You'd got your own quarters, army furniture, arm-chairs for the grown-ups, what they call saddle chairs and you'd got your beds, blankets and sheets, everything provided. When you pack up and you've got to go to another country to do service you leave your things behind, you mustn't take anything with you, and if anything was lost we'd got to pay for it.

They'd tell you, keep the children away from the huts, I mean their prisons, where the snakes are, keep them away from there...cobras, pythons, cor they are a size. They'd go under three houses together. You'd stand there and have a good laugh at them - one of the sergeants came along and says, 'You wouldn't laugh at them if they were loose.'

The only thing you'd find is, if a snake had got out you might find a dead body...but you could always tell because they'd been poisoned or else they'd get a tail end of a snake - they'd leave something from the snake.

The amusements they used to have, the boys, was to get a snake and dig a deep pit and put a snake in and a couple of scorpions and see them fight 'cos the snake can't get over...it'd get it's head up to make a bite. The troops liked that every evening, they never missed. All those who wanted to go for a long walk across the veldt and then they used

to come back again, 'Sit down before we have our supper,' they said, 'and we'll watch these.' Nice, gentle swearing, the sergeant major says, 'You'd better be careful, the flag's wife's over here. Tell the boys to keep their dirty news to themselves.' I've had a good many laughs out there.

The only thing we didn't agree with, say the Dutch and the blacks, if they'd done anything they were put in prison, an underground prison. They used to make them send them down, undo the gates, they had to...catch as many snakes as they can while it was daylight for the people who were working in and out so any of them won't get bitten by them. 

Underground, I don't know what they were after, whether they were looking for diamonds...I don't know...I wasn't interested enough to ask. If they robbed, burglaries...if you could catch hold of them they'd give them any...God's quantity of punishment for perhaps a trifle...silly little things. My husband said, if that had been our men they'd have thrashed them and let them go, but they don't do that out there, not what we call punishment. The Dutch would think no more of getting the blacks together and shoving them down in with the snakes. That's the difference with the two, the blacks wouldn't do that.

Thunderstorms and lightning - it's a picture. See the sky, it just seems as if it's going to come down on you, and when the thunder goes...talk about the army drums, that's how the thunder sounded there. 'Course it's all open plains.