The trouble with universal conscription is you get some very unlikely fellas donning uniforms. You look at them and you think, soldiers they aint, and you begin to worry about the term ‘military efficiency.’ Later, you learn the term ‘oxymoron.’
So there we were ensconced on a farm outside Potchefstroom among raw rockspider seventeen year-olds, fresh out of high school from all over South Africa. We heard it had been a reform school for delinquents before we got there and then recently turned into a military camp. Into a SAMS base in fact: South African Medical Services. “Loopspruit” or “Klipdrif” they called it. We’d been sent there for “army basics.” Basic training.
We were old. Around twenty three or four, having delayed the joys of military life by studying to become optometrists. In hindsight, maybe we shoulda done the army first!? Maybe we could now see too clearly? Time would tell . .
Our barracks were ex-classrooms. Ours an old science lab. It still had the thick polished wooden workbench tops, the thick ceramic washbasins with fancy thin high bronze taps, and fitted bunsen burner attachments. Expensive-looking, so a reform school for blanke delinquents, no doubt.
And best of all – our lab had shiny vinyl tile floors! Other classrooms were older, with wooden floors. That flooring was to become our biggest asset . .
One young dutchman was big as an ox, quiet as a mouse. He sat listening to us twenty four year-old oumanne praating Engels in fascination. In many pockets of the old South Africa you could grow up hearing very little Engels.
Suddenly one day our man became famous! He burst into song, singing three lines: ‘Are you lonesome tonight? Are your brastrap too tight? That’s why you’re lonesome tonight!‘
He sounded unlike Elvis:
We hosed ourselves and gave him a new name: Jelly Tots. He didn’t really like it, but his surname was Lotzoff, and we would see him and say ‘Lots and Lotzoff – JELLY TOTS!’ He learnt new words from us – and taught us a new phrase too: When frustrated, he didn’t say “fuck’s sake”, he said “fuck’s fakes” so that became our phrase too.
Another character was as small as Lotzoff was big. He looked twelve years old and was a compact, muscular, good looking, perky, cute little bugger. He had a smattering of Engels and preferred to use it. Some of the others refused to even try – Stoere Boere. His name? GT Jones! Pointless giving someone with so apt and memorable a name a nickname. GT Jones!
We were in the medics and we had to know all about ambulances. GT Jones called them ‘ambuminces.’ And so was born a new name for one of the meals in the mess. On ground beef days we would refer to the stuff plopped onto our plates by the bored chefs as ambumince – which led in turn, naturally, to gruesome speculation on its origin!
Among the older, optometrist inmates:
Graham Lewis – A companion worth his weight in gold. Never fazed, always cheerful. Keenly aware of the hilarity of this fake existence we were leading. He’d been assigned to D Company. We were in A or C Company and we were chuffed when he got transferred to our (better, natch) company. We were good company and so was he! D Company’s barracks was one of the old residences. Wooden floors. A nightmare to clean. They would regularly get bollocksed for dirty floors after hours of scrubbing them, while we got praise for our vinyl floors after all we had done was sweep them. Typical army illogical unfairness. They would lose weekend passes and we would win bonus weekend passes based on the luck of the floors we’d been allocated! Once while we were away on a weekend pass . . .
Basics was, uh, basic. Get up in the morning, bugger around with your clothes and other domestic stuff like making your bed; Assemble in straight stripes; March; March; Trudge; Omkeer! Eat; March; March; Trudge; MakeeriePAS! Holy shit . . .
Dhhave Cooper was another worth his weight in gold. Always smiling, always upbeat.
Les Chrich, Les Davies, Les Miller, Okkie Oosthuizen, Rod Stedall, who else? Magic comrades all. They made our time together memorable and less stressful, full of laughter.
~~~oo0oo~~~
Loopspruit – walking creek; running stream;
Klipdrif – stony shallow river crossing or drift;
oumanne praating Engels – old men (24yrs) speaking English
flyswatter – qualified hygiene and health inspector
casevac – casualty evacuation; carrying a ‘wounded’ fella away on a stretcher, the heavy bliksem
bliksem – ou; prostate ‘soldier’
wat sal gebeur – what could happen, pasop!
pasop! – watch it, nê!
~~oo0oo~~
- – still to come –
Weeding duty – When even corporals and sergeants couldn’t think of anything mindless for us to do, they used us as cheap labour, sending us out the gate into the fields to pull weeds. What a plesh. Doing very little while talking shit with your mates is what I may have been born for. I’m a natural.
Guard duty – Wear your grootjas, it’s cold; dire threats of wat sal gebeur if you’re caught not looking sharp on duty;
What could gebeur – One poor flyswatter gets DB – the dreaded Detention Barracks – for forging the sarge’s signature. The wily sarge use different colour ink on different days, so altho the forgery was good, he knew it wasn’t his John Hancock. Military efficiency?
Big Day casevac demo – One day some unknown Oom with lots of ornate decorations on his shoulders and a different cap arrived in a helicopter to check us out. From the way our resident belangrike Ooms were flinging salutes at him we knew he must be baie belangrik. Actually we knew he was coming, as the last two weeks teaching us to shoot and stitch wounds had suddenly become unimportant, and teaching us to behave, march, salute had become frantically important. / race / stretchers -to Puma helicopter. We win!
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