A young Rhodesian troopie, who joined 2 Commando in May 1979, remembers some good times, and some bad:
…The passing out parade went well. For me this meant that I managed not to pass out! A few days earlier an abscess had burst in my mouth and as a result I was as sick as a dog, having swallowed a whole lot of pus. I remember little of the parade, and nothing of what anyone said, except that as we left the parade ground and marched around the holy ground we passed Sergeant Hodgson BCR. He was looking rather pleased with himself and said, “Well done, girls!” High praise indeed! The sergeant had been Blue Squad’s instructor for most of the course—a rather terrifying one but a good one nonetheless (not one of this Blue Squad was killed over the next nine months). A few days’ leave and then we took up residence in 2 Commando, looking very raw and self-conscious with our new stable belts and silver badges on our berets.
First contact: The next day we left for Grand Reef to join the rest of the commando. Once there the first few hours consisted of people having fun at our expense. ‘General’ Lovemore introduced himself very confidently. He turned out to be one of the batmen. Some corporal sent one of us to get some 12.7 chest webbing from the quartermaster—just making us feel welcome! Once settled in we were quickly allocated to sticks and did not have to wait long before the commando was called out by a Selous Scout call-sign (we would soon learn that these usually were not lemons). I was in a helicopter stick and nothing in life to that point had come near to the thrill of taxiing off down the runway to go to war. You could always tell the new troopies—they were the ones holding on in the helicopter, yet to realize that they could not fall out of an Alouette. (In time one came to trust this fact implicitly and sat with both hands on the rifle no matter what the pilot did.) So this day I held on—but it was still a glorious ride and my nervousness just made it all the more exciting. We touched down (all the way this time) and jumped out running to cover, eye on the corporal. He was quickly onto his radio and we then joined up with another stick and began to sweep down the side of a stream with the poor corporal desperately trying to stop us rookies from bunching.
Suddenly all hell broke loose on our right flank (the one closest to the stream). We dropped down for a moment and then the corporal shouted at us to follow him and we wheeled right and headed for the noise. I have no idea how he knew to do this but we soon arrived on the edge of the stream and the corporal and other experienced troopies added their firing to the bedlam. I could see nothing to shoot at (or maybe I was just too scared to lift my head high enough). Eventually the firing stopped and we went down into the stream. About eight bodies lay there, most being terrorists. I stepped over the body of a young woman. She had no webbing—a civilian. For the first time I saw what destruction a 7.62 long round caused to a frail human body and smelt that smell which means violent death. As I approached a body on the far side of the stream I got the fright of my life as the terrorist sudden turned his head, sat up a bit and looked at me from about one metre. My rifle was pointed at him and I hate to think what expression he saw on my face. He tried to say something—begging for mercy I think. I will never know for the corporal shot him from right next to me before I had time to wonder about mercy in this new world of violence. I will never forget the terr’s body slowly sagging down to the ground again, his last breath hissing out of his lips—a welcome from him to me to men’s madness.
“Take off his webbing!” ordered the corporal and left me to this grizzly task. I had never seen a dead person before and now I must remove webbing from a smashed body who just a moment before had looked at me with such pleading eyes? I must have gone about it too gently for someone told me, not so gently, to get on with it and came over and helped rip it off, caring nothing for what had been a human. One of our guys had been wounded in the contact. It was not serious, ‘just’ a flesh wound, but he was in a lot of pain and spitting mad! We sorted him out and then, gathering the weapons and ammunition (and any money, watches etc. going), left the bodies and made our way back to the LZ.
As we flew out it was as if my world had changed forever. But I did not realize that that was still to come, for none of those bodies had my bullets in them.
Bookmarks