A prayer was offered for the infantry troops who had paid the ultimate price and finally the mayor of Bloemfontein, a big man with a belly that started from his chest, gave an impressively patriotic speech and then came huffing down from his podium to walk down our open-order ranks and shake hands with every troop as he thanked us. As he got to me a TV crew hurried forward, busy filming. I put out my hand as he grasped and almost crushed it.
“Congratulations on the victory. We all thank you very much.”
I remember looking at the thick, studded mayoral gold chain that hung around his neck and then into his small earnest brown eyes beaming at me as I nodded my head.
Afterwards we were dismissed and told to come into the hall for food. Long tables had been laid out and women with sweet voices handed us paper plates and we loaded up with cold meats and delicious desserts. All of a sudden we were like kids at a church picnic—we laughed and giggled as we stood in line for second helpings and answered, around stuffed cheeks, the women’s queries on how we liked the food. Outside we had a chance to mingle with the civilians for a while. We stood on the city hall steps and smoked as we eyed the girls and they eyed us back. With our long hair, dark brown suntans, torn uniforms and worn rifles slung over our shoulders we looked the part and kept the civvies staring. We were the real thing; just flown out of Angola and into the city hall in Bloemfontein. Seven hours ago we had been sitting in Ongiva watching for FAPLA—now we were chewing cold meat and devilled eggs and eyeing pretty Afrikaans girls in fresh make-up.
The next morning, after another smaller parade and further congratulations from a jubilant Commandant Archie Moore, we were sent off on an unbelievable but true 21-day pass. My mother and Taina were waiting at the gates. After almost breaking my ribs (she was strong as well as beautiful) Taina held me at arms’ length and examined me, her big green eyes taking in every detail with concern before informing me that I had changed and somehow looked different. She said I looked like a man now. Well, thank you very much. I never knew she had looked on me as a boy before. But she was right. I could feel it too—a part of me did not feel the same.
When we pulled into the driveway on the farm it was snowing. It had not snowed in Johannesburg for 20-odd years but now everything was covered in a blanket of white snow. The ‘welcome home’ banner that hung over the garage looked in danger of collapsing under the weight of the thick layer of snow on top of it.
It was great to be home again. Fuck Angola, fuck the army and fuck SWAPO and FAPLA. I was still gung-ho but had seen that it was not a game any more and that people got killed. People got shot to pieces. Old men died and no one cared. Young men who had joined with the same eagerness for adventure as me got ambushed while cooking breakfast and had their brains shot out and eaten by pigs and were notched on someone’s rifle as one more kill. I had no doubt that they would have killed me had I been sitting cooking canned steak and onions but in the back of my mind there was a vague notion that even though I was sure I was doing the right thing, somehow it was still all bullshit.
Fuck everybody.
GLORIOUS 21-DAY PASS
That night I saw myself on TV on the six o’clock news, shaking hands with the mayor of Bloemfontein. I was surprised how skinny and forlorn and serious I looked as the mayor vigorously pumped my hand up and down. My moustache looked huge and almost ginger on my face. They showed my handshake as one of the main features after the march-pasts and speeches. Taina squealed with delight and my dad smiled. The report went on to say that Operation Protea was the biggest and most successful external operation to date; aimed primarily at knocking out SWAPO headquarters at Xangongo, and secondly at destroying the enormous quantities of heavy weapons and conventional equipment that had been stockpiled by the Angolans at Ongiva, a stone’s throw from our border. I was learning more from the television news bulletin about why we had been there and what we had done than I had known when I was in a trench in Ongiva.
I told my brother and father how we had hit the FAPLA troops by mistake in Operation Ceiling—before FAPLA became fair game in Operation Protea a month later. My brother told me he had seen on the news that South African troops had attacked FAPLA and that Angola had complained bitterly to the United Nations about the aggressive racist regime. He shook his head when I told him that it was my platoon alone involved in the unfortunate mistake. I told him how we shot the hell out of them and how I had almost had my head blown off, puking, while a terr was setting up to blast me from five metres away. I told him how we had run through the night when the BTR had come after us and how we had later shot the old man by mistake and callously left him lying there. And how we had carried out the perfect ambush early in the morning, killing all present and about the steaming heads and the snuffling pigs; the hard-looking terr showing me a ‘fuck you’ sign on his chest as he died; the 16-year-old SWAPOs we had cornered in the thicket of dense bush and shot to pieces and the 1,000-pound bombs that sounded like thunder and the chaos of being pinned down with anti-aircraft fire ripping over our heads and dashing from trench to trench. I spared my dad some of the details but my brother wanted to know them all.
I cracked up with laughter when my mother (who was also a corporal in the reserve force) told me how she had single-handedly protested the fact that lately there had been so many young troops dying while serving time in DB. There had been a spate of deaths reported in the newspapers. She had been on parade with her unit in Johannesburg; the parade was dismissed and the two companies turned to march off the parade ground but my mother had stood her ground and refused to move. Troops walked around her, cussing in her ear to “Get out the way, you silly bitch!” Pretty soon my mother was standing, at ease, alone on the parade ground. The RSM had a fit and told her to fuck off his parade ground immediately and what was her fucking problem. She told him that she was a mother with sons on the border and that she was protesting the deaths of young soldiers in DB. He threatened and cursed and shouted in her face that if she did not remove herself from his parade ground at once she would be charged and put in DB herself. But no threat could budge my mother. She stood alone on the empty parade ground for half an hour while various officers tried in vain to get her to leave, all getting the same response. Finally, to her relief, an army chaplain came to her and asked if she wanted a cup of tea and to talk about it. To which she replied “Yes, please” and walked off with the chaplain. She had made her point. My mother—the original rebel. Now I knew where my streak came from.
We went to the famous Kyalami race track for the Formula One Grand Prix in Darryl’s brand-new AlfaSud sports car which he had just bought. His first new car. He clucked and pecked like a old mother hen over his new piece of tin. I laughed when he fussily said that I shouldn’t lean against it. Knowing me as being heavy handed, he instructed me carefully on the correct way to slowly close the door and, though we were both dying for a cigarette, he said we couldn’t smoke in the car. The new sound system with graphic equalizer blasted out the Police’s ‘Walking on the moon’ that drowned the horn blasts of the racing enthusiasts behind us as Darryl crawled at a snail’s pace over the speed bumps leading into Kyalami.
As Mario Andretti and his mates roared past us in their Formula One rockets, we sat in the front seats of the AlfaSud and did some serious damage to a bottle of good South African brandy. Shouting above the roar of the engines, I told Darryl about the last three months in the bush. Thick with brandy and emotion, I emphasized the point by slamming my right fist into the windscreen of Darryl’s brand-new Alfa. The emotion of the moment was bigger than the shattered windscreen in front of us that splintered instantly from corner to corner into a spiderweb of shiny cracks as I carried on with the story, without pausing, still punctuating it with occasional punches. Darryl showed the true colours of our long friendship as he sat silent for half a minute and let me finish my story before we both took in the damage to the brand-new car’s windscreen, my bleeding knuckle and then roared with laughter. By chance I met Badenhorst who was in my platoon. He was also wandering among the crowds with a friend, drunk out of his mind mumbling about shooting SWAPO. I poured him a stiff three-finger brandy. Soon afterwards he and I both passed out on the ground. I was drunker than I could ever remember being in my life.