Page 131 - KBHA BULLETIN 6

servicemen to go to the “Blue Moon Hotel” at Lakeside, which in those days was a popular

venue for young adults to go dancing. Another activity for them was playing tennis at the

“Majestic Hotel”.

Elizabeth joined the University Searchlight Unit for training in detection and they trained
at the Lower North Battery next to Main Road on the way into Simon's Town. They were

also taken to Froggy Pond where they wore tin helmets with their uniforms and were
trained to work on the range finders. The men stationed there used to delight in appearing

dressed as little as possible to try to shock them. The trainees would do physical jerks on

Seaforth Beach and afterwards swim to the flat rock some distance out. This proved too
much for Elizabeth who was not a strong swimmer and on one occasion she had to be

rescued from drowning.

They had night duties when they sat on the range finder to detect planes which had not

reported their presence in the area. On one occasion Elizabeth spotted one such and
decided to contact the control people who told her to sound the alarm. This she did with

some glee, waking up her sleeping colleagues and causing everyone to take up their
positions. It turned out to be a false alarm and a case of a pilot failing to report in. On

another occasion the group brought some fish for lunch at the camp and Elizabeth was

rather horrified at having to gut it before cooking it, not a normal experience for her!

The well-known Lucy Bean of S.A.W.A.S. fame would sometimes arrange special outings
for visiting officers and would enlist local young ladies to partner them to go to “Kelvin

Grove”, where a watchful eye was kept on them and partners chosen for them to dance
with. However, on one notable occasion, Elizabeth's cousin, Ruth Gurney, met a young

man (who was in fact her husband-to-be) in a Paul Jones (where partners are exchanged

each time the music stops). The couple got on well together and succeeded in disappearing
in the opposite direction to the chaperone in order to have more time together for this

wartime romance to be launched.

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