Two weeks ago, I wrote a column urging people over 50 not to be too disconsolate about the future and to remember that their best achievements could yet lie ahead of them. In the process, I let drop the fact that Hannibal was older than 50 when he crossed the Alps.

You could not imagine what response I have had to that statement. From all sides, I have been bombarded with demands that I set the record straight.

There were telephone calls throughout the weekend. I discovered e-mails, in similar tone, in number on my computer. One reader, B M of Walmer, quoted alleged extracts from the Encyclopaedia Britannica to support his contention that Hannibal was only 29 at the time. He referred to a Second Punic War and the struggle of Carthage in which, he claimed, Hannibal was somehow instrumental in securing a victory.

B M of Walmer also described Hannibal as one of the best military strategists of all time!

There must be some confusion here. These people cannot be referring to Fred  Hannibal, with whom I shared a bedsitter in London those many years ago. It seems a clear case of mistaken identity.

If Fred ever was a military strategist, even on a small scale in his native town of Port Morgan, Australia, I’m sure he would have told me. We kept few secrets between us. Indeed, it was something of a problem just getting to sleep at night, so forthright did Fred Hannibal become after a few games of darts in the White Swan (or Mucky Duck, as the locals called it). Friday nights were the worst. Mainly, his frankness concerned past encounters with women.

But Fred never said a word about Carthage or any Punic Wars.

On another point, B M of Walmer. Since receiving your e-mail, I have looked up Carthage in The Times Atlas of the World. There are eleven such places, all of them in the United States, apart from a small town in Tunisia. Now, to my certain knowledge, Fred Hannibal never visited the United States. He had a typical Australian attitude to all things American. He wouldn’t even eat Big Macs – unless I was buying and he didn’t wish to offend me.

As to Fred Hannibal’s age. I can state quite categorically that he was more than 50 when he crossed the Alps. I know because he showed me his passport before we went our separate ways to the Continent, with an arrangement to meet at a youth hostel in Florence.

Fred was old for a Youth Hosteller but his size, five foot two, allowed him to take advantage of YHA facilities. Also, he submitted an old photograph when he applied for a YHA card. Hostel wardens, seeing this cherubic picture over the injunction to “pick wild flowers sparingly, if at all”, concluded that Fred had merely had a rough day getting there, on his bicycle.

What the YHA wardens didn’t know (and could not be allowed to, since many of them barred Hostellers with motor vehicles) was that Fred Hannibal also possessed an old Fordson van, in which he stowed his bicycle for all but the last few hundred yards before the next youth hostel. So he would park the van around a corner and arrive, suitably puffed, on his bike.

Fred’s scheme eventually backfired. Halfway up the Alps, while he was overnighting in a hostel at the little mountaineering resort of Ober-Ingenflushenheimer, the van slipped its handbrake and was never seen again.

So Fred Hannibal was actually forced to cross the Alps by bicycle and by the time he got back to London he looked more over 50 than ever (29 indeed, B M of Walmer!).

Incidentally, we never did meet in Florence. Fred apparently couldn’t find it, although he told me later he had passed through a place called Firenze.

A final thing, B M of Walmer. You state in your e-mail that the Hannibal of your acquaintance crossed the Alps with elephants? Come, come, B M of Walmer! Pull the other leg!

John Ryan’s Time Wounds All Heels column

SEVENTEEN

 Towards the end of 1942, after the tragedy of Tobruk, rationing began to bite. Motorists needed coupons to buy petrol. The government introduced “meatless days”. Beef and lamb, anyway, were in short supply and the chickens that Nick Mostert and other local farmers produced were saved for Sunday lunches. In October, however, the gloom over such things as rationing was hugely lifted by the Allied victory at El Alamein in Egypt, where General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps was defeated by a superior force of tanks and many South Africans were cited for their bravery. On the Friday of that week, when Nick Mostert walked into the Grosvenor, the local celebration of the victory was at its height. Members of the NRV had all but taken over the bar. Among them was Digger O’Brien, the OC. Inevitably, through the crowd, Mostert was singled out by George Trebble and introduced to the local pilot, John Moore. Trebble suggested that the two of them should move into the adjacent lounge, where they would be able to talk more comfortably. They spoke for half an hour before Mostert excused himself, saying he had to go back to check on his incubator. When he had gone, Digger O’Brien and George Trebble joined Moore in the lounge. ‘Well, John?’ O’Brien asked. ‘All I can say is that he seems genuine enough,’ said Moore. ‘I questioned him about the layout of Twelve Squadron’s base. He knew it, down to the little wadi where the blokes go for their evening smoke. ‘He knows the workings of the Boston bomber, which is a flying incendiary, as he says. He even knows about the problems we’ve had with the rear gunner. That rear turret is so big that there’re blind spots all around it. We have to fly the Bostons in formation so that the rear gunners can watch one another’s backs. Mostert knows all about that. ‘But as a clincher, I asked him if he’d done a course on the new Mosquito light bomber. He would have had to, if he had been at the base when he says he was. The RAF sent one out so we could get familiar with it, and we should have a few more by the end of the year. ‘We were talking casually, of course, because I didn’t want him to get suspicious. I said, Do you remember the problem with arming the Mosquito’s guns before take-off? And he said, Yes, if you’re in the pilot’s seat you’ve got to move your head, otherwise a bloody great falling machinegun could give you a terrible headache. ‘His words, and exactly right,’ said Moore. ‘And how would anybody know about that unless they’d experienced it? But a strange chap isn’t he? Ask him a question and he looks up into his head for the answer. I found him a bit vague about people, and personalities. Although the squadron’s changed in just the time I’ve been there. But I’d say, yes, he’s been there as well.’ John Moore turned to O’Brien. ‘I’ll ask around when I get back if you like, sir. Maybe find out more about him. And his accident.’ O’Brien left, knowing that George Trebble would be conveying what Moore had told them to his chums in the pub, but knowing also that there was nothing he could do to stop it. Take it or leave it, that was George Trebble. Gerald Wilson and Ginger Southwood took the information with mixed reactions. ‘I’d say that lets him off the hook, then,’ said Wilson. ‘I couldn’t really picture young Mostert as a spy, anyway.’ ‘But how do you explain the leg that wasn’t broken?’ Southwood said. ‘Why would a man have his leg put in plaster unless he had something to hide? And he doesn’t mention any plans to rejoin the squadron.’ He pushed back from the counter and lit a cigarette. ‘And remember he’s a Dutchman. And that uncle, or whatever he is, fought for the Boers against the British.’ ‘It’s good to see young Moore,’ Gerald Wilson said. ‘You don’t see many chaps his age around these days. It’s the schoolboys and us, mainly.’ ‘Speak for yourself,’ said Ginger Southwood. ‘There’s me and there’s that Robert Fuller from the prisons department. What do they call his lot? Essential services? I see he’s having it off with Mavis Howlett, the low bastard.’ ‘Well, maybe while her husband’s away she considers him an essential service,’ said George Trebble, ‘She’s a bit of all right. Have you seen her in slacks? Like two little boys fighting under a blanket!’ ‘I wouldn’t like to be Fuller when Bernie Howlett gets back,’ Gerald Wilson said. ‘Bernie’s a tough little bugger. Jealous, too. He doesn’t like people to look at his wife.’ ‘He’s in the bag, is Bernie,’ said George Trebble. ‘He’s in that same stalag with the other Transkei blokes. So Fuller will be long gone by the time he gets out. Fuller and those chaps at the jail get moved around every two years or so.’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Wilson. ‘How long do you believe this bloody war’s going to last? With the Americans in Europe, and Rommel chased out of Africa now, it could all be over sooner than we imagine.’ ‘Wishful thinking, Gerald,’ said Ginger Southwood. ‘Wishful thinking.’ Later that night or early the next morning, according to Sergeant Jock Brown, a person or persons unknown broke into the Drill Hall, forced the lock on the door of the office of the National Reserve Volunteers and stole various items of office equipment as well as several documents. The Drill Hall had been closed and was apparently secure when the janitor, Melvyn Swanepoel, made his last round of the school premises shortly after 11 pm. Early on Saturday morning, Digger O’Brien was surveying the damage when Jock Brown walked in. ‘So what’s missing, Digger?’ asked Brown. ‘Have you been able to check?’ ‘Ag, bits and pieces of stationery,’ said Digger, ‘but those were just taken as a blind. What have gone are all our security files from Roberts Heights, the ones we’ve been getting weekly.’ ‘Who would want to steal that stuff?’ said Brown. ‘Who would indeed?’ said Digger.