Cdr H. R. Gordon-Cumming's 'Long' Official History
The fact that Cdr H. R. Gordon-Cumming's 'Long' Official History is only now being published in its entirety, some 65 years after the end of that War, can be ascribed in some degree to a lack of enthusiasm for anything to do with the war by the government which took power in 1948. Many Afrikaners had initially been strongly opposed to South Africa's participation in World War 2 and the question had caused sharp divisions and bitterness in Afrikaner political ranks. This opposition decreased somewhat towards the end of the war as more and more Afrikaners volunteered for service. This involvement increased markedly after the invasion of the Netherlands by the Germans, forcing Queen Wilhelmina to flee to the United Kingdom. She was held in very high esteem among Afrikaners for having sent a warship to take President Paul Kruger into exile in 1900.
The Union War Histories Section in the Office of the Prime Minister was created soon after the war ended under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel J. A. I. Agar-Hamilton. As Editor-in-Chief, Agar-Hamilton had the full support of the wartime Prime Minister, Field Marshal, the Right Honourable J.C. Smuts. When the new government took over, its lack of enthusiasm was soon reflected in the fact that the War Histories Section was moved out of the Union Buildings to a much less salubrious environment. Funding also became a problem. In order to continue with the project of writing a full a account of South Africa's contribution to the Allied war effort, the principal writers and researchers attached to the Section, Agar- Hamilton, Axelson, Turner, Betzler, Brink and Gordon-Cumming, had to struggle continuously with a parsimonious and hostile Treasury for the necessary funding. One of the dilemmas was that Agar-Hamilton's was the only permanent position, the other officials all being under short-term contracts. This resulted in a lack of permanency amongst the staff and a high turn-over of senior personnel. Despite these obstacles, the section succeeded in producing three well-received volumes:
Crisis in the Desert (May to July 1942) - published in 1952;
The Sidi Rezeg Battles (1941) - published in 1957; and
War in the Southern Oceans - published in 1961 (This book was co-authored by Gordon-Cumming and contains some of the material in this full history).
Initially Agar-Hamilton had planned to produce four more volumes in the official war history series, covering the campaign in East Africa; the involvement of the 6th South African Armoured Division in the Italian campaign; a history of the South African Air Force; and the war in the Western Desert from Sidi Rezeg to the fall of Tobruk. These narratives had largely been completed by the time the Section was closed down. In addition to the records of South African, Commonwealth and other Allied units and formations gathered by the Section, they had also amassed a large collection of German and Italian documents. The whole collection came to more than 25 000 files and two and a half thousand volumes, together with periodicals, newspapers, photographs and maps. Eventually a further eight volumes were published commercially during the 1970s at the instigation of the SA Defence Force. Although they did fill some of the gaps in the record of South Africa's war, these volumes were neither as rigorous and sophisticated, nor were they as authoritative as the three books that had been produced by the Union War Histories section.
In 1994 once again South Africa went through radical political change with the first fully democratic elections involving all South Africans. The new Government, under the leadership of President Nelson Mandela, led South Africa into a new era. Under this new Government the now well-established and internationally recognised SA Navy for the first time in our history began to receive appropriate Government recognition of the need for its existence. To some considerable extent the international recognition of this fact came when an International Fleet Review, in which 23 foreign warships participated, honoured the South African President and celebrated the 75th Anniversary of the SA Navy.
At the initiative of the Naval Heritage Society and Trust, the narrative written about the part the South African Naval Forces played in World War II has now being resurrected from the archives. After nearly 50 years Commander Gordon-Cumming's 'Long' history is at last being published.
