Challenges to Man, Craft and Agreements
Shortly before Edgar Whitehead's arrival on the Gold Coast, roads, gantries, hangers, workshops, storehouses offices and living accommodation had been created at Takoradi. The primitive airfields had been expanded and wireless communication created.
Over time, six thousand RAF airplanes were uncrated there and reassembled before flying three thousand six hundred miles across the desert to Cairo for the North African and Mediterranean theaters.
RAF recovery teams of skilled engineers and technicians retrieved crashed planes along the route and loaded them onto specially designed tractors and trailers for repair or rebuilding from the wrecks of two or three craft.
But the RAF soon became seriously alarmed at the high casualties amongst their ferry pilots caused by malaria. The main center of infestations was traced back to the staging post of Takoradi. An agreement was reached between the RAF, the Army and the Director of Public Works to eliminate the mosquitoes by draining the mashes to the immediate advantage of the war effort and long term advantage to the Gold Coast Government. It was agreed the two Services and the Colony should each pay one third of the cost of the project.
The director made it quite clear he had no authority to commit his Government to the expenditure but stated he had informed the Chief Secretary and the Financial Secretary and asked approval. The Royal Engineers undertook the work with the help of the Director's Department. As the work progressed the Government replies to requests to pay their share became more and more evasive, until, when the works were almost complete the General told Edgar to take the matter up with the Resident Minister's Office.
Edgar saw Lord Swinton and told him the full story. He sent for the Governor, who protested he was under no obligation to make any contribution because his Director of Public Works had no power to commit his Government and had made this plain to the Army.
Swinton went through the roof. He said, "Unless the Colony's contribution is paid within twenty-four hours I will refer the matter to Churchill personally, with a recommendation that they be ordered to pay two thirds of the costs."
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: The Takoradi Route https://sixtant.net/2011/artigos.php?cat=the-takoradi-route&sub=the-long-journey-to-egypt&tag=1)the-takoradi-route