A publicity release from the Public Relations office of the East African Command outlined the importance of the Water Transport training course in Mombasa. The report suggested that the training transformed Africans who ‘know little or nothing of the sea’ into ‘efficient watermen’ who ‘perform a vital job of work for the army’. In illustrating the training process, the release largely described the activities displayed within the film, further noting that ‘the training is hard, but the askari soon become enthusiastic, and their greatest ambition is the winning of the sailor’s cap that is issued to each man when he achieves proficiency in his work’ (‘The Army’s Sailors. Water Transport Company in East Africa’).

Further information was provided, as the report explained that ‘the unit – the only one of its kind in East Africa – is the Water Transport Company of the E.A.A.S.C. [East African Army Service Corps], and in effect is a supply and transport company afloat’. The company’s headquarters were in Mombasa, but ‘it is already operating in Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam, Tanga, Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles, and shortly its activities are to be extended to Berbera and Mogadisciu’. Ashley Jackson noted that by 1944 there were six East African Army Service Corps general transport companies and ‘about 230,000 East Africans were serving at the peak of the region’s mobilisation’ (Jackson, 2006, 185). 

The report also emphasised the achievements and rapid progress made by the serving Africans. One officer was quoted as saying ‘already they [the Africans] are doing shipwright’s work that I never expected them to master’, and certainly their work often challenged popularly held attitudes and assumptions. Training and education was afforded particular prominence within the East African Command, noted by Ashley Jackson, as the War Office limited the number of Europeans allowed in East African forces. The East African Command’s Education Corps and School of Education trained Africans ‘as clerks, medical orderlies, signalers, teachers, censors, gunners, engineers and tradesmen’, and in the process, the army became the third largest educational institution in the region. ‘Much of this disturbed the white settlers of Colonial Africa’, Jackson argued, as many ‘believed that education for “natives” needed to be strictly controlled’ (Jackson, 2006, 186).

In a release from the Ministry of Information offices in Nairobi in October 1944, the East African Command Public Relations Department outlined the benefits of the Army Leave Hostel at Nyali, just outside Mombasa, which was opened by the Directorate of Education and Welfare in November 1943. The release described the wide range of facilities available to the soldiers – ‘there are also a reading and writing room and a lounge with easy chairs, a radio and such games as chess, draughts, cards and darts’ – further reporting that ‘a holiday at the Nyali leave hostel, which is for British Other ranks only, costs the soldier only a shilling a day’. The report detailed that the needs of serving women were also catered for at the nearby Mombasa Women’s United Services Club, ‘even down to a room where facilities are provided for sewing and ironing’ (‘Army Leave Hostel Opens at Mombasa’, MOI 381).