A father remembered
Evelyn Nisbet's first memory of her father was when he returned from World War Two in 1945, when she was just four years old.
The Herald recently featured a photograph of Evelyn’s father as the ”Brakpan soldier at war”
Evelyn (73), who lives in Lakefield, Benoni, relayed how her father, Ernest Edward Lawrence Strauss, or Eddie, as he preferred to be called, volunteered for military service when war was declared in September 1939.
“Like most of men at that time, he volunteered and went to Potchefstroom for training in the British Army,” she said.
“He did an officer’s course, passed it and served with the Sherwood Foresters (Notts and Derby Regiment).”
Eddie was born in Benoni on November 16, 1913, and was schooled at Van Ryn School and later at Benoni High School.
He moved to Brakpan in the 1930s and the Strauss family, including Evelyn’s mother Ann (nee McNamara) and older brothers Eamon and Michael, lived at 85 Gladstone Avenue.
Eddie worked on the mines in Vlakfontein before the outbreak of the second world war.
“I was born in 1941 and, while my father must have seen me as a baby before going to war, my first memory of him was when he returned from ‘up North’ in 1945,” said Evelyn.
“I didn’t really know what was going on, but I somehow knew it was a special day.
“We went to my grandparent’s house in Modder Deep, Benoni; I don’t know how he travelled back to the country or to where, but I think my grandparents had fetched him.
“I was sitting on the kitchen steps when I saw this big man, who bent down to my height to hug me.
“I was just dumbstruck.”
Eddie regularly wrote to his wife during the war and Evelyn has hundreds of these pristinely preserved and sentimental letters in her possession.
The letters all bear a censor’s stamp — letters were censored during the war to prevent information from reaching enemy forces.
After the war, Eddie returned to work on the mines and Evelyn remembers attending school at the Brakpan Convent.
The family relocated to Benoni in 1950 and Eddie died in 1960, at the age of 47.
According to Evelyn, some years later, in the 1970s, an English soldier who served with Eddie during the war attempted to make contact with him — through the Brakpan Herald.
“It was about 40 years ago, and there was something in the Brakpan Herald like ‘Is Eddie Strauss alive and living in Brakpan?” said Evelyn.
“It was from Roy Gasson, who was my dad’s ‘batman’ (a soldier assigned to a commissioned officer) during the war.
“A friend of my mom’s in Brakpan saw it and told my mom.
“My mom contacted Roy, who lived in Ravenshead, Nottingham, and they became very good friends.
“It’s very curious that, again, all these years later, there was an appeal in the Brakpan Herald for information about my dad.”
Evelyn’s mother, Ann, who was the matron at the Glynnwood Nursing Home for many years, died in 1998.
Both of Evelyn’s brothers have also passed away — Michael in 1959 and Eamon two years ago.
Evelyn is happily married and has three children and four grandchildren.
Photo of a Brakpan soldier
In the Herald’s October 24 edition, it was reported that a Brakpan resident was paging through a book on World War Two when he came across a remarkable photo of a soldier from Brakpan.
The photo, which was taken on the morning of May 28, 1944, appears in the book ‘World War Two 50th Anniversary Commemoration’ and depicts Sergeant E Newbury, of Melbourne, Derbyshire, and Lieutenant E L Strauss, of Brakpan, Transvaal, South Africa, searching the cellars under a block of flats in Carroceto, Italy.
The Herald invited readers who had information about Lieut Strauss to contact us.
“A friend of the family who lives in Dalpark, Dudley van Niekerk, phoned me when he saw the photo in the Brakpan Herald,” said Evelyn Nisbet, daughter of the pictured soldier, Ernest Edward Lawrence Strauss.
“I had no idea there was a photo of my dad in a book.”
