Granger Korff - 19 with a Bullet

Now there was a different threat. South Africa was surrounded by communist countries. Russia was real, still a great threat and, as far as I had been told, was trying to get a grasp on southern Africa from within by supporting the ANC, the PAC and the anti-apartheid movement, and sending ‘freedom fighters’, better known to us as terrorists, from across the border to try and accomplish it.

I read a newspaper for the first time in months; it told how the Angolan army was aiding SWAPO and had helped repel a South African attack against a SWAPO base camp in Angola. Also that Soviet-supplied and Cuban-flown MiGs had been seen flying menacingly close to the border.

I couldn’t go AWOL. What was I thinking? I would just have to go back and bite the bullet. Before you knew it I’d be on the border and all this training bullshit would be over. It sounded like it was getting serious up there, with all those Cubans in Angola. They said that 40,000 Cuban troops had already arrived and were operational. I felt ashamed that I had even thought of going AWOL and drove home quickly in the fading light as the setting sun shot a magnificent volley of red and orange against the enormous rolling wall of black storm clouds advancing from the north.

I called John right away and told him that it would not be worth the trouble to go AWOL. He agreed. We booked a train the following evening to Bloemfontein.

We arrived at 1 Para early the next morning, walked through the big wroughtiron gates, past the guards. The big fish eagle whooped us a greeting as we strode up the tar road past the parade ground with our heavy kit bags on our shoulders. We hadn’t had a haircut in months, our hair hung well over our collars and we both sported big moustaches and a dark brown border tan. The rank that we passed ignored us, not knowing what or who we were on our last stroll of freedom as we neared our bungalow and saw the sight I had been dreading, but had known could be no different.

The whole Valk 4, Platoon 4, was standing clean-shaven outside the bungalow in open order, blowing hard in the cool early-morning air after completing a couple of laps around the pakhuis . Corporal Berger and the new lieutenant were yelling at the tops of their voices at the same time, and did not notice us as we walked casually past the platoon towards the bungalow door.

After a moment of silence and a long stare the lieutenant recognized us, broke into a big sarcastic grin and shouted: “Well, I’ll be damned! Korff and Delaney! What—you guys didn’t make the Recce course and you came back to us? How special of you!”

I found this lieutenant particularly irksome and could easily have knocked him onto his stupid arrogant arse, but instead I came to attention and threw a smart salute. All attention was on us now and I could see the guys in the platoon grinning and sniggering among themselves. John the Fox and Stander stood next to each other in the front row, blowing white mist into the morning air and trying to hold back their laughter.

“And what the hell is this shit? Get inside and shave those moustaches off, and have your hair cut tonight!”

“Yes, lieutenant.”

The next couple of days weren’t much fun. Although it was good to see John Fox, Stander and the platoon again it was really hard to get back into the swing of things. It was business as usual, just as we had expected. Run here, run there, inspections, hurry up and eat, hurry up and wait… shouting, asshole rank all over the place. After a week I still felt unnaturally low and decided to sick-report to the military hospital across the road from the battalion, where I told the same doctor who had treated my torn feet months before that I was really feeling pretty low and couldn’t shake the feeling. The stutter that had troubled me since I was a kid had also returned in full force; I stuttered on every other word. I told him about the last couple months on the Recce selection course and of walking many hundreds of kilometres with next to no food. He listened and finally said, “No problem; you need some good rest,” and booked me into the hospital for a week of observation.

It was a good move. I was taken to the small psychiatric ward at the far end of the hospital, where they gave me a bed and I changed into pyjamas. I took some sort of liquid medication and disappeared into a glorious, restful, deep sleep from which I surfaced two days later, half-waking for one blurred meal a day and more medication. The white sheets felt soft and smelled clean; I was oblivious to the world around me.

I eventually woke up, medicated and drowsy, but feeling a lot more relaxed and chirpy. I walked around the ward starting conversations with a couple of the flaming queens who were in the psychiatric ward waiting for their discharge papers to come through. They would sit in their gowns in groups on each others’ beds and cackle with laughter as they told stories of Civvy Street and how they would go out cross-dressing for nights on the town. Each had a couple of photographs of themselves dressed in drag from the good old days.

Some guys, I had heard, acted homosexual to get out of military duty, but this bunch of ‘girls’ was definitely no act. One evening just after dinner the night nurse came screaming out of the bathroom, where one of the flamers had cut his wrists after hearing that his discharge had been denied, or something to that effect. I never did hear the full story. I felt sorry for them. Military service was hard enough for anybody, but for these poor guys it was like being in hell.

After a week in hospital I was discharged and walked out feeling great. No one had given me any explanation of what I had been through, but I figured it must have been that I was drained of electrolytes or vitamins from the lack of food and the hundreds of clicks of walking. I wondered what drugs they had given me. It must have been powerful stuff because I felt like a different man and was ready to take on the world again.

I was very glad I had sick-reported.

The first night back at 1 Para, John the Fox and I walked back from the canteen. Fox sipped on his Coke and handed me a cigarette as we sat down on a low wall and watched as a platoon of juniors came running through the main gate in a squad, singing and covered in mud from head to toe. They were coming to camp after an opfok , fuck-up session at the kooikamp , which was a large, open, muddy area about ten clicks from camp, with which we were only too well acquainted. John started to fill me in on what they had been up to since we had been gone.

“You guys are lucky—you missed all the worst training. Company attacks and conventional attacks. We had to sleep out on the shooting range for a week, doing attacks every night with live ammunition.”

I laughed and told him that he was the lucky one. I told him about the selection course and how we had walked hundreds of kilometres with so few meals. I told him about how Hans had been attacked by a lion, but had made the course and looked like a bag of bones. I told him how we had decided to quit but had stuck out the course almost to the end and that we were the last 27 out of 200 to quit. I also told him how impressed I had been by the Recces, that they were really sharp individuals, that they treated soldiering like a business and that there was none of the bullshit that we had at 1 Para.

John knew that I felt bad about dropping off the course and was quick to fill me in on the news. “Well, don’t worry, Gungie. We’re going to see more action here than any Recce. They are not supposed to make contact with the enemy. Our job is going to be to seek them and destroy them. Just have four more months of training down here and then it’s up to the border, boet . There’s lots of shit going on up there. A Company made contact with FAPLA in Angola and got the shit shot out of them, and SWAPO is all over southern Angola and coming across the border every day. Our guys are making contact every day!”