| It is difficult to remember what Heathrow Airport was like in 1949.
When one now surveys the organised chaos of Terminal 3, especially after the arrival of a couple of loaded jumbo jets, it is hard to visualise how it all got started again after the end of World War II, with hangars and half finished buildings all over the place and passenger aircraft converted from wartime bombers. While it may not now be quite the largest airport in the world, it must surely qualify as one of the busiest, as anyone will know who has had the misfortune to be taking off or landing on a Sunday morning amongst all the Charter Flights.
But in October 1949, it was very different. Commercial flying was still in its infancy although rapidly growing, but I suppose there must have been a cluster of buildings of some sort in the centre of the airfield near the Control Tower. However, I was flying to the Gold Coast in West Africa and was directed to a large hangar-like building on the northern outskirts of the airfield, right next to the Great West Road and miles away it seemed from anything resembling an aeroplane. This was called Heathrow North and was evidently an unimportant suburb of the main complex.
I was already a day late in departing. Yesterday's flights had all been postponed because of fog, but now the morning mist was clearing away with the approach of high clouds from the west and a bit of a wind springing up, so the prospects of an imminent departure seemed more hopeful. There were about twenty passengers apart from myself, both male and female, mostly young and mostly like me looking rather apprehensive. We chatted amongst ourselves quietly while waiting for something to happen. Some were civil servants returning to offices in Accra or Lagos, there were some hesitant first-timers going out to the gold mines, and a few others were young brides flying out to join their husbands.
I was a bit different from all the others.
I was flying out to be married
A tearful goodbye had just been said to my parents - tearful on my mother's part, that is, as I was far too excited to feel sad. Post-war England was dreary and depressing and I was delighted at the prospect of getting away. The end of the War had not improved the quality of life in England, and almost anywhere else held out the promise of a more interesting and fulfilling life.
All I knew about the Gold Coast was that it used to be called "The White Man's Grave", and most of my friends had registered total horror when I told them where I was going.
"The White Man's Grave!" they chorused, throwing up their hands in dismay.
"But think of the heat! You know how you hate the heat!"
But then I hated the cold, too.
Well, all right, so it was the White Man's Grave - it couldn't be worse than Austerity England. I was being very hardheaded about the whole business.
One of my mother's sisters, my Auntie Louie, once she was told about our plans, started to be a real ray of sunshine to those around her. All she could talk about was a certain neighbour of hers who had spent some time during her girlhood in another very hot country - India. Apparently this woman could only cope with the problem of the heat by sleeping each night in wet sheets, and she consequently developed acute rheumatism and spent the rest of her life as an invalid. I was getting pretty tired of listening to dismal stories of that kind from relatives and equally ignorant friends, and was really quite relieved to be leaving it all behind. I had always wanted to travel the world but had never had a chance until now. At least this was a start. I had done my War service in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and was now quite determined to enjoy this new life, whatever the drawbacks.
My fiancé, James Roy Beech (usually known as J.R.), was also ex-Air Force. His career, like that of so many others, had been postponed by the War, so that after his demobilisation in 1946 it was a question of getting into University somewhere/anywhere, at the age of twenty four and acquiring some qualifications for a civilian life. He had now completed his studies, had become a member of the Institution of Mining and Metallurgy and was working as Chief Assayer on a gold mine in the Gold Coast, where he had been for the past year. He didn't choose the Gold Coast as the ideal place to take a wife and bring up a family, but when you are starting out with no experience and little money, you have to take what is offered and be thankful - something which my relatives and friends seemed to find very difficult to comprehend. Just because we were starting married life in West Africa, didn't mean we were necessarily going to stay there forever.
Once J.R. had settled on going to work in the Gold Coast, one of our priorities was to find out as much as we could about West Africa generally - its people, its way of life, what one would need to take out there in the way of clothes, etc. And this was not easy. Very few of the people I spoke to - friends, relations and colleagues at my office had the slightest idea of where the Gold Coast was, and the term "West Africa" to them seemed to cover most of the area from Tunis to Cape Town. One of the other typists had a boy friend doing his National Service in Egypt, which she informed me was "part of the continent of Africa", and she wondered if I would meet him. Even my boss, whom I would have thought had a little more worldly knowledge than a teenage girl, gave me the address of his cousin living in Sierra Leone and asked me to look him up when I was there.
I felt like taking along a map of Africa and pinning it up over my desk, with the area of the Gold Coast shaded in pink, the adjacent countries of the Ivory Coast and Togo Land clearly marked, also the equator only six degrees south, and this might bring home to my ignorant friends the enormous size of the continent, and the relatively tiny part which was the Gold Coast.
It was difficult if not impossible for J.R. and me to find anyone who had any first hand knowledge, and after I had exhausted the information found in my local Public Library, I resorted to one of my favourite lunch hour browsing places - Foyle's book shop in the Charing Cross Road, which in those days had a flourishing second hand book department.
Here I unearthed a solid-looking tome entitled "We Two in West Africa" by Decima Moore and Major F.G.Guggisberg, C.M.G., R.E. (presumably her husband), and dated 1909. I leafed through it, fascinated. There were numerous black and white photographs of "we two", wearing solar topees and very hot-looking clothes - she with long sleeves, skirt almost down to the ground, heavy shoes and a tie, and he in what looked like riding breeches and close-fitting thigh boots. There were also many pictures of African natives and villages, and the thick forest, which appeared to cover the whole region. The book was a bit dilapidated and priced at ten shillings, which I thought a trifle high. But after a short discussion with a young shop assistant I managed to get that reduced to five shillings, and eventually walked out triumphantly with my prize. I was late back at the office as a result of the time this took, but I was so pleased with my purchase that I ignored the one or two critical looks I received.
And how we enjoyed prowling through that book! There were various comments which made us hoot with laughter, although I am sure that in 1909 they were received with appreciation and gravity, such as when the Major remarked on the effect his wife had on the female native population. They were made speechless, he said, probably as a result of seeing for the first time a white mammy "who had golden hair and a waist." The golden haired mammy, according to the book, had her own problems in acclimatizing herself to the sticky heat, especially when she was trying to get dressed for dinner and couldn't force her gloves over her perspiring fingers. Times had evidently changed, as I didn't think I would now be expected to wear gloves for dinner on a mining camp in the tropics. But some of the other remarks in the book made me wonder how on earth women managed to keep themselves and their clothes clean and fresh in those days, when a lot of dress fabrics were not washable and there certainly could not have been a dry-cleaning shop around the corner. There was also a lovely piece in the book about the whites teaching the natives to play cricket, and thus "all unconsciously imbibing with their cricket education the sense of fairness, of right and wrong, of 'playing the game"'. Shades of Rudyard Kipling! And she also said that the natives she saw were a tribute to British rule and made her proud to be an Imperialist. Oh happy days, before colonialism was a dirty word!
That book was always with us whenever J.R. and I were together, before he went off on his first tour of duty. Well meaning acquaintances continued to point out that I was crazy to even contemplate going out to such a place, but I was quite determined that I would accompany J.R. after we were married. It was hard work, though, to seem to be continually flying in the face of other people's advice. That was why it was so heartening to us when, one day when we were sitting in Green Park during one of my lunch hours, studying "we two", a nice old gentleman came up to us and started chatting. He had heard us talking about the Gold Coast and apparently he had spent many years of his life out there. He told us we would love it. "A beautiful country" was how he described it, and he told us to ignore all the pessimists who were trying to discourage us. He talked to us for nearly an hour and once again I overstayed my lunch break. But it was worth being admonished when I did arrive back, and I was more than ever pleased with my invaluable book and all its detailed descriptions of the country and the people, and especially of the towns and areas, which J.R. would be visiting.
It may be different now, but the rules on mining camps in those days stated that a man starting on his first tour could not bring a wife out initially, but had to complete one full tour of twelve or fifteen months first. This was obviously to find out if he was going to make the grade. The men who worked underground did a twelve-month tour, whereas those, like J.R., who worked in the offices and workshops above ground, were expected to stay for fifteen months before taking their first three months' leave. We planned to get married in England on his first long leave, but this didn't work out as the mine was very short of the right kind of staff, and he was asked to delay his leave while a replacement was trained to take over from him for three months. Therefore, rather than postpone our wedding, we decided that I should fly out on my own and we would be married in Accra. To that end, my wedding dress and hat were carefully packed into my brand new suitcase and the wedding was scheduled to take place in the High Commissioner's Office in Christiansborg Castle at midday on October 13th, 1949.
This arrangement was not received with cries of joy from my very conventionally minded parents, understandably perhaps, as I was their only daughter. Their visions of a big white wedding in the local parish church, with my father proudly giving me away and my mother wearing her fox fur over a powder blue crepe dress were now being blown sky high. But I regret I did not give this a lot of thought. To me it was not important, but with hindsight I can now understand it must have been a great disappointment to them.
The day I was scheduled to leave, October 12th, dawned grey and foggy and all flights were cancelled, so that now, when I turned up for the second time and presented myself once more to the authorities to have my passport and immigration certificates checked, I was already late for my own wedding. There was no way I could get in touch with J.R. to let him know, but I supposed he would be making his own enquiries at his end.
While we were waiting in the aircraft hangar, I began talking to a young woman who was travelling with her small son, and it didn't take us long to discover that we were both going out to the same gold mine. This was a piece of luck. We were pleased to have met each other and could now share our anxieties about the journey ahead. She was a small pale girl with frizzy hair, and she informed me that her name was Agnes, but she was always called Bunty. Her five year old son Michael should really have been starting school, but she was hoping to teach him a few basics while they were out in Africa. This seemed preferable to letting her husband, Maurice, go another fifteen-month tour on his own. I was brought face to face with one of the very difficult problems facing families when the father has to work in an uncongenial climate - what to do about the children? There were three options, all unsatisfactory in their different ways.
You could leave your child in boarding school at a very early age, which must produce a terrible amount of stress for both parents and child, or the mother stayed behind in England and left her husband on his own, or the whole family went out with father and the child had no schooling. It was an insoluble situation which most of us had to face up to sooner or later. At that time there were no arrangements for the schooling of white children in West Africa. It was, and still is, a very trying climate for a child, and it was not so many years since it had also been considered an unsuitable place for white women to go to. I was thankful that in my case this particular problem could be shelved until some future date.
Finally, after half an hour or so, we were told our flight had been cleared for take-off and we were led in a straggling line to the aircraft.
The plane we were to travel in was a converted Halifax bomber, renamed a Hermes. It was converted in so far as the original fittings inside, the navigator's table, the wireless operator's equipment, the mid-upper and tail gunner's turrets plus all the armaments, had been ripped out, and the inside of the fuselage now consisted of a double row of seats running down to the tail, with a narrow passage down the middle. This was, of course, before the days of pressurised aircraft and the plane had to fly below the clouds, so that the flight was quite bumpy and extremely noisy. There was no provision for any meals on board and these had to be taken at each stopping place. However, it was an aeroplane, it flew (God willing) and would get us where we wanted to go much quicker than any ship, so we were in high spirits as we piled on board. I had flown once before in a Lancaster bomber soon after the end of the War, and although it was an experience I had not enjoyed, I was now able to re-assure Bunty a little. She was extremely nervous but doing her best to hide that fact from young Michael, to whom this day was quite evidently going to be the high spot of his life so far. He was not only going on an aeroplane, but he was also flying out to Africa to meet his Dad!
Our first stop was scheduled to be Tripoli in North Africa, where we had to re-fuel, then we would cross the Sahara by night. We would call at Kano in Northern Nigeria for breakfast, followed by Lagos on the coast and then Accra, the capital of the Gold Coast, in time for lunch. Here I sincerely hoped J.R. would be waiting for me.
We settled down in our bucket seats to patiently endure the next few hours, and it was a question of endurance. The noise from the plane's four engines made it difficult to talk to one's neighbours, and the seats were not sufficiently comfortable for sleep. I tried to read or knit, but a gradually increasing headache forced me in the end to simply sit and look out of the windows. Not that there was much to see as there was too much cloud around us, but we did catch a few glimpses of the snowy tops of the Alps as we flew over France. As darkness came down the skies cleared, a crescent moon accompanied us across the Mediterranean for the last few hours, and we finally arrived at Tripoli on time, making what seemed like a very rapid descent and an exceedingly bumpy landing.
When the aircraft came to a stop and the engines were turned off, we stretched our cramped legs with great relief and tottered down the steps onto the tarmac.
So this was Africa! The first thing that struck me was that it smelt differently from any other place I had visited. The soft air, which puffed against our faces, was warm and dry and faintly scented. The moon had disappeared, but the skies above us held more stars than I had ever seen, although I looked in vain for the Great Bear in what I thought was north. It was also very quiet. There was no far-off hum of constant traffic, no train whistles or car horns, and certainly no distant streams of moving lights from the nearest highway. As we walked across the hard-baked earth towards the airport restaurant, dark-skinned figures wearing long white robes approached us and bowed us into the lounge, where they brought us strong black coffee and cold drinks. Wherever in the world we were, it certainly wasn't Surbiton!
Dinner was provided, eventually, then we went back to the lounge and sat around, waiting to be called back to the aircraft to continue on to Kano. Time went by and still we sat there, until some unpleasant rumours began floating around - a piece had fallen off one of the engines as we landed and the plane was now totally unserviceable; the pilot had had a heart attack and there was no one qualified to take his place; and, most alarming of all, the Moslems had started a revolution and we were all to be held as hostages. Poor Bunty was getting into an awful state and I wasn't much better. Michael was the only one unconcerned. He was fast asleep.
Finally, the news filtered through that there was in fact a fault in one of the engines and we would be delayed several hours while a new part was flown out from England. A collective groan went up, but there wasn't a thing we could do except make the best of an unfortunate situation. We were ferried by coach through the black night into the town of Tripoli and given quite palatial accommodation in a hotel on the sea front. This hotel seemed to be built entirely of white marble and the rooms were huge, with enormous walk-in wardrobes and bathrooms, which would have housed a family. Bunty and Michael's room was next to mine and we settled down to try and get some sleep, not knowing how long it would be before we went back to the airport.
In fact we were there until the next evening. I tried to sleep but found it impossible. In my mind's eye I could see J.R. pacing up and down the runway at Accra airport, wondering where on earth I could be, and perhaps he was even wondering if I was coming at all. Maybe he would get tired of waiting and go back to the mine. Round and round went the thoughts in my weary brain and I felt the night would never end.
When the dawn did break, the sky looked grey and unpromising. The Mediterranean, as viewed from the hotel balcony, was also grey and rough, not a bit like the blue Med. of travel posters. The hotel people looked after us very well, although the food was a bit peculiar, but we didn't dare venture out to explore the town in case we missed our summons back to the airport. It did seem a shame. It was my first trip abroad and here was a whole town waiting to be explored, but all I could think about was getting back on that aeroplane.
Eventually, at about 5 p.m., to great relief all round the coach arrived to ferry us back.
We had heard, although we were unable to verify this information, that no commercial flights could take place across the Sahara during the daytime, owing to the great heat and glare from the desert. It may have been true and it was certainly quite dark when we took off from Tripoli Airport and prepared ourselves for another long, uncomfortable journey.
With first light we landed at Kano. We peered out of the windows with our red-rimmed eyes, but there was not much to see. There were a few huddled buildings around the control tower, hard-packed sandy ground in all directions, and a brassy sun just rising into a pale blue sky. We taxied to a stop outside the airport buildings, the door was flung open and in marched a tall negro with a can of disinfectant in his hand. Without a word he then sprayed the contents liberally over all of us, presumably to kill off any infections we might be carrying.
Michael was enchanted by this turn of events.
"Oh, look, mummy!" , he squealed at the top of his voice. "A black man!"
This relieved the tension and raised a laugh from everyone, including the black man. We gathered up our belongings and, this time smelling strongly of Lysol, were herded towards the restaurant to have our breakfast.
Once again the warm dry desert smell met us, and already we could feel the heat of the sun. African boys wearing khaki shorts and shirts served us musty-tasting eggs and everywhere we saw smiling dark faces. It was a mixed population in Kano, part Negro, part Arab. In the distance we could see white buildings with minarets and towers, and could hear the muezzin calling the faithful to worship. I thought that some time in the future, when I was less anxious and distracted, here was another place I would like to return to and explore. Just then there was no room in my mind for any thing except completing my journey as quickly as possible and getting on with this much delayed wedding.
The plane flew on and in about another couple of hours we reached Lagos. Once again we disembarked, this time into a steamy heat which brought us all out into perspiration, and made us hope that wherever our destinations were, it was not going to be as sticky as this. The desert smell was gone, and in its place was a strange mixture of damp and rank vegetation - the smell of the Coast. It is impossible to describe it adequately. After half an hour or so you no longer notice it but when you return after leave, one sniff and you think, "Ah, back to the Coast!" It sounds most unpleasant, put like that, but it is surprising how quickly one gets used to it.
We only stayed about fifteen minutes at Lagos and then took off again on the last lap to Accra. Tension and excitement were now mounting in me and I began to wonder what I would look like when I arrived - the bride-to-be, still wearing the clothes she had set out in two days before, hot, sweaty, and having had very little sleep along the way.
Meantime, as I was shortly to find out, J.R. had been waiting in Accra airport for the past forty eight hours, not exactly pacing up and down the runway but certainly becoming more and more concerned and impatient, and only able to get the briefest of unsatisfactory information out of the airport officials. He had left the mine on the Wednesday morning and taken the train down to the coast at Takoradi, where there was a Rest House provided for the use of mining and Government officials on their short leaves. Here he had booked a room for us, and the managers, a Swiss couple named Mr. and Mrs. Herman Hottenger, who didn't often have a wedding party to cater for, had kindly provided a wedding cake. Big celebrations were planned for when the bride should arrive. Next morning, J.R. set off in a car for Accra to meet me and bring me back, but was met at the airport with the vexatious news that our flight was delayed and we couldn't possibly arrive until the next day, Friday. He had to book into a hotel for the night, telephone to the Rest House with the news and a request to please have the cake put back into the refrigerator.
Friday came and he resumed his vigil at the airport, where there was still no sign of an aeroplane from England or anywhere else. He was eventually told that we had arrived at Tripoli but we still could not reach Accra until the next day at the earliest. Another night in the hotel and another phone call to Takoradi - sorry, we shan't be arriving today, please to put the cake back in the frig. again.
He never did tell me what his thoughts were during this involuntary wait at the airport, but I imagine he must have been in much the same state of agitation and exasperation as I was.
Finally, at midday on October 15th, Saturday, our Hermes appeared in the distance, to the great relief of J.R. and the handful of other people anxiously waiting on the ground, and at 12.10 p.m. our wheels made contact with the tarmac for the last time. Deafened from the unrelenting aircraft noise and by now pretty nearly exhausted, we staggered towards the knot of people waiting for us, hoping that we had at last arrived at the right place. Because there was no way of knowing if this was Accra or Timbuktoo - no signs hanging out saying "Welcome to Accra!" - it was simply the fourth airfield, the fourth expanse of sun-baked earth and distant figures with dark faces.
However, all was well. I spotted J.R. immediately by his height and fair hair, and Bunty gave me a sharp dig in the ribs, bellowing in my ear, "There's Maurice!" Michael streaked off to meet his father and there was no mistaking who he was, they were so much alike, both dark haired, dark eyed, tall and slim. It all seemed like a miracle to me, that we had come all this way with so many delays and had at last arrived at the right place. The relief was so great that at this point I began to lose touch with reality.
We were steered through customs and immigration and then Bunty, Maurice and Michael were whisked away in a car to go straight on to the mine. Before I could get my breath back, I found my arm grabbed by J.R. and I was also led to a car. He didn't waste any time on saying how pleased he was to see me, or to ask what kind of a trip I had had, although one look at my disheveled appearance must have given him a good idea! All that came later, but at that moment he had other things on his mind.
"Come on!" he urged me, in anxious tones. "We have twenty minutes to get to the High Commissioner's Office for the ceremony. "Not a second to lose - they all shut up shop at 1 p.m. for the weekend!"
"But my wedding dress!" I squeaked. "It's in my case. I must get it out!"
"No time", was the response, thrown at me as he bundled me into the car. "If we don't get there in time, we shall have to wait until after the weekend to be married, and I'm due back at the mine at 9 a.m. Monday morning!"
I was not then aware of the white colonial African preoccupation with the weekend. In England everything might stop for tea, but in British West Africa (and East Africa, as I subsequently found out), everything stopped for the- weekend. From 1 p.m. Saturday until 9 a.m. Monday morning, nobody in Government offices did anything except enjoy themselves, which meant eating and drinking and playing golf, or getting down to the beach if you were near enough to one. And if you weren't near enough, most of the inland centres of white population had their own swimming pools and clubs, and there was a fair amount of social drinking done. I suppose one could argue that there wasn't a great deal else for them to do in a tropical country amongst a largely uneducated native people.
However, I was completely unaware of this as the car raced along the coast road towards the High Commissioner's office in Christiansborg Castle. I sat in the car, viewing in some dismay the little bunch of pink rosebuds, wrapped in brown paper, which J.R. had thrust at me, no doubt acquired with unheard-of difficulty and cost, (I was aware that English roses do not grow naturally in tropical West Africa), and reminded myself that in spite of the unlikely circumstances, this was my big day, my wedding day. It was not turning out to be anything like any wedding day I had previously imagined, but as it was the only one I was likely to get, I had better pull myself together and put a good face on things. I did what I could to improve on my shining red face and wispy hair, but could do nothing about the creases in the skirt of my biscuit coloured linen suit, chosen especially not to show the dirt on a long air trip, but in no way fit to double as wedding dress as well. My protests met with no response. My new white dress, unworn, remained in my suitcase and we arrived at the Castle on the edge of the sea with five minutes to spare.
I really only have a vague memory of the events of the rest of the day. Christiansborg Castle, which was also Government House, was a large white building situated on a rocky promontory almost on the beach, in a grove of palm trees. An idyllic situation, I thought, until I noticed the mildew climbing up the walls from the ever-present combination of heat and damp, both from the atmosphere and the proximity of the sea. The marriage ceremony was brief and I have a piece of paper to prove that it did take place, but by then I felt as if I was in a stupor and just went through the motions, saying what I had to say and signing what I had to sign. After it was over, I do remember feeling guiltily that we ought to send cables to our respective parents, but by then it was Saturday afternoon and all the post offices were closed, so there was no way we could do that until Monday morning.
We then continued in the car westwards along the coast for the 150 or so miles to Takoradi but I fell asleep almost immediately, being at last able to relax, and did not wake up until the car stopped at the Takoradi Rest House.
And what a welcome sight that was! I saw a long low building set amongst trees and shrubs, most of them bright with coloured blossoms. There were red and purple bougainvillea flowers, scarlet and apricot hibiscus hedges, flame-of-the-forest trees and the sweetly scented waxy-white flowers of the frangipani trees. Spreading out on either side of the main glass fronted central building were a dozen or so chalets, white painted and corrugated iron roofed, the whole enclosed in green lawns which led down a gentle slope to the sea. From where I stood I could see the sandy beach and a blue lagoon, with native fishing nets drying in the sun and palm trees growing right down to the water's edge. I fell in love with it all right away. I know I was seeing it through rose coloured glasses, being newly married and without a care in the world, but each time I visited the Rest House on subsequent occasions I always thought what a beautiful location it had and what an ideal spot it was to spend a holiday.
We were taken to one of the chalets, which was to be ours for the night. The interior was an agreeable surprise to me as I had been half expecting a mud hut with a straw roof.
But no, here were all mod. cons. We had a sitting room and a bedroom, a perfectly adequate bathroom with a bath and hot and cold running water, electricity, and comfortable rattan furniture. The twin beds in the bedroom had their own mosquito nets draped above them, ready to be let down to enclose the beds at dusk when the ever present mosquitoes started to bite. All the time I lived in both West and East Africa I had similar accommodation - never had to rough it. In fact, in lots of ways we lived more comfortably there than we did in England and I longed now to be able to sit down and write home, telling everyone how wrong they were to think I would be living in a tent, or up a tree, and how lucky I considered myself to be out here in the sunshine and warmth, far from rationing and make-do-and-mend.
After a bath and a change of clothing (at last!), we made our way to the restaurant in the main building for dinner. The tropical dusk was upon us and the air was full of the noise of crickets chirping happily away, something I was to grow accustomed to in all parts of Africa. There were several mine employees and their wives in the building, on short leaves, and word had gone around that we were arriving - two days late. They all crowded round with their congratulations and I started to enjoy myself. Someone produced some champagne and this, on an empty stomach, went straight to my head, so that the trials and tribulations of the' past three days completely disappeared. We ate and drank and everyone was merry, and finally the wedding cake was brought out of the refrigerator for the third and last time. It had suffered somewhat from its own trials, particularly the changes in temperature, and it now rather resembled a snowman, which had been left out in the sun. But this rather added to the general joviality, and the cake, which did taste extremely good, was quickly demolished.
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