A town called Alex - Part 2

Township duty was mostly boring, doing the daily patrol, playing soccer with the kids. Every so often thinks would get ugly, and then it's total confusion and fear for a few hours. Then it's the boredom routine again.

We were on one of our boredom patrols one Wednesday afternoon (which was a bummer because it means we missed sport parade)in the poorer part of Alex, the one with the tin shacks. The guys were talking about rugby, and teasing Dof Stoffel because his girlfriend wanted sex but he came from a farming community and he was worried what his friends would think..

Out of the blue two Ak's went of on full Afrikaans from one of the shacks. Most of the rounds hit the sides of the buffel, no-one was hurt. But there was some chaos and pandemonium. My radioman was screaming into the radio, the troops on the right side were firing back and the ones on the left managed to get off the Buffel onto the ground (for thos who don't know, lying under a Buffel when someone is shooting at you is not a good idea. The v-shape forces all the ricochets down on top of you).

Four troops had managed to get round the back of the shack, but no one was getting anywhere. They obviously had loads of ammo. I was trying to figure out the next move and swearing at myself because I only had my 9 mil with me, when the cavalry arrived in the form of a mellow yellow - one of the police casspirs.

He didn't even slow down, just turned and drove straight over the tin shack. End of story. Now why the fuck didn't I think of that?

What do you do with a drunken sailor?

Bethlehem (not the one with three wise men and a virgin) – November 1985. I was officer on duty for the night when we got a call from the railway police that military personnel on a Pretoria - Durban train were causing havoc. The train was due to stop in Bethlehem (not the one with three wise men and a virgin), and could we send some guys over and help restore order?

I sent the MP’s, and since it was a quiet Friday evening, about 7 of them went. It wasn’t enough. In the end I sent a section of sappers to go and help. There were three navy guys on the train (I never did figure out why the navy has a presence in Pretoria), a Petty Officer and 2 sailors. They had trashed a whole coach, then beat up some of the passengers, set off all the fire extinguishers, and were trying to braai in their compartment when the train stopped at the station.

It was about midnight when we got them into camp, still aggressive as anything, trying to explain something in incoherent drunk to me. We chucked them in the cells to cool off, and decided to leave them till morning.

I stopped by to see them at the end of my duty shift, and one of the now extremely hungover sailors manages to explain that it was his bachelor’s party. And he was supposed to get married at 10 am. And he was 500km away from Durban. He was going to miss the wedding.

At 07:30 an Admiral phones me, wants to know what the fuck was happening. Why the fuck had we arrested his future son in law? I arranged for the now very sad sailor to phone the Admiral, and his girlfriend. As I left the room I saw him wince and heard a shrill screaming from the other side of the phone…

Turns out his name was Gary. I gave him a lift to Durban on Saturday afternoon (the next train was only in 3 days time) in my car. I was going home to see my girlfriend in Mtunzini. He wasn’t sure if his girlfriend was ever going to speak to him again, never mind get married to him….

Come to the dark side - we have cookies..

Kerkparade was a big event. The whole unit turned out. Even the Jewish kids (of course after the parade they were sent back to camp to clean dustbins). In basics it was simple. You picked the church that had the best cookies after the service. All the churches in Kroonstad vied with each other. And troepe are cheap. Cookies were enough to bribe them to listen to your particular version of religion. The NG Kerk, had it's church in the base, so if you were Afrikaans you weren't going to see town on a Sunday. And ince they felt they had a captive audience they dispensed with the cookie bribing system. Within weeks their numbers had dwindled to about half a dozen. A witch hunt was started to force the troepe back into the NG Kerk, but it was never very successful. No cookies, no church.

Bethlehem (not the one with three wise men and a virgin), 1985. I'd come back from a township late on Saturday night. Sunday morning there was a knock on my door and the mess cook popped his head in apologetically. "Sammajoor vra dat jy asseblief Kerkparade toe kom". I'd been in the army long enough to know that no matter what your rank, it's better to listen to Sammajoor. I didn't wear my uniform, but Rodney Green (I think) and myself presented ourselves at church parade in jeans and tshirts. The parade was done, and the troepe were getting into transports to be taken to the various churches around town.

Sammajoor looked at use and said "The army says you have to go to church - which one do you belong to?" He didn't comment on our lack of uniform. Rodney looked at him straight in the eye and said "St Agnostics, Sammajoor".

There was a moment of silence. "Luitenant, we don't have that church in Bethlehem. But the Methodists are similar" Daa gat jy!

Long ago and far away

I had kak dreams last night. In technicolour. Carlo and Steve were there. And Charles.

Here is a link to a video I like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGMfldP2MMY&feature=player_embedded

Singing

Knew a lady dressed in red
Made her living in her bed

Knew a lady dressed in black
Made her living on her back

Of all the songs we sang while running in a bus, this is the only one I really remember. Strange that. Oh, and there’s a corny one that Richard Savage wrote about
Bossiespruit, still have it written down somewhere.

Bossiespruit is where we train
In the heat and in the rain…..

About the only time we seemed to sing was running in the bus on the way to the parade ground, away from the parade ground or just to prove to the fucking corporal that fucking us around wasn’t really working. Other people marched. We ran. And sang. And when the singing stopped someone would start stamping their right boot to keep the rhythm going. Other than that, there were some soutpiele who sang in the kaserne to amuse themselves and piss others off. And of course the strangled hymns at the daily kerkparade during basics. But church parade is a blog in itself.

Guard Duty

I googled guard duty today to find a suitable picture for my blog. Shit, they do try to make guard duty look like a noble duty don’t they?

Remember we were in the middle of a war. Expected insurgents in red t-shirts were going to overrun every base every night so everyone had to be paraat! (I’m not sure if there’s a suitable English word for paraat). To make sure that that guard duty is done right, procedures were instigated, and troepe were trained for all possible incidents.

Danie may be able to help me (he still has all his notes from basics), but here are the procedures to be followed when you’re on guard duty and you see someone infiltrate the base;
1. Shout. Loudly. “Who goes there?”
2. If no response, shout “Halt, or I will shoot!”
3. If still no response, take rifle magazine from pouch.
4. Tell insurgent. Loudly. “Please wait a bit!”
5. Find in one of your 20 pockets the three (yes, three!) rounds issued to you.
6. With teeth, try and tear off shrink wrapped plastic.
7. Put rifle down carefully, load three rounds into magazine.
8. Pick up rifle.
9. Put magazine into rifle.
10.Shout. Loudly “Thank you for waiting! Halt, or I’ll shoot”
11.Load round into chamber. Shout. Loudly. “Halt, or I’ll shoot”
12.In the likely event that the insurgent has pissed off by this stage, prepare for a bollocking by the sergeant on duty for tearing the plastic covering on your three rounds.

Authority

I’d been sent to Pretoria for a month, to give a practical counter-insurgency course. To a bunch of office clerks. Yes, the army doesn’t always think. Ever tried teaching house-clearing to someone who gets asthma from using a pen? It was long month…

I left early one afternoon when my two instructors were busy with them on the finer art of pushups, and went to a mall in search of a bookshop and some decent coffee. Not in that order though. I went for some coffee first, and had barely sat down when a red-haired corporal and a whole entourage of troops with R5’s came up to me.

“Sir, do you have permission to be here?” he asks. What kind of a fuckwit question is that? Since when do I need permission to drink coffee? I’m allowed to shoot people without authorization, and now I need permission to drink coffee? This conversation was going downhill.

“Who’s your commanding officer, Sir? He asks. “Right now? I am” I tell him. The thing is, he knows, and I know the odd military rule that states that you may only be arrested by someone of equal or senior rank. So this whole thing is getting frustrating for both of us and going absolutely nowhere.

In the end I give him the Devil Eyes De Villiers direct line number. Devil Eyes is the Kommandant at my base in Bethlehem (not the one with three wise men and a virgin). One liner radios his head office, they phone Devil Eyes. Red head the one liner comes back to me, gives me a very reluctant salute, and fucks off.

I heard later from the adjudant at base that Devil Eyes had lost the plot when they asked him. Amongst other things I was evidently given strict instructions to shoot them if they didn’t piss off. The corporal never told me that though.