And from breakfast-time till late afternoon every street leading to Cape Town and to the great Supply and Ordnance Stores at Maitland and at Portswood Road was filled with grey and khaki carts and wagons roaring steadily along in golden dust. In the whole Peninsula the normal interests of life were for the time being completely side- tracked.
Being associated directly with the Commander-in-Chief and Headquarters, we were fortunate in having our camp on the finest piece of ground on the estate; our tents stretched down a strip of sloping sward, sheltered from the wind by the wonderful trees that luxuriate on the lower falls of Table Mountain; from one's tent entrance the eye was caught by a panorama sweeping a radius of twenty miles inland. I shall never forget those days when in the morning wind and sun I helped to make out requisitions for shirts and breeches and saddlery to the notes of wood music; nor those nights when we lay in our blankets on the grass, stars swinging above, the town-lights winking away below us. It is not often in life that one slips into dreamless slumber on soft grass, lullabied by the night-song of a south-wester in pine trees centuries old.
If we had our discipline and our work at Cape Town, we had our compensations, too. At that time khaki was completely the fashion there. On the long promenade down Adderley Street to the pier-head you could have counted a dozen men in khaki to one in mufti. It reminded one of the days of the South African War fifteen years ago. There was naturally a tendency to make much of the soldier-visitor. It did not spoil him, though. A more orderly lot could not have been found. And this with the people whose guests we were in indulgent mood, and the civic authorities throwing open to us every amusement at their disposal.
Though there was work ahead we were all sorry to leave Cape Town.
Brothers in Arms. The British Navy and Botha's Bodyguard fraternised aboard. Many of the latter are, of course, pure South African
Boxing aboard. En route to German South-West Africa