19 With a Bullet (35 page)

“Give me the other one!” I said motioning to the second Sosagon syringe that lay in the medical heap. Kurt looked at me with a strange look but said nothing and handed it to me. I was working quickly as if I knew what I was doing while everyone stood silently around, observing. I took the second syringe and plunged it into a vein in his other arm, mixed blood and pushed the plunger all the way down. I didn’t know too much about what I was doing but what I
did
know for sure was that a shot of Sosagon intravenously into ‘Papa Joe’, the main vein in the arm, knocked you instantly into another world. I also knew that a person could handle two shots, because I had once watched a red-headed, freckle-faced senior on our last bush trip in Ondangwa slam two full syringes of Sosagon one starry night. He’d sat rocking on the sand walls of our Fireforce base, staring up at the night sky until he fell asleep and we had to carry him to his tent. He seemed fine the next day at parade.

Instantly the old man was as high as a kite and even broke into a slow smile. He began pointing this way and that in some explanation that I took to be saying that he lived somewhere else. His speech became slurred and I could see in his eyes that the old boy was heavily stoned as his lids hung halfway over his eyeballs. That was what I had wanted.

I lifted the bottom half of his shin that flopped loosely as I moved it. I picked it up with two hands as gently as I could and shifted it so that it was aligned with the top half. I could clearly see the bottom half of the bone, red with congealed blood. I could feel the two ends of broken bone grind against each other as I pushed them together. I had to repeat the process a couple of times until it all seemed to fit into place, bringing with it a small flood of fresh blood. The old still grimaced and moaned in pain, his eyes tightly shut, but he was able to handle it. I cleaned the sticky blood from around the wound and poured some antiseptic liquid which Kurt handed me into the wound.

“Get sticks for splints!” I called. It it seemed a logical thing to do. Even a boy scout should know this. Make a splint.

Some of the guys quickly returned and handed me an assortment of sticks that I broke up into what I thought to be suitable splints. I placed two field dressings on either side of the wound and then bandaged them tightly into place with a long bandage. Then I put some two-foot sticks on the outside to hold the flopping bone in place and wrapped them tightly too, making a firm splint. The old man, tripping on the morphine proxy, gripped my wrist tightly and babbled on again, looking deeply into my eyes with what seemed like heartfelt gratitude. Even with no medical training, I knew he would probably die if he did not get proper medical attention and even then he would probably lose the leg. I had actually done nothing but put his leg in place and bandage it tightly. I irrationally wondered for a moment whether it had been my bullet.

Lieutenant Doep had just got off the radio, cancelling the gunships and reporting that we had shot a PB. I stood up and looked at him. He nodded at me. We stared at each other.

“What are we going to do with him?” I asked, still in charge as the acting medic.

Doep looked at me blankly. “We should take him with us. It’s probably only 40 clicks to the South West African border,” he said, knowing it would be impossible to carry the old guy 40 clicks.

“We should get a chopper to carry him back to Oshakati to the hospital. We shot the poor bastard. We can’t just leave him here,” I insisted.

I quickly learned the reality of war when Lieutenant Doep looked at the old man silently, then at me, and then away from my gaze.

After a minute, I said again, “What are we going to do, lieutenant?”

“Leave him here. We can’t take him with us ... we’re in Angola. Come on, let’s move out!”

He did not even mention the ridiculous idea of having a chopper come all the way, over 40 clicks, to pick up the poor old bastard after we had shot him by mistake. I shook my head and made a disgusted sound and looked down at the old boy who was now happily smiling, still looking up at me.

Kurt had hooked him up on a drip and was showing his friends that they should keep it held high and remove it when it was finished. I left a heap of bandages and ointments and another Sosagon from the other medical bag and told them to give it to him again in his thigh when it started hurting again. I also left a pile of glucose sweets and sour sweets from my rat pack.

We moved out of the kraal and headed south again in a V formation. A deep, dark mood had settled on me. I felt terrible about leaving the old man lying in the hut. I thought back and knew too that I had pulled off a volley of shots at him when I saw him in his white shirt running to the kraal. Why the fuck couldn’t Lieutenant Doep just call in and at least request a chopper? Who knows, they might have even said: “Sure we’ll come and pick him up.” It would be no skin off anybody’s nose to get a bird out here and pick the old boy up and when he’d healed, just drop him at the border and tell him to make his own way back. I knew that when he came round he would half die from the pain and would probably be dead in a few days from infection.

I pushed the thought out of my mind and scanned the bush, my rifle ready at my side. We crashed south uneventfully but the next day at about 10:00, as we were about to cross a big open
chana
, the black tracker walking point stopped and pointed across the
chana
to the other side.

“SWAPO! SWAPO!”

The formation came to a sudden stop and we stared out across the
chana
, shielding our eyes from the bright morning sun. Sure enough, on the other side 300 metres away was a group of figures hanging around and sitting under a large tree which looked to have bicycles leaning against it.

“SWAPO!” he said again, pointing and wagging his black finger.

“Are you sure?” Doep stared across the
chana
.

“Ja, is SWAPO!” he wagged his finger furiously, his bloodshot eyes widening and his tongue darting across his thick lips.

I shielded my eyes from the bright glare coming off the white
chana
and stared across. I could see that they all seemed to be wearing the same colour khaki uniform and that there seemed to be at least a dozen of them. We were a weary bunch of bush soldiers and had little interest in breaking off and sneaking all the way around the big
chana
to try and surprise them in a flanking attack. In any case it looked as if we had been spotted, so we quickly spread out on the side of the
chana,
as if at the shooting range, and
Valk
4 opened fire from 400 metres. It was deafening. I pretty soon lost sight of the target because of the smoke and then had to stop shooting as a troop in front of me had moved into my line of fire. I did not want to change my position suddenly because there were also troops behind me who were shooting just over my shoulder, so I lowered my rifle and kept still. The lack of one rifle was not going to make a difference from this range.

Fifteen seconds after the shooting started a mortar exploded in a cloud of white smoke 50 metres in front of us ... and then another one a little closer.

“Kleingeld has got off fast with his mortars this time but he’s fucking up again … he’s way too short. Fuck him!” I thought.

Boom
! ... another mortar exploded 40 metres in front of us as we all involuntarily got down onto our knees.

“Stupid shithead!” I cursed Kleingeld, but did not look around for him as rifles were once again blasting over my shoulder, deafening me. After a minute the shooting staggered to a stop, as did the mortars.

“Spread out wide ... move across!” Doep shouted.

I made a point of looking at Kleingeld who was loading up his mortar pipe and his kit. “You were pretty fucking fast to get those mortars flying off, Change!” I acknowledged. (Kleingeld in English means ‘small change’.) “But you were too fucking short again, man ... you landed right in front of us,” I challenged. I still hadn’t forgiven him for almost dropping two of his mortars on me yesterday when we had chased the PBs.

“I didn’t get one mortar off. What are you talking about? I was shooting with my rifle. That was their bombs! They were fucking quick to respond,” he said in Afrikaans.

I was surprised. Shit! They had been pretty close. Their mortar man must have a damn good eye to have put his first bomb so close at over 400 metres while under fire. I never did ask Kleingeld why he hadn’t used the mortar, which would have made perfect sense over that distance.

We walked fast, spread out in an extended line across the huge
chana
. A few bullets buzzed high overhead like bees but soon stopped, as the group of SWAPO made a beeline into the bush, having traded a few shots. With the reckless abandon of having a few successful fire fights under our belts and weeks in the bush, we came to where we had seen them under the trees. They had cleared out but it looked as though they had spent a couple of days in a TB under the trees, because once again we found some bedding, cans of fish and bits of clothing.

We found more propaganda leaflets saying that the
Boere
were white monsters who had no mercy and would not be satisfied until they shot all your cattle and slaughtered your goats and only wanted to terrorize the peaceful people of Angola.

“You see, they found out about the goat. I told you!” Kurt said slowly. “They’re not lying!”

Kruger found a big crimson belt buckle with a hammer and sickle on it and happily held up his booty as we all gathered around to marvel. It was a beauty. What a find! Also clear evidence of the Soviet presence in Angola. We scouted around for about half an hour, looking in the trees for more equipment, but found none.

Lieutenant Doep was on the radio, reporting that we had made contact but said that we had not seen exactly which way they had run. Their chevron-shaped spoor was clearly imprinted in the sand all over and I examined it closely. They seemed to have bombshelled almost immediately, splintering in different directions.

“Clever little fuckers,” I thought. Their bombshelling technique was a good one, because which spoor should you follow? Would you put a whole platoon on the chase of one or two spoor?

Ho Chi Minh, or whoever, was the father of guerrilla tactics and it was he who had come up with this one and saved many a terrorist’s, or freedom fighter’s, life, whichever way you wanted to look at it.

Doep was debating following a spoor but we had all sat down for a smoke and had even taken the opportunity to open a quick can of chow. We had no stomach for a chase. He looked at us and read quite clearly how we felt about it.

“Okay, finish up ... let’s move out.”

That dusk we came to the rendezvous spot in a bushy area. Waiting for us was a platoon of 3 SAI (South African Infantry) who had a few armoured Buffels and had been dug in, waiting for us since the previous day. We were the first D Company platoon to arrive. We flopped down under the trees, laughing and relieved that our four-week patrol in Angola had come to an end. We drank warm Cokes that the infantry had kindly brought and opened long-awaited mail that we scrutinized closely and quickly in the dwindling light.

“The bitch has left me … she says she’s found somebody who loves her! She actually did it. I don’t fucking believe it!” Stan read through the short letter again. He stood up, looking in disbelief at the piece of paper in his hand and walked around and around in a little circle, rubbing the back of his head with a deep scowl on his face. “The stupid cow ... I don’t believe this. She Couldn’t wait till she saw me face to face!”

We laughed and hooted at his misfortune.

“What did you do to her, Stan? She must have heard that you were screwing these Owambo women,” I laughed heartily, as under the circumstances I found it very funny, because for a year and a half I had been hearing about Stan’s up-and-down problems with his girlfriend and I knew all the details. (By pure chance it turned out that it was Taina’s neighbour Jimmy who Stan’s girlfriend had met. Funny thing was that Stan and his girlfriend lived in Cape Town and Taina and I lived in Jo’burg, 1,400 kilometres apart.)

We were sitting under the tree in the fading light and had put our own letter-reading on hold to console and poke fun at Stan when Kurt came walking slowly into the circle with a couple of white pages clutched in his big ham hands.

“Doreen’s pregnant ... from another guy!”

There was a brief silence as we looked at him to see if he was screwing with us—which was usual—when he spoke in that low serious tone but this time he was not as he looked at us quietly with his speckled blue eyes in his big pink face. I cracked up and flopped down on my back, laughing.

Kurt sat down, shoulders hunched, his huge frame bent over as he read the good parts to us. “She’s pregnant by this other guy ... I know the guy, too. He works with her sister. I’ve met him.”

I could not stop laughing and had tears in my eyes. Kurt and I were always taking the piss out of each other and bullshitting, and seeing him sitting there, hunched over, talking in his low, barely audible voice was just too much. The tears rolled down my cheeks as I laughed and laughed. I had met his girlfriend. We had AWOLed to her hotel room in downtown Bloemfontein when she had come to visit him and got drunk on wine before going bar-hopping, getting motherless and ending up having five fist fights in one night. I had been arrested and put into a police van while the cops pursued other drunken AWOLees involved in the inter-unit war that was raging outside the disco, but while they were busy some strange dude with hair down to his arse came and unlocked the police van and said in Afrikaans, “
Kom, ma wag vir ons
” (Come, mother’s waiting for us) and let me out. It was the strangest thing—and then he disappeared, and so did I. Quickly. I have always thought he might have been some weird angel who had been sent to set me free.

John Delaney and I were two of the few who still had our girlfriends. We bragged about how we knew how to treat them right and poked fun at Stan and Kurt till it was pitch dark when we rolled out our smelly sleeping bags into shallow holes. That night we had the first good night’s sleep in four weeks, while the infantry stood watch over us with new South African-made night-vision equipment that had just been issued.