19 With a Bullet (50 page)

I saw the fresh-faced paratrooper recruits in clean new uniforms staring at us as we marched by and knew how they felt. I had stared in the same way when I first saw a combat-seasoned Parabat company returning from the border and being congratulated on their successes. We came to a halt outside the city hall. Sergeant-Major Sakkie’s legendary voice drowned the 20-piece band as we formed up in open formation. Finally the band stopped and we listened as speaker after speaker congratulated and thanked all of us involved for our part in the biggest and most successful military operation since the Second World War.

A prayer was offered for the infantry troops who had paid the ultimate price and finally the mayor of Bloemfontein, a big man with a belly that started from his chest, gave an impressively patriotic speech and then came huffing down from his podium to walk down our open-order ranks and shake hands with every troop as he thanked us. As he got to me a TV crew hurried forward, busy filming. I put out my hand as he grasped and almost crushed it.

“Congratulations on the victory. We all thank you very much.”

I remember looking at the thick, studded mayoral gold chain that hung around his neck and then into his small earnest brown eyes beaming at me as I nodded my head.

Afterwards we were dismissed and told to come into the hall for food. Long tables had been laid out and women with sweet voices handed us paper plates and we loaded up with cold meats and delicious desserts. All of a sudden we were like kids at a church picnic—we laughed and giggled as we stood in line for second helpings and answered, around stuffed cheeks, the women’s queries on how we liked the food. Outside we had a chance to mingle with the civilians for a while. We stood on the city hall steps and smoked as we eyed the girls and they eyed us back. With our long hair, dark brown suntans, torn uniforms and worn rifles slung over our shoulders we looked the part and kept the civvies staring. We
were
the real thing; just flown out of Angola and into the city hall in Bloemfontein. Seven hours ago we had been sitting in Ongiva watching for FAPLA—now we were chewing cold meat and devilled eggs and eyeing pretty Afrikaans girls in fresh make-up.

The next morning, after another smaller parade and further congratulations from a jubilant Commandant Archie Moore, we were sent off on an unbelievable but true 21-day pass. My mother and Taina were waiting at the gates. After almost breaking my ribs (she was strong as well as beautiful) Taina held me at arms’ length and examined me, her big green eyes taking in every detail with concern before informing me that I had changed and somehow looked different. She said I looked like a man now. Well, thank you very much. I never knew she had looked on me as a boy before. But she was right. I could feel it too—a part of me did not feel the same.

When we pulled into the driveway on the farm it was snowing. It had not snowed in Johannesburg for 20-odd years but now everything was covered in a blanket of white snow. The ‘welcome home’ banner that hung over the garage looked in danger of collapsing under the weight of the thick layer of snow on top of it.

It was great to be home again. Fuck Angola, fuck the army and fuck SWAPO and FAPLA. I was still gung-ho but had seen that it was not a game any more and that people got killed. People got shot to pieces. Old men died and no one cared. Young men who had joined with the same eagerness for adventure as me got ambushed while cooking breakfast and had their brains shot out and eaten by pigs and were notched on someone’s rifle as one more kill. I had no doubt that they would have killed me had I been sitting cooking canned steak and onions but in the back of my mind there was a vague notion that even though I was sure I was doing the right thing, somehow it was still all bullshit.

Fuck everybody.

GLORIOUS 21-DAY PASS

Walking on the moon—The Police

That night I saw myself on TV on the six o’clock news, shaking hands with the mayor of Bloemfontein. I was surprised how skinny and forlorn and serious I looked as the mayor vigorously pumped my hand up and down. My moustache looked huge and almost ginger on my face. They showed my handshake as one of the main features after the march-pasts and speeches. Taina squealed with delight and my dad smiled. The report went on to say that Operation
Protea
was the biggest and most successful external operation to date; aimed primarily at knocking out SWAPO headquarters at Xangongo, and secondly at destroying the enormous quantities of heavy weapons and conventional equipment that had been stockpiled by the Angolans at Ongiva, a stone’s throw from our border. I was learning more from the television news bulletin about why we had been there and what we had done than I had known when I was in a trench in Ongiva.

I told my brother and father how we had hit the FAPLA troops by mistake in Operation
Ceiling
—before FAPLA became fair game in Operation
Protea
a month later. My brother told me he had seen on the news that South African troops had attacked FAPLA and that Angola had complained bitterly to the United Nations about the aggressive racist regime. He shook his head when I told him that it was my platoon alone involved in the unfortunate mistake. I told him how we shot the hell out of them and how I had almost had my head blown off, puking, while a terr was setting up to blast me from five metres away. I told him how we had run through the night when the BTR had come after us and how we had later shot the old man by mistake and callously left him lying there. And how we had carried out the perfect ambush early in the morning, killing all present and about the steaming heads and the snuffling pigs; the hard-looking terr showing me a ‘fuck you’ sign on his chest as he died; the 16-year-old SWAPOs we had cornered in the thicket of dense bush and shot to pieces and the 1,000-pound bombs that sounded like thunder and the chaos of being pinned down with anti-aircraft fire ripping over our heads and dashing from trench to trench. I spared my dad some of the details but my brother wanted to know them all.

I cracked up with laughter when my mother (who was also a corporal in the reserve force) told me how she had single-handedly protested the fact that lately there had been so many young troops dying while serving time in DB. There had been a spate of deaths reported in the newspapers. She had been on parade with her unit in Johannesburg; the parade was dismissed and the two companies turned to march off the parade ground but my mother had stood her ground and refused to move. Troops walked around her, cussing in her ear to “Get out the way, you silly bitch!” Pretty soon my mother was standing, at ease, alone on the parade ground. The RSM had a fit and told her to fuck off his parade ground immediately and what was her fucking problem. She told him that she was a mother with sons on the border and that she was protesting the deaths of young soldiers in DB. He threatened and cursed and shouted in her face that if she did not remove herself from his parade ground at once she would be charged and put in DB herself. But no threat could budge my mother. She stood alone on the empty parade ground for half an hour while various officers tried in vain to get her to leave, all getting the same response. Finally, to her relief, an army chaplain came to her and asked if she wanted a cup of tea and to talk about it. To which she replied “Yes, please” and walked off with the chaplain. She had made her point. My mother—the original rebel. Now I knew where my streak came from.

We went to the famous Kyalami race track for the Formula One Grand Prix in Darryl’s brand-new AlfaSud sports car which he had just bought. His first new car. He clucked and pecked like a old mother hen over his new piece of tin. I laughed when he fussily said that I shouldn’t lean against it. Knowing me as being heavy handed, he instructed me carefully on the correct way to slowly close the door and, though we were both dying for a cigarette, he said we couldn’t smoke in the car. The new sound system with graphic equalizer blasted out the Police’s ‘Walking on the moon’ that drowned the horn blasts of the racing enthusiasts behind us as Darryl crawled at a snail’s pace over the speed bumps leading into Kyalami.

As Mario Andretti and his mates roared past us in their Formula One rockets, we sat in the front seats of the AlfaSud and did some serious damage to a bottle of good South African brandy. Shouting above the roar of the engines, I told Darryl about the last three months in the bush. Thick with brandy and emotion, I emphasized the point by slamming my right fist into the windscreen of Darryl’s brand-new Alfa. The emotion of the moment was bigger than the shattered windscreen in front of us that splintered instantly from corner to corner into a spiderweb of shiny cracks as I carried on with the story, without pausing, still punctuating it with occasional punches. Darryl showed the true colours of our long friendship as he sat silent for half a minute and let me finish my story before we both took in the damage to the brand-new car’s windscreen, my bleeding knuckle and then roared with laughter. By chance I met Badenhorst who was in my platoon. He was also wandering among the crowds with a friend, drunk out of his mind mumbling about shooting SWAPO. I poured him a stiff three-finger brandy. Soon afterwards he and I both passed out on the ground. I was drunker than I could ever remember being in my life.

Stan hitchhiked from Cape Town up to Johannesburg and spent a couple of days with me. Lance, my old friend from high school, was also on leave from the border; the old gang was together again. Lance had made it to second lieutenant with a Bushman tracker unit and had been close to the area where we had pushed vehicle patrol. I had often asked after him but had not bumped into him on the border. We swapped war stories.

He was bummed that he had just missed the two ops. “We were securing the area for you guys so that you could get into Angola without a contact. If it hadn’t been for us the whole operation would have been compromised!”

“We had a 16-click mechanized convoy with us going in ... I don’t think we would have had a problem.”

We argued inter-unit politics and pride and drank. Stan got on well with my old gang and we partied at all the old haunts. We swaggered into the discotheque in Boksburg and danced to Bananarama’s ‘Cruel Summer’ then smoked doobies at the dam.

At a roadhouse that served late-night chow, a notorious Lebanese gang pulled in en masse. They were punks with long reputations of ganging up and kicking the crap out of anyone they decided needed an ass-whipping. They had also been involved in a few stabbings and shootings. One of the well-known Lebanese brothers sauntered by and muttered something to Stan who was glaring at him like a Nazi stormtrooper. The little prick sneered and made a hand gesture. Before Stan or anyone could react I had smashed my plate of burger and fries into his face and followed up with a punch that did not catch him flush. He whirled to run with his face full of ketchup, blood and gravy and I gave chase but ran into two of his delightful ‘cousins’. It turned into a free-for-all with everyone involved. I ended up doing pretty well, with two punks in a head-lock under each arm like in a Bud Spencer movie. I was starting to jump up and down, shaking them around. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Stan reel back as he got caught by a good punch. Derek Worthy floored a skinny Lebanese with a long right-hand. I was just starting to have fun when some off-duty cop sneaked up and sprayed a canister of tear gas into my face from 30 centimetres away. I dropped like I had been shot as did the two Lebs I was holding, who also got the benefit of the blast, and, in agony, unable to breathe, the three of us crawled blindly on our hands and knees with our eyes burning like fire. I ended up leaning against the prick cop who had blasted me.

Finally Taina and I took off together and spent a week in Cape Town. We drove down through the flat, hot Karoo semi-desert and swam naked in one of the wind-whipped, remarkably icecold reservoirs that lined the side of the desert road. In Cape Town we went on long drives through the old wine routes. We went for long walks, disappearing off the paths to make love in fields of tall grass and wild flowers.

*****

“Look at it from their side. All they’re doing is fighting for the right to govern themselves in South West Africa. Wouldn’t you be doing that if you were born black, Granger?”

I felt frustrated and out of place among the idiot university crowd. They all seemed like dipshits with their long hair and bullshit. Stupid motherfuckers. What did these jerk-offs know about a T-55 coming out and chasing you, or running the whole night without ammunition, or clearing bunkers while anti-aircraft fire made you almost shit in your pants, praying that the next one wouldn’t turn you into a heap of guts and bone?

One morning I was woken by a loud knock on the front door of the flat where Taina and I were staying. Sleepily I got up and opened it to find Stan standing in full step-out uniform, maroon beret and
balsak
at his side.

“What the fuck’s going on with you?” I inquired, still half-asleep and with a dreadful, throbbing hangover.

“We’ve all been called up. We have to go back to 1 Para … there’s big shit going on. They called my dad’s house.”

I stared at Stan through misty vision, not able to believe my ears, or the sight of Stan standing in uniform in front of me, telling me to get dressed immediately and get back to 1 Parachute Battalion.

“What? Bullshit. You’re kidding?”

“No, I’m not kidding. They called my dad’s house, man!”

“Bullshit. I don’t believe you.”

“I’m telling you, Gungie, I’m not kidding! I’m leaving right now and hitchhiking to Bloem! Come with me.”

“Well, fuck that. I didn’t get the message, did I? Nobody knows that I’m down in Cape Town. I’m not going you never saw me. Got it?”

Stan lectured me for five minutes, telling me I was not a good soldier and that I would be in big shit and was letting the company down.

I was not interested. As I saw it, nobody even knew where I was except for Stan. I would just say that I never knew. I turned around and went back to bed with Taina.