William Henry Vernon Pridgeon

[Nat Quinn]

John Pridgeon

Circa 1886 a young man by the name of William Henry Pridgeon climbed off a ship bound for Cape Town from England.  Among other things, this recently qualified mining engineer from Cornwall had gold on his mind, and along with hundreds of other hopefuls made his way north to the budding gold rush taking place there. He finally settled in a little town called Springs.

Springs gets its name, unsurprisingly, from a large number of natural springs (points from where groundwater flows out of the ground) in the area, although these were not the main reason people originally settled here. Springs started out as a farm, shortly after which coal was discovered around here and it took little time before a railway line emerged to carry coal from the coalfields to the gold mines of the Witwatersrand (Afrikaans for the ‘ridge of white waters’).

Whilst the coal mines soon closed around Springs as coal was discovered in Witbank, the discovery of gold followed fairly rapidly. A village emerged as early as 1904 and by the late 1930’s there were eight gold mines in and around the village, making Springs and its surrounds the largest single gold-producing area in the world.

This Willliam Pridgeon begat several children, and 2 sons, the first born William (“Jeff”) Pridgeon and his brother Arthur Pridgeon, who both followed their daddy’s footsteps becoming Mine Captains on the Daggafontein Mine. Jeff was uncommonly strong, and could hold a gold bar upside down with the thumb and fingers of his outstretched hand – I seem to remember that my father Bill said that he offered that anyone who could do the same could keep the bar.

Jeff begat 2 children, William (“Bill”) Pridgeon in September of 1924 and our aunt Shirley. Billy was always expected to be a miner, in the generations-old Pridgeon tradition. This journey started for mine boys in their early teens, and my Dad was told that he would begin his apprenticeship at Dagga after he had completed his primary school. Its “Mine Time” Billy, my Dad was warned by his father Jeff as the year end approached, and the prospect of going kilometres underground loomed large in unhappy young Bill’s eyes. By a wonderful quirk of fate, Billy became eligible for a scholarship to go to Benoni Boys High school after the parents of the fellow that came first in class were transferred at the end of his last year at Junior School.

Every school day my father rode his bike from home on South Pridgeon Road to the train station and commuted by train to Benoni, where he walked to and from school for the 5 years of his high school career. During that time Bill was an avid sportsman, and excelled at cricket, rugby and brawling. He played Nuffield Cricket, Craven Week Rugby and also got his colours in Englesmanne vs Afrikaner Street Fighting. There was still a great enmity between these two white factions of students, a nasty hangover from the Boer War, and Billy was chosen to represent Die Engelse Sprekende Mense. Apparently Dad was very handy with his fists, but did not like fighting much, and as youngsters, my 6 foot 2 inch father advised us that if he found us fighting, win or lose, we would then fight him. Needless to say, our brawling careers were stopped dead in their tracks then and there. We didn’t dare, as having been on the receiving end of Dad’s “plates of meat” hands when he dished out a not infrequent “good hiding”. None of us could imagine the pain if that hand were closed when it struck us.

When Dad cleared out of Benoni Boys High, Jeff was there at the ready singing his favourite “Mine Time” song but Bill would have none of it. Like many, he opted to serve South Africa in WW II. I never asked dad if this was to avoid going underground or to help the war effort against the dreaded Boche, threatening to Hitlerise the planet, but I suspect a healthy chunk of both. Dad had long ago decided he wasn’t good mining stock. He must have signed up for active duty in about 1942 aged 17.

He then trained as a pilot in the general area of the East Rand, and was apparently a fighter but not a pilot, and nearly missed getting his wings. He described the training aircraft as very little other than an engine, wings and a tail section, and apparently there were not even floorboards on those trainers. After pranging two of these “aircraft” Dad was warned that he would start his infantry career the moment he put a third plane down without doing it “proper landing style”. He finally got his wings, and they flew their “kites” up to Cairo (where he developed a pathological hatred for “Gyppos”) then west across North Africa and up into Italy, where he was stationed as a bomber pilot for the last 2 years of the war. What an experience that must have been, flying your aircraft north through Africa, to the war.

Dad’s log book says he flew a hundred and twenty-three missions while in Italy, and eventually became the youngest squadron leader in Italy; probably a phenomenon unrelated to any flying ability or any leadership qualities, but one that transpired mainly because those occupying that position before him were all killed in action. The war finally ended before he followed in his predecessors’ footsteps up the stairway to heaven, but not before his aircraft took a fair amount of peppering from flak and bullets, and his logbook is a frightening testimony to what those pilots endured day in and day out, as the target practice / cannon fodder bomber pilots were, almost by definition. While serving in the Second Great War Dad learned two more sports, drinking and smoking, which he again excelled at the highest of levels. People were trying to kill him the moment he left the ground, and my guess is that anyone would have utilised that makeshift cure-it-all with the customary tobacco and booze party that lasted the duration of his tour. WW II, or rather the smoking habit it spawned, eventually did kill Dad, as at the very young age of 52 years old he succumbed to the lung cancer that an 80 smokes-a-day habit will inevitably cause, after thirty years of PTSD management.

One of my Dad’s favourite stories was born the day his CO in Italy called him in for “a word”. Obviously if your pilots got hammered every night in the Officers Mess this ended badly for all concerned, so the amount any pilot could spend per month on his bar tab was capped, probably at a very generous limit – there was precious little the poor blokes could look forward to after a hard day above the trenches, except a cold one or ten every night. The interview went something like this:

“You wanted to see me Sir?” asked an inquisitive and mildly apprehensive Flight Lieutenant Pridgeon.

“Pridgeon it has come to my attention that your mess tab is a consistently large number. You recall there is a number that represents the maximum allowed to be spent on alcohol at this base?”

“Yes Sir”

“I would remind you that number is a limit, not a target”

“Sir”, he replied, saluted and left.

Well the Boche were finally tamed and beaten back to Berlin, and Dad flew back and was demobbed. ‘Mine Time’ again. By now, after dodging many bullets, Dad had finally grown a pair big enough to push back and had made up his mind to buck the unsavoury Pridgeon Mining Scheme System, and finally told his father flat out that he would not be following the family’s mining tradition. True to the expectation Dad had dreaded for some time, Jeff was furious and turned his back on his son then and there. Bill applied for and was awarded a serviceman’s bursary to attend Wits University. After qualifying as a Quantity Surveyor William Henry Vernon Pridgeon fled his father and South Africa, to settle in Bulawayo in 1951 where he later met his wife to be, a high school teacher called Kathleen Massingham Seymour, the daughter of a well-known Matatiele lawyer.

William Russell Massingham Pridgeon was that generation’s heir to the name William.

Pridgeons are by their very nature mostly stubborn, hard-headed bastards, who do not easily forgive or forget but the bad blood between father and son mended gradually over the ensuing years, likely fueled by the parents’ curiosity to see how their grandkids were getting on, and eventually every year in December, Bill, my mother Kallah and us three boys travelled to the Natal South Coast for Christmas, staying with the Springs chapter of the Pridgeon family en route.

That stubborn, hard headedness has served the first-born Russell very well, and was in no small way part of the reason why Russ has been able, assisted valiantly by an equally hard headed Patrick Finbar McGarry O’Dea, to beat the horrific legal system that exists today in Australia. A system that openly and provably enables pedophiles, declines to punish them for the terrible abuse they mete out to Australia’s kids, and mercilessly punishes those willing to throw themselves under a bug nasty bus to protect the children.

This system is chronicled in great detail by Russell’s book “Everybody Knows”. I hope one day in the hereafter my brave father will have the pleasure of knowing what courage his first born has displayed.

And be suitably proud.

 

source:William Henry Vernon Pridgeon – Africa Unauthorised

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