One of the greatest fighter pilots of World War 2 was a son of the Karoo. His story reads like a Shakespeare battle tragedy, replete with glory, loss and splendid isolation.
I’m sitting on a long stoep swirling Cremora into coffee, savouring the pre-dawn inky-blue blackness of the big sky, in the gritty nub of the Hard Man’s Karoo.
It’s a symphony of quiet but when you listen, really listen, you can break it up into little sound parts: there’s the percussive tonk-tonk of the wind pump on the farmstead, bottom-noted by the rustle of the early winter wind through the poplar trees on the nearby water course. A hidden lark on its morning breakfast run provides a high, sweet whistle solo. For the rest, silence rules.
Contrails in a clear Karoo sky
Here, literally in the middle of a stony nowhere, I see traces of jet planes in the sky, first a contrail streak then another one, and then a third. The Johannesburg-Cape Town air run is picking up. It’s blissful to be a distant bystander anchored in the Karoo, surrounded by bossies and rocks and little critters that lurk and hunt. And, of course, sheep. Never forget the sheep.
This, I reckon, is probably how the Karoo’s greatest aerial ace, its finest warrior-export, must have felt not that long ago as he sat right here drinking coffee, gazing up at the heavens which were once his battleground.
On the bench nearby lies a thick folder of cuttings, print-outs and general papers detailing, from all manner of sources, the life and times of one Khaki Hugo. Or, if you’re looking at him from a British standpoint, Dutch Hugo.
I am staying on Canariesfontein Guest Farm in the Carnarvon-Loxton area of the Northern Cape. This is where Petrus Hendrik Hugo, who went across “the pond” to Britain to fight for the Allies in World War 2 and became one of their top fighter pilots, spent the last period of his vivid, textured life.
A top fighter pilot
In an interview given many decades ago, he recalls:
“My first squadron was No. 615, AAF, and I stayed with them from 16 December 1939 to 26 November 1941. Winston Churchill was our Honorary Air Commodore and he came to see us at our base in France, Vitry-en-Artois, and later, regularly, at Kenley and Manston.
“Initially we flew Gloster Gladiators but in early May 1940 received Hurricanes.
“A great friend of mine, Bill Fowler, and ...