Nieuw Holland

Dhr. Th. Strauss schreef ons het volgende:

Ik ontving een nieuw boek genaamd: “Train to Nowhere”, geschreven door Anita Leslie. Anita Leslie is een zeer bekende Britse schrijfster die o.a. biografieën schreef over Randolph Churchill en Sir Francis Chichester.
Train to Nowhere kan ik iedereen aanraden; het gaat over haar onwaarschijnlijke avonturen gedurende de tweede Wereldoorlog. Maar zij verteld ook (kort) over haar reis op de Nieuw Holland van Durban naar Egypte in 1941.
Bovendien staat er een afdruk in het boek van een kort briefje van de kapitein;
Welke kapitein was dat?

CAPE TO CAIRO

no one in Ireland would ever throw a Stone at a girl and then run away fast to hide in a side street. The last I heard of our local IRA leader was that he had been arrested after two days’ violent intoxication, to celebrate his daughter winning a George Cross in the bombing of Coventry. The South African women with whom we shared barracks were a charming, friendly lot. One of them said to me, laughing, “We won’t write anymore petitions against you, but it would have been too much if you had gone north to drive our soldiers when we are all kept here” Later on, when I saw South African wounded lying in forward casualty clearing-stations unwashed and unattended I thought of their women, who would gladly have risked their lives to be here helping.
In February, orders came that our unit was to proceed to Crete or Egypt. We trained to Durban and set sail immediately. Our ship, the Nieuw Holland, loaded up with Cape Town Highlanders, stalwart South Africans surprisingly dressed in kilts. There weren no poets, Irish or French, on this ship, and only the Dutch captain wrote a verse “ To the brave girls of MTC”. With the Highland band playing we steamed out of Durban past a troopship packed with cheering Australians. The heat increased as we passed the windless shores of East Africa and Madagascar. I knew nothing about Madagascar except that before the war, on the Atlantic, the famous American financier, Bernard Baruch, had said to me, “ I’m going to chuck this turbulent world and settle in Madagascar. I’ve heard you get two fish for one cent there and two women for one fish”.
We sailed due north through the flat, indigo-blue Indian ocean, till the Southern Cross disappeared in the night skies behind us. Two weeks of unbearable heat brought us to the Red Sea.
We had lectures each day on the vile diseases we might catch. Swahili was

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Gevonden

Alhoewel er via de website geen reactie was binnen gekomen, heeft de redactie van de RIL-Post , op aanraden van dhr. H. Slettenaar , contact opgenomen met dhr. Ronald de Mes.
Dhr. de Mes schreef toen:

“Ik ben archivaris van de Vereniging van Oud Employees van de KPM en heb wat ranglijsten/anciënniteitslijsten vanaf 1939. Gezagvoerder Verstelle, Kalishoek en Noorderbos hebben toentertijd op de Nieuw Holland gevaren. Ik herken echter geen duidelijke naam in de handtekening, maar mijn vrouw heeft de oplossing gevonden… het is P.M. Verstelle. Gelet op de punten tussen de voorletters, dan volgt de rest vanzelf“