MY ARMY DAYS

I wish I could say I enjoyed my time in the army but I really didn’t – I hated every second of it. I’m sorry to say that the Defence Force did not succeed in turning me into a soldier or indeed, anything resembling a soldier. Going to war with me in the ranks would have been the single most foolish thing the country had ever done.

I stepped onto the train In Ladybrand on 3rd January 1964. My hair was the shortest it had ever been and I fondly believed that I would satisfy army regulations in that respect at least. On the way to Bloemfontein, two more chaps with savagely short hair, got into my carriage. First came Mervyn Griffiths, a fit looking English speaking fellow with glasses even thicker than mine. Three things I gleaned were that he was going to the same camp as I was, that his unit would also be Regiment Bloemfontein and that he had been to school at Kearsney College. His father was a Methodist minister and was based at a mission in Thaba ‘Nchu, which no doubt explained why Mervyn would not be joining a Natal regiment. Further on down the line, Raymond Hex joined us. Bugsy as he said he was called was very excited and upbeat about joining the army – quite the opposite of my own mood. I had been to a cadet camp while at school and had a slight inkling of what lay ahead.

How vivid that arrival on Bloemfontein station still is in my mind, 55 years on. We took our time strolling down the platform and spotted a smart looking fellow in a black beret approaching. I knew the black beret signaled a soldier from an armoured regiment so we made for him. In quiet, soothing tones he enquired whether we were perhaps army recruits, which we confirmed we were. WELL!! That polite little man suddenly turned into a screaming demon, demanding, “ Wat de donner dink julle doen julle hier. Ek het nie tyd om te mors nie! HARDLOOP!” And hardloop we did in great fright – jeez, was he ALLOWED to scream at us like that?

Out we went through the station entrance and spotted an army Bedford truck standing there and we wasted no time clambering into it. He came strolling along a little later and peered into the truck where we sat shivering. At the top of his voice he enquired what the hell we were doing in his truck. “KLIM AF” he thundered. And right there on the station, we had our very first taste of army training namely, the correct way of getting on and off a truck. The first big no-no was climbing OVER the flap instead of letting it down and getting on in a civilized fashion. For the next half hour, we practiced lowering the flap, getting on, raising the flap, lowering the flap and getting off again. We did enough KLIM OP KLIM AF for our tongues to start dragging and our breath to be rasping painfully. By now we had drawn quite a crowd of onlookers, who were laughing and jeering at our efforts – no doubt there were some ex soldiers amongst them.

We got to Special Services Battalion in Tempe sometime later for some more KLIM OP KLIM AF, finally forming up with another bunch of forlorn civilians and being marched off to the quartermaster’s stores where we drew blankets, food trays and utensils and overalls. We had to change into those overalls right away as “civvies” were despised in that camp. All this time there were little demons in black berets shouting orders and screaming vile and frightening things at us. Mervyn and I were eventually assigned to a bungalow – Bungalow 13. It’s a good thing I’m not a triskaidekaphobiac. At that stage, I was so depressed and demoralized that I would have welcomed any fatal influence by number 13 to put me out of my misery.

Poor Griffy, who had come from a posh English school and to whom Afrikaans was essentially a foreign language, had the added drawback of not always understanding the orders which were barked at him. Perhaps it was a blessing in a way because he couldn’t understand the numerous imprecations which were being bellowed at him either – really not for the ears of a minister’s son. The closest he came to any curse word was “Crumpets” – not a word to condemn his mortal soul to eternal damnation to be sure. In all seriousness, Mervyn Griffiths was a very committed Christian and he regarded it almost as a personal affront that I wasn’t. In fact, several times since army days, he has unsuccessfully made it his business to try and turn me from my sinful ways in and bring me into the fold but that’s another story altogether.

Griffy had some very bad luck during training which resulted in some really heartfelt “crumpets” from him. A convoy of about six Bedford trucks was taking us out to the shooting range on the army training grounds at De Brug near Bloemfontein. I was in the leading truck and we had reached the range and were waiting for the rest of the convoy but they just didn’t arrive. We piled back in the truck and went up the sandy road to reach a scene of devastation. The truck behind us had skidded in the sand and overturned, flinging out the guys on the back. My pal Griffy had been on it and I couldn’t see him in the chaos. Suddenly I spotted him amongst a bunch of thorn trees, bleeding from a myriad of scratches and crawling around on all fours. I ran over to him and asked if he was OK. He was, more or less but he was scrabbling in the dirt trying to find his specs! I found them but they had broken and for the rest of our training, he had them held together with a piece of Elastoplast. He had been flung from the truck the same as everyone else but he was the only one who had landed in a thorn bush and had torn himself to ribbons getting out of it. We were taken back to camp on the turn as they figured we had all suffered a big shock and weren’t capable of handling rifles.

Another example of the bad luck which seemed to dog Griffy came when he had to change a wheel on the Saracen troop carrier which he drove. The Saracen was a massive armoured vehicle with six wheels and it weighed 7 tons so changing those wheels was tougher than all Twelve of the Trials of Hercules. Imagine what he must have felt like after sweating half a day getting the thing off, when he stripped one of those massive wheel nuts while tightening it all up again. SM John Holliday, not the most reasonable man at the best of times, was apoplectic with rage and wanted to court martial poor Griffy.

Luckily he was not in the guard detail which picked up big trouble one night. We were equipped with the then brand-new Panhard armoured cars, fresh out from France, which replaced the old Mark IV armoured cars which had seen service in East Africa during WW2. These were fitted with massive Dunlop balloon tyres and we had heard that the tyres were the “run flat” type, which, if punctured, could keep going for a respectable distance and get the crew out of trouble. Some bright spark on that guard detail decided to test the effectiveness of one of the tyres and did some bayonet practice on it! The next day the tyre was thoroughly flat and clear in the sidewall were two marks where the bayonet had entered. A swiftly convened board of enquiry did not reveal who had done the dastardly deed – no-one wanted to admit to Destruction of Public Property or worse still, simple sabotage. So it was decided that everyone in that detail would stand guard EVERY night until someone owned up.

I don’t recall if anyone ever did own up or how the matter was terminated but I do recall how awful those poor chaps looked after weeks of nightly guard duty. They were black ring-eyed and haggard from not enough sleep and were about as down as a soldier could go.

Like I said at the beginning, I was no soldier. For one thing, I could not shoot for toffee. At 100 yards I could see the target fairly well and even hit it now and then but beyond that, I could see almost nothing. If I managed to line up the back sight with the front sight, then the target went invisible and if by some miracle I could see the target, then everything else was a blur. It was quite common for me to come up with a blank target while chaps on either side of me on the firing line, had scores in excess of the maximum. I was just a little better with machine guns because I could see where my bullets were kicking up dust. But fortunately I hadn’t chosen gunnery for my mustering, like Bugsy had. I wanted to be a driver but I even messed that up. Fortunately a series of aptitude and IQ tests were done and next thing I knew, I was on my way to the Military College in Pretoria, to attend a course on Field Intelligence.

Not to be confused with the James Bond type of intelligence, field Intelligence is simply collecting, collating and interpreting information from the battlefield and enemy positions and making it available in a coherent format, to senior officers when conducting or planning campaigns. Not as mundane as it sounds – I spent the best few weeks I’d had in the army, on this course. For once I wasn’t bored or trying to do things for which I was not physically equipped.

Coming back to my regiment after the course nearly landed me in military jail. We were handed our train tickets and I discovered mine had Warrenton as its destination, not Bloemfontein. I naturally queried this to be told that my unit (B Squadron, 2 Armoured Car Regt) was stationed at nearby Ganspan. I tried to argue but no one takes any notice of anything that a mere Trooper says, so off to Warrenton I went, arriving there at about 4 in the morning. I expected to find a truck waiting at the station but there was nothing. A farmer had just finished offloading milk cans on the station and I asked if he went anywhere near Ganspan. He passed right by the gates so I had a lift.

The installation there was a huge underground ammunition and stores depot which was closely guarded and secure. When I got to the gate, where I was expecting to be welcomed with open arms, I had rifles with live ammunition pointed at me by highly suspicious guards, who would not let me in or even allow me to stand too close to them. No one knew who I was and why I was there. There were frantic calls to deeper into the camp from where a Lieutenant, the guard commander came rushing over to see this “spy” or “saboteur” or whatever they thought I was. I begged him to phone the Military College as they had sent me there but as it was Saturday, no-one was on duty there. Meanwhile, back in Bloemfontein, as I should have been back already, I was marked AWOL in the roll call and my case was handed to the Military Police for investigation. Of this I was blissfully unaware.

There were cells in the gatehouse and I asked to be locked up so I could sleep while they tried to sort me out. This they did and much later I was allowed in and given something to eat. The mistake was eventually confirmed and I would leave on Monday morning with two officers who were going to Bloemfontein by car. But the camp still didn’t know what to do with me as they did not have a spare bed or bedding for me. Luckily I ran into a chap who had been at school with me, who was standing guard at the depot and as he had 8 hours of night duty, I could take over his bed. (Dankie Jannie Deale – ek skuld jou nog steeds) When I eventually arrived at my proper camp, RSM John Holliday was waiting for me and I got a tongue lashing which I really didn’t deserve. He stopped just short of accusing me of desertion! He just couldn’t understand why I hadn’t TOLD them at the Military College, where my unit was. I said, ‘Hene Sammajoor, ‘ n troep durf mos nie vir ‘n offisier se hy praat nonsens nie’. I was left with a very dim view of the army’s disorganization but at least I didn’t land in DB, which I damn nearly did.

Oddly enough, the one thing I did enjoy in basic training was parade ground drilling. I had been a drill sergeant at school so I knew how the commands worked and how each movement should be carried out. I think I appreciated the precision and order of the parade ground and while it was quite strenuous, it wasn’t beyond the ability of my puny, underdeveloped body, the way so many other things like an obstacle course or a route march were. June 1964 was the year of the great countrywide snowstorm which paralysed Bloemfontein for a couple of days and left us with knee deep snow to cope with. Back home we would have been by fires or heaters but in cold draughty bungalows, the only way to stay warm was to put on multiple socks and double up blankets on beds and crawl under the covers.

RSM Holliday decided it would be a test of our ability to drill a squad, if we NCO hopefuls could drill a few fellows up and down the bungalow verandas without losing control of the squad. It was a challenge which most chaps managed and it helped us to stay warm too. Jan Vakansie (RSM John Holliday) then decided he wanted the snow cleared off his enormous parade ground so we started rolling a mammoth snowball, round and round the whole area. The ball of snow eventually grew as big as a house and took most of B Squadron to move it. It even rumbled as it rolled but it cleared the parade ground beautifully. We left it in a corner and a week later, there was still a big lump of it which hadn’t melted.

Something else which had happened during the blizzard was that communications between railway stations were disrupted, so our little squadron of armoured cars had to go out to surrounding stations and provide radio links for the railways. Those chaps damn nearly froze out there but the trains started running again and safety of passengers was not compromised.

It was truly an unforgettable three days for me, even though I had seen snow before. Try and picture then the reactions of fellows from Namaqualand and those parts where even rain was a rare occurrence. They went quite mad with excitement at the sight of this uncomfortable but magical phenomenon. Even those awful, drab and dreary army buildings were transformed and beautified for a while.

One of the things which happened when I got back from the College was Jan Vakansie cornering me, wanting to know what I had learned. I mentioned a few things but he quickly latched onto map reading, in which I had had some practical experience. I loved the subject and relished the days when we were taken out into hilly and bushy territory near Pretoria and told to find out where we were. “Reg” he snarled, “ons gaan more De Brug toe en jy SAL ‘n lesing gee oor kaartlees. Dis donkermaan en jy SAL ook ‘n kompas mars met 8 aanmeld punte organiseer.” With details of how to use a map already fading from my mind and a compass march something completely new to me, I felt the Detention Barracks would soon be my new home because I could not carry out either of those orders.

But despite my misgivings I boned up on the subject and found I could still read a map but public speaking was something I had NEVER done and here I was about to teach the entire blooming regiment a subject in which I had not had an awful lot of experience and that in Afrikaans.

Came the day and the whole regiment was sitting staring at me as I nervously got up to speak. I know that I stuttered and babbled like an utter fool and then froze. Major Reg Smart (Bless him wherever he is) our commanding officer just quietly said. “Steady Lyle, steady” and suddenly I was calm and I knew what I had to say. It was nothing short of miraculous. I spoke for easily an hour and covered the subject fully – whether it made any sense is immaterial. I had had my first experience of public speaking and had survived. But that fiend Holliday wasn’t finished with me yet. He got hold of driver Griffiths and gave him his Jeep’s keys and Griffy and I would go out onto the training ground and we would plan a compass march for the rest of the regiment.

All I had to do was issue a set of instructions – 1. March 500 paces on X bearing 2. March 1300 paces on X bearing etc. At each point of change, an NCO would confirm they had marched correctly to make sure they didn’t just walk straight back to camp. They had to read the luminous dialed compasses in order to determine their direction of march – I just hoped someone in each group of troops had absorbed enough of what I had lectured about. As I had planned the whole sorry thing, I did not have to do the march and I had made a tiny “spitskoppie” the end destination and climbed up on top to await marchers.

It was sometime in April and the nights were turning damn chilly, especially if you were perched on top of a koppie with a thin Free State wind sneaking around you. I cursed myself for making the course too long because it took hours before the first (And only) group arrived. They cursed me too. Much later I cursed even more when I had to climb down that koppie in the inky dark. A Bedford had gone out to search for stragglers and point guards and I was one of the very last to crawl under my blankets that night. Holliday thought it was all terribly funny but I thought it was all an unqualified and dismal failure. No-one had learned a thing and I had had friends turn into enemies.

Today a simple gadget which a kid can operate pinpoints exactly where you are on this earth – no need for compasses and maps. Rather like the bank where we handposted ledgers and had to learn to add and subtract quickly without a calculator. Those are skills which many of us still have but they are sadly obsolete and of little use to anyone. Even while I’m writing this, a damn machine is watching my spelling and grammar – my few skills aren’t good enough anymore! Oh dear, this is becoming morbid.

I spent the remainder of my 9 months in Holliday’s office as his clerk. Luckily I didn’t see much of him as he was too busy blighting the lives of the rest of the regiment. The last morning in that camp was unforgettable – to see those grim gates receding as we drove away, from the back of a Bedford, was just about as good a feeling as one could hope to get.

We had to do three week long camps every year after the initial training and I figured that as I would have nothing to do in a camp, my time might be better spent if I used that time to go back to the Military College for further Intelligence training perhaps to become the Intelligence Officer my Regiment Bloemfontein didn’t have. Imagine my chagrin when I received a letter back to say that I was at liberty to volunteer for further training in my own time but that the three week camp would still have to be attended as well. Such bureaucratic bulltwang just got to me and I simply loafed my way through the camps, just doing enough to stay out of trouble. The army was being run by idiots and I had no business being there. I suppose things are even worse today.