The Wartime Baby and Milk

It was at a time when anything could have happened in 1944. D - Day, as it now turns out to be, had not even taken place. Every evening, my mother Anu Morjaria, now Anu Jasani, daughter of Hemakaur and Chaganbhai Morjaria, always covered the windows with black material due "blackouts" taking place. This was way before any sirens started wailing to indicate aerial bombing raids taking place on the coastal East Afrcan city of Dar es Salaam, in what was then known as Tanganyika, now known as Tanzania.

Tanganyika came under the League Of Nations Mandate after the First World War as it had been a German Colony. But by 1939, it was handed over to Britain and thus became a mandate.

As the Second World War entered it's fifth year, some of the war was still going Hitler and the Axis alliances way. Every evening, the soldiers would come up to install anti aircarft guns on the building as my grand father's "flat" was in what was then the highest building in the city and before needed, my mother always, the second of the five children in the family, always went and put up the black material for blackouts and prepared everything in the event of having to go into air raid shelter. My grand father, in the meantime, always went and offered cups of tea to the British soldiers, who would gladly drink it. But one one occassion, the air raid sirens went of early in the evening and my grand mother, having just fed my youngest uncle, who had just born a month earlier, ordered my mum to quickly put up the black material. At this moment, a soldier came down and asked why they had not up the material, when suddenly the bombardment started and the anti aircraft guns opened up. One bomb managed to land and explode just a few yards away and shook the whole building and this made the baby of the family fall off the bed.

My mum still remembers the panic that this caused and just recently, my uncle celebrated his sixtieth birthday and laughed at the incident.

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.