Corporal William Cloete was a stretcher bearer of the First City/Cape Town Highlanders who ran the gauntlet of extracting his injured comrades while under heavy German mortar and machine-gun during the Battle of Monte Sancto (Italy) in August 1944. While under such incessant fire, he ran up and down the steep slopes of Monte Sancto through partly cleared minefields to save lives. He and the five others he led, were awarded the Miltary Medal for bravery on parade at 12 Brigade Headquarters in Italy on 4 December 1944.
But his bravery did not end there. He did the same in the Battle of Monte Sole in April 1945. However, this time a German sniper shot him in the right eye. He returned in 1945 and attended the School for the Blind in Bellville South where he became a basket-maker and worked for the rest of his life.
Corporal William Cloete died in June 1993 at the age of 74 in a still unfree Bellville South, less than a year short of our country’s first democratic elections in April 1994.
Jeremy Vearey het grootgeword in Elsiesrivier. Hy was ’n lid van MK en ’n lyfwag vir oud-president Nelson Mandela. Hy is ’n vorige majoor-generaal in die SAPD en was tot onlangs adjunk-provinsiale-kommisaris in die Wes-Kaap SAPD. Vearey se biografie Jeremy vannie Elsies het in 2018 by Tafelberg verskyn. Sy book Into Dark Water: A Police Memoir (Tafelberg 2021) is benoem op die 2022 Sunday Times Literary Awards langlys.
