I recently started telling some of the stories of experiences that shaped my life. The first four were stories about my grandmother. You can read them here.
This one is an introduction of my two years as a member of the South African Defence Force. At the end of my second year at varsity, my dad looked at my results and announced that he was not paying for such rubbish any more. By default, I ended up having to respond to a call-up to the army.
I did not want to go! It was fun eating hamburgers three times a day, sleeping late even when I had early classes and living care-free with pretty girls everywhere I turned. The discipline inherent to being an infantry soldier did not appeal to me one iota.
We were put on a train in Durban (South Africa) and travelled for three days to get to Upington in the northern part of the country. This is one of the hottest places South Africans can imagine and we arrived there in January, the peak of summer. My hair was long. My jeans were dirty. My mood was low. We were left waiting in the sun on a big, green lawn. I had a thirst that was consuming my thoughts.
There were about 400 of us and no one knew where I could find a drink of water. Off to the one side of where we were gathered, a medium-sized tree was providing shade. Hanging from one of the branches was a 'waterskin'.
Do you know what that is? It is a leather satchel in which you store water. As a result of the leather's ability to 'breathe' the water in a waterskin can be quite cool, especially when left in the shade with a breeze gently blowing.
My mouth watered. No, actually it tried but I was too thirsty to get my mouth to water. Who did it belong to? Was I allowed to take a sip? Who should I ask?
I looked around but everyone around me looked even thirstier than I felt and if I made them aware of this source I may not even get a sip. Surely whoever it belonged to would not deny me a sip of water. Water is life. Water is free. Actually, it should be against the law to deny anyone a sip of water.
As I was busy convincing myself of this, I was edging closer to the tree. Now under the tree, I stood about 20 metres away from the rest of the group. I took the waterskin and tilted it to pour cool, sweet water down my throat.
Suddenly someone started shouting as if in great distress or maybe very angry. I was unsure which and looked around to find the source of the extremely vile language that was slowly penetrating my watery bliss.
The first thing I discovered was that all of my 400 peers were intently gazing straight at me. At me?!? Why?
Then I saw the source of the vile language being shouted at 200 decibels, words tumbling over one another as if there was an emergency. It was a soldier. A senior one. Old, like my dad. Red in the face. Shouting. At me!
Me?!? What did I do?
I only found out later that he was the RSM. The Regimental Sergeant Major, the most senior non-commissioned officer in the base. He was the drill-sergeant of choice when there were 2000 troops on the parade ground and he could put them through their paces for an hour non-stop, without even breaking a sweat. He had a voice that could launch missiles and the vocabulary of a drunken sailor.
And I had upset him to the edge of an epileptic fit on my first day in the army. The waterskin in my hand belonged to the base commander. He was on his way to address the new recruits and expected a cool sip of water from a waterskin uncontaminated by the grimy hands of one of these new recruits.
Slowly, I started to make sense of what he was saying. If you eliminated all the curse words, somewhat coherent sentences started to emerge.
According to this red-faced man, I was too @#$%^& rotten / bad / degenerate / incompetent / stupid / retarded to be in his army.
I could not agree with him more but somehow sensed that emphatic agreement was not what he was looking for. It may even upset him more...
He wanted me to hang the waterskin back in the tree. This I did without complaining. I did consider taking another sip though, as I did not know how long it would be before my next opportunity. Once again, I sensed that this very reasonable precaution would not go down well with the soldier with the red face. He did not even thank me.
The next thing I knew, he wanted me to 'give him a hundred pushups'. As far as I was concerned, he could have all of them. I did not want any but neither did I have any to give him.
It was a hot day and I was tired but I could sense quite strongly that the army was not for me.
