Off the Record
Shortly after Godfrey Huggins' return to Rhodesia he sent Edgar Whitehead a signal to say he had been invited to send a representative to a WO Conference on the post-war future of the African troops. He instructed Edgar to attend.
The chairman was the Adjutant-General. It soon appeared that the Conference's purpose was to discover whether, should India become independent, it would be possible to replace the Indian Army East of the Suez with African troops. For the first time Edgar fully appreciated Britain's debt to the Indian Army in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century for the availability of a large, cheap long-service army. Even before the war it would have been far too expensive in manpower and money to maintain Britain's position East of Suez with British troops alone. Someone in the WO had come up with the bright idea that a quarter of a million African troops in peace time might replace the Indian Army in such areas as Hong Kong, the Persian Gulf and the Suez Canal.
Edgar's own brief was limited to telling the Conference Rhodesia would be prepared to maintain one battalion of the Rhodesian African Rifles. He refrained from saying any more until the Brigadier seated next to him said, "Haven't we met before?"
Edgar regretted he could not remember.
He then said, "Now, I have it! You were at Achimota when I paid a visit in 1943." He then passed a note to the Adjutant-General.
The Adjutant-General read it and said, "Will the Acting High Commissioner for Southern Rhodesia be kind enough to forget his present appointment and become Colonel Whitehead of West Africa Command again for a few minutes to tell us his views on the West African troops future?"
On the strict understanding that nothing was recorded in the minutes, Edgar obliged.
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- Sir Edgar Whitehead's Unpublished Memoirs, Rhodes House, Bodleian Library, Oxford, by permission.
- Photo Credit: Released by Imperial War Museum on the IWM Non Commercial License. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_in_World_War_II#/media/File:Delhi_Victory_Week_Parade_IND5040.jpg
