Granger Korff - 19 with a Bullet

“Well, fuck that. I didn’t get the message, did I? Nobody knows that I’m down in Cape Town. I’m not going you never saw me. Got it?”

Stan lectured me for five minutes, telling me I was not a good soldier and that I would be in big shit and was letting the company down.

I was not interested. As I saw it, nobody even knew where I was except for Stan. I would just say that I never knew. I turned around and went back to bed with Taina.

Stan went off in a huff and hitchhiked the whole 1,000-kilometre, two-day journey to 1 Parachute Battalion in Bloemfontein only to be told on arriving that it was a false alarm. He turned around and hitchhiked back. Apparently only a handful of D Company had responded to the emergency call-back from our precious 21-day pass. Stan was pissed.

“I’m afraid that’s the way it seems to be going, son. There’s talk that they might one day release Mandela and that the ANC could become a legal political party. I doubt that it’ll happen but either way I think there are going to be some big changes here. It can’t go on like this. These world sanctions are killing the country. The Americans won’t sell us a thing. Everything’s so expensive. Bombs going off somewhere almost daily. I’m afraid the day might come that life as we know it will change.”

“Fuck the Americans,” I thought. “They’re a bunch of do-gooders—a naïve, McDonalds-guzzling, fat-ass nation that thinks whatever they do, the world should do the same. Fuck the British… and the whole world too.”

I held no hatred for black South Africans nor did most of the people I knew. We would go out of our way to help them. I had known since I was a kid, without being told, that apartheid was wrong and would end one day, that black people should get a better shake. But the ANC becoming a political party, with Mandela coming out to lead them after 22 years in jail? What horseshit was that? It sounded like a bad Hollywood screenplay. The ANC wass backed by the same commies I was shooting on the border. I smiled and shook my head and tried to let it go. I wasn’t going to let politics ruin my 21-day pass. When I thought about it I actually didn’t really give a shit because it would never happen. That would be the day, that South Africa would give in to world pressure and communism.

“Well, you’ve only got three months left in the army, son. Have you thought what you’re going to do when you get out?”

“No, I haven’t, pa…”

“You should think about what your friend Ricky Jones is doing… plumbing. It’s a good trade… you’ll always find work, wherever you go.”

“Plumbing… you’ve got to be kidding. The hell I’ll walk around in dirty clothes, swinging a monkey-wrench and fixing fucking pipes,” I thought to myself.

“Yeah, I’ll think about it,” I said to my father.

We were back up in the operational area on our third and final bush trip. Nothing had changed much at Ondangwa in our short absence. We sat packed and sweating in the hot, tin-roofed canteen next to the small pool and had a welcome-back briefing on what was happening in the area.

Over 2,000 insurgents had been killed since the beginning of the year, with 1,295 being confirmed. This was not including the external operations, where they claimed 300 had been killed by bombings alone and 1,000 in Operation Protea . The SADF had lost 49 troops which they claimed was less than the previous year. The local black population had suffered heavily, with 91 civilians murdered by the insurgents and another 62 who had died in landmine explosions. A further 103 had been abducted into Angola to forcibly join SWAPO. We were told that Operation Protea had dealt a devastating and humiliating blow to FAPLA and that cross-border insurgent raids into South West Africa were down in the last month, as SWAPO and FAPLA were still reeling from the enormous loss of men and equipment. We had shown FAPLA it was not wise to interfere with us while we were dealing with SWAPO. The good news of the briefing was that D Company was going to be on Fireforce again, which meant at least one platoon at a time would be on reaction force, lounging around the pool waiting for the siren to wail.

With no immediate action planned for us I started working out in the little gym and going on runs. I set up a punch-bag filled with towels and sand next to the laundry room and started to work the bag.

“I think I’m going to box when I get back to Civvy Street. Turn pro and get a title.”

Stan laughed. “Turn pro and get fucked up is what you mean! You can’t just decide to turn pro, china. You’ve got to come up through the ranks from a kid—fight your way up, get provincial colours, national colours. Its takes a mindset like one of these idiots—like that Ackerman. He’s been boxing since he was five years old. He’s like a machine.”

“Bullshit. I’ll take Ackerman out. He’s no machine. I’ll whip that boy before he can say ‘Stand in the door’.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Hell, yeah!”

I held Stan’s sneer.

Stan still had a thing about Ackerman, whose brief reign of power had fizzled over the last months of combat, of which he had missed a lot. Yet he still waddled around the company like a short, squat tank with eyes like a snake and a fist always ready to knock someone out. Just a few weeks ago in a disco in Bloemfontein we heard that he had knocked a civvy cold with one sucker-punch in the middle of the dance floor. Ackerman had always been wary of me because he couldn’t figure me out. I was not a loudmouth and didn’t swagger my stuff, like a good macho Afrikaner boy would. He and I had sparred with each other on PT course where I had caught him with a few educated punches. The incident of beating the acting company sergeant-major shitless at Ombalantu had caught even his reptilian attention. (He had not been around at the time it happened and had missed all the operations because he had been called back to South Africa to box for 1 Parachute Battalion in inter-unit tournaments but he had heard about it—as had almost every troop in the battalion.) He had always had a dislike for Stan, eyeing him coldly, waiting for an opportunity to arise. Stan knew it too and I think he had bad dreams about bumping into Ackerman late one night when no one was around.

I slammed the bag with a left-right-left hook combination, then sat down panting. “I think I can do it. I think I can be South African champ. Just got to get back into shape.”

Stan laughed.

After a few weeks doing short patrols and happily hanging around the pool on Fireforce, there came word of a night operation on a SWAPO base in Angola. It was apparently going to be the first night attack that South Africa had ever done in the Angolan conflict. It was to be a combined operation with 44 Brigade, which was disbanded a year or so later to be built into a para unit. At that time it was the small but notorious unit with all the crazy ex-Vietnam Yanks with parachute tattoos on their arms and ex-Rhodesians who had joined the SADF.

We drove out in trucks to meet them at a secluded spot to practise for the op. It was 100 or so kilometres back into the Etosha National Park, close to where we had trained for Operation Protea .

44 Brigade had three or four Q-Kars with them—army Jeeps with twin MAGs mounted on them. We spent cold and miserable nights doing fire and movement with live ammunition, once again going through the motions of clearing out trenches and bunkers with RPGs and grenades. The night lit up with red tracers bouncing off the ground as we dived into the dirt and opened fire.