MISCELLANY

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29010, 26 September 1959, Page 3

MISCELLANY

Bush and Boma. By J. C. Cairns. John Murray. 178 pp.

These memoirs of a District Officer in Tanganyika are written with insight and humour. The author is a Canadian whose five-and-a-half-years service was spread between Kilwa, Mikindi and Dar-es-Salaam. His reactions to the natives who daily thronged the Boma, (District Office) varied between affection and exasperation, but he never lost interest in them. These Africans regarded the Government as their father and mother—to be obeyed when

necessary, but also to be cajoled, nagged or exploited into granting them parental favours. Being Mahommedans their own shortcomings could be conveniently fobbed off on the inscrutable workings of Fate, as for example, when a builder saw the work of three months collapse on the grossly insecure foundations on which he had built it his only comment was, “I forgot to have the poles put deep in the ground . . .it was the Will of God.” The author’s duties included the distribution of food in remote bush villages during a famine, as well as a visit to a leper camp. Fear of witchcraft, to which even the educated clerks (who constitute the intelligentsia) are prone, is one of the main obstacles to progress, while the aim of selfgovernment, though a magic phrase, is savoured simply as a means to unlimited wealth for all, without the disconcerting problem arising of how that wealth can be achieved. Many delightful character-sketches illumine the book; some clever drawings by Beverley Cairns add to its charm.

He Flew By My Side. By Erwin Morzfeld. Macdonald. 336 pp.

This is a notable contribution to war literature. Written by a German airman who served in the grim theatre of operations he so graphically describes, it tells the story of a Luftwaffe unit in the closing years of the war, first in France, and later as torpedo-carrying aircraft directed against British shipping taking munitions to Russia. Rheinhard Torstege and Henner Hellmig typify respectively the dedicated, incorruptible patriot, and the light-hearted hedonist, taking his pleasures where he finds them, but basically heroic when faced with grim realities. They are united in a savage loathing of the political opportunists and their creatures who, in Hitler’s Germany, dominated the fate of the fighting man. The operations of this squadron in the terrible conditions of the Arctic winter make a sombre and unforgettable record of endurance in the months immediately preceding Nazi Germany’s collapse. Torstege and Hellmig continued to survive their suicidal assignments until the last day of the war when both fell victims to the deliberate treachery of their own compatriots. The numerous characters in this tragic chronicle are drawn with great skill, and there is no hint in it of self pity or of recriminations against Germany’s enemies • —save those to be found within the State. The translation by Mervyn Saville is fully adequate.

Sequel to Boldness. By Richard Pape. Odhams. 252 pp.

When the British bomber piloted by Richard Pape crashed in Cutch territory on its way back from a raid on Berlin in 1941 he and his navigator temporarily evaded capture with the help of

members of Resistance movement, who subsequently smuggled them Amsterdam. Her®, owing to the fact ihat enemy agents had infiltrated into the underground, they were picked up by the Germans and made prisoner. At the same time one of the key-men of the movement was arrested, and, having cracked under Nazi torture, revealed the names of his fellowconspirators. In this book the author relates the story of the fate which awaited those Dutch patriots. Many were shot (including the farmer and schoolmaster of the village of Hengelo who had first succoured the airmen after the crash) and others sent to concentration camps. While the author’s purpose in immortalising these courageous individuals is to be applauded, cliches, heroics and a floridly flamboyant style of writing which obscure acts of heroism are open to criticism. Mr Pape’s resolve to wreak vengeance on the ttaitor who had betrayed his countrymen, and caused so much misery, by running him through with a swordstick is in the tradition of Lyceum melodrama; his subsequent decision to forgive the broken man marks a welcome return to commonsense. The book is overful of not very profound moral and metaphysical reflections, but Mr Pape must be given credit for his good intentions.

Oh The Monkeys Have No Tails. By Reese Wolfe. Gollancz. 159 pp.

At the age of 18, Reese Wolfe was imbued by a romantic desire to go to sea, and prove his manhood in the hard but exciting life suggested by Masefield’s “Sea Fever” and other nautical poems. His efforts to sign on a ship—any ship—in his native San Francisco were frustrated by his lack of discharge-papers, and he had ignominiously to accept his father's good offices in entering him on an ageing tramp steamer nominally as a member of the crew (though with his own sleeping quarters) at a token wage. This proviso was to gall him heavily when he found himself worked steadily all day at menial jobs under the sardonic direction of the grim and aloof captain. Nevertheless, despite his inevitable disillusionment and his halfformed decision to desert when he was given shore-leave at Manila, he continued in his unwilling bondage and by degrees formed a few friendships. In Java young Reese, determined to buy something tangible with money so laboriously earned in three months, acquired a small monkey, and for the remaining days of his service this creature was his pride and joy. Written in middle-age these reminiscences of youth are both touching and interesting. The author accords no great virtues to his younger self, but his record stands as an example of courage and an independent spirit of adventure. Night Of the Big Heat. By John Lymington. Hodder and Stoughton. 160 pp. A terrible, unnatural heat sweeps the Island, and as Bob Franker, the village toper, stumbles into Bob Callum’s pub yelling that he has seen giant spiders being decanted from a flying saucer, the statement provides some comic relief to the general depression caused by the weather conditions. The Stranger, Harsen, however, takes the matter seriously, and as the cosmic conditions worsen terror and tragedy succeed puzzlement and incredulity. The possibilities of invasion from another planet are seriously discussed. Space-fiction enthusiasts may find something to stimulate their imagination in the abracadabra of the scientific experts.