Handsome Brute: The True Story of a Ladykiller

by O'Connor, Sean

  However, because of South Africa’s race policies, there was a restricted pool of eligible whites from which to form a volunteer army. Black, coloured and Asian South Africans were, on the whole, committed to the Allied cause. They appreciated the dangers of Nazism and were well aware that supporters of the German cause in South Africa – led by the political opposition – were also the most vociferous advocates of segregation. A number of support corps providing cooks, drivers, stretcher-bearers and labourers were formed of black, coloured and Asian South Africans in order to release whites for active combat. Despite their much larger numbers, non-white South Africans were not allowed to fight because, in the convoluted logic of the prevailing ideology, they were not allowed to take arms against Europeans. At the end of the war 20,000 South Africans – of all races and creeds – celebrated a ‘People’s Day of Victory’ in Johannesburg. At the same time, the government published cash and clothing allowances for discharged servicemen. Whites received £5 in cash and a £25 clothing allowance. Blacks were given £2 and a khaki suit.3

  One of South Africa’s greatest resources was labour. Before the war, industry in the Union was focused on the mining of diamonds and gold. In 1939 there was only one munitions factory in the entire Union. But within months of joining the Allies, South Africa converted much of her manufacturing power to wartime production, making shells, mortars, guns and a huge variety of equipment, including 32,000 armoured vehicles, 12 million pairs of boots, 5.5 million blankets and 2,435 million cigarettes. As a consequence, the number of South Africans in manufacturing, many of them women, rose by 60 per cent. Urbanization increased with great rapidity and by the end of the war many towns had doubled in size. In 1946, for the first time, there were more black Africans living in South Africa’s towns than whites. Many settled in makeshift communities outside the major cities and though they had provided the essential workforce demanded by the war effort, this contradicted the segregationist principle that blacks should not become permanent urban residents. This legacy of the war was to play a direct part in the initiation of apartheid under the re-elected National Party in 1948.

  In 1939, daily life in the Cape was barely affected by what seemed a distant European War. But shortages and restrictions did begin to appear in 1942 and towards the end of the war there were meatless days, a national loaf was introduced and petrol rationed, but the shortage of food and basic commodities was insignificant compared to the deprivations in Britain. Luxury goods like pins, toilet paper and cosmetics were frequently hard to come by – women finding lipstick frustratingly scarce. But the shortage most painful to many men was whisky. This was still being imported, but many freight ships had been torpedoed, driving up the price of remaining supplies. Before the war, branded whisky had been sold at a controlled price of 14s. a bottle (equivalent to £24 in today’s money). After a black market for spirits developed, a bottle of whisky could cost anything up to £5 (£172 today).4 Except for certain regions in the Cape, South Africa had always been a whisky-drinking country. Wine appeared only on formal occasions and it was common to drink several whiskies before dinner. A strange piece of legislation was introduced just before Christmas 1940, in order to curb excessive drinking amongst servicemen. This forbade anybody from buying a drink for anybody else in public. This ill-considered directive became known as the ‘no-treating law’. Barmen, however, were quick to point out that it was impossible to enforce and the law soon fell into disuse.5

  On 7 December 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, forcing America into the war. Two days later, South Africa declared war on Japan and immediately her long coastline and harbours felt vulnerable to attack. At the time, South Africa had only eight anti-aircraft guns and six searchlights throughout the entire Union. The Union Defence Force itself consisted of just 334,000 troops. In contrast, the Japanese had 1.4 million troops and 2,400 aircraft supported by a navy with 350,000 personnel. Like the south coast of England, attempts were swiftly made to fortify coastal areas from German and Japanese attack and to protect the Cape Route, the Allies’ lifeline. Durban’s south beach was cut off with barbed-wire fences, submarine nets were spanned across the harbour entrance and armed sentries patrolled the harbour gates.

  Having jumped ship, Heath was now an illegal alien in a foreign country with few prospects and no money. But, ever resourceful, he posed as a Captain Selway of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, awarding himself the Military Cross, one of the highest decorations for exemplary gallantry. As Captain Selway he procured £85 from Barclays Bank in Durban. Leaving the city, he went on to stay at a series of hotels in Maritzburg and Johannesburg – under different names – always moving on without paying the bill. From Johannesburg, he next travelled the thirty-five miles to Pretoria to the air base at Voortrekkerhoogte. On 22 December, he volunteered for the South African Air Force (SAAF).

  Unlike the RAF, the SAAF had been little prepared for the outbreak of war with only 160 permanent officers and 1,400 ranks in 1939. Despite this, the Air Ministry would not recruit black or coloured volunteers. A concerted effort was made to dramatically increase training for the RAF, SAAF and other Allied flight services with the Joint Air Training Scheme (JATS). By 1941, there were thirty-eight Air Schools throughout South Africa and the SAAF had grown to a strength of 31,204 aircrew including 956 pilots.

  Heath joined the SAAF as James Robert Cadogan Armstrong. The ‘Cadogan’ related him by implication to one of the wealthiest aristocratic families in Britain who were known for owning much of Chelsea. On his application form, he embellished his history with half-truths, fantasies and lies. Though he claimed he was born in Cape Town, he wrote that his family home was in England – Melton Hall, in Woodbridge, Suffolk – hence his English accent. Even in deceit, vestiges of Heath’s real biography remained, ‘Melton Hall’ being a corruption of Merton Hall Road, the rather more modest home of his parents in Wimbledon. Woodbridge is indeed in Suffolk – the closest village to Hollesley Bay, the borstal colony that Heath had joined in 1938.6

  Heath stated that he had been educated at Harrow and Trinity College Cambridge and that he had joined the Officers’ Training Corps in both. He also claimed to have resigned his commission in the RAF in 1937 – lying again about his dismissal – and that he was a journalist by profession. He may have suggested that he had been a war correspondent and that this accounted for the fact that he had not joined the services before, given his useful training with the RAF. In all official documents relating to his identity as Armstrong throughout his time in South Africa, Heath gave his date of birth as 6 June 1915, adding another couple of years to his real age.7 This confusion might have been a simple ruse to cover his tracks if ever his record in the Middle East came to light. His application to the SAAF successful, he joined No. 62 Air School at Bloemfontein.

  Bloemfontein, 254 miles from Johannesburg, was capital of the Orange Free State. Not a large city, its ground plan was based on the American rectilinear pattern – miles of streets in ordered parallel lines with distinguished public buildings of brick and local sandstone grouped around the central Hoffman Square.8 It was a staid, sober town with a strong civic sense of order – a perfect setting for Heath to re-invent himself. From this point, both his career and his personal life improved with extraordinary speed. Within eight weeks of landing in South Africa he had met and married a very eligible young woman from one of Johannesburg’s most respected families.

  Twenty-two-year-old Elizabeth Hardcastle Rivers was the daughter of Charles and Aileen Rivers of Epping Road, Forest Town, a fashionable and leafy suburb in northern Johannesburg. Elizabeth was an attractive girl with ‘sloe eyes and chestnut hair’ coiffured in the Elizabethan style that was popular at the time. She had been educated in England at Roedean, the exclusive girls’ school on the south coast and, like Heath, was very sporty – enjoying hockey, golf and skiing, which she had learned at a finishing school in Switzerland. She had come out as a debutante at one of the last pre-war Spring Balls and was very much par
t of Johannesburg’s social elite.

  Johannesburg in the 1940s was a city of opportunity. Only in existence since 1886 – when it had no buildings, only tents and a population of just fifteen – within sixty years it had transformed into a brash, modern metropolis of skyscrapers and neon. The reason for its vast and swift expansion was the discovery of gold. At the end of every street were golden pyramids, shining in the sunlight – dumps from the neighbouring goldmines. In a hastily built modern city of undistinguished architecture, the travel writer H. V. Morton felt that these goldmine dumps were ‘what St Paul’s is to London . . . a symbol of the city, its true coat of arms’.9 Outside the city centre, what was once an arid, treeless veld was now covered with trees and houses built in a variety of styles – Spanish Colonial, Cape, Dutch and Tudor – which gave a Californian brilliance to suburbs like Forest Town. The surrounding gardens were full of flowering shrubs, pergolas, swimming pools and black servants moving noiselessly in spotless white uniforms. For Heath, Johannesburg offered an extraordinary opportunity to start a new life, with a new identity on a new continent; a golden lad in a golden land.

  Heath wooed and seduced Elizabeth Rivers, but her parents disapproved of the match.10 The couple had only just met and, besides, they knew hardly anything about him. But Heath, by now, was extremely confident of his charms with women. Elizabeth had fallen for him ‘desperately’ – for her, it was a ‘beautiful dream’.11 The pair eloped and on 12 February 1942 married in a small civil ceremony in Pretoria. None of her family were present. Heath married under the name of Armstrong, giving little thought, it seems, to whether this would invalidate the marriage. At the same time, he artfully extricated himself from his engagement to Peggy Dixon in England. He wrote and told her that he had been dismissed from the army, probably anticipating how she would react to the news. Peggy wrote back, breaking off their engagement, but kept her engagement ring.12

  In Wimbledon, Heath’s news from Johannesburg was met with some surprise. Shortly after the wedding, his father visited Mr Scott at the Borstal Association and told him Neville’s startling news. He was now training to be a flying instructor at the Central Flying School at Bloemfontein, had taken South African citizenship, had changed his name by deed poll and had married, all in the space of two months. Elizabeth had sent a very nice letter to her new parents-in-law in which she wrote that she hoped to visit England with ‘Jimmy’ to see them when the war was over. Heath also claimed that his father-in-law was interested in civil aviation, so it seemed that a career as a flyer after the war was assured. Mr Scott noted that though Mr and Mrs Heath were hurt about their son’s change of name, they understood that this might have been necessary for him to make a fresh start.13

  On 2 September 1942, Elizabeth gave birth to a baby boy, Robert Michael Cadogan Armstrong, so she may well have been pregnant at the time she and Heath were married. The naming of the child seems to have been all down to Heath who gave him the aristocratic (if bogus) ‘Cadogan’ where his own mother had given her sons the name ‘Clevely’ – Heath, with little irony, it seems, carrying on a family tradition, but without the family name. Sentimentally, he gave his son his younger brother’s Christian names, reversed. In February 1943, the couple moved to Randfontein to be near No. 2 Air School where Heath was teaching trainee pilots to fly 1930s Tiger Moths. He was in his element.

  I loved it. They took me as a pupil pilot and gave me a test at once. My record for the years I was there shows I was right on top of my job. I was commissioned in March 1942, a month after I was married, and posted to the Central Flying School as an instructor. Even this period of non-operational flying instruction was enjoyable and I must have taught between 100 and 150 pupils to fly. These were the men who became part of the desert Air Force – as grand a bunch of men as there are in the world.14

  Many of these trainee pilots were from Britain and the Empire as part of the JATS. South Africa’s weather and clear skys were perfect for teaching them to fly over the broad open veld. Harold Guthrie, a pilot with the RAF, was taught to fly at Randfontein at the time Heath was teaching there. During his stay at the station, Guthrie remembered that Heath was exceedingly popular with everyone and was always an invited member of any party at which quantities of liquor were likely to be consumed. ‘[Heath] drank heavily and although he frequently appeared to be haggard in the morning, I have never seen him show any signs of alcoholic excess in any other way,’ he recalled.15

  Guthrie was aware that Heath was very well known in the higher social circles in Johannesburg and though he did drink excessively heavily, he always behaved in a perfectly gentlemanly manner, ‘never speaking to women with anything other than complete respect’.16 Heath and his wife often frequented the Inanda Polo Club where they would socialize with Elizabeth’s old school friend and next-door neighbour, the actress Moira Lister, who was just starting her career in the theatre. Lister and her sister were both seduced by Heath’s extreme good looks, wit and charm. ‘Everyone,’ remembered Lister, ‘or all the girls at least, were vying for his favours.’17

  For Heath, these sunny times in the heat, safety and abundance of South Africa were years of ‘perfect happiness’. He was married to a beautiful young woman he loved, he had steered himself away from the dangers of his past and onto an even keel. He was a father now, with a healthy young son – and he was flying again. His life was contented and fulfilled. He even bought a dog. Only three years later, Heath remembered these times in a letter to Elizabeth with a sense of deep nostalgia:

  Bloemfontein at [Central Flying School] with that awful cold hotel – Greystones – the ‘Rambles’, with those enormous teas – The Bloemfontein Hotel and those early morning drives to the Aerodrome in that little open car which we both froze in so regularly – Randfontein and our house there. The chaps who used to come and stay with us – the parties we had there and at the Aerodrome . . .18

  It all seemed idyllic. But, as ever with Heath, his attempts to secure a golden future for himself and his family were to be thwarted by his past behaviour which, still unresolved, now came back to haunt him.

  P&O, who owned the Mooltan, imposed a fine of £100 on anyone who absconded from troop transport. Since Heath had jumped ship at Durban, he was personally liable for the fine and had been pursued by the South African CID. They were also keen to trace him because of the money he had illegally withdrawn from Barclays Bank in Durban and the hotels he had defrauded before signing up with the SAAF. This meant that not only was his false identity exposed to the SAAF authorities, but the full extent of his past misbehaviour and dishonesty would now be known to his wife and to his in-laws. Heath had married Elizabeth under an assumed name, so the Rivers family were concerned that the marriage wasn’t legal. An amendment to the marriage certificate was hastily arranged to make it valid. Heath had jumped ship without permission and was an illegal immigrant. His application to join the SAAF was almost entirely fiction and he had also lied that he had had no previous criminal convictions. Now that the full details of his court martial at Jerusalem were revealed, Heath’s entire new life was held in the balance.19

  The Immigration Authorities indicated that his continued presence in South Africa was entirely dependent on how the SAAF wanted to deal with his career of repeated deception. Due to the valuable work that he had done in training pilots at a time when the SAAF was rapidly expanding, the authorities discussed Heath’s case at the highest level, even involving the director general of the service. Heath’s commanding officer offered a glowing recommendation for leniency.

  He [has] carried out all his duties in the air and on the ground in a perfectly correct manner. He is keen and takes a great interest in the work he is now performing. His personal conduct has been exemplary.20

  On 18 March, Heath himself wrote an impassioned and contrite letter from Randfontein to the director general of the Air Force in Pretoria. He outlined his commitment to the Allied cause and his usefulness as a pilot. He stressed that since joining the SAAF, he h
ad not committed a single misdemeanour. He admitted that his former behaviour was simply due to his natural impetuosity. Desperate to make a fresh start for himself, he pleaded that if he were dismissed from the SAAF, it would ruin his life.

  I decided to change my name and make a really serious attempt to change my character, the fact that I am now married has helped me – and my wife, who knows the whole story and has helped me – is shortly expecting a child.

  Proof that I have made this serious attempt at reformation is easily recognizable from my record during the past 15 months and by my present Commanding Officer’s personal report. I can also produce the names of at least ten officers of Field Rank who would testify on my behalf.

  May I respectfully submit that my services be retained on probation. If I commit the slightest misdemeanour I shall have failed in my attempt to reform myself and then any action which may be taken will be entirely of my own manufacture. I can honestly promise that such a state of affairs will never come to pass.

  I have served as a fighter pilot for two years in the Royal Air Force in peace time and served with an International Fighter Squadron in Spain during the civil war. May I request that I may be retained in the SAAF on the above conditions and posted to one of the fighter squadrons on operations.