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My Mother - my friend.

She was born on the 18th December, 1905, although I did not know that until after she died. She had lied about having lost her birth certificate so that she could go "Up North" to nurse the South African soldiers who were wounded in the War, in 1940, when she was really 35, but the government rule was that she had to be younger than 30. The "duplicate" they gave her showed her date of birth as 18 December 1913, so that made her an acceptable 27 years old. You could do that back in 1940, when the world, although experiencing such a terrible war, was still technologically at least, an innocent place.

When I came to bury her, I discovered that she was 73, and not 65, back in 1979. But that is getting ahead of myself.

One of thirteen children, her father died when she was very young, and her mother raised them all to adulthood alone, on a SA Railway pension of $1.11.1d a month, and some help from the oldest three who went out to work. Mom was the fifth child, and very sickly. She only went to school at age 10, but soon caught up to her peers, and was so bright that her older brothers thought she would one day be a teacher. The poverty of the family was such, however, that after she had completed Standard Eight she left school, unbeknown to her family (packing day clothes in a bag and changing out of her school uniform at the railway station) and went to work for a German baker, who taught her to be an expert at delicate pastry making. She was soon caught out when she started adding her tiny salary to the family finances, however, and many years later my uncles still lamented to me the fact that she had not gone to college.

In her early twenties she met and became engaged to a man from England who worked on the Union Castle Lines steamships which sailed between Southampton, UK, and the Cape. I believe he was the one man she truly loved, but the engagement was ended after five years, leaving Mom with a carefully hoarded trousseau and a broken heart. She had many friends, among whom was the man who was to become my father, but he was simply one of a crowd of young people who used to spend weekends picnicking on the beach, or dancing at parties.

When War broke out in 1939, she and an older sister, both of whom were volunteer first-aiders with the St. John's Brigade, registered for a speeded-up nursing course. This led to the deception about birth certificates. While on a final course at Addington Hospital in Durban, she met up unexpectedly with my

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