19 With a Bullet (39 page)

That night I sauntered across as they sat drinking next to a blazing fire. I recognized the lieutenant in command of the small group as being a guy who had been on the Recce selection course with me. He remembered me. I recalled that it was his third attempt at the Recce course. He had not made it. They had just returned from their part in Operation
Carnation
and were already roaring drunk. I was surprised to learn that they had lost one of the Americans a week earlier in a contact. They didn’t seem too remorseful about it; in fact they scorned the one troop who had been killed because he’d stood up in the middle of a fire fight to lob a grenade like he’d seen it done in a John Wayne movie and had been cut down instantly.

I spent the night drinking brandy with them and they pissed themselves laughing when I told them the sergeant-major story. They accepted me because of this, slapped me on the back and plied me with straight brandy after the Coke ran out. I spoke to a couple of Yanks with thick airborne tattoos on their forearms who said they had been in Vietnam. I tried to prise some stories from them but they seemed tight-lipped and unwilling to talk in front of their comrades. They just shook their heads as they took long swigs of brandy.

“It was a fuck-up,” was about all I could get out of them. (I learned later that one of the unwritten rules when joining a foreign army and its war was not to talk about ‘How we did it in Vietnam or Rhodesia’, but to forget that you’d been there because nobody is interested in how you did it then. This was another army and another war.)

The one guy was still using his old M16 and said it was the same one he had used in Vietnam and that it was a good rifle. His partner jeered him, saying that it was a piece of shit and said that he had almost got killed in Vietnam when his magazine fell out during a fire fight.

“You’ve got to push your magazine all the way in until it clicks, shithead,” his partner said quietly. He patted the South African-made R4 next to him “This is a rifle ... it’s made here in South Africa to shoot kaffirs with,” he said in a thick Louisiana accent. He seemed a nice guy, almost out of place. I wondered how he had got involved in a tiny war so far from home.

As the night went on they became raucous and rowdy, with one American falling in the fire and almost catching alight. They laughed and squabbled, and I felt that there could be an argument at any minute, that one of them would pick up his loaded R4 and start shooting around the fire. I decided in my drunken state that I would definitely not like to go into battle with this loose-goose crowd.

They were mostly much older than me, probably in their thirties, but I got on well with a Rhodesian guy around my age, whom they called ‘Mad Irish’. He told me that he had lied to join the Rhodesian army at the age of 16 and had been shooting terrs for five years. They mocked him as being totally mad and because he had driven into contact in the Q-Kar with his two .357 revolvers blazing like a cowboy. Mad Irish and I sat by the fire, as drunk as lords, and had long rambling conversations about bullshit, only getting up now and then to puke or piss. We had become quite good mates by the time the night was through and he encouraged me to try and get transferred to his “merry band of losers”, which would have been impossible.

I made the mistake of sleeping late the next morning, with a huge hangover, and almost fell out of bed when a voice like a bullhorn bellowed at me, rattling my bruised brain against my skull. I was asked who the fuck I was and what I thought I was doing sleeping at 08:30 in his base?

I stuttered sluggishly that I was from D Company and was waiting for a court martial in Oshakati. This seemed to stir some vague recollection in him and it only made him even more furious.

“Get the fuck out of here, you rotten piece of shit, and start chicken parade around the camp!”

I contemplated trying to kick his ass, which had lately become my standard secret joke when any rank gave me trouble, but decided he would probably shoot me, so I hastily threw on my browns and began to search in between the tents for litter, my brain almost bursting every time I bent down to pick up a cigarette butt.

I had made an enemy and my little holiday was over. The next morning I was on parade with the juniors and put to work in the kitchen afterwards, loading sacks of onions and potatoes. The beady-eyed cunt from the morning before drove me unmercifully and had me doing chicken parade when there wasn’t an ounce of litter in the entire camp. For days the juniors sat relaxing around the pool in pants and boots, on standby for Fireforce and sympathetically watching me trudging around the small base looking for butts. Enough was enough. I was no chicken-parade, chickenshit troopie just up from training like this dickhead captain who had come up with the juniors. I had never even seen him before. Probably just got his wings the other day! I quickly figured on a plan to fuck the irritating captain over, and so one morning informed him with a smart salute that I had to go into Oshakati to see my lawyer about the court martial. He mumbled and grudgingly sent me on my way into town with the morning transport.

Hey, I was AWOL, and sat shoulder to shoulder in the Buffel with airborne lieutenants and sergeants I did not know. I wondered if it was compulsory when you got rank to be an asshole. I wondered whether they take classes on how to fuck with troops and make life a misery for them, to make them hate the army, or whether it was just the personal preference of each individual officer. I decided that they probably did give classes on the shit.

In Oshakati, a small civilian town as well as the operational area HQ, I grooved around the base with a mean, purposeful look in my eye. No one bothered me; they probably all thought I had some business being there ... otherwise I would not be there.

I had a peaceful and tasty lunch at the canteen, which was full of noisy medics, MPs and services troops. I even got a look of respect when they glanced at the maroon paratrooper beret which I wore at a rakish angle. I still had most of the R200 left over that John and I had taken from the SWAPO we had shot, so I cruised downtown and put the money to good use. I bought some shorts, a watch and an ‘electric’ shaver you wound up like a lawn mower with a few good pulls on a cord. It ran for minutes by itself till you had to tug the cord again a couple of times. It gave a great shave.

I walked down to the post office (which was bombed soon after we left the operational area, killing 20 civilians) and called Taina collect. It was unbelievable to hear her voice; she squealed with delight when she picked up the phone and heard who it was. I felt a physical stab of pain in my heart when I put the receiver back in the cradle.

Back at Ondangs the following morning I was informed by the clerk that this time I had to go to Oshakati to see the lawyer for real, so it was back to town the next day.

“Well, it doesn’t look too good for you. You hurt this sergeant-major quite badly, you know. He has a broken jaw and a broken collarbone. Tell me ... did you use any weapon or instrument to hit him with?”

“No, not at all,” I lied.

I knew that the sergeant-major hadn’t seen me use the big screwdriver, because he was huddled up with his hands over his face at the time. He must have thought that I punched like hell. Kurt was the only one who had seen it and I knew that I was safe with him. The redhaired lieutenant looked at me again with disbelief.

“He says you might have hit him with something.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“They are saying that you are some kind of boxer or something. What’s all that about?”

“Nothing. I haven’t boxed in years. Anyway, I heard he was some kind of amateur champion, so that should even that out.”

“Well, that’s not the point—you’re the one who beat the shit out of him, and he’s saying you might have used some kind of weapon. If you did, you’re going to be in deep trouble. As it stands, they want to haul you over the coals and I don’t think we have much to go on. I’m going to try and push the fact that you were personally involved in a lot of action in Angola and that you were looking forward to seeing your pets. And when you found out they had been killed you weren’t thinking straight ... and that you are very sorry for what you have done.”

I still felt no remorse for kicking the idiot’s ass but nodded my head solemnly in agreement.

There was a pause, the lieutenant assuming we were done.

“What kind of sentence could I get, lieutenant?”

“Well, I’ve got to tell you that you could spend the rest of your service in DB and, if there was a weapon involved like they say, you could even go to civvy jail when your service is up.”

I was shocked. The next seven months in DB, or maybe jail! I had never dreamed that the outcome could be so bad; in fact I hadn’t really thought of the consequences at all. I had no idea what to expect, but now the possibility of spending the next seven months in DB shook me to the core. For the first time, I really appreciated the gravity of my situation.

COURT MARTIAL

I heard it through the grapevine—Creedence Clearwater Revival

The court martial was scheduled for the next Tuesday, a week away. I rode back to Ondangwa feeling low and depressed. I had fucked up big time. What a disgrace to spend the rest of my service in DB while my buddies were fighting in the biggest operation at what seemed to be the height of the war. I had let myself down. I had let my guard down and let my emotions get the better of me. I had opened the door and let the demon of chaos in which I could normally control with an iron fist—and now I was to pay the price. Hadn’t I learned anything from the numerous temper-related troubles I had been through in the past? I thought of what my parents would say. They would be so disappointed in me for fucking up. My mom and dad were proud that I was in the Parabats doing my bit; now they would have to come and visit me in DB. And all the bullshit training I had been through—now possibly all for nothing. Why did I do it? What’s wrong with you, man?

Back at Ondangs I received a parcel from Taina with a bottle of Green Island Jamaican rum in it. I read her letter, got drunk and spent the night talking to the juniors and answering their questions about what it was like to be in a contact. They were all ears.

They had not yet completed their training but had come up early to take over Fireforce duties while the senior companies were on the ‘big ops’. I enjoyed the attention and respect and laid on the bush-soldier image a little too thickly, but I felt I had the right. These were our juniors and in the five months on the border D Company had already chalked up 80 kills, so I could lay it on a bit. I told them how we had sneaked up on SWAPO and ambushed them deep in Angola and how we had hit a FAPLA observation base and had been chased by a T-55 tank through the bush, barely escaping with our lives, and causing an international incident. They were impressed and gathered around me, clamouring with eager questions.

“What’s it feel like in a contact ... do you shit yourself?”

“It’s just like a street fight—keep on punching, don’t stop. You’ve just got to pull your ass tight, go for it and keep shooting, try and keep cool and think. In this kind of close contact half of it is the noise. The side that makes the biggest noise makes the other side crack. Just keep shooting.”

I sat coolly on the edge of the bed as if this was how I always acted in a fire fight, smoked one of their cigarettes and looked at the group of eager faces almost worshipping me.

“What about this big operation, senior?”

“Is D Company going to be in it?”

“If they hit FAPLA, won’t all those Cubans be with them?”

“It’ll be a massive operation!”

“You guys might even be in it if the shit really hits the fan … you might be up there in Angola shooting FAPLA before you can say lickety-split. They’ll just wake you up one night, issue you with grenades, put you on a chopper and half an hour later you’re facing a T-55 tank—that’s how fast it goes down.”

They smiled at each other at the prospect of action so soon. These young juniors I was talking to wouldn’t be smiling a year or so later. In fact, their company was to end up seeing the most action of us all—they would lose 12 troops when the Puma helicopter carrying them into Angola on Operation
Meebos
was shot down by anti-aircraft guns hidden among the trees, ploughing into the ground at high speed, killing everyone aboard.

For some reason the tormenting, beady-eyed captain had disappeared from the scene, and so again my days were laid back with long suntanning sessions and cold Cokes. I had been thinking about the whole scene. If I went to DB for the rest of my service, at least I would not get my ass shot off and would be in Bloemfontein. Taina could come and visit me and before I knew it I’d be done and out the army, getting on with my life. This wasn’t life, walking around the bush shooting people. Get on with life? Get on with what? I had no idea what I was going to do once I had finished the army. I had given it little thought. My brother was at university getting his marketing degree, but further studies were out for me—I had just skinned by, getting my matric after screwing the English teacher, and that was on my own, studying in the city library. What was I going to do?

I had sometimes thought of signing up and making a career of the army but lately that had turned sour. Fucking up a sergeant-major wouldn’t look good on my file and I would definitely stay a private forever. No, to hell with the fucking army. I could belt out some good rock and roll—perhaps I could sing in a rock band, become famous, live the good life and drive around in a Mercedes sports. Music, maybe?

The other thing was sport. If I trained like hell and put everything into boxing I could turn professional and maybe get to the top and make millions, or at least give it a shot. All this thinking just made me more depressed. I decided to go on some long runs. I ran round the big base once in the morning and again in the late afternoon; I went to the little weight gym and worked out hard with the concrete-filled paint cans till I was dripping with sweat and my muscles ached the following day. But I pushed myself to do it over and over again.