Do you remember how many troepe used to play bridge in the army? And how, when getting up a bridge party, rank and corps just didn’t matter at all, so that a colonel would sit down with a lieuty, a sergeant and a troep? I learned to play bridge in the army, and have been a consistent player ever since. Some years ago, representing the Southern Cape at the National Bridge Congress, I went to kibitz (watch) in the Championship Room, where all the top players, including the Springbokke, are seeded. It was quite an experience – the quiet concentration, the expertise, the subdued, silent atmosphere as the game was played at its top level. This was, in a nutshell, Bridge with a capital “B”. Granger Korff’s 19 With a Bullet is the SADF conscript’s equivalent of the Championship room. Many ex-SADF servicemen are proud of the corps in which they served – from pantsers to ops medics, even to the tiffie Armourers, with whom I was proud to serve. But the granddaddy of them all is without doubt the Bats. Everything they did was larger than life, from their savage two-week PT course (go to www.sadf.info and look at the photographs to see quite how savage it was) to the extreme experiences they went through in the front line of the Border War. The rest of us sometimes experienced the Bats as violent, arrogant and a good many other things. They seemed to see themselves as the “main ous”, and to look down their noses at the rest of us. But they were the SADF on the grand scale. They also set the benchmark of SADF training. All the PT we went through in our first three months was in some way measured against the Bat programme, something which becomes obvious as one reads Korff’s book. There is no doubt about it; in one of the world’s toughest armies, the Bats were the toughest of the tough. Only the Recces rivalled them. As one reads Korff’s book, one comes to understand them from the inside, and it makes a considerable difference to one’s perspective. Korff grew up on the East Rand, where one had to look out for oneself. I suspect that one of the reasons for the aggressive pugilism of his youth was simply that, like one of my own oldest friends, fighting gave him a massive adrenalin rush. His pugilism was clearly matched by a very lusty libido. Both seem to have got him into considerable trouble. As he tells the story, it is clear why the Bats appealed to him. His attempt to join the Recces, from which he was RTU’d for chucking the course when he would have succeeded, makes sense in the context of his life; he wanted to be a Bat, in the front rank of the fighting, not dropped behind the lines to observe. RTU was one of the most feared events in the SADF for the humiliation it brought, but in Korff’s case going back to the Bats, as his subsequent history shows, was undoubtedly the right decision. He was man enough to accept it. His wayward youth notwithstanding, there is a very high level of integrity and honesty in Korff. He is capable of acts of kindness and generosity. He tells his story in direct, plain language, without self-justification or moral posturing. The story of how he qualified for the Bats despite not actually making it, he tells bluntly, but shows that he is able subsequently to live up to their demands. He suffers agonies with mangled feet during the PT course, but refuses to give up. He is one of the few survivors. His way of describing the end is characteristic: "Suddenly, one afternoon at 16:00, it was all over. Two hundred of us stood on the parade ground, all that was left from the 700 hopefuls. Two companies of paratroopers. We had made it through the PT course. Two weeks of non-stop PT. I smiled stupidly, shook my head and swore with sheer relief." Even those of us who never came near that kind of PT know exactly what he means. Similarly, after the recce course, he tells the story of his being caught in Durban and getting an SAP caning for possession of dagga. He decides to go AWOL shortly after this – by now he is gatvol of being messed around by the army. But back home, he realises that his country really needs him, that there is no way he can remain AWOL, and goes straight back to 1 Para in Bloem. Later, on the Border, his violent assault on the Sergeant who killed his two kittens is likewise told matter-of-factly – as is the account of the subsequent court-martial. Sometimes his candidness is of such a nature that I would gulp before roaring with laughter as I read his account. For example, shortly after returning from Angola on one of his Ops he comments: “I realised I hadn’t even whacked off in more than three weeks either. Must be some kind of record.” I have never had the moral courage to speak so bluntly about that side of army life! But with that same candidness, Korff can write movingly about his experiences. Describing the needless death of the smallest member of the company a mere two weeks befor uitklaar, he says: “Having got through all this shit, to have Baba drown in such a cruel way, trapped under the plastic liner of the pool at the party celebrating the end of two years’ national service…coming out of it in one piece just a couple of weeks before we all went back to our families and loved ones. Emotional and drunk, I sat on the sandbags and wept tears of frustration and stared at the moon. I thought of Baba, who was the smallest guy in the company and looked as if he was a kid of 15. I suddenly couldn’t wait to get out.” Korff can also write compassionately of the civilian victims of the war, especially in the last chapter, Enough is Enough. 19 With a Bullet might at one level be the story of one paratroop’s two years’ National Service. But at another level it is an epic. It takes in so much of the South Africa of those days, and of the SADF as we ou manne experienced it, in the sweep of one man’s story. The often harrowing descriptions of the battles, patrols and operations are alive with the memories of one who experienced them at first-hand. Few of us went through what the Bats did, but all of us shared in it to a greater or lesser extent. My 3 months’ infantry Basics and subsequent time in tiffies were as nothing compared to Korff’s, yet I feel a kinship with him and his story. So will any ou man who reads this book. There is one aspect which might at first seem somewhat baffling. The blurb on the publisher’s page inside the front cover leads one to believe that Korff’s story in the USA will be told in some detail, as do the photos of him in the boxing ring. All one in fact gets at the end is a short epilogue. I asked Korff about this, and received a series of friendly and helpful messages in return. His publisher shortened the book by about 30 000 words. No doubt the epilogue replaces a more substantial original chapter. Similarly, in the published text he tells us that he was able to return the favour of the pock-marked lieutenant who helped him to get into the Bats. But this story is also excised. Again I asked him, and he told me that the lieutenant was himself later on the Bat PT course. Korff met him in the bathroom suffering from a severe sugar-low. He rushed back to his bungalow and fetched the man some energy bars. It is a pity this is not in the book. It is an illuminating insight into the real character of the author. But these are small beef. 19 With a Bullet is a superlative view into the largely unknown world of 1 Para Bn. It is also a riveting account of the Border War during its height at the beginning of the 1980s. It brought home to me anew the realisation of what a burden young SADF conscripts had to bear, and how manfully and bravely they bore it. If you only ever read one conscript’s book about the Border War, this must be the one.
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