Reconnaissance

In May that year, I s  tarted my stint with reconnaissance. In those days, all engineers had to get practical experience at surveying. We were two engineers – Mike Lief and I – sent to the survey camp at the Chelmsford site on the Ngagane River near Newcastle. Mike Basson, a very senior surveyor, was in charge of us and his team of surveyors and assistants. I had acquired a set of survey instruments: a tachometer and level, for which I received a subsidy. These were the days before aerial surveys became common. We had to survey the dam site and basin. The area was covered by beacons, the position of which was determined by trigonometric surveys from official trig beacons. At convenient intervals, steel pegs were placed from which the contour survey could be undertaken. Traverses by Tachometer were done, starting and ending at these known positions. Small closing errors were distributed by means of the method of least squares. Spot shots were taken from these pegs at regular intervals and at every change of slope. A team of some 10 assistants held Sopwith staves (survey staves graduated in feet and inches) which were read for distance and for horizontal and vertical angle with a tachometer. The readings were taken at such tempo that a learner-surveyor had to write down the figures. In my case, Hans “Botski” Botha, later chief of the survey division, was my booker. (I also remember one of the surveyors, called Abbring who, who was of Dutch decent. Also Vermaak en Danie Visser, both learners.) After a line of staves had been read, the assistants moved a few feet back and the exercise was repeated. The height of all instrument stations above sea level were later determined by running a traverses with the level instrument. The survey camp consisted of army tents and two caravans. Mike Basson and his wife occupied one and I, being the second oldest, had the privilege of sleeping in the other one. One morning we woke up surrounded by snow. No number of blankets managed to keep out the cold from underneath! A large tent served as mess and office. In the evenings and over week-ends, we were supposed to reduce the survey data with the aid of a Cox stadia computer, a rather tedious exercise. (This instrument is not to be confused with a computer! It consisted of a square piece of plastic on which was mounted a smaller round piece of plastic, both marked with figures. The round plastic could be turned to bring the required figures opposite each other – somewhat like a slide rule.) Calculations of co-ordinates were done by means of the 7 figure log-book of Baron von Vega, the only way large figures could be multiplied and divided when I was a student! At Chelmsford, we could use a Facit to multiply and divide such figures. When dividing, one had to turn the handle in reverse until a bell rang, after which one had to wind a turn back. Existing trigonometric survey beacons were used to survey a number of dam basin beacons by means of single second theodolites. I was instructed by Mike Basson to determine the position of these beacons, which were marked by red flags. To my consternation, I could not see these flags from the relatively large distance from the Trig survey beacons. I did not know that I am somewhat colour blind and struggle to see red against a green background! In desperation I asked Mike to lend me his binoculars, so that I could at least find where these flags were, but he refused. That was the end of my trigonometric survey career! The survey books, fully reduced, were later plotted by the staff of the drawing office and thus turned into contour maps. I remember Joe Burke and Eric Hunt from that office. At the time, I did not yet have a car, nor did the others in the camp, except Mike Lief, who had a Citroen, which he kept on blocks, supposedly to work on! The only time we had an opportunity to leave the camp and go to town was when the departmental lorry went to Newcastle to get supplies. Desperate to get out now and then, I asked Mike to use the official vehicle to go to church, which was refused! Needless to say what a joy it was to get my first car, thanks to a little money left to me by my mother, who died when I was a toddler: a brand new VW Beatle 1957, which my then fiancée collected in Germany while visiting her family in Belgium! After the Chelmsford task was finished, we were moved to a site on the Bushman’s river near Estcourt. I only stayed there for a short while before travelling to Stellenbosch to get married.

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