19 With a Bullet (4 page)

“It’s the sound that scares you,” he said. “Shit and dust flying all over the show, bullets sounding like a whip being cracked over your head when they pass over you.

“By the time you do your national service,
boet,
there will probably be a lot more shit going on up there. They’re coming in every day.”

That was 1978. My folks had moved me from the public high school in Kempton Park to a private college-type school in downtown Benoni. It was great doing the interesting subjects like criminal law, criminology and ethnology.

It was a gas until the eve of my 19th birthday when I was bust once again for weed possession. Some hot-shot undercover narcotics cop was going through the downtown crowd like a jackal in a hen-coop and getting everybody to squeal on one another. Someone must have fingered me because two narcs turned up at the plot at about midnight one night, just as I was going to bed. They were dressed like bikers, with long hair and black leather jackets. They pulled a stash of marijuana out of my desk drawer, having placed it there themselves only moments before and despite my howls of protest and loud protestations of innocence, I spent my 19th birthday in jail. This time the old man flipped and threatened to send me to the big weed party in the sky, but my mom jumped on him in time, stopping him and talking some sense into him.

For a couple of months, life at home was hell again. No one spoke; I sulked around the farm and slept a lot. Mom tried to be her usual cheerful self and walked around the house whistling ‘Moon River’, but the notes sounded strained and she couldn’t reach the high ones. Murray, who was now at university, was the only one who seemed to find my misfortune amusing.

But time healed, as time will do, and soon the family was talking and joking with one another again. One night my dad poured us each a whisky and we talked. He said that he loved me and that I should stop all the drug crap, that I should get on the right track and get on with my life and leave all that sort of stuff behind me. I agreed with him, as I was getting kind of tired of that scene anyway, and had been at it since I was fourteen. I cleaned up my act a bit, stopped hanging around with the downtown crowd and even started dressing a bit better.

It was around this time that I started diddling the English teacher. I was still going out with Taina and had been for a couple of years now, but I was caught up in the forbidden, exciting affair and couldn’t give up having Bev on the side. It was simply too easy to meet her after school and screw her brains out in her study, or parked somewhere in her car. It went on for five erotic, funfilled months, till the end came crashing down surprisingly swiftly when I found myself busted by the headmaster and given the ultimatum: “Tell your parents all of it and bring them in to see me, or don’t come back at all.”

I made the decision there and then in the principal’s office not to return to school.

Paul Jackson would meet me on his breaks sometimes, bringing me the latest extra notes that he had scrounged from class and bringing me up to date on everything that was happening at school. It was during one of these breaks on a windy day that Paul and I were walking down Princess Street, Benoni’s main drag. Coming towards us, head on, was a soldier in his stepping-out uniform. It was not unusual to see a soldier in uniform, but this guy looked somehow different.

He was a tall, thin, very tough-looking guy with a small moustache. The deep maroon-coloured beret was set at a rakish angle and seemed almost to glow on his head in the morning sun. The white-and-green cloth wings on the front of the beret jumped out in sharp contrast. His brown uniform was impeccably clean and crisply ironed, with shining brass buttons. He had the two stripes of a corporal on his arm; on his chest were some decorations and a set of gold wings that was burnished to brilliance. He strode confidently towards us and, glancing quickly at our long hair, flashed us a ‘Don’t even think of fucking with me’ look and walked past us, going in the opposite direction.

“That’s one tough-looking hombre,” said Paul, turning to watch the paratrooper stride down the road.

“Yeah, that’s a Parabat. They’re supposed to be a mean bunch,” I said. I had heard of them, but had never actually seen one before.

“Those guys have pulled some nasty stuff up in Angola,” I said. “My brother told me about them. They’re always in the action. They jump out of planes.”

“Must be fucking mad—you won’t catch me jumping out of a plane, especially into the bush,” said Paul, lighting a bent Camel cigarette and flicking the stillsmoking match in a slow arc to land four metres in front of us.

We cruised around town for a while and then pulled in to a Greek fast-food joint for a bite to eat. There was a lunchtime line and we found ourselves standing near our paratrooper friend who had a far friendlier look on his face—perhaps it was the food, maybe they didn’t get to eat much. I immediately took advantage of his friendly demeanour and struck up a conversation with him, asking him about his unit and his opinion on what was happening on the border.

“Fucked up,” he said, starting on his burger.

“We shoot the shit out of SWAPO. Track ’em all the way into Angola and go in after them. They bombshell but we chase them and usually kill a few of them,” he said, licking his fingers. He had put his beret on the table next to him and it shone deep maroon, reminding me of the colour of a Dinky Toy E-type Jaguar I’d had as a kid.

“We hit their base on an operation in Angola ... jumped right into them. Landed through a tin roof ... hand to hand … took one of them out with a knife,” he said as he popped the last bit of his burger into his mouth.

I told him it was a good thing that he was doing. He wiped his hands slowly, put on his maroon beret at a rakish angle and lit a cigarette. “You should come down; we need guys like you,” he said and slipped out the door as fast as if he were exiting a C-130.

I was sold. I wanted to get those wings on my chest and wear that deep maroon beret. I wanted to jump out of a plane, land through a tin roof and fight terrorists hand to hand.

“Boy, sounds like these guys do the real thing,” I said, still halfway through my burger.

“Sounds pretty rough.”

“Aww … he’s probably bullshitting. That stuff doesn’t really even happen up there.”

But I knew the Parabat had not been lying. I could see by the look in his eye. I knew that he did jump into terrorist bases and fight hand to hand, and I wanted to do that too. The laughter of girls drew my attention for a moment. They seemed to find something on the menu hilariously funny and were in stitches of laughter. For the moment I forgot about the paratrooper.

INTO THE ARMY

Purple haze—Jimi Hendrix

We stood on a dirt parade ground with tall gum trees lining one side and the camp’s tin mess hall and administration offices on the other. Behind us, rising almost immediately from the parade ground, was a large hill covered with scrub and tough thorny bushes. This hill was known as
Kakhuis Koppie
, or Shithouse Hill. I had been in the army for five weeks, having been drafted into the Engineer Corps.

Ours was a field camp—it lay in a long valley with a creek that babbled past the camp and meandered its way past the shooting range at the far end of the valley.

Under different circumstances it would have been a beautiful scene. We were also close to the town of Bethlehem, one of the highest points in South Africa, and in winter the notoriously coldest part of the country with temperatures often below freezing. I had been advised before coming to the army that the Parabats came around to the various camps after a while, looking to enlist volunteers.

When I asked when the parachute battalion might come looking for volunteers my lieutenant, who was a mean, tough-looking guy with a badly pock-marked face and possibly the most sour and unpleasant individual I had met so far in my life, looked at me like I was a piece of shit and told me sarcastically: “The Parabats don’t come to field camps looking for fresh victims, so you’re here to stay as an engineer. But if you’re so eager for extra punishment, I can see that you get some.”

I was bummed out, but had kept going on extra runs by myself after PT and worked out on the shooting range, just in case the Bats did come looking for a few good men. I had no intention of staying in this dump for all of my two-year national service. Even by 10:00 it was still freezing cold, with the fog only beginning to lift from the valley. We had to run halfway up a hill to take a crap. On one of these cold winter mornings we had been drilling for an hour, and been chased all the way up
Kakhuis Koppie
a couple of times to fetch a leaf from the tree at the top, only to be told that it was the wrong leaf and to go back again and get the right one. We were wringing with sweat; every troop, every soldier, blew a cloud of cold white mist with every breath.

The camp commandant brought us to attention in our various platoons for his morning instructions for the day. He told us at the end of his rant that anybody wanting to try out for the paratroopers was to stay after parade for some preliminary tests.

Surprisingly, 70 or more guys stayed, and a tall Parabat lieutenant made us line up in front of him as he explained the five tests we had to pass to get 1 Parachute Battalion even to look at us.

He was soft-spoken, with flaming red hair and an easy look in his eye. He told us we would have to run the length of the parade ground and back in 90 seconds—carrying a buddy; do 50 push-ups and a few other tests. The last was to run three and a half kilometres in a specified time. It all sounded easy enough, but right from the first test I began to feel light-headed and out of breath. My heart was pounding and I began getting anxious.

“Don’t fuck this up, boy—this is what you’ve been waiting for,” I told myself. My head swam. I had managed all the tests so far, and many of the troops had already dropped out as we set off up the valley towards the shooting range for the three-and-a-half-kilometre run.

Straight away I knew I wasn’t going to make the passing time. I was short of breath; my chest felt like it was closing, and by the time we reached the turnaround point I was trailing well behind the others.

I couldn’t believe it! I had been betrayed. My body had betrayed me. Why was this happening? This was the very same dirt road that I had run almost every fucking day preparing for this very fucking moment, and now I had fucked it up royally. Halfway back to camp I had to sit on a rock, gulping for breath and watching in disbelief as wheezing troops ran past me. I shook my head and felt weak and useless. I couldn’t believe I had fucked up my one-and-only opportunity to get into the Parachute Battalion. I got up slowly and began walking back along the stony dirt road, feeling totally dejected and mystified by my failure, when my asshole lieutenant drove by in a Jeep and pulled to a halt in front of me in a cloud of dust. He looked back over his shoulder, his one hand on the long gear lever.

“What happened to you?” he hissed. “You’re the one who was always asking to go to the Parabats. What’s wrong? What happened?”

I shrugged my shoulders and said nothing. I had no explanation for him. He shook his head at my failure, jammed the gear into first and pulled off, spraying me with stones and dust. When I got to camp the troops who had finished the run stood in line, their chests heaving, waiting to give their times.

I was walking dejectedly past them, heading for the bungalow, when someone grabbed my arm roughly and literally shoved me into the front of the line at the desk, barking a passing time to the clerk. I turned to look into the black eyes and pock-marked face of the lieutenant whom I had known as a sarcastic, mean son-of-a
-
bitch. He held my arm tightly, his fingers digging into my bicep, and glared at the clerk until he was sure the corporal had written down my passing time; then he shoved me in among the crowd of potential paratroopers standing wheezing nearby.

I felt a rush of hope as I stood quietly among the group of passing candidates who were still huffing and puffing. I couldn’t believe he had done that. I was eternally grateful to the man. I would meet him later in a similar circumstance and be able to return the favour. Oddly, I didn’t feel like a cheat, or that I should not be there. I knew it was through some freak occurrence that I had fucked up on those simple preliminary tests, probably because I wanted to get to the Bats so badly that when they did surprise us by showing up, I was too nervous to get myself together.

Anyway, I didn’t give a shit. It was very unlike me, and I vowed to myself that I would push myself with whatever I had and through whatever it took to pass the real paratrooper physical tests that lay ahead.

Later, the group of us which had ‘passed’ the tests was sent to wait on the lawn outside some admin offices, and told to wait to be individually interviewed by the Parabat lieutenant.

This was the next tricky part, but I had long ago prepared for it. I knew that they would strip us to our underwear and inspect us physically, and I knew the Parabats wouldn’t take anybody with tattoos.