Vrystaat Confessions

Category: 5_Army days

1979 Potch (Loopspruit Medics) & Roberts Heights, Pretoria
1980 Hotel Command Durban & Addington Hospital

Brief Sojourn at Hotel Command

Fresh from officers course at Roberts Heights (then it was called Voortrekkerhoogte, now it’s called Thaba Tshwane) this brand-new lieutenant is sent as adjudant to Natal Command, fondly known as Hotel Command. I’m given my own room just above Marine Parade and told to leave my shoes outside the door. Not for religious reasons – because someone else miraculously cleans them overnight!

In my very own office in Metal Industries House the PF (permanent force – career officer) outgoing adjudant gives me the list of hospitals which fall under my care: Mosvold, Ngwelezane, Christ the King, Madadeni, Appelsbosch, Hlabisa, Osindisweni, St Appolonaris and Manguzi are the names I still remember. I’m responsible for the civilian force docs posted to these outposts, so I go through their files to see wassup. Wait! This guy is due to leave Mosvold tomorrow! I better phone him NOW! He thanks me profusely and says “Usually we’re told late or not at all!”. Another one thanks me for giving him a whole week’s notice. Both notices had arrived on this desk more than a month earlier!

Once I have everything sorted out and organised after about a month I ask around: Yes, says my boss Naval Captain Dr Mervyn Jordan, head of SA Medics in Natal in his dapper white uniform, I can requisition a Land Rover and visit “my” hospitals! I can’t wait. I start planning an adventure to all the Zululand hospitals for starters.

But just then I get a transfer order myself, and though I’m sorely disappointed to miss my planned “Grand Tour of the Provinces” I cannot miss this:
“You are hereby ordered to report to Addington Hospital where you will be given your own flat in Doctors’ Quarters across the road from the Nurses Res where hundreds of nubile nurses await your arrival”.

Hey, orders are orders!

~~~oo0oo~~~

29 Jan 2014
Graham DryBright Lewis

For army basic training we were posted to Loopspruit outside Potchefstroom. We were ‘medics’ we were told. The place had been a reform school before and we were billeted in old houses converted into barracks – or most of us were. Our gang (platoon?) got the science lab, and boy, were we lucky. The other guys spent their days sanding and polishing old wooden floors. We had linoleum. All we did was sweep and – unfairly – we often won the prize for neatest inspection. Every so often that meant a weekend pass, so we were careful to keep the place clean, removing our boots at the door and shuffling around on ‘taxis’ – cloths you step on and scoot around on, cleaning as you go.

Uniforms and beds were inspected too, so evenings were spent cleaning and ironing and smartening. Some would even sleep on the floor, unwilling to mess up their crisply-straightened beds. One of our guys found this all a bit hard. Graham. What a lovely bloke, but Tidiness R Not Him. He would get bombed by the corporals for untidiness, so we took to doing his ironing and smartening for him, forbidding him to move as we shone his boots and dressed him for inspection. If he moved he would get boot polish on his browns, so we ordered him: SIT! STAY!

One weekend we were all given a pass but Graham was ordered to forfeit his. On our arrival back in camp Sunday evening we were greeted by the disturbing sight of our dazzling floor looking dull and scratchy. It had lost its shine!

Graham explained: Bored all alone over the weekend he had spied an electric polishing machine and some ‘DryBright’™ polish in one of the houses and thought he’d do us all a big favour and get the floor to a dining shazzle the likes of which had never before been seen in military history.

Well, the more he polished the duller it got. So he polished some more. Eventually he managed to get it to the disastrous state we now saw before our ‘thinking-of-lost-weekends’ eyes! Fortunately we knew where Graham’s heart was, so we saw the funny side and set to rescuing the situation as best we could.

But we never let him forget it: Graham DryBright Lewis!

~~~oo0oo~~~

Here’s the man a few years later. Probly explaining his floor-polishing theories:

– Graham ‘splaining things to Stephen while his girlfriend thinks . . . –

His lovely partner for the evening is thinking Omigawd . . . as many of our partners seemed to do back then, I dunno why . .

~~~oo0oo~~~

29 Jan 2014
Hitch-hikers

1979 Army “basics” – basic training – and my buddy Graham DryBright Lewis and I are hitch-hiking from Potch to Harrismith. Waiting for a next ride outside Villiers in the darkness of that Friday night a clapped-out bakkie stopped. At last. Jump on, says the weirdo who looks three sheets to the wind, while handing us a quart of beer to share.
We jumped.
We drank.
Screaming along the road to Warden we glance nervously over our shoulders through the back window into the cab and over the driver’s shoulder. The speedo needle was quivering at 135kmh! We glance at each other, trying to be casual. Nonchalant.

Suddenly a loud schlap schlap schlap schlap sound and the bakkie lurches. Burst tyre!
We start skidding sideways with the white line coming at us from the left;
Then skidding sideways with the white line coming at us from the right;
Then going backwards staring at the white line racing under the back of the bakkie towards us as we sit facing what should have been backwards;
Then spinning round to see the white line receding away from us – as it should.

We come to a halt still upright and facing forward – and on the correct side of the road. RELIEF!

COME! I barked at Graham. Grabbing our balsaks we hopped off and walked back where we’d come from into the night without a backward glance or a single word to the driver. I did not want to engage with him in any way at all. Fucked if I was getting into Stockholm Syndrome with the twerp who’d almost killed us! We walked till completely out of sight and out of earshot in the dark night.

Where we hitched a ride with another stranger.

~~~oo0oo~~~

28 Jan 2014