Later that day we were issued with our very own R4 assault rifles. The R4 is the locally made version of the Israeli Galil rifle, which is based on the Finnish Valmet rifle, itself a clone of the basic 1947 design by sergeant Mikhail Kalashnikov. It therefore followed logically that the weapon should be presented to us as tangible proof of South African innovation and engineering prowess. Ah, guns, lies and politics!
It is a badly kept secret of 1980's realpolitik that the South African and Israeli governments of the day were working closely together to develop and manufacture military hardware. And not just small stuff like assault rifles. The list included mobile artillery, armored vehicles and aircraft weapons systems, to name but a few. Both countries were, and I guess still are, very adept at 'reverse engineering' equipment from countries like the US and France and making these designs their own. They also did an excellent job retrofitting aging aircraft and extending their useful lifespan far beyond what any of the wealthier warring nations would ever attempt. I point you towards the 35 year old French Mirage fighter aircraft and Super Frelon helicopters still in service in both countries and rest my case. It is also no coincidence that these two countries developed their first tactical nuclear weapons more or less simultaneously. South Africa has since given up it's nukes, thank God, but as we all know, downtown Tehran may yet be turned into a glass-topped parking lot without assistance from George Bush and company.
We received instruction on the functioning and cleaning of the weapon. Note that I refer to it as a weapon, not a rifle, gun or any such nomenclature. Calling your R4 anything but a Weapon let to immediate punishment and retribution. I am baffled to this day about why that was so important, but such are the small things on which military discipline sometimes hinges. True to army tradition, the weapon had to be taken apart and reassembled what felt like a thousand times. By the way some guys handled their weapons, it was clear that they had never handled a firearm before. Some were fascinated by the little hole at the business end of the barrel, others used their rifles to point at whatever they were looking at or whomever they were talking to, and some managed to have a handful of spare parts left every time they reassembled their weapons. I shuddered at the thought of their getting ammunition as well.
It is a badly kept secret of 1980's realpolitik that the South African and Israeli governments of the day were working closely together to develop and manufacture military hardware. And not just small stuff like assault rifles. The list included mobile artillery, armored vehicles and aircraft weapons systems, to name but a few. Both countries were, and I guess still are, very adept at 'reverse engineering' equipment from countries like the US and France and making these designs their own. They also did an excellent job retrofitting aging aircraft and extending their useful lifespan far beyond what any of the wealthier warring nations would ever attempt. I point you towards the 35 year old French Mirage fighter aircraft and Super Frelon helicopters still in service in both countries and rest my case. It is also no coincidence that these two countries developed their first tactical nuclear weapons more or less simultaneously. South Africa has since given up it's nukes, thank God, but as we all know, downtown Tehran may yet be turned into a glass-topped parking lot without assistance from George Bush and company.
We received instruction on the functioning and cleaning of the weapon. Note that I refer to it as a weapon, not a rifle, gun or any such nomenclature. Calling your R4 anything but a Weapon let to immediate punishment and retribution. I am baffled to this day about why that was so important, but such are the small things on which military discipline sometimes hinges. True to army tradition, the weapon had to be taken apart and reassembled what felt like a thousand times. By the way some guys handled their weapons, it was clear that they had never handled a firearm before. Some were fascinated by the little hole at the business end of the barrel, others used their rifles to point at whatever they were looking at or whomever they were talking to, and some managed to have a handful of spare parts left every time they reassembled their weapons. I shuddered at the thought of their getting ammunition as well.
* * *
''You drill to learn discipline. Discipline can save your life one day." Our corporal was trying to justify marching us up and down across the dusty parade ground in the hot midday sun. No one believed him.
"Bloody marching will kill me before discipline can do me any good.'' This grumbling came from a sweat soaked figure in an oversized overall somewhere in the squad. It could have been any one of us in the platoon that day, and on 300 other days like that one.
I'm still not buying that bullshit about military drill saving lives, or being good for anything other than torture for that matter. How does marching up and down in the dust and heat prepare the modern soldier to fight a bush war or urban terrorism? We spent 20 hours on drill for every hour of weapons training and shooting practise! I kid you not. The running and physical training I can understand—you have to be able to get the hell out of wherever you are quickly when the shit starts flying, but it's not very likely that everyone is going to fall in and march off in orderly fashion, smartly executing a series of silly moves invented by sexually frustrated English and French perverts in the early 1700's. Even if you don't plan, or need, to retreat quickly, attacking is best done on the double and not in a neat squad formation. What do I care if the guy next to me can march in perfect step in a straight line with straight shoulders if he can't shoot straight?
We ran our first 2.4 kilometer fitness test that afternoon. This 1.5 mile endurance test is the brainchild of yet another military pervert. The distance is too short to settle into a rhythm, as you would on a longer run, and too long to sprint. For some reason this was deemed the perfect test for general physical fitness. If you ask me, the original 2.4 was the distance between a general's tent and the pit toilet during a typhoid epidemic on some forgotten campaign.
Dressed in PT shorts, T-shirts and running shoes, we lined up at the start. I decided not to exhaust myself unnecessarily. I finished in about 16 minutes—you were supposed to do it in 12 minutes. That left me plenty of room for improvement at a later stage. Some guys provided even more room for improvement. The second slowest time was 22 minutes. The slowest time was five days. Someone had skipped the fence at the halfway turning point. The police returned him five days later.
We had our first session of punishment PT that night. Our rotten inspection and barbaric behavior on the parade ground served as reasons, not that they actually needed a reason. With his usual sensitivity, Lieutenant Kotze timed our session for immediately after dinner. Within an hour we were rolling and crawling in our own vomit. It was like being sick when you're really drunk, and you can't breathe and someone is kicking you in the gut at the same time, only much worse. Again the logic and rationale escaped me. The only good explanation is that some people, when they find themselves with the kind of power to do unto others as they please, will do exactly that. Seeing others suffer at their command must be gratifying to them, and part of their psyche is either boosted or suppressed, as the case may be. I was growing up while I was throwing up, and beginning to understand that there really were bad people on this planet. That Nazi's and Fascists weren't just awkward movie extras with bad German accents; they were real people who really did cruel and unspeakable things to those in their power. I also learned that strong people aren't the ones to worry about; weaklings are the scary ones.
At nine o'clock we were released, more dead than alive. All I wanted was a shower and my bed. That was not to be. We shared our barracks with another platoon. A low wall divided the building. As things go sometimes, quarrels arose. Our neighbors chose that night to settle the score. I was still in the shower when the fight broke out. They attacked us, yielding duffel bags stuffed with boots. Now that wasn't too bad. It's not all that dangerous. Then one stupid asshole in our platoon decided to put his four pound flat-iron in his kit bag. When he hit the first intruder the fight was over. It was also our last fight with the neighbors.
I was unbelievably tired that night.
"Don't worry," said one optimist, who had yet to learn when to keep his fucking trap shut, "Things can only get worse."
Nobody bothered to answer him. I fell asleep, hating the thought of tomorrow.
* * *
The day was old when I realized it was Saturday. Whatever happened to the weekend feeling?
"It's alive and well and living on civvy street," the platoon philosopher said. I decided to write my MP and demand a forty hour week.
The morning was spent (wasted?) marching, sweating, farting and running around all the various landmarks our corporal pointed out. We had the afternoon free. That is, we were free to clean our living quarters, polish boots and weed the lawn. In those intervals of relative freedom all the cropped-up humour came to the surface. Hardship may bring out the worst, and occasionally the best, in some people, but it certainly brings out their funny sides as well. I can fill the pages of a very thick book with all the jokes that circulated in our platoon. If only I can remember them.
We were blessed with the presence of quite a few master storytellers. A chap by the name of Cronje was particularly versatile. He quoted Shakespeare and Monty Python with equal ease. He also offered some controversial theories on life and the universe. A willing listener was confronted with such realities as the 'Butter Crisis in Biafra', or a lecture on the earth being a sausage.
"I used to be a member of the Flat Earth Society," he once told me, "but I resigned when I became convinced that the earth is in fact a sausage." He was very serious.
Everybody was not as sophisticated as Cronje. Many were downright crude. One guy I recall, specialized in gruesome dead-baby jokes. His favorite was something about a baby in a microwave oven. He must have told it five hundred times, and not always to new listeners.
Even crude jokes proved to be above the intellectual abilities of one idiot, whose name and face thank God escape me now. He would walk up to his victim, grab him by the arm and fart as loud as he could. Then he'd walk away, laughing hysterically for several minutes.
That Saturday night was extremely peaceful. I ran into a corporal who was an old school friend. He was duly sent into town for takeout food of the non-military kind. Piet and I skipped supper and indulged in hamburgers, Coke and memories of our varsity days. And we had Sunday to look forward to.
Sundays started with rusks and coffee at seven. Rusks are essentially blue collar biscottis, without the chocolate dip and $2.50 price tag, and has been a South African staple since the Great Trek in the mid-1800's. You can buy a two pound box of rusks for about what a single Starbucks biscotti will set you back. In case you wanted to know.
On Sundays breakfast and lunch were combined into one meal served at eleven, the often confusing, and seldom successful, 'brunch'. Granted, there may be perfectly decent brunches to be had in parts of the world, and I may have been near one or two in my day, but there is no way a brunch could have worked at the Fourth South African Infantry Battalion in the year of Our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty two. For several reasons.
The chefs, as we sometimes managed to call them without laughing hysterically, not fully grasping the concept of brunch, simply combined all the breakfast and lunch dishes and served them at the same time. Which, while bad enough, is not the end of the world and at this point brunch could still have been saved. But this is where things started to derail badly. Brunch was prepared as two meals, by different crews. The breakfast crew started their preparations later than they would on weekdays; the lunch crew started their shift earlier. Yet another point in time where total disaster could have been averted with a little coordination. But that was not to be. What ended up happening was this: The breakfast crew started too early, and the lunch crew didn't start early enough. Their failure to understand time as a dimension resulted in the 'Br' part of brunch being overcooked to death and beyond, even by army standards; and in the 'unch' part being undercooked, raw, frozen or alive (pick one), even by army standards. I have never before or since seen fried eggs with quite the same plastic consistency and green hue, and I have chewed on tastier plastic toys as an infant. One day I plan to duplicate those eggs in a laboratory, but I'm not confident that I will succeed. Even if I manage to exactly recreate the color and the impermeable plastic skin, I'm not sure they will float in cold, hydrogenated vegetable oil in quite the same way, nor will I be able to reproduce that very peculiar rubbery sound the eggs made when bounced off a concrete floor.
Sunday church parade took place on the rugby field. It was hell to stay awake. The hot sun, the padre's droning voice and our tired bodies were a deadly combination. Many a head was nodding on a rubbery neck. The company sergeant-major couldn't tolerate such lack of discipline. Halfway through the service he jumped to his feet. "Wake up!" he shouted. In a softer voice: "Sorry Padre." He sat down, trying his best to look like an elder in the front bench. The stunned preacher lost complete track of his sermon. Only after two hymns and a prayer did he continue. We stayed awake though.
I wrote a few letters that afternoon.
"Dear Anita. Please send me a nude photograph of yourself."
"Dear Natasha. Please send me your body. Express mail."
The effects of the blue tea were wearing off.
"Dear Sandy......," I hope I don't go blind.
Corporal Roberts strolled into the barracks. "Writing to your girlfriend, hey. You're wasting your bloody time. She's sweating in another man's arms. Wha-ha-ha-haaaa!" He was so damn funny.
"Dear Mother. I am really very happy here. It is not as bad as I expected it to be." Yeah, right.
I settled down with Henri Charriere's Papillion—the only way I could escape on that depressing day.
* * *
''Suddenly I look into your sleepy eyes......"
I was doing pushups to the rhythm of the the music in my head. Vivid visions of sleepy blue eyes and flowing blond hair on a pillow eased the pain of early morning PT. I was quickly mastering the art of transporting my thoughts to more pleasant circumstances. I still got bloody tired though.
Monday was selection day for the leadership course at Infantry School. That was the where the army turned human beings into infantry officers. I was told that the food was much better there. What's more, it was served an proper white plates, of the non-plastic variety. I decided to try my luck.
Selection started with all the applicants running another 2.4 kilometer fitness test. I failed to understand what that had to do with leadership qualities. There were several idiots who could cover the distance in under eight minutes, because they were too stupid to get tired. Anyway, I made it, barely squeezing in under 12 minutes. An interview with a fat captain from the School followed.
"Why do you want to do the leadership course?" Because I want to get out of this shit hole, I thought. Aloud, I said:
"I have to do two years of National Service, Captain. I want to make the most of it and serve my country to the best of my abilities." That bowled him over. Duly impressed, he added my name to the list of the chosen few. All the platoons were reorganized. Only the men destined for Oudtshoorn remained behind in our company. The others were posted to other companies and some to other units. Most of my new acquaintances were selected as well. A new military force was on the march.
''So, you think you're smart now. You haven't reached Oudtshoorn yet and already you act like you run the bloody army." Corporal Roberts had reached one of his phenomenal conclusions. We were treated to another punishment session. This time it was a sort of steeplechase, spiced with star jumps, sit ups, squats and other unnatural body movements.
''He's just trying to crack us," someone panted. That didn't worry me. I was afraid he was trying to kill me. I pushed myself beyond the limits of endurance. The bloody corporal pushed me even further.
I dragged my dead body to the showers. My reflection in the mirror horrified me. I had lost at least 10 pounds of weight in less than a week. Weight Watchers, eat your heart out. Anna-Nicole, don't read this.
The night brought no relief. We were introduced to the delicate art of night camouflage. That meant covering your face, neck and arms with a sticky, polish-like black cream invented by yet another pervert—the military seems to have its fair share of them. A route march followed. That ended in chaos. The platoon got separated in a black wattle forest. Half the guys were lost and the other half stumbled through the undergrowth trying to find them. When we were eventually reunited, two men were still missing. They showed up after midnight. Apparently they had reached the main road in their search for the rest of the platoon. They then followed the road to the nearest Wimpy Bar. After a good meal, they hitched a lift and returned safely to the base. Sensible fellows.
At one in the morning I was more or less free from the dreaded black stuff. It had taken almost half an hour of intensive scrubbing. My skin was as pink as a newborn baby's bum. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. You're not likely to suffer from insomnia in the Army.
At last! Our boots had arrived. Everyone received two pairs. And then the agony started. A fakir's nail bed is arguably the most uncomfortable thing in the world. If so, army boots come second by a very small margin. They don't change shape to fit your feet. Your feet get moulded until they fit the boots. Everybody offered foolproof ideas on how to make your boots soft and pliable. One suggested stuffing them with wet paper. Another swore by rubbing methylated spirits into the leather. "No,'' said a young farmer from Vryheid, "Dubbin is the only thing that works." Others soaked their boots in hot water, some trampled them and one genius even urinated in his boots. For weeks he was a very lonely young man. Almost everybody had blisters and sore feet in the end. Inventive genius proved no match for army boots. The boots caused more problems than blisters and misformed feet. The extra weight on my feet was too much for my delicate young knees. I was in agony for a week.
At last I decided to suffer the humiliation of reporting sick. I told the doctor about my suffering. He patted my knees. "You've got sore knees," he said. How on earth could he tell? He gave me some tablets. He didn't even put me on light duty. Bastard.
The week progressed true to army tradition. PT and drill were interrupted only by inspections, weapons training and lectures on field craft. We racked up a lot of mileage that week. All the lectures took place in the veld surrounding the camp. Being infantry men, we went everywhere on the double. Our corporal was a fanatical non-smoker. To him smoke breaks meant more time for running around trees, miscellaneous non-tree landmarks, and up and down any hills this side of the horizon. I was down to five cigarettes a day.
On Friday we had a nice break. We spent the whole day writing aptitude tests. Somebody stole
my bush hat.
"No, you can't get a new one." I had to wear my damn steel helmet all the time. More than two weeks were to pass before I received a new hat. I learned to keep a close eye on my kit.
Saturday was Open Day. Parents, wives and girlfriends could visit their loved ones on the base. We had to stay in the barracks until our visitors had arrived. A corporal called your name and only then were you allowed to go out into the 'picnic' area. I have seen prisons with more lenient visitor rules.
Nobody came to visit me. I spent the whole fucking day in the barracks. I experienced an intense feeling of being dead to the outside world. Maybe corporal Roberts was right after all.
Piet brought me a fat slice of chocolate cake. Good old Piet. Yes, it was great seeing his girlfriend again. "Only problem is, we had nothing much to talk about." She married someone else before Piet was back on civvy street.
The word was out! We were to go on pass the following weekend. Sex was written an every face. Rosy-cheeked young men were dreaming of losing their innocence in a passion filled weekend of doing unto others and having other do things to them. The more experienced ones had that special faraway look in their eyes.
I organized a lift with someone from my home town. His father came to fetch us. I got home late Friday night. Mother opened the door.
"What have you done to your hair?" Hello Mother. It's good to see you too. Was I hungry? I was.
I stuffed myself with chicken and salad, followed by five slices of bread plastered with butter and homemade apricot jam. After ice cream, coffee and more ice cream I went to bed. I spent half the night bent over the toilet bowl. My digestive system said 'No' to rich food. Bloody traitor. It was already adjusted to army food.
First thing in the morning, I looked up an old girlfriend. What have I done to my hair? Thank you. You look lovely too. Would I like some coffee? No, I'd rather have you. She had a new boyfriend. Would I like to see his photograph? I spent the morning in the pub.
I tried in vain to get a date for the night. Everybody had something on.
"Oh I'd love to, but......''
I fell asleep in front of the TV.
Church, lunch and a lift back to camp. That was Sunday's program. Some bloody weekend.
I reached the base in a state of black depression. The whole place seemed to close in on me. The two years ahead looked like a long, endless road.
* * *
My last week in Middelburg was an orgy of handing in some of our kit, drawing more kit and completing hordes of documentation. A bit of haphazard training was thrown in just for the hell of it. The army was safe in its cocoon of red tape. We had a barbecue on Saturday night. We were allowed two beers each. Believe it or not, we had a few teetotallers in our midst. I duly swapped my meat for two more beers. Man cannot live on meat alone.
I saw more than one guy getting pissed on two beers that night. The healthy life of lean food and around-the-clock exercise was no way to get drinking fit. The night was lost in drunken laughter and crude songs, and a good time was had by some. Army life didn't look too grim after a few beers.
* * *
We boarded the train on a Tuesday, destination Oudtshoorn. It immediately became a pub on wheels, not an up-scale neighborhood kind of a pub; more like the type of dump that smells of piss and cigarette butts where worn-out alcoholics go to get drunk on the cheap. I don't know where on earth all the alcohol came from. I have a strong suspicion that some of the officers made a lot of pocket money on that trip. Anyway, we didn't complain.
I shared the compartment with Piet and four other guys. One didn't drink and one complained about our smoking all the time. The other two were stoned out of their minds for the whole trip.
The behavior of a bunch of drunken soldiers is a study of humanity at its lowest—and funniest. Some became loud and boisterous, others became aggressive. A few just sat quietly, staring from blank eyes. Many ended up puking out the windows or on the floor if they weren't quick enough.
The train stopped at De Aar station for three hours. It is a very desolate spot in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the Great Karroo desert, and we were stranded there in the middle of summer. People in that part of the world always walk around in groups of two or more in summer, because, as they put it: ''If this fucking sun catches you alone it will burn you alive.”
A dare-devil called De Klerk decided to break the monotony. He stripped off his clothes and dashed across the platform, shouting "fuck the army!" at the top of his lungs. That was followed by flashing a brown-eye to the shocked civilian spectators. He must have been very drunk. It took five MP's to bring him down. I have often wondered what happened to him.
We reached Oudtshoorn very early on Thursday morning, February 11th, 1982. Hordes of mean-looking, shouting NCOs marched us to waiting vehicles, their colorful phrases filling the morning air, amusing no one but themselves. I was strongly reminded of a German concentration camp. Years later I stood next to the railroad tracks at Birkenau and couldn't understand why the scene looked so familiar to me.
It was raining. Dark clouds covered the surrounding mountains. My immediate future looked even darker.
