19 With a Bullet (9 page)

I kept to myself and sat quietly on the floor, thinking over the recent events in my life and weighing up my situation. I had received a two-year sentence the year before, which had been suspended. Those two years were not yet up, so I was probably going to be in the shit; I would get a jail sentence. I wondered how they would react at 1 Reconnaissance and if I did time whether it would be in a civilian jail or in Detention Barracks, DB.

I also wondered what kind of jinx was on me that I was in jail on my birthday, twice in a row. In court I had no counsel; I stood abjectly in the dock and pleaded guilty to possession. I was fully expecting the full brunt of the law and thought I would probably be in the right frame of mind for jail after living like a dog for the last month and more.

“Are you the guy from 1 Reconnaissance Commando?” the judge said, shuffling through a stack of papers on the bench in front of him.

“Yes, sir,” I said, standing at ease with my hands behind my back and looking straight ahead with my best Special Forces look. I told him that I had just come from the operational area and had been in the bush for seven weeks straight, that I had got carried away buying the marijuana—a thing that I did not usually do and would certainly never do again.

He shuffled his notes again and told me that I could end up in serious trouble, that a man of my calibre from 1 Recce should know better. He seemed impressed by my serious demeanour and clearly thought I was a Special Forces operator.

“And how are things going up at the border?” he asked by the way, without lifting his head.

“Where I’ve just come from it’s been pretty busy, sir,” I answered in an over-serious voice.

He wrote for a minute, then looked at me and paused. “Well, Mr Korff, from your record it looks like you are always looking for trouble—and in this case, it looks like you have found it. However, I’m informed that you have important work to do and that you need to get back to your unit as soon as possible. You’ll receive four strokes of the cane, and let’s not see you here again.”

Four strokes! What luck!

I walked out of the dock and was led downstairs down two long corridors, to a small room. I was chuffed. Someone must have pulled some strings for me to get off with just a caning. I was no stranger to a good caning; although I had heard about these police canings—they were supposed to be pretty harsh. A stocky constable pulled two benches together and indicated that I should lie on my belly. He then put two grey jail blankets over me, one across the small of my back and the other across the back of my thighs, leaving my arse exposed for the cane.

He pulled out a cylinder of long plastic canes, made a show of selecting one and bent it, touching it from tip to tip, testing its flexibility. At high school the headmaster or teacher was only allowed to use a rigid cane, and could not lift the cane above the level of his shoulder. This was a little different. This guy pulled the ‘whip’ back as far as he could and brought it slamming down on my arse with all his might as if he was trying to cut me in half. I was determined not to show any pain. The first two were so hard that I did not feel anything. It was too much pain too quickly for my brain to register. Only when he brought the third and fourth ones slamming down on the same spot did the pain shoot waves through me like an electric current, and I felt as though the top of my head would blow off.

There was a pretty little policewoman who had poked her head around the door to watch the caning. Even though the pain was excruciating, almost overwhelming, I was poker-faced and showed no reaction to the pain that was going through me like 1,000 volts. The only clue I gave was slamming my fist as hard as I could into the wooden bench as I calmly got up.

In measured words I asked the cop where I could get a taxi back to the Bluff, and whether he could perhaps lend me a couple of bucks for a taxi. He could scarcely hide his surprise at my cheek, and had a stupid smile on his face as he packed away the plastic whip. I really felt like bellowing at the top of my voice and could hardly contain the impulse to jump up and down and rub my burning arse as hard as I could, but with a supreme effort I calmly walked out of the room and the building with my hands at my side, as if I had not felt a damn thing.

He declined to lend me money for a taxi.

GATVOL

Stones in my passway—Robert Johnson

Walking into the quiet 1 Reconnaissance base, on the way to the bathrooms, I met John Delaney at the bottom of the stairs. He was all cleaned up and in uniform. He told me I had to pack my kit immediately and sign out right now if I was to catch the truck taking us to the train station. It was leaving in about half an hour. After a quick change from dirty civvies into my browns I hastily inspected my still-throbbing arse, revealing huge, thick, black-and-blue welts across my buttocks. The skin had not been split, but it was very close as pinpoints of reddish plasma oozed from the swollen black pores. The whole of my skinny rump looked like a technicolour sunset—it was inflamed cherry-red all the way from my back to my thighs. The whip had also curled around the far side of my hip and reached the hip bone, which hurt the most. I felt it for many weeks.

I double-timed down to the dark administration block and walked to the only office that still had a light on. Behind the desk sat a black-haired major with an aide standing at his side. The major’s face was terribly scarred. It appeared too that he was blind. It also seemed as if most of his fingers and part of his hand were missing.

“Stand easy,” he said after I had saluted him.

I wondered how he had seen me. He seemed a nice fellow.

“What the hell happened to you last night?” he asked unassumingly.

“I got in to some trouble, sir …” I answered.

“I know, I got you out!” he said loudly and quickly. He asked me why I hadn’t made the course because I had been doing well. That was news to me and I answered something about having a beautiful girl waiting for me at home and not wanting to sign up for another four years.

We chatted casually for a while on a one-to-one level that impressed me; he rubbed his slits-for-eyes with his stumps-for-fingers as he did so. (I later found out that he had been maimed in an accident while setting an explosive charge.) He invited me back to try the selection course again, saying that my chances of success would be far greater next time and that a lot of guys only made it on their third or fourth try. He then had his aide walk me through some ‘class’ photos that were hanging on the wall and point out the operators who had been killed in action. Every class photo of 15 to 20 men featured three or four who were now ‘operating in the big bush above’. I thanked the major for his help; he signed my release papers and I walked away, down the now dark, echoing, deserted halls of 1 Reconnaissance Commando.

John and I sat deep in conversation on the two-day train ride from Durban to Bloemfontein. As we were in no hurry to get back to 1 Parachute Battalion, we decided to jump the train, go AWOL and hitchhike home to Johannesburg for a couple days of R&R. To hell with everybody, the Parabats included. We deserved it after what we had been through. We spent a cold, wet night under a freeway bridge, which was a walk in the park after spending all that time in the bush in the Caprivi. The next day we were cruising past the yellow mine-dumps of Johannesburg.

I sat quietly sipping my Johnny Walker and savouring the pleasure of normal life. Taina sat next to me with her legs squeezed tightly against mine under the table; her big green eyes sparkled. This was life. To hell with the army—I had had enough.

A few days later I drove up to one of my favorite spots where my brother and I used to go horseback riding. We would gallop recklessly down the long, uneven, potholed dirt road that was lined with old 30-metre-high black wattle trees until it petered out and came to an end in the never-ending veld. Standing there, I could look down across the miles of long shallow valley which the old farmhouse overlooked. On the far crest of the valley I could see the busy road that led to town, 25-or-so kilometres away. In between was a patchwork of long, ploughed fields of vegetables that belonged to the Portuguese farmer and fields of long dry grass around the small houses of the black farm workers, bunched together in a row and from which fragrant wood smoke drifted lazily and hung heavily at the bottom of the valley.

I was contemplating not going back at all. Fuck them—I’ll go AWOL for good this time and leave the country if I have to. The Transkei, a popular fishing and holiday spot for South Africans, was a black ‘homeland’. It was also called the Wild Coast, and was a loosely-run independent black ‘state’ wholly within South Africa. It had the feel of Jamaica or some other seaside banana republic, with little ragged black children holding up huge crayfish for sale at the roadside. The terrain was thick, lush and tropical, with rolling mountains that rose into the low layer of clouds and canyons that were dense with high trees and covered with moss and long Tarzan vines. It was a favourite place for ‘heads’—some of the best pot in the world grew in abundance here, high in the misty mountains, and you could buy sacks of the stuff for next-to-nothing.

I thought I would find a job in one of the many resorts or just live and fish on one of the many long deserted beaches until the heat was off. I even thought of going overseas. Fuck this—I could get a ticket and just go to America. I had enough from my army payroll for an air ticket. I had an uncle who lived in Colorado; he could probably help me out. Or I’ll plead for political asylum; the Yanks will go for that—I’ll say that I didn’t want to fight for the white racist regime.

I had been in the army for only seven months and all I had achieved was to shit off in a big way. Straight from the tough Bats to one of the toughest courses in the world at Special Forces selection. I needed some time off. I needed to relax for a while and replenish myself. Screw everybody and everything. America?

It was a thought—but what the hell would I do there? All my family and friends were here. I loved Africa. I loved the open bushveld and the big thorn trees, the smell of wood smoke from the kraals in the winter and the high brown grass. I had no personal quarrel with the black people; I never had. I loved the people of South Africa. The
ousies
, the old mamas, who could walk for many kilometres on the side of the road with improbably large bundles balanced on their heads; the snot-nose
piccanins
who ran around steering cars fashioned from wire and with bottle caps as the wheels. These were the people, black and white, that I loved. My family had been here for generations. My grandfather, at the age of 12, had ridden out with his father to fight against the British in the Boer War in 1899. They had fought not far from this same ground where I now stood smelling the wood fires. They had suffered terribly in the winter after years of fighting as commandos and living off the land. They were finally ground down after the Brits launched a scorched-earth policy, destroying the farms and incarcerating Boer families in concentration camps, where they had died in their thousands. It had taken more than 400,000 British troops from all the corners of the mighty British Empire three years to subdue 87,000 Boers.

Now there was a different threat. South Africa was surrounded by communist countries. Russia was real, still a great threat and, as far as I had been told, was trying to get a grasp on southern Africa from within by supporting the ANC, the PAC and the anti-apartheid movement, and sending ‘freedom fighters’, better known to us as terrorists, from across the border to try and accomplish it.

I read a newspaper for the first time in months; it told how the Angolan army was aiding SWAPO and had helped repel a South African attack against a SWAPO base camp in Angola. Also that Soviet-supplied and Cuban-flown MiGs had been seen flying menacingly close to the border.

I couldn’t go AWOL. What was I thinking? I would just have to go back and bite the bullet. Before you knew it I’d be on the border and all this training bullshit would be over. It sounded like it was getting serious up there, with all those Cubans in Angola. They said that 40,000 Cuban troops had already arrived and were operational. I felt ashamed that I had even thought of going AWOL and drove home quickly in the fading light as the setting sun shot a magnificent volley of red and orange against the enormous rolling wall of black storm clouds advancing from the north.

I called John right away and told him that it would not be worth the trouble to go AWOL. He agreed. We booked a train the following evening to Bloemfontein.

BACK TO 1 PARACHUTE
BATTALION

Hold the line—Toto

We arrived at 1 Para early the next morning, walked through the big wroughtiron gates, past the guards. The big fish eagle whooped us a greeting as we strode up the tar road past the parade ground with our heavy kit bags on our shoulders. We hadn’t had a haircut in months, our hair hung well over our collars and we both sported big moustaches and a dark brown border tan. The rank that we passed ignored us, not knowing what or who we were on our last stroll of freedom as we neared our bungalow and saw the sight I had been dreading, but had known could be no different.

The whole
Valk
4, Platoon 4, was standing clean-shaven outside the bungalow in open order, blowing hard in the cool early-morning air after completing a couple of laps around the
pakhuis
. Corporal Berger and the new lieutenant were yelling at the tops of their voices at the same time, and did not notice us as we walked casually past the platoon towards the bungalow door.

After a moment of silence and a long stare the lieutenant recognized us, broke into a big sarcastic grin and shouted: “Well, I’ll be damned! Korff and Delaney! What—you guys didn’t make the Recce course and you came back to us? How special of you!”

I found this lieutenant particularly irksome and could easily have knocked him onto his stupid arrogant arse, but instead I came to attention and threw a smart salute. All attention was on us now and I could see the guys in the platoon grinning and sniggering among themselves. John the Fox and Stander stood next to each other in the front row, blowing white mist into the morning air and trying to hold back their laughter.