Forsaking Huggins
Robert Tredgold, Rhodesia's Minister of Defense, gave Edgar Whitehead the ultimatum from Prime Minister Huggins on February 14, (1940) to return to Rhodesia if he had not yet been accepted into the Army.
Edgar sat down and wrote to the War Office setting out his position:
'I have travelled six thousand miles at my own expense to serve. It is rather galling to have received no information after six weeks, as to whether I am likely to be required. I have now been ordered by my own Minister of Defense to return with him to Southern Rhodesia, so unless I hear from the War Office within a week I will be compelled to withdraw my application.'
The reaction was immediate. Edgar received a letter signed by a senior officer the next morning at breakfast saying, “Will you please arrange to medically examine Mr. E.C.F. Whitehead who is urgently required for duty with the R.A.S.C. (Royal Army Service Corps).”
On arrival a very youthful Royal Army Medical Corps (R.A.M.C.) officer gave him an intensive inspection. Edgar knew he was absolutely fit apart from his eyesight and hearing. Fortunately, the medical officer possessed an unusually loud and clear voice in normal conversation. Edgar heard him so easily that the officer did not take the trouble to examine his hearing.
He did examine Edgar’s eyesight, whistled and expressed his dismay saying, “I am very much afraid I can’t pass you.”
Edgar then showed him the letter signed by the senior officer. “There will be serious complications if you fail me.”
“What are the purposes of your services?”
“I’m not at liberty to disclose these for security reasons.”
“I can’t appear to have missed spotting your eyes. Will it be alright if I classify you as A2 eyes?”
“That will be fine.”
On the strength of this, the War Office accepted Edgar on the Officers Emergency Reserve and told him to report for the next O.P.C. course beginning in Ramsgate in the middle of March.
Edgar told Tredgold that he would not be returning with him and to give a message to Huggins to submit his resignation from Parliament whenever it suited him to do so.
Then he set about to obtain his uniform and kit.
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: © National Portrait Gallery, London by Howard Coster
bromide print, 1937 NPG Ax136164 rightsandimages@npg.org.ukGodfrey Martin Huggins,