Angus
(On receipt of Hedwig Bognar's letter about Angus MacInnes)
(11/7/1972)
The Haib, Soth West Africa - now Namibia
I am a vegetable.
I lie in my special place
In a neat row of beds.
All carefully tended,
We must be nurtured,
We with silent heads.
We lie whilst the sun
Passes above,
Unseen time and again.
Someday we will be gone,
And new vegetables will lie in our places,
Incurables, Ward 10.
I'd completed my tour of duty with US Borax in the USA and after spending about three months in London I'd been posted to work with Rio Tinto South Africa for a year. They sent me to their Haib copper project just north of the Orange River in SW Africa. Do you remember Angus from Aberdeenshire? While I was working there it became clear that he was ill. Now he had died of leukaemia. He was about my age. This sort of thing wasn't supposed to happen!