My Life Through Stories

By Ian Caddie M.Sc.

This memoir is based on two decades of travel, living and working overseas, presented through true stories. The stories start by outlining my life during WW2 and what created my passion to travel. Life's adventures continue through living in the Caribbean, Central and West Africa documenting both good and bad things, the experiences and absence from home reinforce my belief regarding the importance of families and their legacies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781984582690

Ian Caddie M.Sc.

Ian Caddie was born in the United Kingdom during World War Two. He studied engineering and later worked on large construction programs in the Caribbean, Central and West Africa. He holds a master of science degree and was awarded the Order of the Chevalier by the government of the Ivory Coast. He was an adjunct professor at National Louis University, authored The Saw Grass Solution, and was a vice president with a large global engineering company. Now retired, he lives with his wife in Winter Springs, Florida.

Book preview

My Life

Through Stories

Ian Caddie M.Sc.

Copyright © 2020 by Ian Caddie M.Sc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 06/11/2020

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CONTENTS

Introduction

My Parents

Linda (Lynn) and Her Family Heritage

An Early Adventure and Elgin Revisited

Elgin and the Scottish Highlands Revisited February 2018

Our Wedding Anniversary Trip after Thirty-Five Years

Glenfiddich Distillery, Dufftown, Scotland

Midnight Passage

Dr. Whiskey Gordon

The UK, Jamaica, South Africa

Grenada, West Indies

Victoria Falls Rhodesia

The Democratic Republic of the Congo

Ghana: A Meeting to Remember

The Middle East and Nigerian Visits, 1970s

Crusader’s Castles, Petra, and Akaba

Ivory Coast and West Africa

Good Morning, Orlando, This is Lynn Caddie

Gambling – What Am I Missing?

An Early Attempt by Me at Oil Painting

St. Petersburg, Florida

Graduate School

Donald Trump: An Unforgettable Character

Cruising

An Unforgettable Trip to the South of France, 2011

Cardiology

California, West Coast, and Texas

Paris and Provence, 2014

The Importance of Family

This book is dedicated to my wife Lynn and Daughters Carol and

Sandra with profound thanks and affection.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

T HE WORLD IS a better place because of the efforts of people who want to help, develop and lead others . A lesson I wish to pass on to my Children and Grandchildren. I have been honored to be part of large infrastructure projects that have provided direct benefits to improve people’s lives and environment.

To all the individuals I have had the opportunity to lead, be led by, or watch their compassionate humanity to others, I want to say thank you for being the inspiration for My Life in Stories.

I am thankful for the invaluable help that I received from Margaret Marlow, Jeanette Church and Catherine Scalisi regarding family histories, and Karina Ruiz for initial help with the layout.

I acknowledge with thanks permission from Philip. S, Boyd artist and creator of an oil portrait of Ian Caddie to include a photographic image of his work in this book. The website of Philip. S. Boyd can be found at www.philipsboyd.com

I owe a great deal of thanks to the governments, leaders and people in the countries I have lived in or visited during my travels, for showing me great kindness. I am greatly indebted for the unwavering support and experience of my peers and the team at Xlibris publishing, without which this book would not exist .

INTRODUCTION

F AMILY STORIES ARE not just diversions. They are intimately woven into our lives in an endless multitude of ways. Hopefully, they may not only inspire us but also teach us and make us feel a part of an adventure. They are the way that family traditions, history, and principles are communicated and passed from one generation to the next. Most of all, they humanize us. We write to live life twice, in the moment and in retrospect. If your own life is not enough, or even if it is, as a writer of family stories, you get to vicariously relive them and maybe as they are read by others brought to life.

Selfishly I write to remind myself of things I know but have somehow forgotten in the rush of daily life. The simple act of putting down my memories and thoughts helps capture them, contemplate them, and savor them.

The following true stories move from the history of my parents in the 1930s, my birth in 1942 in wartime London, through some self-discovery adventures during my teens, and on to experiences working and living overseas as an expatriate in the 1960s to 1980s. I have witnessed desperate poverty, illness, cruelty, and war in places of the world that many people have not visited. I have also seen wonderful acts of kindness and humanitarian concern. The stories are to the best of my recollection true although some minor items may have been changed slightly to reflect politically correct norms today.

I hope members of my family will enjoy reading these experiences without finding them boastful and not judge me too harshly for things that I did badly, omitted to do or accomplish.

It is with profound hope that I wish everyone a long and productive life and that each of you builds on the family legacy of discovering new wonders, challenges, and feelings of accomplishment.

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IAN CADDIE M.Sc.

MY PARENTS

M Y PARENTS, JANE (also known as Jean) Mills Sutherland and John Thompson Caddie, were born in 1916 and met sometime in the late 1930s in Glasgow, Scotland. They were living there when World War Two was declared in September 1939. My mother was the eldest in her family and had two brothers, Hugh and Johnny, both of whom became civil engineers. My father was the middle child in the Caddie family and had a brother, Jim, and an elder sister, Peggy. Jim served for a while in the merchant navy and then later became deeply involved in charitable work. He married Grace, lived in Glasgow, and I believe had two children. Peggy worked for the Glasgow Corporation and remained a spinster. My mother’s father worked for the Glasgow Corporation in the water department, and my father’s dad worked in the shipyards as a fitter. My grandmother Sutherland’s maiden name was McBride. Grandmother Caddie’s maiden name was Murdoch.

My parents were married on November 6, 1939, in Glasgow. My grandfather John Menzies Sutherland, my mother’s father, gave the bride away. The newlyweds moved south to London where my father worked as an industrial chemist at an oil refinery as part of the war effort.

Despite my father being in a reserved occupation, he volunteered and joined the Royal Air Force, eventually completing his training as an engineer/pilot. He was transferred to an operational squadron and flew as part of the aircrew of Lancaster bomber aircraft. Bomber Command of the RAF was probably unique in the history of warfare at that time, attracting volunteers from the far corners of the British Empire and patriots from the Nazi-occupied countries of Europe and Scandinavia. He flew in a crew with a Canadian pilot with the advent of the large four-engine bomber. This led to the creation of the flight engineer to handle the complicated mechanical, hydraulic, electrical, and fuel systems during the flight. Unlike the American planes, the British Lancaster bomber had just one pilot, with the flight engineer trained to take on a piloting role if the pilot became disabled. The Lancaster had an eight-man crew—the pilot, flight engineer, observer, navigator, wireless operator, and two air gunners. The bombing raids over Germany involved flying for eight to ten hours after takeoff and, particularly for the pilot, was extremely stressful and tiring with physical strength needed to operate the controls, unlike the electronic controls of today’s planes. This was in addition to the enemy’s best efforts to shoot them from the sky. The RAF flew bombing raids over Germany at night and the USAF during the day. During the latter stages of the war, both groups flew together in formations of up to one thousand aircraft. Both the RAF and USAF suffered enormous losses from enemy fighters and from large guns firing shells from ground level that exploded within their formations. The role of the flight engineer during the operation could be imagined in the following fictional story.

After the pilot, navigator, and wireless operator had been briefed on the target for that night’s raid, the crew drew their equipment and went out to the dispersal point and boarded the aircraft. In the afternoon, the plane had been prepared with ammunition, fuel, and the type and number of bombs to be used in the operation. The pilot explained the target, which tonight was Germany, to destroy submarine pens; the trip was to be a long one, turning on to different headings to confuse the enemy as to the final target. It was expected that there would be a heavy enemy fighter force and many enemy guns surrounding the target.

The flight engineer had spent time with the ground crew chief, going over the engine checklist and ensuring any repairs or maintenance had been completed after the last mission. On the flight deck, the flight engineer was located behind the pilot and had overseen the fuel load, checked to ensure that the fuel valves were in their correct position. He then leaned toward the pilot to inform him everything was ready for engine start-up. The engineer was in contact with the ground crew who manned a battery cart ready to start the port inner engine first. The pilot switched on the ignition, and the engine coughed and spluttered and finally roared into life. This is repeated for all four engines.

The engineer monitors each engine as they warm up to operating temperature. At the required time, the planes taxi out toward the runway, with a full load of bombs and the fuel the pilot needs in the full length of the runway to take off. The engineer assists the pilot in pushing the throttles to full, still checking the gauges, as the pilot eases back on the control and climbs slowly into the night. The Lancaster requires the pilot to initially push the yoke forward to get the tail section off the ground before easing back to lift the front of the aircraft. The engineer is an essential part of the takeoff in assisting the pilot; very few crews survived crashes on takeoff.

As the aircraft move in formation toward the enemy coast, the engineer continues to monitor the instrument panel, checking temperature, fuel, pressure, and cross-feeding fuel where necessary. Each crew member is responsible for separate tasks, and as the planes pass through five thousand feet, the pilot reminds them to connect their oxygen masks. After a number of diversionary tactics, the flight approaches the target, heavy explosions caused by the enemy shells exploding and called flak burst around the plane, showering them with hot metal fragments that tear through the thin skin of the aircraft. The main danger is if fragments of flak penetrate the engines or fuel tanks. During the operation, many of the Lancasters are shot down and spiral down often on fire, giving the crew little time to escape. After the bombs are dropped, the planes turn back for England. By now the enemy’s defenses are fully awake, and waves of enemy fights dive down shooting at them. More planes are shot down.

The engineer monitors the engines and hydraulics. On almost every flight some damage is sustained. The engineering must transfer fuel, coach damaged engines to keep operating, deal with leaking hydraulics. In addition, often crew members are severely injured. After they cross the English Coast, if they can, they make for their home base; sometimes the damage makes a successful landing problematic. After landing, they spend time debriefing the intelligence officer, and the engineer must write up and brief the ground crew on the state of the plane.

After a long mission, it was time for breakfast and to collapse into bed. Many crews flew three times a week on missions like this. The aircrew was required to complete twenty-five active missions before their tour was complete. Many did not survive to this number.

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I was born at Kings College Hospital on May 22, 1942, and named Ian Sutherland Caddie. My mother and I were left in London while my father served his country. My mother worked as a secretary in London in one of the branches of the intelligence services. She never discussed this in detail, but I know from comments that she was deeply involved with her work. After the war, her boss wanted her to continue working for him, but she was a devoted stay-at-home mom. She was always involved in her children’s school activities.

My father talked little about the war, and I regret that I had not asked him more about it, but he did mention that he flew as part of 615 Squadron who undertook the famous Dam Buster Raid. At the close of the war in 1945, the Lancaster crews were stood down; he flew his aircraft to Singapore for a final tour of duty where bomber crews were no longer required and for a short time were used to guard Japanese prisoners of war. He eventually returned to England where he was demobilized. He returned to the company he was with before the war. Apart from his war service, he had one employer his whole working life and rose to the position of assistant refinery manager. He was known at work as Jock.

In January 1948, there was an addition to the family, a daughter for my parents and a sister for me—Margaret Rosalinda Caddie. The family moved from London to Kent, vacationing each year in Glasgow on an annual visit to relatives. It was normally a grueling trip by car, with no motorways and my father the only driver. It took about twelve hours. Later we started going to the seaside resort of Broadstairs in Kent. The town of Broadstairs is rather nice, a sandy cove, harbor, and the main claim to fame was the house Charles Dickens lived in while he wrote Bleak House. Around this time, my father became ill, tired and feeling weak. He had developed diabetes. He spent a couple of weeks in Queen Mary’s Hospital near Sidcup, Kent; however, once stabilized, he had to continue treating himself with daily insulin injections.

In 1952 another child, a boy, for our parents and a brother for myself and Margaret. The new brother was named Derek John Caddie. The family grew, and unfortunately, Derek contracted diabetes and, as a small boy, also had to be treated with daily insulin injections.

Five years later, another child was born, a girl, Lesley, and this completed the family. The Scottish relatives visited us in England now and then. My Grandfather Sutherland died around 1951, and as a result, my grandmother Sutherland used to visit for extended periods during the summer. I am not sure when my father’s parents died. I do not recall them ever coming to London.

In the 1960s, my parents began to take vacations overseas and travel frequently to Spain, Italy, and farther. By the late 1970s, they had several grandchildren—Carol, Sandra, Alexander, and Kenneth. John was planning to retire at the end of 1979 and had cherished a plan to sell the house in Sidcup and move to the seaside town of Broadstairs in Kent. My mother said later that she never bought into that plan as she had a wide circle of friends in Sidcup.

My father loved soccer. His company had an active soccer team, and he was president of the soccer club for several years. Most Saturdays would find him attending a soccer match, coaching from the sidelines. My father had always wanted to return to Singapore and show it to my mother. In July 1979, his dream was fulfilled, and they took a trip to Singapore, Hong Kong, and Bali and enjoyed every minute of it. Unfortunately, my father died suddenly of a heart attack and complications from diabetes at the beginning of August 1979, just a few weeks after their return. They would have celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary on November 6, 1979.

I studied construction and civil engineering at a