‘cause’ it became inactive, but it was still a ‘red area’—ideal for a Recce selection course. It is usually very hot and dry but it was the rainy season and the tough thorn and big mopane trees were thick with green leaves while the bush teemed with game.
Sightings, spoor and brushes with buffalo, wild dog, hyena, elephant and lion would be fairly common, as we were to find out in our hundreds of kilometres of meandering. Rainy season or not, when we climbed off the C-130 onto a small landing strip in the bush, the heat hit us like a wall. The glare from the white sand was intense and we were greeted by rough-looking black and white Reconnaissance troops dressed in terrorist camo and holding strange machine guns.
“This looks menacing,” I thought. “These guys look like they live in the bush.”
We were strip-searched and all hidden watches, cigarettes or anything that could make life easier in the bush was taken away. We were then divided into six-or seven-man teams, given a compass and a compass bearing and told to start walking through the bush to the rendezvous 20 ‘clicks’ (kilometres) away.
We walked and walked and walked. Then we walked some more. Day in and day out. Through nights, days, and nights again. We walked for five more weeks, 20 to 30 clicks every day, through the African bush.
No mad PT to fuck you up like there had been at 1 Parachute Battalion, just trudging through the Caprivi bush day after day, week after week, for 500 kilometres, until my brain screamed “No more!”
I pushed on.
My stomach shrunk to nothing, so did my body fat. We now had one meal every five days. We were given three cans of food and a loaf of bread to share between two guys every five days. And, every day, relentlessly, without flagging, another 20 or 30 kilometres. No nutrients; zero energy. Day after day. I had no idea that walking could be such prolonged torture. And now they gave us 60-millimetre mortar cases filled with cement to carry in our kit.
My mind started to play games with me. Some days I felt okay, gripped my mind and pushed on, step by step, but the next day I was depleted and could hardly move or think properly.
“Fuck this … I can’t carry on … no, carry on, you can do it … I can’t go on. I’m stopping at the tree! Carry on, boy … go past the tree and keep on … don’t stop now!”
It became a second-by-second mind-fuck.
We were a mixed bunch, but most of our course mates were older Permanent Force personnel with rank. Their rank was meaningless on this course and we spoke on an equal basis to sergeants, lieutenants and captains. Some were civilians who had finished their military service and had come back to try out for the Recces, like the skinny blond-haired bus driver who ended up coming first out of everybody on the course. There was Jan Muis, a huge bull of a man with bright blue eyes and a big walrus moustache, whose quiet manner kept us going. He had come from Civvy Street after his brother, a Recce apparently equally as big, was killed on a mission deep in Angola. The story was that he had taken 12 AK-47 rounds before he went down, taking a handful of SWAPO with him. Everyone had their own reasons for wanting to become a Recce. I was running out of reasons.
We had all lost weight dramatically; our filthy, torn uniforms hung on our skinny bodies. We had not shaved, washed or had a change of clothes since we had left the Bluff, which had been almost seven weeks before. We were filthy from the black camouflage grease that we had to put on every so often.
My stomach had long since shrunk so much that I wasn’t even that hungry any more, and had passed fantasizing about juicy hamburgers and huge, sizzling steaks. But the longing for an icecold Coke was ever present.
After well over a month now of constant walking and little food, I was having a hard time holding onto my mind and had lost the ability to judge distance and time. We had stopped quarrelling among
Sightings, spoor and brushes with buffalo, wild dog, hyena, elephant and lion would be fairly common, as we were to find out in our hundreds of kilometres of meandering. Rainy season or not, when we climbed off the C-130 onto a small landing strip in the bush, the heat hit us like a wall. The glare from the white sand was intense and we were greeted by rough-looking black and white Reconnaissance troops dressed in terrorist camo and holding strange machine guns.
“This looks menacing,” I thought. “These guys look like they live in the bush.”
We were strip-searched and all hidden watches, cigarettes or anything that could make life easier in the bush was taken away. We were then divided into six-or seven-man teams, given a compass and a compass bearing and told to start walking through the bush to the rendezvous 20 ‘clicks’ (kilometres) away.
We walked and walked and walked. Then we walked some more. Day in and day out. Through nights, days, and nights again. We walked for five more weeks, 20 to 30 clicks every day, through the African bush.
No mad PT to fuck you up like there had been at 1 Parachute Battalion, just trudging through the Caprivi bush day after day, week after week, for 500 kilometres, until my brain screamed “No more!”
I pushed on.
My stomach shrunk to nothing, so did my body fat. We now had one meal every five days. We were given three cans of food and a loaf of bread to share between two guys every five days. And, every day, relentlessly, without flagging, another 20 or 30 kilometres. No nutrients; zero energy. Day after day. I had no idea that walking could be such prolonged torture. And now they gave us 60-millimetre mortar cases filled with cement to carry in our kit.
My mind started to play games with me. Some days I felt okay, gripped my mind and pushed on, step by step, but the next day I was depleted and could hardly move or think properly.
“Fuck this … I can’t carry on … no, carry on, you can do it … I can’t go on. I’m stopping at the tree! Carry on, boy … go past the tree and keep on … don’t stop now!”
It became a second-by-second mind-fuck.
We were a mixed bunch, but most of our course mates were older Permanent Force personnel with rank. Their rank was meaningless on this course and we spoke on an equal basis to sergeants, lieutenants and captains. Some were civilians who had finished their military service and had come back to try out for the Recces, like the skinny blond-haired bus driver who ended up coming first out of everybody on the course. There was Jan Muis, a huge bull of a man with bright blue eyes and a big walrus moustache, whose quiet manner kept us going. He had come from Civvy Street after his brother, a Recce apparently equally as big, was killed on a mission deep in Angola. The story was that he had taken 12 AK-47 rounds before he went down, taking a handful of SWAPO with him. Everyone had their own reasons for wanting to become a Recce. I was running out of reasons.
We had all lost weight dramatically; our filthy, torn uniforms hung on our skinny bodies. We had not shaved, washed or had a change of clothes since we had left the Bluff, which had been almost seven weeks before. We were filthy from the black camouflage grease that we had to put on every so often.
My stomach had long since shrunk so much that I wasn’t even that hungry any more, and had passed fantasizing about juicy hamburgers and huge, sizzling steaks. But the longing for an icecold Coke was ever present.
After well over a month now of constant walking and little food, I was having a hard time holding onto my mind and had lost the ability to judge distance and time. We had stopped quarrelling among
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