Wasn’t that a wonderful expression of gratitude extended to members of Britain and the Commonwealth’s armed forces on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of VE Day recently. For four days British television programmes paid glorious tribute, with the appropriate pomp and ceremony only the Brits can do, to the men and women who paid the supreme sacrifice in World War 2.
The tributes of course also honoured the now profoundly aged and diminishing number of front-line servicemen and women still alive and those brave souls, mostly women I might add, who held the fort at home who also played an essential role during those turbulent years. From the King of England to the man in the street, all paid homage to those who defended their little island from the Nazi onslaught in those dark days of the war.
It brings to mind the poignant and solemn promise made in the poem by Laurence Binyon entitled For the Fallen, which includes the following lines.
“They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.”
I took a call from an older East Londoner last week who wanted to know whether anyone still remembers Durban’s famous war-time “Lady in White” Perla Siedle Gibson and her connection with the Border. She had asked around and no-one seemed to know anything about her.
Perfectly understandable. Not many people today would have even heard of Perla Siedle Gibson, as her fame is now wreathed in the mists of time. But older South Africans and particularly surviving members of the armed services of many nations who passed through Durban’s harbour will have fond recollections of the “Lady in White” as she was known. During the dark days of the war she gained world renown by singing troop transport and fighting ships in and out of Durban harbour on their way to various theatres of the conflict.
A former nurse at Durban’s Addington Hospital during those years, she clearly remembers seeing this wonderful woman on the quayside, megaphone in hand in fair weather or foul, singing words of comfort to the young men and women as they sailed to an unknown fate.
The Border connection? Not directly, but an interesting one nevertheless. In January of 1930, the Natal cricket team made one of its rare visits to Queenstown to play Border on the Recreation Ground. In the team was famed Springbok opening bat, Jack Siedle.
What I am about to reveal was told me by the great man himself. Just after he had been dismissed by Ken Muzzel (father of former Border cricketers Peter and Robbie), caught on the boundary for 44, he was in the process of taking off his pads in the dressing room when he was politely informed that he was wanted on the grandstand, where he met Lesley McPherson, a daughter of AK McPherson the proprietor and founder of the local newspaper, the Daily Representative. They were married the following year.
Jack died in August, 1982, a year after the couple celebrated their golden wedding anniversary. Leslie’s brother, Murray McPherson was a former editor of the Rep and also of the Daily Dispatch. Jack Siedle was Perla Siedle Gibson’s younger brother.
The “Lady in White” died in Durban in March, 1971 at the age of 82. The church in which her funeral was held was filled to overflowing and was attended by such dignitaries as the consul-generals of Britain and the US and of course, representatives of ex-servicemen’s organisations from all over the world.
The Royal Navy kindly asked the Durban city council to erect a cairn at the base of the North Pier at the harbour entrance into which a memorial plaque was inserted to perpetuate the memory of this remarkable woman.
