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The Society of Malaŵi Journal

This came in the third of my twenty-one years of living in Nara. Later I saw
the movie, and the Buddhist temple concerned is the incomparable Horiyu-ji,
founded by the truly great Shotoku Taishi, in 607. The grounds retain the oldest
wooden building in the world.
Finally, in this vein, I remember when the Empress Michiko of Japan visited
the University of Edinburgh, and as she stepped out of her car, she was greeted by
George Shepperson. I am unable to verify the date, or even the event, but it is as I
remember. Years later, perhaps in 2013, Empress Michiko’s granddaughter, the
Princess Mako, was for a time an exchange student at the University, studying art
history.
The present writer has been a post card collector since 1951, and from the
many Prof. Shepperson sent, four are so special as to warrant highest evaluation in
their own right. Two are from the high veldt, and two from the southern slopes of the
Himalaya.
The first set are watercolors by Alice Balfour (sister of the prime minister),
th
entitled “June 12 , 1894,” “The Limpopo or Crocodile River a few hundred yards
below its junction with the Marico River.” Sister card to that is one entitled:
“Between Salisbury & Umtali about 4 miles W. of the Devil’s Pass, Aug 24 /94.”
Miss Balfour’s unerring sense of composition and her subtle use of washed-out
pastel earth colors are the best one can see. On the first card, Sam has written: “This
p.c. is to remind you of good old African scenes,” so similar to what I enjoyed when
hitch-hiking in Rhodesia in 1975. Both cards are © National Archives of Rhodesia [in
or before 1975]. Sam wrote the second card on August 24, 2004, exactly 110 years
after the picture was painted.
Next are two black and white photographs from the southern slopes of the
Himalaya. One is captioned “Nepalese Children,” showing a young girl carrying a
younger child on her back, both well-dressed in a snowy landscape, which Sam wrote
on April 21, 2003. Within his message, one reads: “I reply on this ancient card which
I discovered recently when I was sorting out some World War II papers. I bought it in
Darjeeling in the Himalayas where I was on a fortnight’s leave in 1945/46.”
Another of the same provenance is entitled: “Sikkim Peasant Girl,” she
apparently well into her teens, barefooted, wearing a warm peasant shirt and ankle-
length skirt, a nose ring, a beaded necklace, and a shy smile. She stands on a forested
non-wintry hillside, and in the background a man is shading his eyes from the sun.
st
On the verso of this card, Sam affixed a “1 ” stamp entitled “Everest Team,”
showing Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay ascending the high country. The
border of the stamp’s original pane bears the date April 29, 2003, and it has no
cancellation. Sam’s message is very short, the relevant portion reading: “I was in that
area on leave at the end of 1945 – hence this Himalayan p.c.”
Both cards have perforated tops: they were originally part of a pack of
postcards, and the only non-postal writing on the back of each are the letters D.S.
Neither was sent through the post: they were included in envelopes. In addition to
mentioning his furlough after the Burma Campaign, the subject matter of the cards
indicates in Sam a basic humanity that few can deny.
We often shared our experiences as soldiers. In 1992 Sam sent me a card
featuring “The Romance of the Rose,” by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1890), with
a translation into Japanese, and with Sam’s news: he had recently attended a
regimental dinner in London, “… where I sat next to a former Japanese infantry
officer who was in the same part of Burma that I was in, in 1944. I am going to
London – D.V.! – later this month to meet a group of former Japanese Burma

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