“The Navy can lose us the war, but only the Royal Air Force can win it. Therefore our supreme effort must be to gain overwhelming mastery of the air. The fighters are our salvation but the bombers alone provide the means of victory. We must therefore develop the power to carry an ever-increasing volume of explosives to Germany, so as to pulverise the entire industry and scientific structure on which the war effort and economic life of the enemy depends, while holding him at arm’s length in our island.”
Winston Churchill September 3rd, 1940
HMT “Anselm” sailed from Liverpool on June 26th, 1941, carrying almost 1 300 troops and RAF personnel bound for the Ghanian port of Takoradi where aircraft arrived in crates, were assembled and then flown the long and difficult route to Cairo by “Air Delivery Unit” ferry pilots for Middle East delivery.
RAF personnel included Squadron Leader the Reverend Pugh who had been posted to Takoradi from RAF Bridgnorth, a Royal Air Force station in Shropshire with a hospital but no runway established as a basic training facility and transit centre two months after war was declared and, where Reverend Pugh’s day to day functions involved “spiritual support” and “moral guidance”.
Named after Lord Herbert Kitchener and Cecil Rhodes, Herbert Cecil Pugh was born in Johannesburg in 1898 and one of seven children. Educated at Jeppe Boys High, his traumatic experiences as a 17- year -old First World War Field Ambulance stretcher bearer on the Western Front motivated him to enter the ministry. He studied at Oxford on a scholarship, ordained in 1924, he was serving as a Christ Church minister in Middlesex when he joined the RAF’s Chaplin branch in 1939.
The 7 000 km sea journey from Liverpool to Takoradi was threatened by German warships and U- Boats and almost half the distance had been covered on July 5th when German torpedoes struck HMT “Anselm”. Unconcerned for his own safety, Reverend Pugh insisted on being lowered into the flooded hold to comfort the trapped and injured, losing his life in the process. No other South Africans have been identified but several Rhodesian RAF groundcrew were reportedly among the 254 casualties.
From “More than a “Few” South Africans”, chapter 6 of Jon Eagar's book. About the book.