The sleep deprivation resulting from all my late-night confrontations with the day’s events in my bed under my mosquito net was somewhat blunted by my heavy consumption of quantities of pink gin and tonic. This was the drink of choice for chopper crews, simply because at ten cents an imperial tot of Beefeater gin with Indian tonic and a dash of Angostura bitters, it cost substantially less than a can of beer (25 cents).
Late one night around a fire in the aircrew living area at Ondangwa, midnight was beckoning. A handful of chopper pilots, some new, some not so new – all young – were sitting around the dying embers of the fire. The conversation gravitated, as it always did at that time of each G&T-fuelled night, to the possibility of dying. Not surprisingly, this undesirable scenario was considered by most of us to be a quite distinct probability, given where we found ourselves.
The quinine-laced Indian tonic in the G&Ts had, as usual, thoroughly depressed the drinkers, and the atmosphere at the fireside was morose and introspective. Soon, one by one, everyone would quietly leave the fire and make their way to their beds, crawl under their mosquito nets and try to get some sleep before the anaesthetic effect of the gin wore off and, in the pre-dawn light, their flight engineers would bring steaming mugs of
‘We all know that when it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go! Get over it!’ one of the group said.
‘If the fucking bullet comes up at you with your name and address on the front, there’s bugger all you can do about it!’ growled an ouman. ‘So why worry about it?’
Heads nodded in agreement and silence prevailed for a few seconds.
Then, just as the first pilot rose to his feet to leave, or to vomit into a nearby flowerbed, a gravelly voice, speaking slower than BJ Vorster addressing a Republic Day rally, uttered these unforgettable words:
‘Gentlemen… I… completely agree… that there is… sweet… fuck all… that I can do… about the bullet… that has my name… and my address… on it. So… I lose no sleep… over it.’
Drawing a deep breath, he went on: ‘But the bullet… that makes me… kak myself… each minute… of each hour… of each day… that I fly in this fucking war… is the one addressed… “To whom it may concern”.’
And then, quite anticlimactically, my first stint on the Border was over and I boarded the Flossie for the three-hour flight back to AFB Waterkloof in Pretoria. I had only been there for about three months, but I had already seen and experienced much more than any young man would be exposed to under normal circumstances.
Waiting in the arrivals hall that Thursday evening were my mom and dad. But, tanned as I was, and with my wildly long hair bleached bright blond by the Ovamboland sun, and my sunburnt cheeks bloated from excessive consumption of G&T, they both looked directly at me but walked past me twice.
‘Mom, Dad, it’s me!’ I exclaimed as they threatened to pass me by a third time and I removed the military-issue brown floppy hat from my head to dispel all doubt.
My mom turned towards the sound of my voice, and then, seeing where it came from, her eyes immediately grew to the size of saucers and she burst into tears, folding me into those graceful arms of her and squeezing me so tight that I thought I’d break.
‘What have those bastards done to him?’ she hissed at my dad over my shoulder. ‘He’s just a child.’
In a concerted effort to avoid an incident, my dad and I guided my mom from the arrivals hall to the privacy of their car. All the way during the 45-minute journey back to the Wonderboom farm, my mom never took her eyes off me. She seemed to examine every pore, every strand of hair and every freckle to make sure they were all still there.
The intensity of her attention was quite disconcerting. Her mouth kept opening, as if to ask a question, but then would close again without her saying anything. She stared intently into my eyes, looking, I think, for something recognisable, something familiar.
Now that I have children of my own I realise that she was probably trying to see inside my head, to see if she could spot the damage she suspected was hidden there. If she could identify it, she probably thought she could do something to heal the wounds and the shattered innocence and make me whole again, like I’d been when I’d left for the Border just three months before.
As my mother was busy inspecting me, I had a vague sense that perhaps something fundamental had changed in me, but I couldn’t yet put my finger on what exactly. On reaching the farm I made a cursory attempt to probe the actual cause of the shift in my alignment but found that my concentration quickly waned. I was far more comfortable dealing with the mundane, everyday things that a returning soldier might pursue, such as where to party the night away, who to do it with and whether there was petrol in my car.
