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KC Erasmus's avatar

I do note from your list of war regions, that you left out Angola, which I take it was accidental.

I am one of those who served in the Angolan war, and although hesitant, having a job back home, that was paying me and the future prospect of a bursary to study engineering when I had completed my South African military conscription service, I went to do, what I felt at the time, was my duty.

Ending up in a infantry training base at Ladysmith 5 SAI, and despite looking for cushy options, my platoon commander had other ideas and saw to it that I wrote the Psycometric Assessment exam for the junior leadership program ( jnr offers and nco training ) at the Infantry School in Oudtshoorn, and was one of the forty odd selected from the over three hundred who actually wrote the exam, out of approximately 600 odd trainee's.

Initially I hated the Infantry School so much that I didn't care if I was RTU'd, which happens throughout the training program, which runs for approx. Nine months after basic infantry training and wittled down the approximately three hundred junior leaders in training in my company, from infantry training units across country, the to a hundred and forty odd of us who qualified as either officers or NCO's.

However once you pass the halfway mark and having eaten up so much s@#& at the Infantry School, you will do anything to survive the rest of the course, to ensure that your efforts so far had not been wasted, with 7 chaps being RTU'd without rank in the week of practice for our passing out parade because they went AWOL to have a drink at a pub, and got caught.

When you are finally allowed to wear that pip on your shoulder and you think about the rigours o the course and that you are one of a very small number who made it, from the thousands that started out, in basic training, there is definitely reason for a sense of achievement and pride.

Just when you think it's all over the selection begins again with the easy route being to accept a post at a training unit somewhere in South Africa where you will see little action, except for the odd patrol somewhere on the SWA/ Namibian border or as officer on duty at one of the many small or large out bases in SWA/ Namibia.

For those of us who had had enpugh of a blowing whistle and did not intend blowing a whistle for others or petty parades and inspections, there were selections and panels which decided whether you were good enough to join 32 Battalion, special forces units etc.. Parabats had already been selected at a earlier stage and done their jump training.

Me, I went in boots and all for 32 Bn and made it, spending another two weeks of more rigourous special training before finally being allowed to where the hallowed cammo beret, only to be in the unit for a further couple of weeks before they were temprarily withdrawn from operations due to the Joint Monitoring Commission agreement between South Africa, and Angola, which later fell apart.

So at that point it was back to inspections and parades with troops who were professional soldiers, not into inspections and parades and the nightmare that that brought to us junior officers and nco's.

In the nick of time SWATF came knocking at 32 Bn, looking for volunteers from the officer and nco ranks to join the newly established Special Services Reaction Force Companies known as the Romeo Mikes, and I again volunteered and was one of those who was selected, much to the chagrin of Col. Eddie Viljoen, who considered us traitors for "deserting" his coveted unit.

I could write a book on my motivations and experiences as a Team Commander at Romeo Mikes, where I served out my time, and about whom little is written except that they became more feared and notorius than 32 Bn, and in the mere nine years of their existance, had only one less medal recipient than 32 Bn in its twenty something year history.

I am proud to have served as the very first Team Commander of Romeo Mike 12, and value the Esprit de Corps and battle hardened troops of my team, whom I trusted with my life, who were all black SWA/ Namibians or Angolans all of whom had their own motivations for going to war, and do not deserve to be judged in any negative manner.

When you are young and recognise your your path of achievement it is easy to understand the desire for even greater challenges even in war, if you at that stage of your life believe in the cause.

Over time my views have dramatically changed in regard to the approach used by the South African government of the time, however having 20/20 hindsight doesn't solve that problem, but I would have thought that Israel had observed the consequences of Apartheid from South Africa's experiences and learned something from it.

My experience commanding a team in a Specialised Counter Insurgency Unit, rated at the time by both the US and Israel as the best in the world, helped open my eyes to many things later in life of which I will mention but a few ;

1. That I was hopelessly untrained and unprepoared by the Infantry School to lead a team in intensive combat, and had to learn very quickly on the fly, maybe that's why an IQ test section was included in the Pschometric evaluation which we underwent, prior to being trained.

2. That terrorism does not initiate in a vacuum and most definitely has a cause, and that to avoid terrorism requires determining the Root Cause and finding a way to remove the cause which gave rise to it, and so solving the problem, or else the killing will never end.

3. That killing "terrorists" is like trying to kill a Hydra, it is dedicated and will just rear another head, because you have failed to find a solution to the Root Cause driving it.

4. That despite the Psychometric evaluation we were put through, that in many cases people went off the rails, resulting in broken marriages, domestic violence, liquor abuse, drug abuse and in some the insatiable desire for the challenge of literally dodging a bullet, or to keep killing.

5. That the return to civilian life for those of us who had the experiences we had, was a difficult one, to the point that keeping ourselves under control, possibly has made us too passive in some instances. ( for me the movie "Nobody" made a lot of sense )

6. That the need for war does arise, when others fail to heed years of warning and requests to stop provoking, and there remains no alternative, as in the case of Russia in the Ukraine conflict, where Russia has actually become an Offensive Defender, against Western Hegemony which is using the Ukraine as a proxy.

7. That many of our fellow South Africans still Conflate modern day Russia, with the Soviet Union, and were so effectively brainwashed, that they are unable to see that the US is the cause of Global strife, and Not Russia or China, thus still seeing the US as good, contrary to Fact, and Russia and China as bad, again contrary to Fact. These people with these inverted/ perverted beliefs, have a very low level of perception, are one dimensional thinkers and lack the ability to perform a rudimentary Root Cause Analysis, and many still believe that "white" South Africa should have kept the fight in Angola, Namibia and South Africa going after 1989.

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Diana van Eyk's avatar

All war is class war. I'm sorry to see anyone have to experience this brutality. War is not a good way of solving problems, and it's usually about domination anyways.

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