obviously bought it at the dock gates and now proceeded to throw the fruit up to whoever could catch it. That was the troops’ first experience of the sort of kindness everyone met in Durban as they passed through it. The people of that city and of the whole Natal Province were extreme anglophiles and seemed anxious to show to their less-keen Afrikaans citizens just how pro-British they were. It was difficult to buy yourself a cup of coffee or a meal in Durban if you were in British uniform.
I had a couple of days there, seeing the city sights and visiting the lovely beach where the sand was so hot that it was impossible to walk on it with bare feet. The temperature was in the 90s and the humidity high, for Durban, although about seven degrees south of the Tropic of Capricorn, is kept both warm and moist by the Indian Ocean which rolls on to its beaches, marvellously warm for bathing, but a favourite haunt of the shark. Two days of that and I was on the train heading north for my destination.
