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