19 With a Bullet (40 page)

One of the pathfinders for D Company arrived and dumped his kit in my empty tent. He had come back because he was scheduled to have knee surgery at Oshakati. I was happy to have the company and some information.

“Ja … we’re all camped up about 80 clicks straight up the main tar road. It’s really
kak
; there’s maybe a thousand troops there. Every day we’re doing the same thing—digging trenches. We spent days digging these long fucking trenches and bunkers, then for the last two weeks we’ve been assaulting them. There are about 20 Mirages that come in first and do dummy bombdrops. The infantry’s there, medics, panzers with Ratels, everyone. It’s a big fucking operation going down. You’re fucking lucky you’re not doing it.”

“What’s going on, what’s the target?”

“Ag, I don’t know … nobody knows yet but it’s obviously a very big base and D Company is the spearhead for one of the attacks. We’re going in right up front and we’re going to be taking the trenches, with all the rest following up. I think there’s going to be a few attacks. We’ve spent days doing fire and movement into the trenches and then throwing grenades into bunkers to clear them. It’s a full-on conventional attack,
broer
. We’ve got Ratels and Elands and artillery behind us. You must hear those howitzers, man! Fuck, it’s loud … can’t believe it! What’s going on with you? I heard about the sergeant-major … are you fucking crazy, man?”

“I’ll probably get DB till I
klaar
out.”

“Shit, china, that’s rough … Hey, where can I get some chow here?”

I gave him a few cans from my stash.

*****

I marched into the big gloomy room in doublequick time and came to a sharp halt in the middle of the floor. The walls were dark; my halt seemed to echo off them. In front of me was a long row of tables pushed together, behind which sat seven or eight big knobs with piles of paper in front of them.

I couldn’t even tell what rank they were because I had never before seen the kind of stuff they had on their shoulders. They had an ugly assortment of orange and blue and brown berets from different units. I felt a twinge of pride as I stood stiffly at attention with my dark maroon airborne beret at an angle on my head.

“Take that beret off!” a voice boomed sharply at me. The corporal who had marched me in snatched my beret off my head and handed it to me. He seemed as nervous as I was. I stood staring straight ahead of me but in my peripheral vision I could see that this was a group of no-nonsense, mean motherfuckers. They shuffled papers and growled at each other in low snapping tones. I had the distinct feeling that they did not like paratroopers. Finally a thin, bespectacled, mean-looking commandant-general, brigadier-or-something started reading some preamble in rapid-fire Afrikaans that I had no chance of following. I did, however, catch the word ‘sergeant-major’.

The thin man finished and sat down, then barked at my counsel who stood up and came forward nervously, shuffling his sheets of paper. He performed just like I was afraid he would. He began speaking in English in a weak little voice that was barely audible in the big room; even I could hardly hear him and he was right next to me. The same voice that commanded my beret to be removed roared at him to speak up. He was clearly shitting himself, overawed by the quantity of scrambled egg on the shoulders of the men he was addressing. He turned it up half a notch, shooting through his delivery of my defence seemingly in one breath. I was done for. I had a sinking feeling in my gut. Was that it? Chicken shit!
I
could have done better than that and I stutter!

The voice boomed again and the 3 SAI sergeant-major whose ass I had kicked marched smartly into the room and came to an impressive halt on the smooth polished floor. I could see that he was a lifer. He sat down on a wooden chair and began to give his testimony of what had happened. He kept his beret on. I was surprised when he opened his mouth and spoke in a small, almost pleading voice, in Afrikaans. All I could pick up was the bit at the end: “And then he kicked me and jumped on me,” as he pointed dramatically to his shoulder and neck.

He also said that he had been ordered to get rid of the cats by the camp CO the day before. The brass barked a couple of questions at him, which he answered meekly like a child talking to his father, not at all like the fire-eating, kitten-killing Popeye character I had tried to kick to death a month before.

Perhaps I was wrong and he was a decent sort. Maybe I was the fuck-up. The way he spoke was very humble and human. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye; he looked small and harmless, and I felt a brief sense of remorse but quickly changed my mind when I remembered the unalterable fact of him stomping the kitten to death. I changed my way of thought. He was probably so humble because someone—me—had finally and properly kicked the shit out of him. This much was true as I later found out from the 3 SAI troops. He was never the same man after his troops had seen the crazed paratrooper giving him the mother and father of all beatings right in front of them.

My counsel seemed to have found some courage from somewhere. He stood up at his wooden desk with his few pages in his hand. “These are young servicemen who have come straight from high school to do their duty. They do it for the security of our country and for their families, as we all do. Those who enter combat units are thrust straight from school into close-combat situations. Consideration has to be given to the fact that the accused is in a fighting unit and had personally been involved in numerous contacts just prior to the incident.”

“Yes, that’s my man … go for it. You tell ’em!”

My counsel seemed to have found a crack in the proverbial dyke. He persisted bravely, standing somewhat squarely behind his empty desk. He had a determined look on his face as he lifted his notes and made a broad, sweeping gesture with them when he came to the part where I had discovered that the kittens had been killed. It seemed out of character. The panel of slavering pit bulls let him talk for a minute, glaring at him in silence with knuckled foreheads.

“I have a letter of recommendation here from the accused’s company commander, Captain Verwey. In it the captain states that Rifleman Korff is a likable, good troop who has always pulled his weight and has never been a troublemaker. He has performed well in the bush and has been at the forefront of recent actions across the border in Angola.”

He handed the letter to the corporal, who came forward and then handed it to a short, fat commandant who had been sitting quietly at the end of the long table.

“In these circumstances, away from family and loved ones, the men form strong attachments with pets and suchlike for comfort and possibly feel more for them than they would under normal circumstances.”

“Lieutenant, you are repeating yourself. I say to you again, troops are not permitted to have pets of any sort in the operational area, or in their base camps in South Africa!” The voice boomed out in surprisingly good English and cut off the brave redhaired lieutenant in mid-sentence, signalling the close of my defence.

My counsel quickly lost heart and swallowed his words. He sat down and shuffled his papers distractedly.

I stared straight ahead at the brown prefabricated wall behind the panel of pit bulls as they swapped notes and snapped and growled into each other’s ears. I felt the same feeling of helplessness I used to have when I was sent down to the school principal’s office and stood in front of him. It was a childhood feeling of having been bad and being caught and reprimanded. My brain seemed frozen in this childlike state of catatonic helplessness. I shifted my eyes back and forth along the prefabricated wall in an attempt to rearrange my thoughts and snap out of it. Why did I always end up in these situations? Why was it always me? Why hadn’t someone else beaten the shit out of this prick?

I didn’t have time to come to a conclusion in my soul-searching. It seemed that they had decided my fate alarmingly quickly. Boom Voice cleared his throat and bellowed on again in rapid Afrikaans for a minute, building to a climax that came quickly. Then he sat down and passed some notes to his colleagues.

The corporal, who’d been standing in the doorway, came forward to a snappy halt next to me, sharply saluted the panel and turned to me. “Right turn! Out the building, doublequick time! Forward ... march! Leftrightleftrightleft …”

I marched through the doorway like a wind-up toy, unable to step in time to his quick-fire commands. Outside, he dismissed me on the concrete pathway and flashed the shadow of a smile as he shook his head slightly. Although he said nothing, I could tell that he was thinking—“What a bunch of dicks”.

The corporal took off and I stood uneasily in the shade of the covered walkway as sundry admin motherfuckers walked past me with piles of paperwork and relaxed attitudes. They seemed to be having a great time, bullshitting and laughing easily. Just like any job in Civvy Street. Five minutes later the redhaired lieutenant came out and gestured to me with his head as we walked briskly to his small office a few buildings down.

“What happened, what did I get?” I had no idea what Boom Voice had been saying on my fate.

“Well, it looks like luck is smiling on you, Korff. You got a one-year sentence, suspended for three years. It’s a longer sentence than I expected, but it is suspended. If you put a foot wrong in the next three years you’ll go to DB for a year, which will be carried over to civvy jail if your service is up while you are in DB.

I didn’t quite get the gist of what he was saying at the time, but all I knew was that I wasn’t going to DB. Even though I had prepared myself for the worst, in a way I was not surprised at the verdict as I had never really felt I would go to DB from day one. Somehow the picture of me in DB had never registered in my brain. Maybe God was looking after me after all. Maybe He had used me as his instrument of bush justice. Maybe.

“I think that letter of recommendation from your captain helped a lot. Also that you guys have got this big operation that’s going on any time now and they need every man they can get in your unit.”

I felt a gush of gratitude towards Captain Verwey. I went to the lieutenant’s office and signed some papers. I shook his hand and thanked him.

“Stay out of trouble now, eh—no more beating up sergeant-majors!” He had a smile on his face.

“No, I won’t, lieutenant.” I came smartly to attention and saluted him. He returned a casual salute and I walked out the door. Outside I felt like jumping up and down and whooping a Red Indian whoop but I walked casually, on air, to the canteen where I could grab some decent chow before I caught the ride back to Ondangwa. I couldn’t believe my luck and was unable to wipe the stupid grin off my face as I chowed down. As far as I knew the ‘big ops’ hadn’t started yet, so I might even be able to make it in time to join the action. Now I just had to find out where the hell D Company was.

Back at Ondangwa I jumped off the Buffel, beaming. It was hard to keep the smile off my face. I felt joyously happy. I was a free man ... it was over! My soul soared like an eagle after being released from the dark threeweek depression I had slipped into, sitting alone in my tent and waiting for this fucking court martial to be over. I walked among the tents on the way to the canteen and bumped into one of the corporals of the junior E Company, talking to a few of his troops in the doorway.

One of the good things about the Parabats was the respect shown between the senior and junior companies that didn’t really exist to the same extent in other units. A senior rifleman could even throw a bit of attitude around a junior corporal and probably get away with it. The only difference between a senior and junior company was the difference of six months between intakes of troops for national service.

I questioned the corporal with new vigour and bearing. “Corporal. Do you know anything about this big op? Has it started?”

He looked at me and, recognizing me as a senior, dropped the aggressive attitude he was inflicting on the group of juniors and answered me respectfully, even though I was just a rifleman and he had two stripes on his arm.

“No, I’m not sure … but I don’t think so. But it should be soon, because I know that D and H companies have been up training for it for the last three weeks. They’re going to be involved in it.”

“Yes I know. I’m in D Company and I need to get back to them as soon as possible.”

“Well, you better speak to Captain Swart. He’ll be back at 14:00.”

“Thank you, corporal.”

Captain Swart, the tormentor! I couldn’t wait to tell him that my business was done and I’d be moving on. I strolled back to my tent, pulled off my army boots and put on my worn blue sneakers, which had become a habit. I lit a cigarette and lay back against my folded-up sleeping bag as I contemplated my good fortune. A hot ray of sun blazed through an open tent flap and burned my legs. It felt good.

If I could find out exactly where the company was, I could join them immediately. They would probably have to send a Buffel to take me out there. They needed every man for this op … shit, if they’re going to hit FAPLA, there’s going to be a small war. Captain Verwey said that I was a good troop who pulled his weight. I needed to be with my company!

I felt a new buzz of loyalty to my company and to my OC, Captain Verwey, and a rush of excitement at the chance of making it in time to be part of the mother of all cross-border operations into Angola. I sat back, deep in thought, and lit another cigarette. I had sworn that I would quit after the retching incident, where I was almost shot dead while coughing and puking my lungs out when we’d hit the FAPLA troops. I would have died in midpuke. What a way to go! I had stopped for a couple of days afterwards but was soon back to puffing a pack a day. I blew a big cloud of smoke and watched it drift lazily to the top of the hot tent.

My 21st birthday was in two days time. This was a good thing, except that for the last two years in a row, the evening before my birthday had been cursed with weird bad luck. On both occasions, almost to the hour, around 23:00, I had been arrested on possession of weed charges and spent both birthdays in jail. I mean, what are the chances of that? It was uncanny and must have had something to do with the alignment of the stars when I was born—not that I believed in that crap, of course, but perhaps there was something to it after all. Anyway, this time it looked as if the spell had been broken and that luck was working for me and not against me. I decided to slip over to the canteen and pick up a couple of icecold Cokes and a chocolate bar to celebrate.