by J H Thompson
– Paul, age 18
The best thing about the army was being out on pass. You’re young, you’re fit, you’ve got no cares, and most people treat you really nicely because you are doing your bit for the country and they make allowances for you. If you get drunk and throw up on somebody’s carpet, they’ll say, ‘Shame man, he’s out on pass.’ I found that even girls’ parents were more accommodating.
– Paul, age 17
When I joined the army for three years’ short service, I was young, dumb and full of cum. I was also 246 pounds and 5´11. After 12 weeks of training in Heidelberg, I went home to the farm for my first leave. One of the guys had an Opel Manta, and a bunch of us chipped in for petrol, which was difficult to get because of the petrol restrictions in the 1970s. We had to drive at 80 kph. Eventually, about 4 a.m., we got into Somerset East. My brother picked me up and took me home. My boet hadn’t said a word to alert my folks. My ol’ lady came to the door and said, ‘Hi soldier, how are you?’ I was then 6´3 and I’d lost 78 pounds. My old lady didn’t know who the hell I was! I said, ‘Hi mom,’ and she burst into tears and said, ‘What have they done to my little boy?’ and all that sort of shit. The first thing she did was cook me a huge breakfast: bacon, eggs, sausage, toast and tomato. I think she tried to put those 78 pounds back immediately.
– Ric, age 18
I was still a recruit and had only been in the army, in Oudtshoorn, for about two months. I was sent there because I was a teacher. All teachers, whether they had a degree or a diploma, were sent to Oudtshoorn to do the Officer’s Course, the SADF mentality being that teachers were born leaders. If you were good enough to lead in the classroom, you were good enough to lead troops! During the JL phase of the course, they held rugby trials for the various units. They wanted to pick three sides to go to Port Elizabeth to play rugby for Infantry School as a preseason opener. I made selection, and off we went to PE to play rugby for the weekend against EP Command. It was the first time I had left base other than to go to the Catholic church, which was off the base. It would be the first time I would see civilians! Women! Real life! We played the PE sides, and they let us go out that evening. I knew the area and we all went to Lilly’s Pub at the Holiday Inn, where I got chatting to this girl, and, y’know, things went well. Very nice. But there was a problem. She didn’t have her own place, neither of us had a car, and we needed somewhere to go. The only place was back on the base. EP Command was much slacker than Oudtshoorn regarding security, so it was easy to get her in through the main gate ’cause they had civilians in and out all the time and it was very, very late at night. We were staying in this long bungalow-like barracks, because we were just visitors to the base. So I took her into the dorm where all the guys were sleeping and we did the business as quietly as we could, somehow without waking up the other 29 guys. But now I had a big problem: how to get her home. She stayed in Northend, which was miles away, on the other side of PE. There was only one thing to do. The oke on duty had to know there were three visiting sides from Oudtshoorn, so I put on my overall and went to the gate and said to the guard on duty, ‘Ek is Luitenant Hummel! Waar’s die diensbestuurder?’ [I am Lieutenant Hummel! Where’s the duty driver?]. He came to attention, saluted me and said, ‘Moenie worry nie, Luitenant, ek sal hom roep’ [Don’t worry, Lieutenant, I’ll call him]. I instructed the duty driver to ‘Vat hierdie meisie huis toe’ [Take this girl home], and that’s what happened. Just like that she was outta there and he took her all the way to her house about 30, 40 kilometres away. The story about me bringing a girl back into base, and me, with no rank whatsoever, impersonating an officer, got out, and I thought I was in for big shit. I could be thrown off the course and even sent to DB. The major who took us on our tour was a real hard-ass, and a few days after it had all happened, the story got back to him. He walked up to me, tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Mooi gedoen’ [Well done].
– Stof, age 24
There was this little hole-in-the-wall shop on the base in Voortrekkerhoogte. Absolutely tiny. A café we called die snoepie. It only opened at certain times and it ran out of everything all the time. They’d blow the whistle three times at the end of parade, and if you weren’t one of the first troops of the hundreds and thousands rushing to buy Cokes and smokes, forget it. They had a telephone as well, but the bloody thing was always out of order.
– Paul, age 18
Fear and Loathing
On the second day of my army life, the sergeant major noticed that instead of one crease line down the front of my trouser leg, there were two or three lines. These ‘tramlines’, as he called them, caused the sergeant major to scream right into our ears about how he would ‘sny jou keel, daarin afklim, en op jou hart kak’ [cut your throat, climb down it, and shit on your heart]. Although we thought it was not a bad effort for our first attempt at ironing, his words inspired us to make sure our clothes were properly ironed. The next day he made us all ‘march’ through the dam and then ‘swim’ across the red sands of the parade ground – his idea of a joke. It was a rude and fast awakening to the complete power that those in charge were going to have over us for the next two years. Initially I thought these people were clowns, but, as time passed, I realised how they were able to take young men from all walks of life and mould us into like-minded characters. We soon believed that the good of the country took precedence over individual rights, and that all we had held sacred about our lives was under threat from the evil Communist empire that was brainwashing ‘our blacks’ to rise up against us.
– Chris, age 17
Our platoon sergeant was called Fires ’cause of his blood-red hair. He was Afrikaans, and he was particularly resentful that he was an NCO and hadn’t been selected as an officer. The qualities necessary to be a leader are inborn; you can’t take someone with minimum ability and transform him into a good leader. So he, as a failed officer and only an NCO, was particularly cruel. He liked to strip you of your dignity, and his training methods were very harsh. During them he liked to yell things like, ‘Ek sal jou nek afsny en in jou keel afkots’ [I’ll slit your neck and vomit down your throat], or another favourite he yelled at you when you returned from leave was, ‘Ek sal jou suster se vingers in vishoeke verander en hulle in jou neus opdruk en jou breins uitpluk’ [I’ll turn your sister’s fingers into fish hooks and stick them up your nose and pull out your brains]. In our platoon we had this Portuguese guy. He was short, fat and unfit. We called him Vetseun. He was so big, he must have had a glandular problem or something. In training they always told us Vetseun had to come first. You can imagine how difficult this was. One day we were doing a section of the conventional warfare course, house penetrations and such, and were on a forced march in full battle gear, so we had everything with us and on us. We reach this bridge and wait for Vetseun, who is about 150 metres behind us. He is white, just these black eyes in his face, his steel helmet is skew on his head and hanging crookedly over one eye, he’s dragging his rifle, sweating and, honestly, he looks like he’s already dead. And Fires just strips. In one move he grabs Vetseun as he reaches us, and he whips a tokkeltou around Vetseun’s neck as he kicks his legs out from under him and pushes him over the bridge. He had him hanging there for a good few seconds before some of the senior officers rushed over and told him to let him go. Fires drops him and Vetseun falls into the little stream below. It wasn’t much of a distance, and I think the water revived him somewhat. This happened in front of about 30 guys, but not one of us said a word. Our training was already so ingrained, and we were so aware of the power that the NCOs had. Fires was busted down to a one-liner, and he lost his instructor status.
– Clint, age 18
Guys would shiver with fear when just talking about this sergeant major in Ladysmith. He was a maniac. We wore doibies with a big coloured mark on the front to depict which platoon we were with. Echo was yellow, Charlie was orange. The guys on light duty had white to say they were sickly boys and couldn’t be chased around. We were drilling when I
saw this sergeant major hit a guy so hard on his doibie that it broke. He had this gleam in his eyes, like an axe murderer. We were extremely scared of him.
– Nick, age 20
What stands out for me is that very young people were in charge. Our corporals and lieutenants were only 18, 19 years old, yet they were in charge of hundreds of men. The major was younger than 30. The other thing I recall was the instructors’ lack of humanity. I could never drill a guy until he vomited, or shout at someone who was injured to keep going. We were very lucky in that we had a very decent instructor, a corporal from South West, who would group us together every night and have a chat to us, like a big brother. But as nice as he was at night, he was ruthless during the day. He had very shiny inner ears and we used to joke that he boned his ears! Then there was this other corporal, with short-man syndrome, I’m sure. He used to come up when we were standing at attention or during parade and whisper in our ear, ‘Wil jy my moer?’ [Do you want to hit me?]. The guys said no, of course, but the one time he asked me, and I replied, ‘I’m not allowed to.’ That just threw him. He said he’d take off his rank and meet me. I said, ‘Corporal, make the date and time and I’ll be there.’ It never happened.
– Tallies, age 17
One of our majors was not particularly well liked. The guys thought his leadership was rather arrogant, but I thought he was an okay chap. We were jumping in this remote area and we all landed miles away from this small dam. Oddly enough, the major, who was using a steerable [parachute] landed far from all of us, right in the middle of the dam, and he drowned. It was very strange, because he had jettisoned his emergency chute – we found it at the edge of the dam – and there had been no wind to blow him off course. To this day we don’t know the reason behind his freakish death. I heard that a whole company held a braai to celebrate his death. I found that quite disturbing.
– John, age 18
It couldn’t have happened to a better – or rather a worse – person, and I swear it wasn’t on purpose. I don’t think. This lieutenant was hated, absolutely hated. He was such a dick. He just happened to be standing behind the Buffel I was driving. He was screaming at the troops lined up to get into the Buffel. The vehicle’s exhaust stands quite high, and as he opened his mouth, I started the engine. This huge ball of wet black diesel belched out and covered the whole top of his body. You know those cartoons where there’s just a black sooty face and gleaming white eyes and teeth? He looked just like that, like a cartoon. I laughed so hard I hit my head. He didn’t find it so funny and jumped up on the wheel and klapped me with his fist. But it was worth it, he was such a dick.
– Brett, age 18
There was a huge competition between SSB – Panzer School – and Parabats. And the war between them involved putting anything heavy – irons, bricks, stones, anything like that – into your balsak and going over to beat the shit out of the guys. You had to be wearing your jumpers – these were very heavy boots, much heavier than the usual military issue boots – and you would climb over the wall to get them. Sometimes it was like a war, with one company attacking another. Both groups thought they were elite, but the Panzer guys weren’t an elite unit; the Bats were the elite unit. I suppose jealousy sparked the fights.
– John, age 18
Sometimes you would get a guy who just wasn’t performing or toeing the line or who didn’t bathe – whatever – there was a problem with him. Then the guys would call a meeting. They’d put him in the middle and tell him that he had better listen up, ’cause he hadn’t been keeping himself clean. ‘Either you sort yourself out or tomorrow we are going to throw you in the shower and scrub you with the floor brushes.’ It usually worked. But, if not, that guy could be sleeping and suddenly wake up to guys hitting him with a balsak filled with boots and stuff.
– Nick, age 20
We had a rat in our bungalow. This guy would rat on us to our platoon sergeant. But he went too far when he piemped us out for getting a few six-packs. It was the end of Basics, and to celebrate we were allowed two beers, but we had bartered and organised a six-pack for each of the six English-speaking members of the platoon. We had a contact in SAWI and he got the beers for us. This rat must have seen us take them into the bungalow, ’cause he wasn’t around while we were drinking them. Of course, after Basics you are so fit and you haven’t touched alcohol for six weeks, so you get absolutely trashed on just a few beers. I was finished after just my third. The corporals were smart. They waited until we had passed out and then woke us all around 2 a.m. We got such an opfok. From 3 a.m. until 10 a.m. the next morning we had to leopard-crawl in only our shorts and T-shirts, cradling our rifles. We had to crawl on the lower parade ground that was just sand, stones and thorns. My knees, elbows and toes were stuffed. The entire platoon got the opfok, during which the rat’s name came out. We had our suspicions, but until then we hadn’t known for certain who had ratted us out. Not being able to trust someone is a major problem in a bungalow where you depend on one another. We decided it was time for him to ‘get an orientation’. That night each of us put a bar of soap into a sock and each person hit the rat just once. Twenty-nine hits were enough. Suffice to say he became a reasonable human being after that.
– Clint, age 18
Of course you must remember this was the early eighties. It was illegal to be a homosexual; you could be arrested for sodomy. I was so scared that my sexual orientation would be discovered. I also thought I was the only gay man in the world. I hadn’t met others like me. I was terrified of being exposed, of being victimised, and I was even more terrified that the army would find out somehow. I went to see a doctor for some medical problem. I sensed that he was gay, and although I couldn’t tell him I was gay, I knew he probably suspected it. So I told him I was fearful of going to the army without really revealing why. He wrote out a medical certificate for me, claiming that I suffered from rheumatism in my joints. First prize was that this would get me a medical exemption from the two years’ National Service. Second prize was to get a classification of G4K3. I got the latter, which meant I was exempt from physical training and was assigned only to light duties and admin work. Although I was issued a rifle, I spent two years in the army without firing a single shot, not even for training like target practice. It was a bit strange because I was there for two years, but never felt part of the game. I was assigned to a platoon in 1 SAI, HQ Company, in Bloemfontein. We were a company of failures, so we were told. We were all either not medically fit or unfit mentally for active duty.
– Rick, age 18
I would wake up and he would be in my bed. The first time he raped me was after a party. He was a married corporal. He even said that one of his children was ‘ours’, because he was thinking of me while he was having sex with his wife and the child was conceived. He said he knew me from Oudtshoorn. I recognised his face, but he hadn’t been in the same bungalow as me. He remembered all sorts of details and incidents involving me, which I had no recollection of. I was too scared to report this corporal, because I knew being homosexual counted against me, and I knew my superiors would not believe it was rape. The only person I told was this social worker. It was strange, because she was counselling him and his wife because they were having marital problems, so she was able to advise me on how to handle certain things with him.
It was after this incident that I began a relationship with one of my troops. They were coloured and I was white. I had completed Junior Leadership and I chose to train coloured troops. I was a one-pip lieutenant who managed a section of the Cape Coloured Corps. It was the least popular posting. I chose it because I wanted to be close to Joburg, and Vereeniging is only an hour’s drive from there, and because I had no desire to go to the Border. Most of the others chose a Border posting. They believed in the government, believed in why they were there, and they wanted to go to the Border to fight the enemy. I think they also wanted to go to the Border because there was a lot more freedom there. Also more drinking and more pay – they got danger p
ay – and they wanted to be able to say they had been on the Border. They were more paraat. But my motives were less political. When I was in Basics, I saw that the officers had better food and accommodation, and that’s what I wanted. Something a little more civilised, something to remove me from the masses.
I immediately felt at home with my coloured troops because they were volunteers. They were not there because they believed in the war. They were there for financial reasons. Most of them were very poor and very poorly educated. They were often sole breadwinners. There was a lot of drug abuse and alcoholism. I became very involved in programmes to help them. I also took abuse for defending them and was called names like ‘kafferboetie’. The coloured troops always came second to the white troops. They had to eat after the white troops; they were second for everything: the TV room and the telephones. I protected my troops. It was quite funny, really, from trying so hard to get out of being in the army, it became my life. I seldom even went home on weekends. I socialised with my troops and got to see what life was like across the colour bar. It got so that I never even saw people as different colours.
I guess I was trying to save this one guy. He had a lot of problems – drink, drugs – and because of the amount of time I spent with him and all the help he needed, we developed a relationship. It was exceptionally hard dealing with the corporal’s sexual abuse when my troop, the one I was having a relationship with, had an accident. I had insisted that he go out on patrol. In those days we were deployed mainly to patrol in the townships, and I knew I could have easily got him out of it because he was experiencing withdrawal symptoms as he was coming off the drugs, but I said he had to go on patrol. I thought it was the best thing for him. There was some accident and he fell off the Samil. He was taken to 1 Mil. His family flew up from Cape Town to see him, and it was really hard just being his lieutenant and not being able to tell them how much he meant to me. He died of his injuries. That was 20 years ago, and I haven’t had a long-term relationship since then. The abuse from the corporal only ended when my National Service did.