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I spent the next few days in tidying up the paperwork and loose ends of our evacuation from Addis. I had to find a home for all the stuff we had brought back and generally sort myself out after being away from a civilised climate and people for over a year. On 22 March in the afternoon I got into a plush 1st class compartment of the train in Nairobi bound for 10 days leave in Malindi. Although only having a narrow gauge track, around about one metre, the carriages were quite as wide as our own in the UK. They were also extremely comfortable particularly the bunk which was more like a bed.
The train arrived in Mombassa soon after breakfast the next morning and during the daylight hours of the trip I saw game of every description, particularly on the Sarengetti Plain. I joined two other officers who were also going to Malindi on leave, so we borrowed a 15 cwt from a local unit in Mombassa and set off. As far as I remember the journey only took a few hours that included being ferried across a river on a pontoon hauled on a chain by a couple of Africans.
I remember Malindi as a long curved bay, probably a mile long, with palm trees growing right up to the edge of the sandy beach. There was a reef about half a mile out to sea and a small cluster of ten or a dozen small buildings at the far end, nothing else. In all other respects it was like the beach of a Robinson Crusoe island. I believe that today, in 1996, it resembles a cross between Nice and Monte Carlo. The group of buildings was "the hotel". It consisted of a very spacious bungalow with a veranda all round it and was the private house of mine host, an eccentric retired sea captain from Tyneside.
He permitted his guests to use one room as a restaurant cum lounge. Other than a guest's bathroom the rest of the house was out of bounds. Sleeping quarters for the guests, when there were any, consisted of half a dozen small banana leaf huts built on the sand just a few yards up from the sea. We were the only three staying there at the time. Each hut had a concrete floor into which poles had been cemented to support a leather thronged bed. There was a small table with a wash-basin on it and other than a mosquito net hung over the bed, that was it. For a "hotel" it was all pretty primitive. However it was absolutely marvellous to be able to wake up, disentangle oneself from the mosquito net, roll out of bed, take two or three strides down the sand and into dive into the sea. After the last 18 months it was Heaven.
The reef offshore was just within my swimming ability distance and contained a lagoon-like expanse of water about the size of a couple of football pitches. I borrowed a pair of goggles from mine host and was able to see there fish of all colours, size and shape. On one occasion I was swimming below the surface, went round a pinnacle of rock and came face to face with a king fish. With the magnification effect of the goggles it looked like a shark and I shot up to the top at great speed.
On another day I did come face to face with a shark. The Captain had a nice little international dinghy for his own use. It was identical to the one that Dick Crossley tried to teach me to sail in Rye harbour when I was at school. I said that I would like to borrow his dinghy to go out beyond the reef and spin for king fish. A bit reluctantly he agreed to do so but only if I took his Arab boatman to sail her. He wasn't too bad really I suppose, because he also lent me his own sea rod, line, spinners etc..
We had a great sail, the Arab was a cheerful soul who told me that he knew just where to go for king fish. On the way we saw several large turtles swimming by and towards the end of the day I had caught three or four quite decent size king fish. The smallest weighed about ten pounds. Just as I was about to pack up I had an almighty bite that nearly took the rod out of my hands. The Arab in the stern got highly excited and managed to haul down the sail. After about half an hour playing the fish I managed to get it to the side of the boat where my Arab clobbered it between the eyes with a wooden club he had under the thwart. When we finally got it inboard it flapped a lot and was only about three feet shorter than the boat. It was of course a shark just over ten feet long.
It was a great leave and just to put a little cream on the gingerbread, when I got back to Nairobi I found that I had been gazetted T/Major and W/S Captain with effect from the 1st April. By the middle of that month everything in Nairobi became very laid back now that the whole campaign 'up north' had ended. My original boss out here when I first arrived, Lt. Col. Stringer was now promoted to ADOS (E). He and the overall RAOC chief, DDOS East Africa Command, Col. Gaisford together with their wives, went off on safari. They left me holding the Ordnance 'baby' as acting unpaid ADOS(E) which was quite fun.
I spent the next three months in and around Nairobi with a short spell in Mariakani doing something or other. In Nairobi I was not worked too hard in Command HQ although much of it was pretty boring paperwork. Luckily there was quite a reasonable golf course a few miles out towards Nyri where I spent several very enjoyable days. One always used two caddies, one to carry the bag and a fore caddie to find the ball in the rough - and to give it a good lie with his toes!
About this time a South African was appointed DDOS(E). He was a very good type, Col. Arthur Coy. He and his brother were the owners of what I believe was the largest distributors in Cape Town of one of the well known makes of cars. He and I got on well together as we seemed to think the same way. He was a very keen and talented cricketer and during this period I frequently played cricket for or against one of the sides he was always arranging. We played on a ground at the Mithaga Club that was typical of one of the smaller English county grounds. It was not unlike Worthing where we were mobilised before going to France. The Mithaga Club was the focus of the affluent Europeans and run like a London club except that ladies were also permitted entry! Some time during the 1950's before all the turmoil of apartheid blew up, Arthur Coy came over to the UK as manager of the South African Test Team. Although I tried to see him on several occasions while he was over, we never quite made it for one reason or other. However I did manage to have a long telephone conversation with him from my office while he was at Lords.
Quickly scanning back I have become very aware that in following, rather blindly, the movements record of my diary I have not done full justice the incredible amount and diversity of wild game that I saw during my period in the bush. On television today in 1996, there is so much fantastic photography of wild life in Africa, but almost all of it taken in Game Reserves. Everything looks too tame to be true. What I saw was always very much ‘in the wild’. As well as the game, there were ticks bigger than damsons, flying beetles as large as bats and grasshoppers that looked more like sparrows when they flew. I remember once driving through a swarm of locusts that must have been several miles long and just as wide. It was like the thick London winter fogs of long ago. They had to be shoveled off the windscreen, the wipers couldn’t cope.

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