by J H Thompson
During OC everybody had to look the same. Eenvormigheid. Either everyone in the platoon wore jerseys or no one did. They’d been issued, but you weren’t allowed to wear them until you’d ‘earned’ them. You did that by running the 2,4 in under a certain time. But it didn’t help if only some of the guys ran it under the time, because they still couldn’t wear their jerseys. The whole platoon had to do it. Winter was starting. It was almost May and we still didn’t have our jerseys, so we went to the company commander and said we wanted to run the 2,4 to earn our jerseys. Everyone else already had theirs. He told us we couldn’t do it during normal training times; we would have to run it after hours. So on a Saturday around lunchtime we went and ran an extra 2,4 to earn our jerseys. We fuckin’ ran our guts out and we all made it with only about three seconds to spare. It had to be the whole platoon and we did it. We all earned our jerseys and that night we wore them. I will never forget it. That right to wear a jersey still remains one of the greatest ‘prizes’ I’ve ever won.
– John, age 18
I kinda had three Basic Training periods: my army Basics, then air force and then the air force OC. Hard, easy, very hard. I think the SAAF’s OC was one of the toughest because they put you under a lot of pressure to ensure you were able to think and make decisions under very difficult circumstances. The pressure was both emotional and physical. I also found it tougher ’cause I was a lot older than I was when I did my army Basics. There’s a training time called ‘Gogga’ – because you’re meant to be scared of it. They take you to a remote location and they push you for 36 hours without sleep. You run around with tyres and poles, and carry weights on your back, they make you pitch and strike and pitch and strike tents repeatedly – and these were huge canvas military tents. They’d let you sleep for ten minutes and then wake you up because you had gone to bed with boots on. ‘An officer doesn’t sleep like that!’ they’d shout and give you an oppie and then make you strike and pitch the tent again. And again, because the tents weren’t in a perfectly straight row. After 15 or 16 hours of physical pressure they let you sleep a bit, and then woke you and off you went to write an essay on Why You Want to Become an Officer. By then you are so tired you fall asleep while you are writing and your pen keeps sliding off the page. It was one thing after another, including the night march, which began at about 3 a.m. The guys are following the instructors and the rest are just holding onto the webbing of the guy in front so they don’t get lost. I think it is possible to sleep while marching; you just go into zombie mode. You don’t know where you’re going or for how long you’ll be marching. You just hold onto the guy in front of you. After Gogga you are allowed to wear your CO badges, a white little band on your epaulettes, which previously you were not worthy to wear.
– Tallies, age 17
There were lots of myths about becoming a Recce: you were given a puppy at the beginning of your training, and once you completed your training you had to kill it. If you didn’t do these things, you failed. This was absolute bullshit. Utter nonsense. The focus of the training was to understand the capabilities of an individual to perform mentally and physically under the most extreme circumstances. There were various exercises which involved extreme physical stress. This translates into mental stress, but there were also mental exercises, problem-solving and such, which were actually very simple, but not in conjunction with sleep and food deprivation. As basic as the exercises were, they were effective in seeing how guys performed in small teams of four to six men. The combination of physical and mental tasks brought out the capabilities of each man. One of the mental tasks that the psychologists came up with involved a Lego man. One guy from the team goes and has a look at the Lego man. It is only two bricks high, but he may not touch it. He can only view it, see how it is built, and then he must return to his teammates and explain to the team how to build it so that it is exactly right. If they are going wrong, he must explain clearly what they must do to correct it. It’s not nearly as easy as it sounds, ’cause you must remember the guy’s brains are stuffed after extreme physical and mental strain. It’s interesting and necessary to watch the interaction between the team members. This revealed how a person was capable of handling problem-solving when physically broken and shattered, and how they interacted with one another under stress. There were obstacle courses with sections that appeared to be absolutely impossible to overcome. Specific obstacles had specific problems and solutions. With the different aids provided, the team had to work things out in a limited time. For example, the whole team had to get themselves and some or other shit across a four-metre gap, using planks of varying lengths, without stopping at a certain point or touching the ground between certain platforms. It had to be done in, say, less than ten minutes. The pressure was the time constraint. The guys were constantly watched and evaluated. The actual evaluation period for selection was anything from two hours to 100 hours, but the training was a year. You were continually assessed on courses like Foreign Weapons, Demolitions, Seaborne Orientation, Parachute Course, Know Your Enemy, Bushcraft, Tracking & Survival, Minor Tactics and so on. The emphasis was on three things: how do the guys measure up on the physical side, on the mental side and on the teamwork side of things? The Recce training was completely different to any other SADF training. It involved assessing how a guy was going to fit into a small team under extreme combat and in difficult conditions.
– Anonymous
I was called up to 1 SAI in Bloem, but spent only one week there before being chosen for Parabats when the selectors came through. When you first start training at 1 Parachute Battalion at Tempe outside Bloemfontein, you begin with six weeks of Basics, which is much harder than the normal SADF Basics. Sure, you run, do sit-ups and stuff like that, but you also do skaapdra. That’s when you run around with this weight, this concrete block, and train carrying it around, in addition to all your kit. After that, there is a two-week PT course, and then a three-week hangar course. A lot of training is done in the hangar, where they have a mock-up of an aircraft interior, swings and other things to give you the feel of what the real thing will be like. One of the other training exercises is jumping off the 35-metre JP Louw Tower. This is one of the deciding points in your training, because the instructors know if you can’t jump off the tower, you sure as hell aren’t going to jump out of a plane. So if you don’t jump, and without the slightest hesitation, you are off the Parabats course. Finally, you get into a plane, but you still don’t jump. This particular exercise is called ‘flight experience’, but we called it ‘fright experience’. When you are airborne you are watched carefully to see how you react when you have to move to the open door. They make you stick your head out of the doorway and look down. Your reaction is critical. If you seem afraid to move towards the door or pull back when you look down, you are off the course. Eight 1 000-foot jumps later, on a static line – stand up, hook up and jump, including a night jump – you qualify. Lastly, you do your ‘glamour jump’, so called because you get to show off your capabilities and jump in front of your parents. After nine jumps you are awarded your bronze wings, and after 50 jumps or more you are awarded silver wings. On my first jump, I received a GP+, which is the highest grading you can get. I was very chuffed, because it was a notoriously strict staff sergeant who gave me the grade. Staff Sergeant Landman was a legend there. You just knew if you did one wrong thing, he would chuck you off the course. And those guys had the power to do that. I was terrified of him, but I respected him; he was a disciplinarian and good at what he did. I remember on the one jump out of a Dakota, Staff shouted, ‘Staan op!’ and everyone stood up and I just couldn’t get up. Now you haven’t got much time; everything has to be executed with precision. I tried and tried but my legs wouldn’t move. The whole stick is standing and he’s still shouting at me to get up. I was so fearful of him and nervous, I thought it was nerves paralysing my legs. My brain was telling them to move but I just couldn’t get up. I say, ‘Ek kan nie! Ek kan nie!’ [I can’t! I can’t!]. Then S
taff points out that I hadn’t released the safety harness across my lap!
– John, age 18
Even though I was a Parabat, I spent most of my time in the bush and never did one operational jump. So much for being afforded the nickname ‘Vleisbom’. We’d been called out a few times, but never jumped. On a particular occasion we were deployed as a stopper group, which is very similar to an ambush group. You are effectively covering an envisaged escape route with the intention of inflicting casualties. We flew in in C-130s and C-160s, 64 people absolutely laden with equipment. We were so heavily laden down with radio, rifle ammunition, mortar bombs, landmines, ration packs and water that you needed to hang onto the overhead cable that secured the parachute static line just to keep yourself upright. Before you jump, you have your reserve parachute across your chest, your main parachute on your back and your equipment resting on your leg. Only once you exit the plane and have done your flight drills do you release your equipment so it hangs below you. Once you land, you ditch the parachutes and carry your equipment on your back or webbing belt. But this one time we couldn’t find the drop zone for whatever reason, and the flight was taking longer than anticipated. It got to the point where the fear of having to execute the operation and jump into an enemy situation hanging underneath a parachute became less of an issue than the weight of the equipment. It felt like it was dragging you down into the fuselage of the plane, and the Black Is Beautiful was running into your eyes because you were sweating with the effort of remaining upright.
– Dudley, age 21
I thought, yeah, studying through the military was the way to go. The Military Academy was for the crème de la crème. I was to do a BMil degree. I was one of only four from the Medical Services to be selected. Although we were shown around Stellenbosch, we actually went to Saldanha Bay. Already on the Flossie from Pretoria to Cape Town I knew that I’d made a mistake. You know when you just don’t fit in? I honestly believe a lot of them were doing it because it would give them a comfy, cushy job in the army for the next 20 years, or their pa was a colonel and they were expected to go to military school. When we got to Saldanha, the weather was miserable. It was freezing cold and there was nothing, nothing there. I had a wooden hut on Malgaskop and the area stank from these thousands of seagulls that nested there. The hut was so run-down you could see through the holes in the floor and the walls. I was expecting a more educational environment, but it was far more military than I had imagined. We had initiation, induction, and every morning at some ungodly hour we had to swim in that freezing cold West Coast sea. I cried myself to sleep, thinking, what had I done? The picture they had created and that I had created in my mind as to what the Military Academy was like and stood for didn’t exist. All my mates had klaared out and I had committed myself to eight years PF. I could’ve already been out of the military, but there I was, 1 200 kays from home. Three days later I’d had enough. It was more difficult to get out than to get in. In the end it came down to this colonel who had recommended me to the Academy and heaped praise on me, to write a letter saying I could leave. Ten days later I could finally go. I felt like I had been let out of prison.
– Paul, age 18
Boetie Gaan Border Toe
We were so disciplined after Basics. You did anything they said. When we were out on trains to go to the Border and they told us to put up the blinds – we just did it. I’ve no idea why. Protection? I have no idea, but we immediately closed the blinds. You were like that after Basics. When we got into Windhoek, we sat on the station platform for 16 hours just waiting for anybody to come and get us. We had no money to buy food or anything to drink. We only had our army pay books, but we couldn’t use them. Eventually, the next morning, they came and fetched us and took us to the Windhoek base. Then it was back to the station and up to Grootfontein, to the Deurgangs camp. There we waited for two days. We were given rat packs. We didn’t know what the hell they were or that they were supposed to last for an entire day. What did we know – we’d just completed Basics. We ate it all in one meal. They finally collected us in Buffels to drive us to Rundu. I was shitting myself. I knew how to make an oven in the veld, but here I was over the kaplyn without a rifle, clutching my balsak. I kept looking over the top, and every Ovambo I checked was a terrorist. There’s one. There’s one. There’s one. You don’t know what to expect. When I got to HQ there was no rest time or teatime; it’s just tree aan. I was terrified; you’ve come from the city and the next thing you’re in this godforsaken place. The camp was just sand and dust and thorn trees, acacias everywhere, and more dust and no women anywhere. And the next thing you look and there’s a goddamn swimming pool and squash courts! I thought, hey, this can’t be that bad.
– Anthony, age 18
After my Basic Training in South Africa, I was sent to Rundu. We flew in, and as freshly arrived troops we were immediately lined up on the runway and issued with two compulsory malaria tablets. We were told these were special army tablets and of course that we were special to be given them, but they would only work if you chewed them. All this was bawled at you by a screaming corporal, and by now one had come to accept anything one was told, so the tablets were chewed, much to the merriment of all the spectators who had lined up to see the weekly comedy of the ‘new arrivals’ show. In less than a week, it would be my intake standing on the side laughing, because by then we had learnt to pretend to chew the tablets while surreptitiously spitting them into our hands. While we were almost vomiting from the tablets, we were ushered into a hall and given a wad of forms to sign. These included the State Security Act or some equally pompous document in which we swore not to divulge our activities to ‘lesser mortals’. We also had to agree not to object to our personal letters being read by a clerk who wielded the awesome power of a wide black marker pen with which he could eradicate any portion of the letters he thought could give the enemy information about our super-duper fighting machine. I am still not sure why poetic descriptions of sunsets across the Kavango River were deemed worthy of erasure by the black pen.
– Chris, age 17
All that shit they taught you in Basics was good for discipline, but we didn’t even iron our clothes, because it made them shine. However, we did take good care of our boots, because we walked a lot, sometimes 40–50 kilometres a day. We had Israeli Desert boots, but had to keep our leather boots in shape with wet newspaper and regular polish with Kiwi Military Tan. But they didn’t last too long. We alternated pairs of boots, because you didn’t want to have to wear in new boots and tried to make your old ones last as long as possible. There were some guys who enjoyed keeping their hands busy, polishing boots or whatever. We’d pay them with a packet of smokes. I smoked Texan Plain, 15 cents a packet of 20. This was around 1978. Hardly anyone smoked Camel, as they were too damn expensive – 25 cents a pack. Ridiculous. Booze was cheap too, 10 cents a tot. Colddrinks were the most expensive, 20 cents a can.
– Ric, age 18
I wanted to go to the Border in my second year. I thought it was important for me because I would be required to lead troops then, and when I did camps at a later stage I wanted to be sure that I had some experience at least. We flew up to Mpacha just after New Year and landed around 2 p.m. As you step off that plane, the sun just hits you. It was hot, hot, hot and humid. You don’t realise things can be as hot as that. I’d got some good advice – take a 9mill – ’cause they don’t have 9-mills on the Border, and wherever you go you have to take your weapon with you. A 9mill is much easier to carry around than a rifle. But I didn’t have any ammo. This fact didn’t seem to matter. It’s just that if the colonel catches you without your weapon, you’re in serious trouble! We still had to drive from Mpacha to Katima. We hitched a lift on this Buffel going through, and I was very nervous. There I was with only a 9mill and no ammo. The roads were tar, but the grass and bush grew right up to the edge of the road. Man, I was really scared. The terrs could hide in the bush and shoot at us. This was not lekker. I thought they should really c
ut the grass. If the guys are going to shoot at us, let it be from at least 50 or 100 metres away and not right on the edge of the road!
– Paul, age 17
We drove to a 32 Battalion training camp just west of Rundu. It was the Recce Team HQ, and even though it was a temporary base, it had clearly been in use for a long time. There were sandbags everywhere, underground bunkers and sand berms with machine gun posts. These machine guns were real. They had ammo crates next to them and were clearly for use, as opposed to being there just for troeps to polish. When our Samil drove in, a wild man dressed only in SWAPO camouflage shorts and a headband greeted us at the re-training base. He was standing on a water tower. In one hand he held a beer, in the other a heavy-calibre Russian machine gun, which he fired over our heads as we fell out of the truck. While we were grovelling in the sand, the captain, who was a hero then but has since been discarded, stood oblivious to the bullets and welcomed us to his base. Arriving at this base was a shock. Everything suddenly seemed very real. We were used to the general disorganisation of the army, but here there was a very strong sense of purpose. The soldiers all looked like real soldiers. Very hardcore. They looked like the pictures I had seen in newspapers and magazines of the RLI or Selous Scouts from the Rhodesian war. They had this very capable air about them. They didn’t look like they were ready for a parade; they looked like they were dressed and ready for war. All the men seemed to be carrying rifles and ammo. There were guns everywhere, but we didn’t have any, as ours hadn’t been issued yet. These guys clearly knew what they were doing and why they were there. They had a swagger and an air of competence about them that I hadn’t seen in the army before.
I was there to train as a real radio operator for 32 Battalion. Before, I had fiddled about on telex machines and hi-tech equipment, but I had done very little practical training. I had never even spoken or communicated in real radio talk – codes and such – to another person before. I would learn how to send and receive coded messages, how to transmit in Morse code, and also how to handle Russian military equipment like their machine guns and AK-47s. Four Reconnaissance guys trained us. It was quite something to see them strip and reassemble an AK-47 in less than 30 seconds – blindfolded. In less than two weeks we could also do that, even after a 10-kilometre run. Because everything in the camp was done for a purpose, I tried really hard. There was no rondfok. Nothing was formal in the camp. Even the one parade in the morning was only to tell you what you were going to do that day, not to mess you around. Things were done because they had to be. Even when I received my camouflage beret with the Buffalo insignia, it was nothing formal. I was so proud to wear my beret with my unit’s insignia, as only members of that elite unit could wear them. It was the first time in my life that I was really good at something.