WWII: Schoolboy's tale of evacuation to South Africa

We'll meet again: Children being evacuated to South Africa are waved off by their parents at Derby station in August 1940

Richard Marfleet's aunt, Eileen Hepworth, taught maths at Bemrose School in the 1940s.

Eileen Hepworth

Among her belongings, when she passed away, was a copy of the 1945-46 form magazine for Form 4.11 Wellington House, Bemrose School. The contributors included a boy called simply Verdon, presumably his surname.

He was among a group of youngsters who were evacuated to South Africa in August 1940 and, on his return, he wrote about his experience. The article, entitled Evacuation, was printed in the magazine which, 60 years on, Mr Marfleet discovered. This is his story:

"In 1940, I was evacuated to South Africa. When we heard that we were going, we were only given about four days' notice. We left Liverpool on a Friday in August on board the Union Castle Line's Llanstephan Castle.

"On the way there was no excitement but it took us four solid weeks to reach Cape Town.

"Cape Town is a very lovely place with Table Mountain in the background and with all its picturesque gardens and suburbs.

"We stayed in Cape Town for three weeks before being sent to different parts of the union, where we were to live for the next five years.

"The place I went to was Maseru, the capital of Basutoland. It is only a very small place with the white population about 500 at the most. The native population is very large.

"There is a European section of the town and the native location on the other side of a small ravine. Maseru is at the foot of the Maluti mountains, the western range of the Brakensberg.

"The surrounding country is grassy and rocky with dongas (gullies) and spruits (small streams) all round.

"Through Maseru and dividing Basutoland from the Orange Free State runs the Caledon River. This river was named after the Earl of Caledon and varies in depth during summer and winter.

"Bloemfontein, the city in which I went to boarding school, is about 85 miles away from Maseru and the country around it is flat with an occasional hill or "kopje".

"Near Bloemfontein, 16 miles out, is Mazelspoort where there is the Modder River dam and the largest open-air swimming bath in the southern hemisphere.

"While I was in South Africa, I went to Durban twice. Durban is a port in Natal on the Eastern side of South Africa on the Indian Ocean coast. It is very lovely there with tropical palm trees and sunny beaches where you can buy as much fruit as you have money to do so.

"While I was out there, I went to the Victoria Falls in July 1944, which are on the Zambezi River. This river divides Southern Rhodesia from Northern Rhodesia.

"The Falls are 420 feet high and are a mile and a quarter wide. There the country is semi-jungle with wild animals prowling about.

"You can buy assegais (wooden lances) and tom-toms and carved animals, which the natives make.

"After the waterfall, the river passes through narrow, curving gorges for a few hundred miles. Over the first gorge is the wonderful Victoria Falls bridge.

"In South Africa, you keep left on the roads as in England. The railway gauge is one foot less than that in England.

"When the war ended, I was still at boarding school but knew it wouldn't be very long before I returned to England.

Panorama of the Cape Town city bowl from the Waterfront to Table Mountain

"When the news eventually came that we were to sail from Cape Town in July, I felt very excited. I had to leave school early so as to collect my belongings from Maseru.

"We left Cape Town on the 23,000-ton ship Alcantara, then a troopship. There were 3,000 passengers aboard with a crew of 500. There were only 13 evacuees returning home but there were about 2,000 RAF men and their wives also.

"The return voyage only took us two weeks. The ship was an armed merchant cruiser during the first two years of the war and was then converted into a troopship.

"In the dormitory, I was with 160 other civilian passengers. During the voyage, there was A gun practice.

"We were supposed to land at Liverpool but there was a strike on, so we landed at Southampton."

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