We had just come through a long field of trenches. We turned our sweep line at a 90-degree angle to our right from the way we had come and were preparing to sweep through a long open field in front of us that was knee-high with patches of dead grass.
“Okay, go down and take a smoke break,” Lieutenant Doep barked.
He was two men to my left. It was our first official break in eight hours. Feeling pretty safe and in control, most of us took off our heavy jump helmets and sat on our haunches, still holding the formation of our sweep line. It was the first time in eight hours I had taken my helmet off and it felt great to feel the hot air on my head. My hair was drenched with sweat and I had a sharp headache down the middle of my head from the weight of the helmet. I lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.
Once again I took the bandana from around my neck and wiped my eyes. “They should make a headband standard army issue—a person could get killed with sweat in his eyes,” I thought. I made a mental note to mention it to someone later on.
“Hey, Gungie! What do you think about your birthday curse now? Looks like you’re going to be okay, eh?”
I had completely forgotten that today was my 21st birthday. Everyone in the valk knew of my uneasy feeling about this op. A chorus of laughs went up around me. Even Lieutenant Doep turned to me with a big grin on his thin, shark-like lips and said in Afrikaans, exhaling a cloud of smoke: “Well Korff, are you going to make it?”
“Looks like it, lieutenant,” I answered sheepishly and laughed too.
We sat on our helmets for five minutes, chatting and laughing down the line. Fourie was still going on about the FAPLA troop who almost got away. “I’ve never seen a man run that fast! I know what they mean now when they say it’s hard to hit a moving target. That guy looked as if he was always just in front of the bullets.”
I thought about why I had stopped shooting. I had no real answer. “Stupid! If he had got away and picked up an AK, do you think he would have stopped shooting if he had you in his sights?” I asked myself. The small voice inside me answered clearly: “He was unarmed and running for his life, that’s why you stopped.” The other side of me said: “So what? He would have shot you.” I was glad no one had seen me stop shooting. I laughed and agreed that I never knew how hard it was to hit a man running.
Lieutenant Doep was the only one standing. He walked in small circles, talking loudly into the handset pushed to his ear. I was looking his way, just finishing my second cigarette when a loud shot cracked out from the dry grass ten metres in front of us. Doep flipped violently backwards, his feet kicking forward from under him with the receiver flying into the air. He fell flat on his back. I snatched up my rifle. A single puff of grey smoke rose from the grass, just metres in front of us. The six of us closest rose as one man and, with helmets off, charged the suicide sniper’s position, shooting as we ran. The FAPLA troop did not even have time to turn over. He died on his belly, still in his shooting position, in a hail of South African bullets. We stood over the FAPLA soldier for a moment. A second later I turned to see that Lieutenant Doep was not dead. He was now flying towards us, almost in mid-air, with his long wet blond hair flowing behind him and his face flushed red, locked in a murderous mask. His eyes bulged with rage as he landed and fired four or five shots into the already-dead soldier, almost decapitating him. Lieutenant Doep was visibly shaken. He put his rifle down, his eyes still bulging. He felt his head with his fingers. The skin was not broken but he said he’d felt the bullet pass through his hair. He checked himself, not believing he was unscathed, but after a minute when he found himself intact he broke out in a huge boyish grin.
Lieutenant Doep was the luckiest man on earth. The FAPLA soldier had lain quiet, not ten metres in front of us for more than five minutes. He had probably lain down in the grass when he saw us coming. He knew that he had no chance of escape in the open field, that he had one shot before he died. He had probably held each of us in his sights at some point during that five minutes as he chose a target to take with him and had correctly identified Lieutenant Doep as our leader. He had five minutes or more to take his shot but he had missed and had died like he knew he was going to. With the violent way Doep was thrown back, the brave FAPLA soldier must have died thinking he had taken a Boer officer with him. In a way, I thought he was a brave man. He could have stood up and surrendered and taken a chance that no one would have potted him.
The whole operation was a slow-moving process of trench-to-trench and wait. By nightfall we still had many kilometres of trenches ahead of us.
“Hey, listen up. We’re going to dig in and spend the night right here in the base. Dig in properly and set up double-watch. No flame. Only cold food,” Lieutenant Doep instructed.
We dug shallow shellscrapes in the middle of the FAPLA military base to spend the night. There was no doubt that the maze of trenches ahead of us was still occupied as shots had buzzed past us all day and, as we knelt digging in for the night, the odd shot still rang out.
I rolled out my thin inner and lay on my back, fully dressed, with my rifle next to me. The whole scene took on an surreal feeling as everything around us was plunged into darkness. I lay and listened to a night that was still alive with the sounds of shooting, but it seemed kilometres away at the other end of the base. There was the roaring, far behind us, of some of the Ratels moving their position for the night. There had been a few bunkers of ammunition that had burned for hours throughout the afternoon, cooking off thousands of AK-47 rounds that popped and crackled and sounded like a never-ending fire fight, but they too had now burned out. I drew slowly and carefully on one of my last cigarettes and looked up at the dark night sky. There would be no moon tonight. It was pitch black and here we were, sleeping in the middle of a FAPLA base.
What a day!
I thought of how the RPG-7 rocket had missed me by centimetres, of what an almighty mess it would have been if it had hit me. Fuck it. I realized as an afterthought that it was my birthday and that I was 21 today. What a way to turn twenty-one. Other guys have parties, give speeches and get wrecked. I thought of my brother’s 21st, when every joller in town had been there and of the speech my dad gave as he handed my brother an oversized brass key that my dad had received on his own 21st birthday. But of course, not me. Instead, I get to dodge fucking rockets and anti-aircraft fire and face fucking T-34 tanks. I thought of my family who would be thinking of me today and wondered if they had any idea how I was spending my big day. Well, as the story goes, it’s the day you become a man. If that’s the case, then I guess it’s somehow fitting that I spent the day dodging bullets. What better way to see in manhood?
The artillery began a 15-minute barrage from several kilometres behind us. I had never heard the howitzers before and lay amazed, listening as the rounds whistled high overhead in the darkness and then crashed like rolling thunder many kilometres away, somewhere in the dark bush. This became a nightly routine with the artillery. The day’s activities had made me feel small and humble. I closed my eyes and tried to doze but the adrenaline still coursed through me like fire and I lay listening in the darkness like an animal. At about 21:00 I snapped out of a surprisingly restful state of being as we heard voices chatting casually to each other in what sounded like Portuguese. They were coming from the big trench that was about three metres from where I lay. Between the trench and me were John Delaney and John ‘The Fox’ Glover who was closest to the trench. I pulled my rifle soundlessly onto my chest and lay, hardly breathing, so I could hear better as they came closer. They appeared unafraid or unaware, talking loudly and seeming to be arguing in short sentences. I waited, my finger on the trigger. I knew everyone else was lying waiting in exactly the same manner.