For months they besieged the authorities and pulled any strings they could in order to be allowed on active service but had no success. It took them a long time to accept the fact that their job was at home. They attended annual Commando Training Camps and continued regular Platoon meetings. Farmers were active members of the Food Production Committee and widened their farming operations in order to produce as much food as possible.

Among those who went from Melsetter to serve was Bill Rose, who was killed in action in 1942. Tommy Delaney saw service with the Long Range Desert Group and Frank Bennett with the Reconnaissance Unit. Fred Delaney as a Police Reservist was in charge of the Birchenough Bridge Guard and then on duty on the boundary near Espungabera. John Olivey spent most of the war with the Long Range Desert Group; during a leave in Rhodesia he married Mickey Tollner who had taught at Melsetter and then also joined the Forces; John was awarded the Military Cross and Bar and he and Mickey returned to Sawerombi at the end of the war.

Wartime activities were a background to daily life. Melsetter�s fund-raising and other helpful efforts were never-ending and were joined in by everybody: all worked extremely hard to make them a success and enjoyed themselves in the process. They included beetle drives, derbies, dances, fetes, games evenings and sales: Bring and Buy Sales, Cake Sales, Preserve Sales, and Sales of Work. Teas and lunches were sold on every possible occasion.

As travelling was restricted, many activities were crowded in on the occasions when people did meet. On one Saturday in 1945 there was a Farmers� meeting; the W.N.S.L. A.G.M. at 11 a.m.; a W.I. committee meeting tt 12 which authorised two members to interview the M.P. in connection with medical facilities; the women sold lunches at the Memorial Hall; everyone played tennis at 2 o�clock; there was a treasure hunt for the children at 3, a bazaar at 4, a braaivleis at 5.30, and dinner and a dance at the hotel in the evening. At some point small children were bathed, supped and bedded down at the hotel, and the following day everyone played tennis before going home in the afternoon.

Funds were raised for knitting for the troops, the Red Cross, troops� Christmas Parcels and the National War Fund. No record has been found of the total which Melsetter raised during these years but one item recorded is �200 for the N.W.F. at the Race Meeting in 1941, and there are references to donations of cattle for which the F.A. arranged the sales. The fund-raising went on after the war, when large contributions were sent to the Food for Britain Fund, the Aid Europe Fund, United Nations Appeal for Children, and the Save the Children Fund.

On 11th November 1939 after a meeting of the L.E.C. the Melsetter branch of the Women�s National Service League was formed. The W.N.S.L., a voluntary organisation, received Government recognition as Auxiliary to the Defence Scheme. Meetings were held about every two months and members worked at home in between; the membership varied between 10 and 20 in any one year, and during the five years of the war Melsetter W.N.S.L. made and sent off 210 pairs socks, 26 pairs of stockings, 26 pairs of gloves, 23 balaclava helmets, 19 airmens�s jerseys, 26 scarves, 61 pairs of pyjamas, 11 ration bags, 53 hold-aIls, 13 pairs of mittens, 59 pullovers and 4 seamen�s jerseys.

The district also responded to other appeals and sent off clothes, books, magazines, and, one year, 300 lbs of biltong. Individuals sent comforts and wrote long letters to members of their families and their friends with the Forces and sent food to friends and relations in Britain. A Salvage Committee collected everything that could possibly be spared and re-used.

Hospitality was a big item, and the W.N.S.L. arranged accommodation in members� homes for R.A.F. personnel on leave. Many had been put up by 1943, there were 45 in 1943, 18 in 1944 and 11 in 1945. Mrs. Rose�s sister, Miss Emily Ward, came from England bringing two nephews and a niece to spend the war years in Rhodesia.

The W.N.S.L. final meeting was on 1st September 1945, and funds on hand were sent to the Thanksgiving Fund. The knitting carried on to use up stocks of wool on hand, hospitality to R . A. F. and Women�s Services continued under the aegis of the W.I., and the Parcels for Britain Fund carried on for some years.

Rationing was part of daily lives. Petrol rationing restricted movement, but enough was available for farming and local purposes and all travel further afield was by train from Umtali until petrol was again freely available, after ten years, in April 1952.

Sugar rationing was disconcerting to the farmers� wives who depended on preserving the constant supply of fruit. With a growing family half a pound per head per week did not go very far, but in due course full requirements were allowed under special licence and once again bottling and the making of jam, preserves, chutneys, sauces, jellies, fruit juices, every single month of the year carried on. Everybody tried to be as self-sufficient as possible, and, as most were in any case struggling to make ends meet, the minimum of groceries was bought.

One curious rationing attempt was the Government decision that it would help the war effort if nobody ate eggs after 6 p.m. At the Police Camp the Sergeant got up from table one evening saying: �Well, that was very nice. Why don�t we have poached eggs on mashed potato more often?�, and his wife replied: �Because I think you had better not break the law too often.� This regulation was quietly ignored by all who liked having eggs for supper and did not last for very long as it was impossible to enforce it.

With restricted travelling the telephone party lines were a great boon and enabled scattered homesteads to keep in touch with one another. Wirelesses were powered by 6-volt car batteries, and few people owned more than one battery which therefore had to do duty both in the car and for the wireless, and ingenious plans were worked out for driving the car into a position suitable for the wireless leads to be attached without taking the battery out of the car. When the car was needed, the rest of the family had no radio, and the party line showed its value on one occasion when a wireless was fixed up next to a telephone, receivers were taken off, and a neighbour some 16 miles away was able to listen to Churchill speaking.

Ted and Olive Allott were left to carry on the hotel as best they could with a drastically depleted staff and very little business when Josie joined up as a FANY and Rosemary married Charles Owen. Ted and Olive volunteered for service but were turned down: the hotel was an essential business and had to be carried on. Practically the only visitors were Air Force lads who were put up free, an occasional Government official, one or two permanent residents and the R.M.S. lorry drivers who were a great standby.

Rusitu Mission built an African School in Melsetter.

Two huts were available at the Camping Site at I / - a night for adults and children free, but the set-up was not satisfactory and the upkeep of the huts was a problem.

At The Gwasha the cypress trees had grown huge and were shutting in the house too closely. Dan Koch arranged for labour to strip the branches and fell some trees. When the first one was tackled, the stripper climbed up the tree and chopped off branch after branch as he ascended. Koch arrived home just as he reached the top � obviously with no means of getting down again. Panic. Eventually a ladder and a length of washing-line were procured, and from the top of the ladder � so inadequate against the 40 feet of the tree � the line was at last caught by the stripper, who tied it round himself and with this purely psychological safeguard he managed to shin down the tree.

Horses were kept by many residents. Dan Koch was about the last of the N.C.s to have a horse allowance; no one used the horse, Linda, who was sold by one NC. to the next, but she was a very good mare and several N.C.s had foals from her from a local stallion. The police donkey was an offender in the matter of straying into village gardens, and the V.M.B. asked that it should be transferred to another district as it was such a nuisance here.

The water supply continued to be a problem, and requests for advice were made regularly to Salisbury. A ratepayers� meeting in 1939 discussed a Government Irrigation Engineer�s Report, and, on being assured that redemption and interest on the proposed loan of �250 could be met without increasing the rates, agreed that the money should be borrowed. By the time arrangements had been made the War had started, costs had risen, and the V.M.B. had to borrow �310, to be paid off at the rate of �40.3.0. per annum. By April 1940 most residents had piped water and there were seven standpipes in the village for public use.

 

Supplies to some houses were still from furrows: at The Gwasha two Bandits filled the tank daily by hand; one scooped the water out of the furrow with a bucket which he handed to the other, who climbed up a ladder and emptied it into the tank, until Koch made a small reservoir above the house which enabled water to be piped to the tank by gravity.

There were occasional visits by Town Planning Officers, Ministers and other officials, some of whom praised Melsetter for its patience and all of whom promised that something would be done about the Town Planning. As nothing was done the hold-up in development was complete and many problems resulted. Applications for stands and  plots had to be turned down, or applicants lost interest because of the long delay. The siting of the Veterinary camp, a new rifle range, a new school, district surgeon�s house, clinic, cottage hospital, slaughter poles, butchery, postmaster�s house, railway depot, a club, a landing ground, the camping site, the African township, children�s playground, the water supply and septic tank system were all discussed and had to be left over. Everything had to be shelved waiting for the Town Plan.

On the road to Chipinga a new Beit bridge replaced the black wooden bridge across the Nyahode river in 1940 and the road was realigned to cross it. All police patrols were on horseback until motor vehicles were gradually introduced in the 1940s, including a short spell with motor-bikes which were found not to be ideal on these roads. Improvements were made to the police house which until then had few amenities: one drawback was that, in spite of the magnificent view commanded by the site, the mountains could only be seen from the bathroom window. Gradually all the buildings at the Camp have been improved and increased.

In 1941 the old tennis courts were abandoned when two courts were built in front of the hotel, with a rent of I/-  a year for the stands. The whole Commonage area was inspected for bilharzia, and no signs of infection were
found.

The building of the Pioneer Memorial was completed, with the stones from the original cairn built into the side panels, preparations were made for an exceptionally large invasion of campers, and in September 1943 an estimated 400 visitors, including Government representatives, came for the four days of ceremonies for the unveiling of the Memorial. There were services, speeches, games and meetings, and many old friendships were revived. Mrs. Marthinus Martin planted an oak tree but it had later to be removed as professional advice warned that it might damage the Memorial.

The Melsetter-Cashel Road Council split into two separate entities, and Melsetter Road Council worked hard to improve the local roads, which were still all narrow, twisting, winding, steep, troublesome in wet weather, and always slow to travel on. All the rivers were forded by drifts with indifferent surfaces, and all farms were well fenced which meant gates, mostly concertina ones, on all the roads: there were 12 gates in 14 miles on the Nyahode road.

Sheep were doing well on the highveld, and pigs throve on many farms but the cost of transport for importing food and exporting the product limited their viability. Cattle flourished except for A.C.F. hazards and tsetse fly losses on Springfield in 1945; in 1940 a Branch of the Rhodesian Stock-Owners� Association was formed, and in 1942 Melsetter offered grazing for cattle from drought-stricken Matabeleland.

 

Dairying looked tempting, but transport killed the profits, and the best line in this connection seemed to be stud herds: a Jersey herd did very well until the bottom later dropped out of the dairy market throughout the country and there was little demand for high quality stock. Potatoes grew well and sometimes gave an excellent return but there were snags including blight, market gluts and floods.

Soya beans grew well, but in the early 1940s there was little market for them and so no incentive to carry on with the crop. Pyrethrum grew excellently, with a high pyrethrin content according to analysis in Salisbury, but by the time it reached the only market in Durban it was downgraded. Groundnuts grew well but were difficult to reap during the rains as they sprouted in the land before they could be brought in. Oyster nuts, the first known introduction into Rhodesia, were planted on Albany, and the growth was rampant and heavy steel wire trellises were needed; good returns were received from the sale of seedlings and cuttings, but as the result of heavy pruning the vines died. Albany was one of the first farms to market Giant Rhodes Grass seed when it was introduced into Rhodesia. Pasture grasses were planted, but upkeep was expensive, and for those struggling to make ends meet the expenses could not be continued at the time.

On many farms new orchards were established and showed great promise, and in 1946 an Eastern District Fruit-Growers� Association was formed. Many farmers planted pine trees, cedars, gums and cypresses, which grew excellently. Fodder crops were grown regularly, mainly maize and oats.