An Unpopular War Read online

  – Brett, age 18

  I had been in boarding school for five years. I figured going to the army straight after school was a good idea. I was used to the routine and the discipline, all the bells ringing, inspections, eating meals at a certain time – all that shit. Even though I had dual citizenship, British and South African, I volunteered. I did so because I heard they were going to make it compulsory for immigrants. So I thought, rather get in now. And, ja, they did a year later. I was fucking glad I’d gone in earlier, ’cause they gave those new guys such a hard time. They really kakked off. I was the only Englishman among 13 Afrikaners. That’s where I learnt to speak Afrikaans so well. I had to.

  – Andy, age 18

  My father had pulled strings to get me a comfy clerical job in Pretoria for my two years’ National Service. I remember just reading a paperback on the way there. Arriving was a shock. I come from a home where there is no shouting, and I was even looking for porters to help me with my bags when we arrived at Pretoria station. The comfy job lasted only a week before they decided they needed more infantry. I tried everything to get out. I claimed to have a drug dependency. I said my girlfriend was pregnant. Nothing worked, and a whole lot of us were sent to 6 SAI in Grahamstown. I had no idea what to expect. Food was always an issue. I had a friend who was a Catholic. He attended Mass off base, which in itself was great, because the bigger churches like the NG Church were on the base. But the best thing was that they served lunch at his church. So, for that duration I became a Catholic and remained one for about a year after my National Service.

  – Werner, age 21

  Rooibaard was the devil incarnate as far as I was concerned. He was also one of my first memories of Ladysmith. We had originally congregated at Milpark in Joburg and then sat on the trains for nearly an hour, just looking at the Joburg skyline before we finally left. We were all so apprehensive, wondering where the hell we were going. We arrived at Ladysmith around 4 a.m. on the 2nd of July. It was pitch dark and freezing. The Bedfords were waiting to take us to the actual camp, and so were all these ou manne and sergeants. I heard this voice scream, ‘Julle fokkin’ bliksems! Klim uit!’ [You fuckin’ bastards! Climb out!], and saw this guy, Rooibaard, this madman with blazing eyes and a red beard. Later on, I heard rumours that he had drilled his nephew to death. The carriage doors on both sides were open, and on one side was this screaming loony with steely blue eyes. Out the other side, through the carriage doorway, were just empty railway tracks. I looked at these and thought, should I make a run for it and just go? But I didn’t, and we got out of the train and were herded like sheep. Life as we knew it came to an end. We went to total zero. Less than zero. You were total dirt. You didn’t count for anything. We were kitted out in the only two sizes the army has: too big or too small. You had to exchange with one another afterwards to try and get stuff to fit you. We were given a trommel, blanket, a grootjas and stuff, and sent to tents. I went to sleep with my grootjas and one blanket, and in the morning I had my grootjas on and five blankets, it was so cold. That same night this commandant came and spoke to us and he said if we wanna leave before we register tomorrow morning we must do so now. This would save him the time of coming to look for us if we went AWOL, because once we were registered we became his problem. He said, ‘Are there any of you that object to holding a rifle?’ And this I’ll never forget, out of 2 500 guys this one lone guy stood up. We were all sitting down and he stood up and raised his hand and said, ‘I do.’ The guy was taken away. I’m sure he wasn’t sent home.

  – Nick, age 20

  When we got the call-up forms at school, we had to complete them and fill in where we would like to go and what we would prefer to do. I chose Engineers, thinking I might as well learn something new. I also put something like ‘Intend to study further in this direction’. Obviously someone read this and assumed I was an engineer. So I ended up with the graduate intake. It was great, because they abuse you that little bit less, probably because they realise that after four years of varsity, you know they can’t kill you. None of that ‘Val langs hom,’ which means if a guy drops his rifle he has to fall next to it. This one guy was told not to bend his knees ’cause his rifle didn’t do that, and he smashed up his face. Grads wouldn’t do that. We klaared in at a place called Vegkop; we Engelsmanne called it Vegetable Head. There were only about 120 of us, and it was good because we had hot food and hot showers. It’s much easier to feed 120 than 3 000 troops. Once we got onto Officer’s Course, we even had waiters! Guys from the local prison. Bandita was the con that served us food and washed our plates. So it was not a very tough time for me!

  – Paul, age 17

  I cried my first night in Voortrekkerhoogte. I just thought: I’m here, I’m really here, and I didn’t know what lay ahead. It was the early hours of the morning, and we were still in our civvies, no browns. The loneliness of being with all these people, but not knowing anybody and no one knowing me, was hard. I still wonder if it was intentional, that no one was sent away with anyone they knew. No one from the same school or same class was together that I knew of. If you did end up at the same army base, you sure weren’t in the same company or group.

  Hurry up and wait. That’s what it was all about. We stood in the streets separating the barracks and waited outside the barber for three days to get our hair cut for the first time. It was a very small room with two barbers in it and a corporal reading a newspaper. Even though the guy was a real barber contracted by the military, he wasn’t gentle. It was a Number One all over. I watched guys with long, long hair just getting it all shorn off. Shoop! There were mountains of hair on the floor. I’ll never forget that. I think it was part of taking away your identity to break you down. To avoid the queue, and because it was so easy to do, some guys went and bought clippers and charged five bucks a haircut. The guys who’d shaved their heads got into trouble ’cause you weren’t supposed to be bald.

  – Paul, age 18

  It was the first time I had ever met other gay guys and realised I wasn’t alone. Coming out was another story. There were two platoons in a bungalow that slept about 80 men. Running down the centre was a lowish wall. This one guy stood up on the wall and shouted out, ‘For those who want to know, I am gay!’ I couldn’t believe it! That broke the ice, and later that week, when we were sitting in the bungalow, some of the other guys also ‘came out’. I felt on top of the world. I’m rescued! I’m saved! I’m not alone! In that state of happiness and joy, I looked them all in the eyes and said, ‘I’m gay too.’ There was this heartbeat of silence, and the guys looked at me and said they were only pretending. For an instant I thought, oh my God, this is a trap. The army has set a trap and they’ve caught me out. It was only seconds later that they started laughing and said they were only joking, but I died in that time. It was the shittest coming out I’ve ever heard of.

  – Rick, age 18

  I was 17 years old, so horribly young, when my dad and I drove up to Potch from Welkom. When we got there, we handed in my call-up papers and said I wouldn’t be doing my military service. We were told to go to Voortrekkerhoogte. My dad drove me to the Law Offices there. The MPs collected me and took me to prison. It was a cell eight by six feet and held three of us. It was very daunting and I was very nervous, even though I had been preparing for this for years. I was charged with ‘Refusing to Perform Military Service’, and a date was set for my court martial – I think it was about two weeks after I arrived. Let me tell you, it’s nothing like JAG or any of that stuff you see on TV. You stand facing this bank of brass, about five or six colonels, as they read out the charges. I was impressed by the colonel, or whoever it was in charge. When he read the sentence, he said something like, ‘I don’t really have a choice in this matter, and as much as I would like to do otherwise, by law I am bound to give you the maximum sentence for what you are charged with.’ He very clearly conveyed to me that he didn’t really believe in what he had to do. It was uplifting to hear that from him. I was sentenced to three y
ears without parole.

  – Alan, age 17

  Soutpiele and Dutchmen

  We were taken to this large hall, surrounded by guys holding rifles, standing against the walls. I felt more like a prisoner. This RSM asks anybody who is English to put up his hand. So I put up my hand and I looked around, and in the entire hall, out of hundreds of guys, I was the only one who’d raised his hand. That was the thing, although we were in the same army, fighting for the same cause, they created this division between English and Afrikaans. It was huge, a huge division. This one soldier walked over to me with this red doibie which fits inside a helmet. Everyone else’s was green. Although I didn’t know at the time what the RSM’s words – ‘Engelsman, jy gaan bloed pis’ [Englishman, you are going to piss blood] – meant, it didn’t sound good. I also knew I was the only oke with a red helmet, which couldn’t have been a good sign. We all had to wear our doibies all the time. It meant that I really stood out, and anybody with any rank could order me to do anything: dig a hole at midnight, do push-ups, roll in the dirt, iron clothes or dish up food. They could make you spray your bed and your clothes at night with water, fill your bed with sand, anything. The guys sorted me out, but without breaking me. But I have to say, it taught me discipline and – for the first time in my life – responsibility and endurance. It was the most significant contributing factor to me being selected for an elite unit.

  – Brett, age 18

  There was quite a difference between the English and Afrikaans guys. A lot of the Afrikaans guys had bought into this ‘volk en vaderland’ lock, stock and barrel. The English guys thought it was a crock of shit. The English guys were more thinkers. And they were thinking that this was bullshit. The ‘I don’t want to be here’ kind of thing. I fell into the latter category by a long way. English guys were given a hard time. Everything was set up to keep the Afrikaners in power. You would never find an Englishman as a bevelvoerder at any of these camps. It was all part of a massive set-up, and the army exploited the differences between us. The English guys were NAAFI and keen to gyppo. The Afrikaans guys were more paraat. I remember standing guard duty with this Afrikaans guy. I asked him why he asked to be selected for State President’s Guard. He turned to me and said, ‘Van kleins af was dit my droom om ’n Staatpresidentswag te wees’ [Since I was a child it was my dream to become a State President’s Guard]. That threw me. Nearly knocked my socks off. I just looked at him and said I chose it because ‘dit was naby die huis’ [it was close to home]. The Afrikaners called us soutpiele – one foot in England, one foot in South Africa, and with your dick hanging in the sea.

  – Nick, age 20

  We were told, ‘Die weermag is vyftig vyftig. Vyftig persent Engels en vyftig persent Afrikaans. Die eerste vyftig jaar was Engels en die volgende vyftig jaar sal Afrikaans wees’ [The army is fifty fifty. Fifty percent English and fifty percent Afrikaans. The first fifty years were English and the next fifty years will be Afrikaans].

  – Paul, age 18

  The corporal shouted at us to ‘Pak tekkies uit!’ This was usually bellowed at us before inspection. I’d got the hang of many things, like not sleeping in my bed when I knew there was an inspection, and using two dixies to make sure the bed was perfectly squared off at the corners. Being an Englishman, I was at a language disadvantage. The first time I heard ‘Pak tekkies uit,’ I quickly ran and placed my takkies neatly at the foot of the bed! Everyone had a good old laugh at the Engelsman. It meant the same thing as ‘roer jou gat’, which basically means hurry up and get sorted out as quickly as possible. Nothing to do with placing your takkies anywhere!

  – John, age 18

  Although I got a C+ for Afrikaans at school, I couldn’t read it or write it very well. And the Afrikaans I learnt in the army often wasn’t suitable elsewhere. I went on pass with an Afrikaans friend of mine, back to his folks’ place for dinner. His mother was shocked by my language, as I said things were ‘moerse goed’. He explained to me that you didn’t talk that way at home. But, having said that, I met this girl in Amanzimtoti, and by then my Afrikaans was so good I could pick up from what she said and how she said it that one of her parents was English. That’s how fluent I became.

  Mixing with people from other backgrounds and classes was a real eye-opener for me. In my platoon of about 36 guys, I had a guy who couldn’t even read! He had a Standard 4. He had to bring me his letters to read to him. Unbelievable. I was from a white middle-class family in a good middle-class suburb, and I knew if you weren’t bright you got to Standard 8, and then went off to technical school. The girls would do a secretarial course or something. I didn’t know anyone who just had a Standard 8 or had left school early. Guys from Joburg’s John Orr Tech had the lowest academic level that I was aware of. The one guy had gone to ‘Special School’ and was a Code Seven. That meant he was not qualified to handle a rifle and was sent to Marievale. The Marievale troops did things like construction. One of the other guys’ life’s ambition was to be a tipper truck driver.

  – Paul, age 17

  G1K1, G4K-Fucked Up

  The physical inspection to determine your classification was held outdoors. We all had to line up dressed only in our army issue underpants. There were these trestle tables in an L-shape and a long row of doctors, about 10 or 15, sitting at them. They were checking in our mouths, looking at our teeth and handling our goolies. For this they used a spoon. They’d shove it at you, hold them and say ‘cough’. They had their fun, but at the same time they took the classifying very seriously. If there was something wrong with you and something happened to you, they could be sued. They’d also check your body for scars and whatnot. Then they would write on your back with a permanent Koki – a big ‘G1K1’ or whatever. This determined what duties you could perform. G1K1 was perfectly fit and capable, while G4K4 would make you a pen-pusher. G5 would exempt you. Then someone would slap you on the back and say, ‘Go there.’ The whole time this was going on, we were communicating. We weren’t supposed to, but we were. Even if it was whispering, communication was going on all the time about what was happening and what would happen to those separated out. I saw this programme on TV about Robben Island and how the prisoners communicated in the jail, and it was just like that – illicit communication going on all the time. Some guys were trying to limp or saying they had problems with their kidneys, as they wanted to be kicked out of the army. Not me – I was very patriotic and I knew I had to be in the bush. I had to have a rifle. I wanted to kill gooks, terrs, guerrillas, whatever, but because of a motorcycle accident in which I had injured my neck and broken one leg so badly that it was shorter than the other, I had a big black G4K4 written on my back. I said to them, ‘Stuff you guys, I’m here, I want to fight!’ so the guys scrubbed the G4K4 off my back and I signed an indemnity form allowing me to perform G1K1 duties.

  – Brett, age 18

  I had a heart murmur and was classified as a G4K4, or ‘G4K-fucked up’, as we called them. It meant you couldn’t do any physical training or opfok. That’s when they discipline you for failing inspection and make you run. They make you run to a distant tree, pick leaves, and then run even more because you were destroying nature, ha ha. We G4K4s had to stay in the bungalow and drink water. Lots of it. About 13 litres in ten minutes or so. Then, when you puked it up, they made you leopard-crawl through it in your uniform. I lasted one week before I realised I’d rather be running. I got myself re-tested and was found to be okay, so I became a G1K1 – fit for active duty.

  – Andy, age 18

  It was mid-winter and we were in our grootjasse and army underjocks. This female medic is standing there, perving. When we had to take off our coats, she’s just standing there lagging and looking at our crotches. It was so humiliating. Then, when we had to get our injections, there were two medics who came at you from either side and dug the needles into your arms at the same time, and she watched you squirm. It hurt like hell. The whole experience was undignified and degrading.

  – Nick, age 20
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  During Basic Training we had a meningitis scare and a whole bunch of us had to see the doctor. We were lined up outside his room, all wearing our black gym shorts, brown army T-shirts and lekker brown army takkies, same colour as the shirt. It was my turn next, and I was peeking through the crack of the door and I saw them giving a guy a lumbar puncture. I turned around and I told the guys behind me what I’d seen and ten guys just disappeared. The doc came out and there was no one there! They dragged us back kicking and screaming, but it was just as well, because my headache wasn’t from the physical training as I thought – I actually had meningitis.

  – Ric, age 18

  Parades were awful. The parade ground was enormous, about the size of four rugby fields, and we had to march on last, in front of all the other troops who had assembled there already. When we marched on, we had to make the sound of an ambulance siren and, with hands at chest height, palms forward, flick our fingers to imitate flashing lights. We were G4K3s and they called us the LSD troops. Die Lam, Siek en Dooies.

  – Rick, age 18

  Drill and Weapons