments). He offered Edgar a ride to Umtali at the weekend, and promised to return him in time to take off on Monday morning. After the House rose on Friday, Ian delivered Edgar to the Umtali Club late that evening where Edgar met a few old friends. The next day he hired a drive-it-yourself-car and drove out to the farm.
Sumajeri was overjoyed to see Edgar again. Old Mukwishu said to Edgar, "Everything in the garden is lovely. Boss, are any more of my young men wanted for the army?"
Nat, his assistant, was with the Rhodesian Armored Car Regiment in Ethiopia. The farm was returning to bush and the house decaying. It was unsettling. He was glad not to stay longer on the farm.
He had insufficient petrol to visit his neighbors in the Vumba and was relieved to return to Umtali the next morning.
On the way back to Salisbury with Ian Wilson they stopped off at the Balfour Hotel in Rusape for a sundowner and ran into a violent political argument. Recognized by some of the disputants they were invited to join them in a round of drinks. They then renewed their argument. One stranger suddenly announced that his policy was to hang all Africans. Edgar looked at him in amazement wondering whether he was sane, when the proprietor whispered to him that he was the Public Hangman and got five pounds for every hanging. Edgar only wrote that 'this incident rather delayed him and Ian,' (but we can infer that he strongly objected, but as in other unacceptable incidents, he did not elaborate or name names).
Edgar still wanted to see his friends in Macheke, who had given him a send-off home-cooked meal on his departure for England when the war first broke out. This called for a further celebration so they decided to sleep at Marandellas, forty-seven miles short of Salisbury.
The next morning, Edgar made it in time to catch the South African Air Force plane headed for Khartoum and back to West Africa.
The historical novel Whitewashed Jacarandas and its sequel Full of Possibilities are both available on Amazon as paperbacks and eBooks.
These books are inspired by Diana's family's experiences in small town Southern Rhodesia after WWII.
Dr. Sunny Rubenstein and his Gentile wife, Mavourneen, along with various town characters lay bare the racial arrogance of the times, paternalistic idealism, Zionist fervor and anti-Semitism, the proper place of a wife, modernization versus hard-won ways of doing things, and treatment of endemic disease versus investment in public health. It's a roller coaster read.
References:
- Sir Edgar Whitehead's Unpublished Memoirs, Rhodes House, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, by permission.
- Photo credit:
- Wikimedia Commons File: Southern Rhodesia Legislative Assembly
