I got into the Colonial Service in 1932 and was sent up to Cambridge by the
Government on the Colonial Service course for a fourth year to study those subjects
which it was considered would help us to run the Empire. I went out to Freetown by
Elder Dempster ship in 1933 and was met in Freetown by my brother who had been
seconded from his Regiment, the Inniskilling Fusiliers, to whom I had been attached
in the Supplementary Reserve for the four years I had been up at Cambridge. He had
been seconded to the West African Frontier Force and it was good to meet one of my
own family on first setting foot on foreign soil.
I was sent up country as an Asst. District Commissioner, on probation, to Makeni
under the District Commissioner, Humpherson. He soon went out on trek and left me
in charge of the Station H.Q. with an African Staff of three literate clerks to keep
records and interpret if necessary and about 35 Court Messengers. These were all
ex-soldiers of the R.W.A.F.F. of exemplary character with military ranks from
Private to Sergeant Major, a very much respected force throughout the country who
wore distinctive uniform and were the maid-of-all-work for the D.C.
A much decomposed body was brought into the District Office by a messenger from
a Paramount Chief and I was required to ascertain the cause of death. I sent the body
down to the Medical Officer who reported that he thought that the body had died as a
result of being mauled by a leopard. I held an enquiry such as I was able and brought in
a verdict that the body had died as a result of being mauled by a leopard. I was quite
ignorant of African ways of thought but I sensed from murmurings amongst the Court
Messengers that my verdict was incorrect, though of course they were too polite to
make an open objection.
You see, from the African standpoint there were three ways in which that body
could have met its end. One was being mauled by a leopard; the second was by murder,
for there was a Leopard Society in which malefactors combined and took binding
oaths of secrecy, covered their bodies with leopard skins and tied on to the hands and
feet iron claws made by local blacksmith, then lay in wait for their chosen victim,
pounced on him and clawed him to death. Then the Africans thought there was a third
way, by which a man could put his spirit into that of a leopard which would then be
conducted to attack his chosen victim, and thus though the leopard had actually killed
the person, the guilty party was he who had put his spirit into the leopard. In African
eyes this was murder. In this case I gathered that the Court Messengers thought that
number three of the alternatives was the correct one which we know is impossible and
thus I gained the first insight into the African mind, about which, as time went on I
began to learn a little more.
Then during my first tour I was asked to play tennis for Sierra Leone against
Nigeria. I am afraid that in those days no Africans played, so six of us Europeans
sailed down to Lagos and we, a tiny country, beat mighty Nigeria which was very
gratifying.
Later still in my first tour I was transferred to Port Loko as Asst. D.C. to the D.C.
who was "Baby" Taylor. There was no proper house for the Asst. D.C. in the H.Q.
station, so my permanent house was just a Rest House as it would be on trek. The
government decided that there should be a permanent house for the Asst. D.C. and
allotted 60 pounds for its construction. Even in those days of cheap labour and material, 60
pounds was very little. I chose the site and in the evenings I cut down the bush on this site to
clear the area. As I was cutting down a tree with a great axe I felt a piercing stab in my
head, and as I looked up a green snake fell from the tree on to my shoulder and on to
the ground. I realised that this snake had bitten me, but I had no idea of the variety. I
went to Baby Taylor and told him, but he was writing a report and I remember him
saying, "Are you sure it wasn't a mosquito?" So I went back to my Rest House and told
my boys. "Oh, Massa, that is a very bad snake, you must have some native medicine." I
had been warned against native medicine but I recalled my tuition on the Colonial
Service course up at Cambridge in Tropical Hygiene. We were taught that when bitten
by a snake you should rub pot permanganate into the area after having cut open the
part bitten. I did not feel very much like doing that on my head.
But the other instruction was to apply a tourniquet at a point nearer to the heart.
This would mean putting a strangle hold round my neck, and I didn't think that was
much good. The final remedy was to drink some spirits, so I asked my boy, or rather
intimated to him, to bring me some whisky. I put this in my mouth, but I was quite
unable to swallow. The liquid just came down my nose. I could not talk for I was
unable to articulate. My eyes remained closed for there were no muscles able to lift my
eye lids. I could not even get rid of my saliva. I was completely paralysed from the neck
up. My head swelled right up and as I pressed my finger into it left a great hole,
showing it to be oedemetous. Baby Taylor did come along finally and saw me in this
poor shape and he sent off to the nearest doctor which was at Makeni, 80 miles away.
He came the following evening, when the effects of the venom of the green mamba, as
the snake turned out to be, had begun to wear off. He gave me an anti-venom injection,
for what it was worth at that late hour, but he said that I really was lucky at being bitten
on the ear, for the venom had to go through my thick hair, which must have absorbed
some and then the blood vessels in the scalp are very small and so comparatively little
of the venom got into my system at a time and the body defence mechanism was able to
deal with it. He said that if I had been bitten in the arm or leg I would surely have been a
goner!
Owing to the white corpuscles which are the body's mechanism for fighting infection
having been excessively over-produced by the lymphatic gland I got quite sick and was
sent home after a year instead of 18 months which was the normal tour. I also got a lot
of malaria. However I got perfectly well on leave and came back for my second tour
when I acted for a spell as A.D.C. to the Governor. I was then sent up country and in
spite of being only an Asst. D.C. I acted asaD.C. thereafter and became a substantive
D.C. after six years.
There were a number of things that happened to one, but I shall tell of two of them
which occurred before the War. I was acting as D.C. to Nkolili District and was out on
trek. I had fetched up at a Rest House and the Doctor from my H.Q., Bill Quin,
happened to arrive at this same Rest House, he also being out on trek, a coincidence
which never occurred again. After having supper together we went to bed and in the
middle of the night I was awakened by a messesnger from a Paramount Chief to come
to his town immediately as a European had killed one of his subjects. If a dead body
was concerned I thought that this was right up the doctor's street, so I asked my boys to
waken the doctor so that he could accompany me to the scene of the shooting. There
was a man called Opey, an engineer from a Mining Company whom the Chief said had
shot the African, so I asked him about it. He said that all he had been doing the
previous evening was to shoot at tins which he had chucked in the river which was the
Sewa, a very big river, and as the swift-flowing stream carried the tins down he shot at
them to practise his accuracy. He had a .22 rifle.
The dead body of a young African was laid out on the verandah of a house, so I
asked Bill Quin if he could find the bullet which had killed the boy and he set to work to
carve the body up. I was fascinated with the meticulous manner in which he did this,
and he could see where the bullet had gone through the heart. He then put his hand to
the back of the African and just under the skin he could feel the bullet. The bullet
matched the rifle which Opey had been using. Bill Quin was at that time working for
his F.R.C.S. and I wondered whether he purposely did his dissection in the front to get
some practice. The bullet matched Opey's .22 rifle, so it was clear how the African had
met his end. He had, the evening before, been lying up on the steep bank, in thick bush
which came right down to the river with a string tied on to his big toe, on the other end
of which was a baited hook. The African would lie up there, invisible to anyone on the
opposite bank and probably go to sleep until he felt a tug at his toe when he would
wake up and play the fish. The chances were millions to one against, but somehow one
of Opey's shots must have ricocheted off either a tin or the water itself and bored its
way through the bush into the African's heart. I had to hold an enquiry and it was clear
that there was no guilt on Opey's part, but a young African had been killed whose
dependants must be compensated. I decided that Opey, or his Company, should pay to
the African's family the sum of 20 pounds with which all agreed. That was in 1937.
Early in 1939 I was out on trek collecting tax and hearing complaints when I got an
urgent message from an iron ore mining company. Sierra Leone Development Co., to
come to their H.Q. at Lunsar near Marampa because 4,000 of their labourers had gone on strike and
things were looking very bad. I left all the tax, several thousand pounds, for the clerk
to get back to my H.Q., Port Loko, and with 4 Court Messengers set off to walk to the
nearest motor road, 10 miles away, to get a lorry and then drive on the 40 miles to Lunsar. As I approached the mine I saw a large band of Africans, all armed with sticks
and looking bellicose. I then noticed that they had felled the palm trees on the side of
the road, thus preventing any vehicles getting up to the mine. The D.C. always wore a
blue band round his topi, and the Africans knew that he was impartial and when I got
out of the lorry and they saw this they became more friendly. I asked them to pull the
palm trees off the road so that we could get up to the mine, and this they did. There
were 40 Europeans up at the mine and the Manager said that the Company would not
parley under duress and if they would go back to work they might consider the increase
in pay the labourers were demanding. The Company wanted to give them more rice to
improve their diet and thus get more work out of them, but the labourers wanted more
money. Then I got a message from the Government in Freetown to the effect that I
must get the labourers back to work, for the iron ore which the company produced was
needed in England for armaments which were then being built up in preparation for
the War. I asked the Government to let me have 30 more Court Messengers from other
Districts, which they provided and each morning I used to hold a meeting on the
football field and asked the labourers to go back to work and then the company would
consider increasing their pay, with or without more rice. Each time they refused to go
back to work.
I had to do something so I asked the Army to let me have a platoon of troops to be
kept in reserve. Col. Woolner, the O.C. of the Battalion of R.W.A.F.F. came up and
said to me, "You know, Pat, if you call us in a soldier shoots to kill".
Oh Gosh, I thought, this is reminiscent of my namesake. Sir Michael O'Dwyer,
Governor of the Punjab and General Dyer before the First World War. I asked the
Court messengers to get as many labourers as they could on to the football field the
next morning and I would ask them finally to go back to work after which the
company would talk. I made the plan that if they continued to refuse, then each of the
34 Court Messengers should grab the labourer standing next to him and frog-march
him up the hill to the alluvial iron ore mine and set him to work. If this plan failed, and
there was chaos, then the R.W.A.F.F. troops, hidden out of sight in the adjoining bush
would be called in to keep order. Well, they would not go back to work, I gave the
signal, the Court Messengers frog-marched the adjacent African up the hill, put a
shovel in his hand which put the iron ore on to a conveyor belt, thence on to a railway
which went down through the country to the shore at Pepel and on to a ship bound to
England. All the other labourers seemed so stunned at seeing their colleagues going up
the hill and starting to work that they followed and the strike was over.
Later on in that same year, of course, the Second World War broke out. I was on the
Reserve of Officers and whilst out on trek again, collecting tax at the end of August, I
got an urgent command from the R.W.A.F.F. to rejoin the Battalion in Freetown.
Again I left the tax to the clerk and had to walk another 10 miles to get to the road and
a lorry to take me down to Freetown. I was in the R.W.A.F.F. for 14 months when the
Government commanded me to come out of the Army and take charge of a District.
And so I was locked there for the rest of the War, but my time in the Colonial Service
was abruptly terminated by an occurrance on October 21st 1945, the date of the Battle
of Trafalgar, on which I reckon I met my Waterloo. I had been transferred to a District
called Moyamba and a woman came into the District Officer there complaing that her
daughter had been murdered by a Secret Society, the object of which was to kill a
young girl, cut the heart out, and smear their bodies with the fat around the heart after
which they would be impregnable to man. That was the legend.
I sent Court Messengers out to try and get some evidence, but none was
forthcoming. On my next trek I would include this place where the woman lived,
Shenge, and amongst other things look into this complaint. Now Shenge was a very
pleasant spot, on the Coast with the Rest House high up on the cliff looking out into the Atlantic. I was very keen on fishing and the attraction of Shenge was the tarpon
fishing which was to be had there. I remember arriving there by launch one Saturday
evening, and usually on trek one went into the native court to hear cases much as on
any other day of the week. But I thought I would spend this Sunday fishing so I sent for
Captain Huff, the head fisherman who had a large dug out canoe, and asked him if he
and two other fishermen would accompany me out to sea and I would fish for tarpon.
In the past I had hooked many tarpon but never landed one. They take the bait very
lightly and then jump high in the air and usually manage to spit the hook out but on
this occasion when I hooked one and the fish jumped three times high in the air still the
hook remained in its mouth. The top and bottom of their mouths are very hard and a
hook will not penetrate but it is soft at the side and if the hook gets lodged there it will
stick. The energy needed to hurl that great weight out of the water is terrific, so it will
only jump three times, such a sight with its tough silvery scales shining in the bright
sun! But then it will rush through the water with the reel screeching out.
From one moment to the next I felt quite suddenly very ill. I had this great fish on
the end of the line but I could not hold the rod up with my left hand all I could do was
to put the butt under my right armpit and feebly work the reel with my right hand.
After half an hour the poor old fish was near to the canoe feeling dead as I was, and
Captain Huff, after trying fruitlessly to gaff the fish through its impenetrable scale,
finally got the gaff down its large mouth and pulled it into the canoe. Both the fish and
I lay at the bottom of this canoe quite flat out. We finally got ashore when the
Paramount Chief and the people came down to see that the D.C. had caught a tarpon,
the natives in those days not having the tackle to do so.
I felt really desperately ill but custom required that I stand around whilst the fish
was carved up and distributed to the chief. Court Messengers etc. The fish weighed
96 lbs. I finally got into the Rest House, the mud walls of which had been decorated by
the people with country cloths, and I lay down on my camp bed, feeling dead to the
world. It was a boiling hot sunny day but I felt desperately cold and I asked my boy to
pull all those country cloths off the walls and on top of me and one of my Court
Messengers went off to call the Doctor, two days march away in Molyamba. He,
Harold Tweedy and his wife Dorothy finally got to Shenge, but not before the
Sergeant of my patrol, Bindi Bekadu with four other Court Messengers behind him
stood at the door of the Rest House and announced to me, lying prostrate on my camp
bed, "Please Sir, We know what is the matter with you. The head of that Secret Society
into which you are going to enquire about that child's death does not want you to 'talk'
that case. He has therefore put a 'swear' on you to prevent you doing so and there are
only two ways open to you. One is to give us enough money with which to bribe this
man to 'pull' the 'swear' and you will then get better, or give us permission to cut his
head off, for if he dies so will the 'swear' become ineffective.''
The doctor, Harold Tweedy then found that I had blackwater fever, sleeping
sickness, from the bite of the tsetse fly, and malaria, all together. He felt he must get
some help from Freetown so he sent a message to the D.M.S. there to send another
Doctor, John Busby and a European sister who arrived by launch. They thought that I
was going to die so for good measure John Busby gave me an injection of triparcimide.
This was specific against the sleeping sickness which normally requires a prolonged
course of treatment, but in a miraculous manner the blackwater fever seemed to
evaporate and the fevers subsided. I was very weak and yet I felt remarkably better and
in a week I was put in a hammock and taken down to the sea-shore and carried through
the water to a launch. The Paramount Chief and his Tribal Authority stood in the
water to bid me farewell and I remember leaning out of the hammock to shake the
chiefs hand and say to him that I would be back to talk that alleged murder case and
other things.
There was a journey of about 40 miles across the sea to Freetown. I was taken from
the landing up the hill to the European Nursing Home on Hill Station. It was evening
and as the sun went down over the sea as one looked westward I noticed the
phenomenon of the green flash, an optical illusion which one sometimes saw. In the
morning I was feeling all right but an orderly brought me some tea. It was dark. He
then came to shave me; it was still dark. I just thought they started early here. Then he
brought me some breakfast; it was still dark. I asked him the time. It was 8 a.m. when
the sun was well up and I could not see it. I had gone blind overnight. I was not allowed
to go back to Moyamba to pack up even where all my belongings accumulated over 13
years were, but my boys went back to do so.
I got back to England in January 1946 and started a new life as a Blind man at the
age of 36. I then trained as a Chartered Physiotherapist at the Physiotherapy School
run by the National Institute for the Blind. Having qualified in 1950 my wife. Bay, and
I came down to Eastbourne and started a private practice in physiotherapy. My eldest
daughter then in 1981 took over the practice and though married with two children
ran it under her maiden name, Mary O'Dwyer.
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