The Lady in White

During the Second World War, Durban harbour was a busy way station for troopships. Soldiers and airmen from New Zealand, Australia, Great Britain and elsewhere, as well as training bases in South Africa, all spent a brief period of leave here before sailing for the jungles of Burma and British Malaya or the battlegrounds of Europe.

As the ships entered the harbour, the men would crowd along the landward rails to watch a woman dressed in white and wearing a red hat welcoming them with songs.

“She sang for hours all the songs we knew,” wrote one soldier. “Songs we learnt as kids;