19 With a Bullet by Granger Korff

Author:Granger Korff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Helion
Published: 2009-11-18T16:00:00+00:00

15 casualty evacuation, in this case by helicopter

16 Wake up, Gungie … he almost took you out! (Afrikaans)

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Misunderstanding—Genesis

We moved a bit farther south and felt safe enough to be resupplied with ammo and food early the next morning. We were also able to stay put in a TB and relax for a couple of days. I stripped and cleaned my rifle that was thick with carbon and dust. We even had the chance to rinse our filthy clothes in a smaller second reservoir with less than a metre of water in it, but enough for our needs. The rains had disappeared. I washed and donned my olive-green FAPLA pullover and scrubbed the thick bloodstain from the SWAPO cap which I pulled onto my head. The pullover still reeked of scented soap from when I had found it in the satchel stashed in the trees at the ambush. Now I saw why during training they had emphasized that we could not use soap on operations, as after weeks in the bush the scent was still strong enough to be picked up from a fair distance. For many years afterwards, whenever I smelled a bar of soap my mind would flash back to FAPLA, the ambush and the dead man’s clothes.

At one of our early-evening TBs we came upon a troop of nagapies, a kind of small monkey with bulging eyes that comes out at night and once caught is quickly tamed. Nagapies, Afrikaans for night apes, or bushbabies, are about the size of a small rabbit, and prized possessions to be smuggled back to South Africa. It was a powerful symbol of a true bush fighter to walk among the juniors with one of these little primates perched loyally on your shoulder. Now I watched as half the platoon, the war forgotten, dropped their rifles and whooped like kids as they ran around some thorn trees where a small troop of nagapies had become marooned and were clinging onto the thin branches, staring down and foiling the paratroopers’ clumsy attempts to capture them. The troops formed a circle around the trees and began to shake the branches to try and get them to fall out, but this proved impossible as the bushbabies simply bounced up and down, their long fingers holding on with ease.

Smit, who was a small chap, scaled the trunk of the one thin tree to try and get closer to the branch that four or five of them had moved up to. The little creatures screeched as they leaped with ease to the next branch, where they grabbed on with their strange-looking fingers, glaring at their would-be captors. After five minutes of playing ‘musical branches’ they took a chance, leaped screeching from the tree, one after the other, and landed almost among the circle of troops beneath them. But, like lightning, they scampered away to the closest clump of trees, kicking up puffs of sand, lost from sight and gone forever.

One, who seemed younger than the others, remained clutching the branch as Smit climbed up.

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