Page 140 - Bulletin 13 2009

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When War broke out in 1939 there was a desperate shortage of pilots, planes and ground
staff in South Africa. Eddie signed up on 6 November 1940. His enlistment papers

described him as brown-haired and blue-eyed, 6 ft. tall, chest 44 ins., and weighing 220 lbs.
His pre-enlistment employment was stated as aircraft ground engineer. After two months at

the Central Airforce Training Depot he was attached to 61 Squadron at Grand Central Air

Station, Johannesburg, for the remainder of 1941. He was then posted to North Africa as
Flight-Sergeant for a two-year tour of duty. (Fig. 3.27). He arrived there on 27 December

1941 and was attached to the ground staff serving 40 Squadron, one of the best tactical
reconnaissance squadrons of the Desert War.

Like tens of thousands of others Eddie did his duty, and more. Whatever people said about

him later in life he was a brave man. He was captured at the fall of Tobruk, 21 June 1942,

but escaped eastwards to British lines, joining the withdrawal towards El Alamein.

Escape to a minefield
Flight-sergeant Eduard Ladan of Kalk Bay was with 40 Squadron, SAAF, at Tobruk
when it fell. He remembers: ‘Tobruk was supposed to be impregnable, but after it had been
flattened by Stukas and the remaining mine-fields blown up, the German tanks came
rumbling in by the score. A lot of people blame Klopper for surrendering but he had no
option. It would have been a massacre if he hadn’t.
‘The Germans came so quickly there was no time to get out. The next thing, a
German officer came up and said, just like in the movies: “For you the war is over. You are
now prisoners of the German Reich.” And that was it.’
Ladan was one of the many who escaped. He had been put to work clearing
wreckage in Tobruk harbour when a British bombing raid began. ‘The Germans dived for
cover. This was my chance. I jumped into a German truck with a couple of friends, jammed
a German steel helmet on my head and put my foot down.’
They were waved through a German check-point and headed for the desert, picking
up other stragglers as they went. After spending part of the night in the open they went on,
and eventually saw movement ahead. Someone was signaling them with a lamp. A shot
was fired over their heads but they kept moving, came to a halt among British troops, and
‘A major of the Green Howards came up and said. “You must have come on the wings of
Jesus – this is a minefield”’.

Joyce, P. (ed.) (1981) South Africa’s Yesterdays, Reader’s Digest, Cape Town. p. 311.