I took a deep breath, sucking in the sweet air that always smelled of iron and pepper. I looked out at the sky. The high clouds shone brilliant white at the edges but were a dull grey in the centre. Everybody kept mum. Blame for the missing digits quickly fell on the jealous infantry troops who had snuck in under cover of darkness and clipped off some trophies to toss around at home like bush fighters and brag about their fire fights.
Later in the morning everyone who had been directly involved with the contact was called into the commandant’s office in the middle of the camp and given the third degree. When my turn came, the commandant said it was a serious crime to mutilate bodies in any way and was punishable with a year in DB and that if I knew anything about what had happened it would be wise for me to come forward, or I would be held as an accomplice. Standing to attention in the small hot tin office I explained what I had seen from when we had dragged the terrs out of the bush into a line on the edge of the chana after the contact. I told him how we had searched the dead terrs for documents and that we had relaxed for ten minutes, smoked a cigarette and spoken to the chopper pilots before loading the dead terrs onto the Buffels. I told him, respectfully, that I did not know anything about any missing ears, that it might equally well have been some of his own troops right here in the base who took them and that he should check his men too. His eyes darkened and looked like they might explode. His straight black hair bounced as he jumped up from behind his wooden desk and rushed me like a bull, stopping right in front of me. I blinked instinctively and braced myself for what was surely going to be a punch or a shove, but he surprised me and stopped inches from my face, glaring at me. I could see the sweat running down his forehead, I could smell his breath as he yelled, spitting, into my face in Afrikaans.
“Fuck off out of my office!”
With a hasty salute I turned around and almost fell through the narrow doorway and through the short, dark hallway into the bright morning light.
Stupid fucking idiot. What gave him the right to charge at me like he’s going to do something and to talk to me like that? The prick! The guy’s obviously got some serious personal problems. I gave him the benefit of my psychiatric evaluation as I walked out of the small tin admin area in a hurry, headed back to the tent at the camp entrance and squeezed my way back to my kit. Nobody can have such deep-rooted anger without a serious hang-up, I decided.
In the tent I lay back on an old foam mattress and bummed a cigarette from Stan. The guys laughed when I told them what I had said and how he had reacted.
“You should have told him our trackers followed a spoor to his cook’s tent, and that he should check his steak and onions for bits of terrorist.” Kurt Barnes roared at his own joke.
After the attention had shifted from me, Smitty sidled nervously up to me and spoke quietly as he puffed on a butt. “Was that all you said?” he asked quietly, trying to sound casual and by the way. He looked searchingly into my eyes to see if he could catch me lying.
“Of course… what did you think I was going to tell him? That I saw exactly who did it?” I said out the corner of my mouth.
He was visibly relieved and gave an empty chuckle. Kevin, who was in earshot, gave me a grin.
“But you know it’s a fucking crime to mutilate bodies! A fucking year in DB! Haven’t you ever heard of the Geneva Convention?” I said forcefully, as if I had a good grasp of military law.
Smitty nodded his head slowly, saying that he had recently heard this.
“Just be cool when you go in there… don’t freak out… tell him we found them like that.”
Smitty grinned at my joke, lit up another smoke and prepared himself for his grilling by the commandant.
I sat pondering the situation. I felt relieved that my good sense had kept me from getting involved in this trophy-cutting business when I saw it happening back at the contact. This commandant seemed determined to have somebody’s balls for the incident and it appeared it was going to be paratrooper balls. If Smitty and Kevin were our only guys to take a couple of ears and fingers, it must have been the infantry fucks who took the rest—and it seemed like this prick of a commandant thought his men were beyond doing such a thing! I knew this wasn’t going to go away and that someone was going to have to go down for it, or we wouldn’t be leaving the camp for a while.
I mentally washed my hands of the whole situation and picked up my rifle that was lying on my kit. I inspected the new inscription: one dead. I’d scratched it in English next to the drie dood, three dead, that was already scratched deep into the chipped green-and-brown camo paint above the handgrip. I felt that I was entitled to put the notch there, although all four of us had shot the poor bastard. I asked myself if it was altogether the right thing to mark the poor skinny terr’s death with a notch on my rifle. I fantasized morbidly whether my name would end up as a notch on the side of a worn AK-47 somewhere in Luanda. I pushed the thought out of my mind.
“Fuck ‘em.”
At least I had got to see my first contact. Most SADF, South African Defence Force, troops go through their entire service without seeing any action. I thought back to the cold excitement of the contact and the small brown-clad figure flailing desperately, crashing through the bush only to run into our hail of bullets. I was surprised at my cold emotion. I had shot somebody. Aren’t you supposed to feel something? I thought perhaps it would sink in later.
That afternoon we packed all our gear onto the Buffels. Smitty and Kevin, after going back and forth to the commandant’s office a couple of times, had confessed to taking an ear and a finger. The pair of them were charged with corpse mutilation, a punishable offence under the international rules of war laid down by the Geneva Convention many years before. The charged pair would be allowed to leave with us to complete the patrol and return to Ondangwa where their case would be handed over to the proper level of authority. We never found out who else was to blame for the rest of the missing fingers and ears. We drove out of the base, glaring at the infantry troops who looked away as we openly challenged them, jeering at them.
I was glad just to get moving again. The cool breeze blew through our hair and with it came the smell of the coming rain. We were in the bush again, where we belonged, where we were in control and not some dipshit infantry commandant. Our four Buffels immediately left the dirt road and made their own path, winding through the dry bush and heading west. I sat relaxed. After nearly a month of vehicle patrols the Buffels had become our home. We were quite comfortable squashed shoulder to shoulder, kit kneehigh, bouncing through the thick bush. This was where we belonged—in the bush, hunting!
Our senses had adapted and sharpened in the last weeks, becoming accustomed to the sights, sounds and mood of the bush. We were bush fighters. We had all lost weight from living on rat packs. We slept in sand holes under the moon and lay awake at night, waiting for SWAPO to walk into our ambushes.
Late that afternoon, when the sun started to cast long shadows, we crossed a long flat chana and entered a most quaint, almost magical forest of tall, flat-topped thorn trees. We drove under this long avenue of trees, whose intertwining crowns totally blocked out the sky above. All the trees grew at almost the same angle and, if you did not know better, you might easily think that the entire scene had been landscaped and maintained by the local parks department. Suddenly the lead Buffel came to an abrupt stop, forcing the four following to brake quickly, sending us tumbling into each other at the front of the vehicle.