Perhaps her greatest achievement was an internal one: the overcoming of fear. Most people did not know how frightened she was. Ever since childhood she had been nervous and afraid, of the war, of the dark, of strangers, of failing, of being left alone, of public speaking, of violence, of the future. All the more amazing, then, were her acts of courage, especially during the ‘struggle’ years: facing the jeers and catcalls from passing cars as she stood holding an anti-war placard on Jan Smuts Avenue, being arrested in Pretoria for marching on the Union Buildings, venturing into conflict-ridden townships to help set up peace committees, or standing between threatening thugs and Desmond Tutu’s office door, refusing them entry. Then, having to watch family members go into harm’s way for the ‘cause’. About the risks Desmond Tutu was subjected to, she wrote, “I cannot save him but I can walk with him,” and what she believed to be right trumped even a mother’s fears. In later years when I sat listening to her speaking to a crowded roomful of people in strong, confident tones, I often wondered if they had any idea how much courage she had to summon to do it.
You don’t get to be like that without inner reinforcement. Cynics who dismiss faith as a mere crutch for dysfunctional people haven’t encountered the real thing. Authentic faith takes us on a journey in which we invite Jesus and his teaching to interrogate every part of our lives, seeking both the desire and resources for transformation. Lived faithfully, this journey enables deep inner overcoming in those places where we need to be different. It also makes life different by placing the turmoils of the moment into God’s ‘big picture’ perspective, replacing our fears with serenity. It lifts up changeless virtues to inform our actions, shaping us toward integrity. It reminds us that because our lives are already given, they are therefore impossible to lose, freeing us from fear.
All her life, Elizabeth was on this journey and that is why she populates each chapter of this book.
5
The Sea
I have sometimes thought that I only made one real sacrifice in my life, which I suppose is not true, but if there were others, they all seem to have flowed from the decision to end a naval career before it really began. My yearning to go to sea was born the first time I sat in a boat of any kind, around age five. It was small sailboat on Germiston’s Victoria Lake hundreds of miles from the ocean, but from then on I never doubted what I wanted. Further, of all the dramas during World War Two, the grinding attrition of the Battle of the Atlantic had most captured my imagination. I was awed by the grey ships of the Royal Navy, the men who sailed in them, and the six long years they had fought a hidden human enemy as well as the fury of nature itself. Unsurprisingly, there had grown in me a single-minded, uncomplicated intention to become a naval officer and spend my life at sea.
I blame God entirely for the frustration of this ambition.
I signed up in the South African Navy fresh out of school in 1956. As I boarded the bus for the 120-mile journey to the training base at Saldanha Bay, I was joining others who would spend a year at the Naval Gymnasium, young men from whom the Navy would select its next batch of officers and personnel. There were no women in those days, and certainly no black South Africans, but this was to be my first experience up close with Afrikaners. My initial encounter was a telling one in terms of the changing power dynamics in the military. Seated beside me in the bus was a pleasant young Afrikaner who, discovering that I was fairly well informed on matters naval, plied me with questions about life in the service. I was surprised that someone could sign up with so little knowledge of what he was getting into, yet a couple of days later this same person was kitted out as a commissioned officer and I found myself obliged to salute him. I was going to compete with 350 others to earn the Queen’s Commission, but he and some other Afrikaners on the bus that day were the first of the blitzoffisiers – ‘lightning officers’ – created overnight by the Nationalist government to dilute the solidly English-speaking character of the Navy and to infiltrate political support for the new regime. Seasoned officers with WWII records understandably resented these untested political appointees.
At the time, however, such issues hardly touched my life. Given my memories of 1948, I was relieved to find myself relatively at ease with my Afrikaner compatriots. Politics was taboo in the mess-decks, the English and Afrikaans languages were used on alternate days and we simply had no time to reflect on our cultural divides. Life at SAS Saldanha was both brutal and stimulating. We were knocked into shape by some leathery old salts who had seen decades of service in the Royal Navy and carried the scars to prove it. They were jealous custodians of naval tradition going back to the days of Nelson, and they knew how to deal with uppity recruits. Most feared were the GIs – Gunnery Instructors – who thought nothing of drilling us until we dropped. Rock ’n roll was bursting onto the music scene at the time, and our first acquaintance with its beat was not on a dance-floor, but through the PA system while polishing floors on our knees before sunrise. Morning PT was followed by parade drill and classes, and in the afternoons we practised rope-work, knots and splices, rowing and small-boat work, sailing the Navy’s traditional whalers and cutters across the bright waters of the bay. A 70ft, WWII launch challenged our skills at pilotage, picking up mooring buoys and coming alongside. We ate well and played hard in inter-divisional sports competitions and boat-pulling regattas. Our prize for surviving the first three months was a bumpy truck-ride south to a weekend shore-leave in Cape Town. The wild alcohol-fuelled drive back on the Sunday evening might have been the riskiest part of being in the Navy.
We all wanted real sea-time and I was fortunate to get some earlier than most. In April 1956 the frigate SAS Transvaal had a mishap on a replenishment mission to the South African weather station on Marion Island, deep in the Southern Ocean. Her motor boat had capsized while offloading stores through the notorious surf around the island and a Petty Officer drowned in the incident. She also had a number of men ashore at the time and was obliged to steam back the 1 200 nautical miles to pick up another boat and some temporary crew. I was excited to be among the dozen chosen, issued with a hammock and cold weather gear, and flown in an Air Force Dakota to Cape Town. Our first sight of the ship was depressing: she had battled home in the teeth of a 117mph gale and had taken a severe battering. Most of the gear on the upper deck had been swept away. There was no time to waste, the ship was still loaded with most of the stores needed at Marion, and as soon as essential repairs had been completed, we steamed out of Simon’s Town, heading for the Southern Ocean.
My first assignment at sea in a warship was less than romantic: the Petty Officers’ bathroom below decks was a tiled space lined with stainless steel washbasins, urinals and toilets. I was told that the ‘brightwork’ needed polishing, and the deck swabbed. I was also told to ‘look lively’ about it. Swabbing the deck required flooding the space with some sea water, then mopping it toward a single drain-hole – or ‘scupper’ – in the corner. This would have been simple if the entire space was not rising, falling and rolling from port to starboard and back in a gut-wrenching, corkscrew motion. Looking through the closed scuttles, I could see the grey mountains near Cape Point one moment and the next, nothing but green ocean sluicing past the glass. No sooner had I swabbed the water toward the scupper than it ran back at me, gurgling contemptuously at my efforts. My head began to spin and