Warrior Shellhole March 2017
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WARRIOR SHELLHOLE 65TH ANNIVERSARY! A most enjoyable celebration, combined with the MMA 6th birthday. Brian and Virgil entertained us with fabulous music (although I don’t recall that Brian’s vocal chords got much exercise)…… Our thanks go to Old Bill Glen Clark, Deputy Phil McMahon, Friends of the Moth Viv Clark, Val Viljoen and the Mothwa for their hard work in preparing, cooking and selling great food! WARRIOR SHELLHOLE MARCH 2017 Our favourite Sergeant Major! The Chefs! Good times Our Pam Beautiful Val “She went that way”! Anyone know this person.............? Beautiful yummy grub! Ja well no fine Our Old Bill Viv ~ taking things seriously Kevin waxing lyrical Success!!!! And ……… he sang! Briefly! THE ALEXANDROV ENSEMBLE (OR THE RED ARMY CHOIR & ORCHESTRA) The Alexandrov Ensemble is an official army choir of the Russian armed forces. Founded during the Soviet era, the ensemble consists of a male choir, an orchestra, and a dance ensemble. The Ensemble has entertained audiences both in Russia and throughout the world, performing a range of music including folk tunes, hymns, operatic arias and popular music. The group's repertoire has included The Volga Boatmen's Song, Katyusha, Kalinka, and Ave Maria. It is named for its first director, Alexander Vasilyevich Alexandrov (1883–1946). Its formal name since 1998 has been Academic Ensemble of Song and Dance of the Russian Army named after A. V. Alexandrov. The Alexandrov Ensemble and the MVD Ensemble are the only groups with the right to claim the title "Red Army Choir". On 25 December 2016, the artistic director and 63 other members of the Ensemble were killed in the Russian Defence Ministry aircraft crash of a 1983 Tupolev Tu-154 into the Black Sea just after takeoff from the southern resort city of Sochi, Russia. The Red Army Choir singers and dancers were en route to Syria to entertain Russian troops there for New Year celebrations. The plane crashed with no survivors. Alexander Alexandrov SINKING OF THE SS MENDI 21st February was the 100th anniversary of the sinking of SS Mendi in World War 1. Mendi had sailed from Cape Town carrying 823 men of the 5th Battalion the South African Native Labour Corps to serve in France. She called at Lagos in Nigeria, where a naval gun was mounted on her stern. She next called at Plymouth and then headed up the English Channel toward Le Havre in northern France, escorted by the Acorn-class destroyer HMS Brisk. Mendi's complement was a mixture characteristic of many UK merchant ships at the time. Officers, stewards, cooks, signalers and gunners were British; firemen and other crew were West Africans, most of them from Sierra Leone. The South African Native Labour Corps men aboard her came from a range of social backgrounds, and from a number of different peoples spread over the South African provinces and neighboring territories. 287 were from Transvaal, 139 from the Eastern Cape, 87 from Natal, 27 from Northern Cape, 26 from the Orange Free State, 26 from Basutoland, eight from Bechuanaland (Botswana), 5 from Western Cape, 1 from Rhodesia and one from South West Africa. Most had never seen the sea before this voyage, and very few could swim. The officers and NCOs were white South Africans. At 5 am on 21 February 1917, in thick fog about 10 nautical miles (19 km) south of St. Catherine's Point on the Isle of Wight, the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company cargo ship Darro accidentally rammed Mendi's starboard quarter, breaching her forward hold. Darro was an 11,484 GRT ship, much larger than Mendi, sailing in ballast to Argentina to load meat. Darro survived the collision but Mendi sank, killing 616 South Africans (607 of them black troops) and 30 crew. Some men were killed outright in the collision; others were trapped below decks. Many others gathered on Mendi's deck as she listed and sank. Oral history records that the men met their fate with great dignity. An interpreter, Isaac Williams Wauchope, who had previously served as a Minister in the Congregational Native Church of Fort Beaufort and Blinkwater, is reported to have calmed the panicked men by raising his arms aloft and crying out in a loud voice: "Be quiet and calm, my countrymen. What is happening now is what you came to do...you are going to die, but that is what you came to do. Brothers, we are drilling the death drill. I, a Xhosa, say you are my brothers...Swazis, Pondos, Basotho...so let us die like brothers. We are the sons of Africa. Raise your war-cries, brothers, for though they made us leave our assegais in the kraal, our voices are left with our bodies." KOEVOET ~ At the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, is a wall of remembrance and a statue honouring the Koevoet dead. Sisingi “Stompie” Kamongo, the legendary Kavango tracker and co- author of the book Shadows in the Sand: A Koevoet Tracker’s Story of an Insurgency War, was involved in more than fifty fire fights with the enemy, survived five anti-personnel mine and POMZ explosions and experienced a direct hit by a RPG rocket in his Casspir APC vehicle. Wounded three times, he finally lost a leg. Sisingi “Stompie” Kamongo In his book, he tells of the trackers looking for “the shadow on the ground”, facing ambushes and landmines, and reveals some of the tricks of their trade - the art of tracking, “where dust can tell time”. When peace came in Namibia, the Koevoet trackers found themselves without a country. They were promised they would be taken into the new police force, but this never happened. Fearing for their lives in their motherland, they fled in droves in the late 90s, over the border into South Africa. They are still here – as is the case with the former Angolan soldiers of 32 Battalion and 31 Battalion (the Bushmen). They are living in a country hostile to them for their choices of the past, for siding with the “Boers.” Most of them work as security guards, and others are still being used as trackers, hunting down poachers on game farms. Since the disbandment of Koevoet, its members worked in every possible theatre of war in the world, where their expertise is today sought-after. Koevoet members have worked in conflict areas like Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, as well as in Bosnia, during the bloody conflict in the Balkan countries. Some of them also ride shotgun on cargo ships and oil tankers, offering protection against pirates. The founder commander of Koevoet, Lieutenant-General “Sterkhans” Dreyer and his trackers RECEIVED FROM PETER DICKENS – SA LEGION Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth, is Patron of The South African Legion. Congratulations on her Sapphire Jubilee, the only British monarch to achieve this. On this, the 65th anniversary of her ascent to the throne, she remains the only WW2 veteran to still currently serve as a head of state, and that alone, is enough to earn our gratitude. The photo shows the then Princess Elizabeth as a 2nd Subaltern (2nd Lt.) in the Auxilliary Territorial Service standing in front of an ambulance in April, 1945. During the war she served as an ambulance mechanic and driver. Queen Elizabeth II with her grandchildren .