How to blow yourself up

We did all our explosives training at the outside base. It was far away from town, so we usually made a whole day of it. Even got the base to send out food for us at lunch time. I used to take sandwiches with – cold army food really is gross.

We were doing the basics of explosives with a new intake, and after numerous lectures on PE4, detonators, fuses and safety procedures, we finally give every troop a piece of PE4, a length of fuse, a detonator and a crimper to join the det and fuse. And some matches (remember this is explosives 101 – the simple stuff).

Charles Bester was one of the instructors, sitting with the guys, going through the procedures with them. He was an excellent instructor, always calm – which was good because a surprising amount of people get nervous and shaky when handling explosives. For the non-army people, PE4 (plastic explosives) is very stable. We used to burn it to boil water for tea.

Four of the troops put their rigs together, crimped the detonator onto the fuse, inserted it into the plastic explosives and then walked about 25 metres forward and put it onto the ground to light it. Once you’ve lit it, you turn your back on it and walk back normally (very difficult to do). The fuse burns at a specific speed – so the time is set by the length of the fuse. One of the more nervous guys came back at a very fast walk. Charles had been watching him, and as he arrived back in the safe area, he asked the guy “En waar is jou fokken vuurhoutjies?” and turned round to grin at me. Before we could do a thing, the guy spun around, and ran straight back towards the burning fuse.

Fuckit. Charles and I legged it after the guy, and managed to tackle him before he reached the explosives, both of us crashing on top of him and knocking his wind out. We dragged him back, Charles hit him on top of his boshoed and told him to stop being an eedjit. The rest of the troops thought it was hilarious and teased him for days afterwards.

Route marches

Route marches are an integral part of training. Except at Bossies they were also part of the general fucking around. I think we did at least one route march a week, the times were arbitrary - but usually after 21:00, and of course with 5 minutes notice to "Fokkentreeaanvolkitstaaldakengeweer!!! Nou!"

Then it's off in the dark at a fast walk/slow jog sort of pace. Not sure if there's a name for it, I think the Brits call it tabbing. If the moon was up, it went quicker, but on a dark night the first 30 minutes was always characterized by stumbling, unexpected face plants and a fair amount of swearing. And of course there's the certainty that if your time is slower than last time, you get to do it again.

The photo shows Tony Barnes (left) and I just before a route march. Note the ancient webbing. I think the engineers were sucking on the hind tit when it came to equipment. The note on the back of the photo says our 20km time was 3 hours 20 minutes.

War School 101

I think it was late 1985 when we did our military maneuvers in the Eastern Free State. Lesotho had some internal strife, and it was probably also aimed as a show of force for the rebels in Maseru.

We left early in the morning, driving along the main roads toward Fouriesburg, and then on to Ficksburg, building temporary bridges across what seemed every single stream. In between it all we had ambushes along the road, minefields to clear, wounded people to casevac . The ambushes didn’t always work so well – the sergeant major would shoot at us with blanks from behind a tree, we shoot back, he declares us dead, we say not a fuck and drive off. I think he found it very frustrating.

I was assigned a driver for the Gharrie (the word Gharrie, usually assigned to any jeep-like vehicle, is actually a Swahili word, and is still used ubiquitously in East Africa) as I never got around to getting one. By the 1st afternoon I made him sit in the back and he became my radio operator. He was a useless driver – kept falling asleep at the wheel.

The vehicles in the pic were my part of war school 101, lined up next to the parade ground at 2 Field in Bethlehem (not the one with 3 wise men and a virgin).

Roadblocks and boredom

King Jonathan of Lesotho was in danger of being deposed, or he was deposing someone. One of the Squadrons from Bethlehem (not the one with 3 wise men and a virgin) had sent a troop to Bloemfontein as engineering support for a planned military invasion. We were patrolling the Lesotho/South Africa border from Ficksburg to Golden Gate.

We’d been manning a roadblock just outside Ficksburg for about 12 hours, checking cars and buses that were taking migrant workers back to Jozi. We’d caught teenager with a bag of shit quality dope. I was going to confiscate the dope and let the kid go, but some gung ho police sergeant insisted on taking him to the cop shop.

Tubby van Deventer (he’s dead now) was bored. He’d taken a rooikat (caracal for the non-Africans) off one of the farmers earlier the afternoon, and decided to play silly buggers. The cat was forced very unwillingly into an old battered suitcase, and the suitcase was placed next to the road, about 200 metres past the stopper group.

Within 5 minutes a very full Toyota taxi screamed to a halt, the suitcase was snatched and the taxi spun off. The rest was slow motion…. people started peeling out of the windows, the sliding door had opened and 3 guys just rolled out on to the tar. The driver just got out – he didn’t brake, didn’t stop. He just exited the vehicle, as the Americans would say. A rooikat probably weighs about 20 kg, but a pissed off caracal inside a minibus must’ve looked the size of a grizzly.

As for the cat, he got away. There was a farmhouse about 500m from the roadblock, and early the next morning the farmer brought us all some hot coffee and homemade rusks. He was bitching about a rondloper rooikat that ate his chickens the night before.

Tuit djou bek!

The mine warfare training in Ladysmith was at their training grounds outside of town. Also doing training there at the time was the Cape Coloured Corps – a delightful bunch of training. Although different to standard operating procedures, their training methods were novel and seemed to work.

They were working on 81mm mortars. Me, knowing absolutely nothing about them went to have a look, and tried to get a couple of freebie lessons on targeting these things. They’d spent the first few days firing practice rounds, then smoke and white phos. It amazed me just how far you could chuck a mortar round.

It was their last day on the mortars, we had just finished our course, and I went to watch them using HE. Boys never grow up – noisy things are always fascinating. I can’t remember, I think there was a battery of 8 or 9 mortars, all making a very satisfying “tonk” sounds as they threw the HE at a target way off in the distance.

Something had caught my eye. The troops manning the tube closest to me had thrown a mortar round into the tube. And it didn’t come out. And then he threw another one in. And another. The last didn’t even go all the way in – the point stuck out of the tube. And very calmly he turned around and announce “loop vol korporaal!”

I turned around to look for the corporal. There was no one within a 100 metres of me. People slowly started appearing, rather hesitantly I thought. The poor troop had by now realized that he’d done something he probably shouldn’t have. His corporal came up to him and quietly said “tuit djou bek”. The oke dutifully pouted his lips and “smack!”, he got klapped in the face. He didn’t even blink.

Everybody looked at me. Couldn’t understand why – until it dawned on me that I was the demolitions guy. And who better to sort out an 81 mil mortar tube full of rounds. Shit, I knew fuckall about mortars, don’t think they even showed us how they worked. Best thing I reasoned, was to get them out of the tube first. So I tipped the tube over, lifted the back end up and let them fall out the front of the tube. For some reason no one wanted to help me, and the bloody thing is heavy! None of them exploded. So far so good. The rest was easy – I destroyed them with some PE4.

The troop? He was single handedly carrying the base plate of the 81mm mortar to the target area and back..about 10km for the round trip

Jackets, warm

It was winter. And in Bethlehem it gets fucken cold. In the mid 80’s you could get ex-German Army cold weather parkas from military surplus stores. I bought one of those, took off the German flag and wore it in the base. As long as you didn’t wear it on parade, nobody seemed to mind too much. In fact it became a bit of a fashion statement among the sappers.

I was sent down to Ladysmith (5 SA Infantry?) to do a mine warfare course for a new intake of troops. They were called storm pioneers (And only the army can think up crap names like that). Anyway, my sergeant and I arrive at Ladysmith, both dressed in our jackets, warm, German issue just as the infantry guys finished their morning parade. A SM saw us and immediately flew off the handle “Wat de fok dra julle!? Dis nie standard univorm nie!!! Ek kla julle sommer nou aan!” We both looked at him in mock amazement. “Maar Sammajoor, hulle reik hierdie goed uit in Bethlehem! Dis mos fokken koud daar!”

He looked at both of us. And decided on another tack “Ek wil ook een hè. Kan jy dit organize?”

We did actually. He was a cool dude. Found a cheap one and had it sent with a consignment of landmines that he’d ordered.

No, it's not me in the pic.

Too much is just enough

A directive had come out – if there were any troop movements in the Bethlehem (not the one with 3 wise men and a virgin) area, the senior person with them had to be armed. All officers leaving base had to be armed. It seems the “rooi gevaar” were planning to abduct army personnel and do beastly deeds with their poor bodies.
I drew one of the old standard issue 9mm pistols from the armoury. Simon, a young 2nd Lt from Joburg, pulled rank on the staff sergeant and insisted on drawing a R4, and enough rounds for 4 magazines. He was going home for the weekend and wanted to look like Rambo or something.

Anyway, he only got away after dark on Friday evening. Ten clicks out of town his car crashed into some boulders on the road, and he spun off into the dirt. Some local gangsters had been doing this on a regular basis - put some rocks on the road at night, and when the cars crash they robbed the survivors.

This time they lucked out. Simon was severely pissed off because the car was his pride and joy. He managed to get his door open just as they came running up. According to him, he let rip on R for Afrikaans with two magazines worth, and then went looking for the survivors. He found two guys, amazingly only lightly wounded, but in a state of shock. Two others managed to gap it.

The practice of putting rocks in the road stopped. At least in Bethlehem (not the one with 3 wise men and a virgin).