A walk down memory lane: Remembering the golden years of dam building

Abstract

ROOIKRANS DAM The Resident Engineer at Rooikrans Dam was ‘Jumbo’ Downes – an ex-boxer with cauliflower ears and previously Lieutenant in the 22 Field Park Company, which was our sister company during the war. The dam was a large earth dam that would supply water to King William’s Town and the neighbouring Zwelitsha. My colleague, Anton Wejtko, was in charge of the materials used in the construction of the dam. During WWII he fled from Poland when it was invaded by the Germans and later served in the Polish army in the UK. He had a strong sense of humour. He was later in charge of the department’s soils laboratory in Pretoria. Colin Stegman later took over from Downes, and was more formal in his approach. He did not like the idea of having to walk to my office every time he had something to discuss with me, so he instructed the mechanical foreman to put a bell in my office so that he could ring me. The only bell was one of those huge red fire alarm bells. I stuffed some paper into the bell so that it buzzed instead of clang ing. One day the bell did not work.

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