On discharge from hospital I was sent to King's House in Durban for convalescence and was duly fitted out with hospital blues and a red tie. I remember being there for Good Friday and for another couple of days and enjoyed the time touring the city; it was a beautiful place, this was the end of March 1943, their autumn, the right time of the year and the vegetation was lush I was just settling down to a short spell of doing nothing; I wasn't looking too smart, I used to have my hair cut every two weeks and it was now seven weeks long, additionally the pneumonia had left me with three boils on my face. My convalescence was short lived because I was ordered to report to a hospital, not Clairwood, to be examined to determine if I was fit enough to re-join draft RGDFA. An ambulance arrived and I occupied a stretcher on the upper of two berths, the man on the lower was going to the same hospital. Our ambulance bounced along over dirt roads, it was a very rough ride and after one huge bump my stretcher collapsed and I landed on the fellow below; he wasn't very pleased with me and I finished the journey sitting down, listening to his constant griping. After a cursory examination by the doctor I was pronounced fit enough to re-join draft RDGFA. He must have known where we were going and he must have known that troops with lung problems were not supposed to be sent there, but there, that's the military. I suppose that after the war these three doctors, this one and the two on the Antenor, were let loose on the civilian population of Britain, I'm glad I wasn't one of their patients. Most of our group had a good time in Durban and were very well treated by the South Africans, when we expressed our thanks they said, "Oh, you should have been here before the Australians came, they nearly wrecked the place." Back on the docks we saw our next floating hotel, HMT Aronda; she was much more modern, lighter in build and with finer lines than the old Antenor. Once on board we got into our new routine. The ship had a permanent army officer, OC Troops who, I presume stayed with her on all her voyages. We also had another luxury on board, a real live bugler; his job was to sound off at various periods of the day to announce some activity or other.