Granger Korff - 19 with a Bullet

She had no idea what I was saying but she turned her face up and almost smiled at me again. She looked at me with her rheumy eyes and nodded her old white head as if she knew exactly what I was saying, believing that it would all be okay. Then she lay back on her elbow and gazed at the children. I took it as just that. She knew what I was saying. She believed me. I looked back at the children, standing right there looking at the scene. They stared at me blankly, their eyes huge in their faces. One kid, who was probably around seven, had her thumb stuck deep in her mouth and was sucking as though her life depended on it. I stood up.

Dan had been standing behind me and had watched the whole scene.

“Dan, I’m going to see if I can get a medic over here to help.” I shouldered my two weapons and walked down the little rise. A few metres over the rise, I heard a gunshot crack out. I turned to see Dan standing over the old lady, his rifle pointed down at her and a wisp of gunsmoke hanging around him like a shroud. The line of children stood behind him in mute terror. I stood quietly. I had really believed I was going to make an effort to save this grand old matriarch of the clan but as I’d turned my back, Dan had blown her brains out—in front of six children.

I stood looking back at the scene. I felt a detached, cold rage. I wondered what I should do. I wondered whether I should kill Dan. I knew that without a doubt I could just walk up to him, shoot him dead, not bat an eyelid and turn around and walk away. I went cold and calm as I looked at Dan standing over the shattered old lady.

I decided not to kill him and turned around and walked away.

Back in the macabre thicket I watched as the bodies were searched for documents and the area searched for stashed equipment. Nothing much was found on this scanty group that had been on the run.

We were busy loading the AK-47s in a pile when Lieutenant Doep came puffing through the trees, his face still bright red against his long blond hair. “ Valk 3 and 4… form up in two lines and follow me.”

“What’s going on, lieutenant?”

“We’re going to form a stopper group. They spotted some more terrs and they’re heading this way. They’re going to use the gunships to drive them onto us.”

We heaved ourselves farther up the little hill and walked, dripping with sweat, for about 300 metres, then spread out in a long line in the thick bush. We were able to hide pretty well in the tall dead grass and bush, each man about a dozen metres apart. I sat crouched on one buttock with one knee up and peered into the bush. I heard a gunship’s 20-millimetre start hammering some distance in front of us. It had a sporadic rhythm and sounded like speculative fire.

I had the silver crucifix that hung around my neck clenched in my mouth again and was grinding away at it with my teeth. For some reason I was scared. For the first time I felt real fear sliding through my stomach and limbs like a slippery, treacherous eel. My arms felt weak and useless, like jelly, and my mind had locked into some nonsensical scared-shitless mode.

“What’s going on?” It felt as if some force was in control of me. “Snap out of it, man. It’s a stopper group… all you have to do is shoot them as they run toward you, fucking asshole! C’mon, c’mon!” I screamed at myself silently but got no response. A tangible fear had taken over and I felt useless. So this is what it feels like to be scared? This is what it feels like to just about shit in your pants? I couldn’t understand why this was happening. I had faced many worse situations than this before.

I had been okay 20 minutes ago when we walked up the hill into the fire fight. I had not felt nearly as scared when the RPG-7s and anti-aircraft guns were flying a metre over my head or when we found ourselves in a FAPLA base with hundreds of spoor all around us. Or sneaking onto and ambushing the SWAPO at what had become known as the Breakfast Party. I had taken the forefront then. Sure, I had been scared in all of those actions but it had was controlled and buried deep down, disguised. I had felt emotionless and eager—a trained paratrooper ready to pay the ultimate price.

In seconds, I quickly tried to logic it out. If I died, I died. Why did there have to be fear in between? You live or you die. Forget getting scared in between. What’s the point? I remembered what my brother had once told me. He had said that fear was the Devil’s doing and had no place in a child of God. I said a prayer. I believed I was a child of God. If I died, then I died. It was in His hands, but please take this fear away.

A product of the mind or genuine Divine intervention? I did not know which but quickly the strange fear did subside. I felt the cold, slippery eel leave me. I was able to hold my mind steady and stay focused on the yellow and green trees in front of me, waiting for a figure to come crashing through the bush towards me. The gunships’ cannons sounded closer. I pushed up my jump helmet and pulled my rifle hard into my shoulder.

“Any time now… any time now… take in easy…”

I heard the bush crashing somewhere in front of me but saw nothing. Then I thought I saw some yellow bush move about 30 metres ahead but saw no targets. They’re right here. I can hear them! Seconds later Valk 3, which had formed up a few hundred metres to our right, hidden in the bush, opened up with their 5.56 rounds sounding like firecrackers popping as they sprung their trap on the fleeing SWAPOs running slap-bang into them. The whole thing didn’t take long.

Within 45 minutes we were carefully walking back to the original killing zone.

I felt ashamed that I had felt so afraid. Where had it come from and how had it managed to sneak through all my intricate defences and ambush me so intensely and suddenly? Was it because I only had about three weeks left in the army before I was back in Civvy Street and my mind had loosened up too much? Was it the Bushman family we had slaughtered and that still lay here in front of me?

I pushed the thought from my mind. “You think too much, Korff.”

We gathered up the AK-47s and some satchels of equipment and trudged half a click to a chana where four Pumas had landed. We left the grisly scene behind us. The only survivors we left were the ten or so children and a woman who had crept out of the bush. They stood in a couple of small groups and watched us silently, like mutes, as we walked out of the thicket and down the hill, leaving them to wander among and identify the over 40 corpses sprawled grotesquely among the trees.

I knew that this contact—the one where we and the gunships with their 20-millimetre cannons had wiped out a family of women, grandmas, children, babies and their menfolk in SWAPO uniform, leaving a surviving woman and a handfuul of wide-eyed children there in that carnage—would haunt me forever.

It does.

We met up with Valk 3 at the choppers. They said they had shot quite a few terrs who had run into them. I heard that one guy had mistakenly—or perhaps not mistakenly—shot two kids. I also heard that one terr had come forward with his hands held up in surrender and that another guy had shot him in the stomach. I did not dig for details or try to separate fact from fiction.

We flew back low over the trees in the classic Vietnam War formation— four big Pumas, a Cessna Bosbok spotter plane and two Alouette gunships, all flying side by side in a V formation barely metres above the treetops, all set against an angry red African sun that was minutes from setting.

I thought of the movie Apocalypse Now . We flew in this formation till we reached the airstrip at Ionde, then broke off. I sat cross-legged by the chopper door and saw all the troops looking up with contorted faces, admiring our fly-by.