In 1989, I thought 17-year-old me was going to be on the run from call-up to the Apartheid Army, head into Zululand, and become an underground activist.
South africa has such a dark history, the attacks on black businesses I've heard about online make my blood boil, i so wish we can be progressive nation RSA has so much potential that's being suppressed by racism, inequality and corruption. I wonder what the future holds for a young Zulu man like myself.
I fear for all South Africans, but the youth most of all. With half the country unemployed, and our politicians still playing politics instead of serving, I cannot predict a better future. Corruption is our #1 enemy, and poor education #2, yet no one is dealing with them seriously. Unless those two challenges are overcome, inequality will grow. More and more, the end of Apartheid feels like it wasn't a victory, but only a transition to enslavement with a different definition.
I always tell people that 1994 wasn't a victory, the apartheid is still there it just got better at hiding itself, the education issue is sad I'm from Nkandla and i was lucky enough to be naughty and take my parents phone to go through the internet trying to get more understanding about the world we live in. I have to say education in rural Zululand is the worst.
I cannot walk in your shoes, nor claim to know your region, but I do sympathise.
Just after Zuma became president, I watched a documentary about the orphans of Nkandla, and the terrible poverty there. 5 years ago, I accompanied a salesman on a drive through Zululand, almost to the border. The towns we passed looked like they were all struggling, which would mean the villages are worse.
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.
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.
I won't be able to respond in a way your comment deserves, because you know a lot more than me, but I appreciate you sharing your experience.
Whereas you were obviously a tough mother, I was K4ed, and after Valhalla and Waterkloof, got to Durban where I monitored plane flights. When on night shift alone, I used to illegally read secret files, and realised how horribly casual township killings had been.
Had a confrontation with some arseholes higher up, and remarkably managed to turn a losing battle into my favour, and thus landed up in an office which was maybe 4 feet wide - a lot better than killing in a desert.
I have oft wondered how different my life would've been if I'd been born a year earlier. And that's the bitch in history, people born at the wrong time, or in the wrong skin colour or religion, and getting sucked into a whirlwind of violence. It's one reason why I appreciate Willy OAM as his analysis is sympathetic to the soldiers blown by geopolitics. Similarly, I'm sympathetic to revolutionaries deliberately as terrorists. It is, as Diana said above, more likely to be class war.
One of my close mates was a Bat. We got drunk before his qualifying jump, and a car clipped his ankle as we crossed the road in front of Addington Hospital (One Mil was next door). He was in that zone where you do well in the situation you given. No thought for politics, nor philosphising morality. So he got bandaged and let his foot swell in his boot, jumped and landed in pain, and qualified. Another mate was a medic but thankfully missed the war by a fraction, but still had to run up and down sand dunes in Namibia.
PS: I never forgot Angola. That was named briefly early on, the reason why there were boy schools, and the source of the two anecdotes. At the end, I listed current hot spots.
I don't believe that I was really tough, but the situations I ended up in toughened me up to survive, and one of the greatest fears I had, was how I would react to an actual contact ( combat fight ).
The first one I was involved in at 32Bn was embarrassing for me as a platoon commander to say the least, as I hit the deck and started shouting fire and movement instructions that had been drilled into me at the Infantry School, only to watch the troops walk ahead and past me upright, just firing, and seeing the two different coloured tracers going in both directions, as those who walked past me just looked down at me.
I quickly realised that if I was ever going to be respected by the troops again, I best get up and start moving and firing with them, and give directional instructions, or else I would be finished as a platoon commander.
Getting up and walking directly into a fire fight without cover is contrary to military training and common sense, and at first I was gripped by immense fear, however, once you get going and you don't see any of your troops being hit, somehow a feeling of invincibility takes over, and you stupidly blunder forward without fear, and it is that feeling that overcame a few of my fellow officers and nco's at the Romeo Mikes, that made some later see this as a challenge in literally dodging a bullet as mentioned in my prior comment.
I am highly grateful that during my time, and due to the fact that my unit was a SWATF unit, the Romeo Mikes were never deployed in the townships, and the unit was disbanded in 1989.
Unfortunately that was the fate that befell 32Bn in about 1989/90, when some Moron decided that it was a good idea to deploy these professional combat soldiers, in the South African townships, which resulted in a few incidents and killings by these troops who were not trained in violence control, but to kill the enemy, and which resulted in the disbanding of 32 Bn with many troops and their famlies who had been uprooted and migrated from their home at Buffalo just inside the Caprivi, to Pomfret in the Northern Cape, where many who couldn't be absorbed into South Africa special forces, fell into a state of povert and destitution, resulting in liquor and drug abuse which led touch domestic violence and crime.
It is from this that I clearly understand, that fighting alchohol abuse, drug addiction, Gender Based Violence and Crime in South Africa, is just as futile as fighting "terrorists" when you fail to address the Root Cause, that of Poverty, Unemployment and the right to self respect.
Worse is that some from 32 Battalion and others joined mercenary outfits like Executive Outcomes. That's the problem with soldiering, is that they teach a man a living, and then expect him to stop shooting for money.
Why called Romeo Mike? Looked it up but never found answer.
Yes, inequality is the honourable war. All else is ego and profiteering.
The same happened with many of the Romeo Mikes, they ended up working for the US PMC Blackwater and various other PMC's around the world in dark places. My mentor at Romeo Mike, call sign Mike Foxtrot is one of those.
Romeo Mike was the military phonetic for Reaksie Mag.
Look up under 101 Bn Special Operations Companies, 901/2/3 &4
I see Ramaphosa, the USA, the DA, and Germany as the same entity, so I wouldn't be surprised. However, I'm not digging further into these things as I'm too easily distracted from my original intentions. I've got Ukraine and Palestine up next.
I don't trust Ramaphosa as far as I can throw him, he's the typical new style ANC cadre always trying to play both sides of the fence, and I don't believe for a minute, that Russia or China actually trust him either.
Keep up the work on the Ukraine and Gaza and expose the rot in both cases.
It appears that Lindsay Graham has just said the quiet part out loud in regard to the Ukraine, and that in addition to attempting a Regime Change in Russia, followed by the Balkanising of the country, it's all about the mineral wealth that can be extracted from the Ukraine too, at the expense of its people, and the desire to make the Ukraine a Colony of the US.
That makes sense. Reminds me of a scene from Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night where the main guy is fighting in World War I and his French compatriots all running courageously into battle and all he can think is that we’re all a bunch of fucking idiots
I was called up for compulsory military training in 1969 in NZ. I told them to stick it! Spent my time encouraging others to refuse as well. It did cause some consternation when I joined the Naval Volunteer Reserve some years later - but they did Fisheries protection work, which I cared about - also I had dive gear and they had boats! It also fucked with their beauracratic ideals .... I'm not a conchie, I'd defend my country if improperly invaded, but when it comes to it - no one should have to go through a war because of political egos!
If I lived in a just society run by representatives and not controllers, I would wish for national service, whether it be on the border, in a hospital or social welfare. But nationalism is dead. Nowadays, its used for brainwashing young adults into becoming slaves for rich folk's wars.
You must be referring to the Senior Officers in certain countries, however I can tell you that was never true in regard to the Senior Officers of Specialised South African units, like 32 Bn or the SWATF Romeo Mikes, where there are several anecdotes of our Senior Officers getting down and dirty, and even wounded.
A case in point being Colonel Eddie Viljoen aka Big Daddy from 32 Bn who was shot in the neck in combat, and was yelling at the medic who was trying to stop the bleeding and patch him up, that the medic was walking too slowly, as the combat line was advancing with Big Daddy in the advance group, shot, bleeding and all.
Beautifully written, Mike. I learned a lot, and there was a lot I didn't understand. These conversations between you and other South Africans is also most enlightening. Thank you.
Wow, I did not expect this when I wrote that comment! I’m very glad you did though. Thanks for sharing your tale. I like how you teased it out. Looks like it’s resonated with a lot of people.
Suicides and broken necks in training… boy, your experience was a far cry from mine.
South africa has such a dark history, the attacks on black businesses I've heard about online make my blood boil, i so wish we can be progressive nation RSA has so much potential that's being suppressed by racism, inequality and corruption. I wonder what the future holds for a young Zulu man like myself.
I fear for all South Africans, but the youth most of all. With half the country unemployed, and our politicians still playing politics instead of serving, I cannot predict a better future. Corruption is our #1 enemy, and poor education #2, yet no one is dealing with them seriously. Unless those two challenges are overcome, inequality will grow. More and more, the end of Apartheid feels like it wasn't a victory, but only a transition to enslavement with a different definition.
I always tell people that 1994 wasn't a victory, the apartheid is still there it just got better at hiding itself, the education issue is sad I'm from Nkandla and i was lucky enough to be naughty and take my parents phone to go through the internet trying to get more understanding about the world we live in. I have to say education in rural Zululand is the worst.
I cannot walk in your shoes, nor claim to know your region, but I do sympathise.
Just after Zuma became president, I watched a documentary about the orphans of Nkandla, and the terrible poverty there. 5 years ago, I accompanied a salesman on a drive through Zululand, almost to the border. The towns we passed looked like they were all struggling, which would mean the villages are worse.
'Freedom' has not been good to Zululand.
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.
War is the preservation of inequality.
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.
I won't be able to respond in a way your comment deserves, because you know a lot more than me, but I appreciate you sharing your experience.
Whereas you were obviously a tough mother, I was K4ed, and after Valhalla and Waterkloof, got to Durban where I monitored plane flights. When on night shift alone, I used to illegally read secret files, and realised how horribly casual township killings had been.
Had a confrontation with some arseholes higher up, and remarkably managed to turn a losing battle into my favour, and thus landed up in an office which was maybe 4 feet wide - a lot better than killing in a desert.
I have oft wondered how different my life would've been if I'd been born a year earlier. And that's the bitch in history, people born at the wrong time, or in the wrong skin colour or religion, and getting sucked into a whirlwind of violence. It's one reason why I appreciate Willy OAM as his analysis is sympathetic to the soldiers blown by geopolitics. Similarly, I'm sympathetic to revolutionaries deliberately as terrorists. It is, as Diana said above, more likely to be class war.
One of my close mates was a Bat. We got drunk before his qualifying jump, and a car clipped his ankle as we crossed the road in front of Addington Hospital (One Mil was next door). He was in that zone where you do well in the situation you given. No thought for politics, nor philosphising morality. So he got bandaged and let his foot swell in his boot, jumped and landed in pain, and qualified. Another mate was a medic but thankfully missed the war by a fraction, but still had to run up and down sand dunes in Namibia.
PS: I never forgot Angola. That was named briefly early on, the reason why there were boy schools, and the source of the two anecdotes. At the end, I listed current hot spots.
I don't believe that I was really tough, but the situations I ended up in toughened me up to survive, and one of the greatest fears I had, was how I would react to an actual contact ( combat fight ).
The first one I was involved in at 32Bn was embarrassing for me as a platoon commander to say the least, as I hit the deck and started shouting fire and movement instructions that had been drilled into me at the Infantry School, only to watch the troops walk ahead and past me upright, just firing, and seeing the two different coloured tracers going in both directions, as those who walked past me just looked down at me.
I quickly realised that if I was ever going to be respected by the troops again, I best get up and start moving and firing with them, and give directional instructions, or else I would be finished as a platoon commander.
Getting up and walking directly into a fire fight without cover is contrary to military training and common sense, and at first I was gripped by immense fear, however, once you get going and you don't see any of your troops being hit, somehow a feeling of invincibility takes over, and you stupidly blunder forward without fear, and it is that feeling that overcame a few of my fellow officers and nco's at the Romeo Mikes, that made some later see this as a challenge in literally dodging a bullet as mentioned in my prior comment.
I am highly grateful that during my time, and due to the fact that my unit was a SWATF unit, the Romeo Mikes were never deployed in the townships, and the unit was disbanded in 1989.
Unfortunately that was the fate that befell 32Bn in about 1989/90, when some Moron decided that it was a good idea to deploy these professional combat soldiers, in the South African townships, which resulted in a few incidents and killings by these troops who were not trained in violence control, but to kill the enemy, and which resulted in the disbanding of 32 Bn with many troops and their famlies who had been uprooted and migrated from their home at Buffalo just inside the Caprivi, to Pomfret in the Northern Cape, where many who couldn't be absorbed into South Africa special forces, fell into a state of povert and destitution, resulting in liquor and drug abuse which led touch domestic violence and crime.
It is from this that I clearly understand, that fighting alchohol abuse, drug addiction, Gender Based Violence and Crime in South Africa, is just as futile as fighting "terrorists" when you fail to address the Root Cause, that of Poverty, Unemployment and the right to self respect.
Worse is that some from 32 Battalion and others joined mercenary outfits like Executive Outcomes. That's the problem with soldiering, is that they teach a man a living, and then expect him to stop shooting for money.
Why called Romeo Mike? Looked it up but never found answer.
Yes, inequality is the honourable war. All else is ego and profiteering.
The same happened with many of the Romeo Mikes, they ended up working for the US PMC Blackwater and various other PMC's around the world in dark places. My mentor at Romeo Mike, call sign Mike Foxtrot is one of those.
Romeo Mike was the military phonetic for Reaksie Mag.
Look up under 101 Bn Special Operations Companies, 901/2/3 &4
PS! Eben Barlow who started Executive Outcomes was Ex 32.
More recently I heard that Executive Outcomes or what remained of them was being used for financial strongarming by the ANC.
Who would ever have thought that.
I see Ramaphosa, the USA, the DA, and Germany as the same entity, so I wouldn't be surprised. However, I'm not digging further into these things as I'm too easily distracted from my original intentions. I've got Ukraine and Palestine up next.
I don't trust Ramaphosa as far as I can throw him, he's the typical new style ANC cadre always trying to play both sides of the fence, and I don't believe for a minute, that Russia or China actually trust him either.
Keep up the work on the Ukraine and Gaza and expose the rot in both cases.
It appears that Lindsay Graham has just said the quiet part out loud in regard to the Ukraine, and that in addition to attempting a Regime Change in Russia, followed by the Balkanising of the country, it's all about the mineral wealth that can be extracted from the Ukraine too, at the expense of its people, and the desire to make the Ukraine a Colony of the US.
This is a hell of a description. Seeing the guys looking down as they walk by and then getting up and walking right into it… the madness of it all
That's why 32Bn and the 101 Bn Romeo Mikes earned the reputation they had.
32Bn was known among SWAPO and the Angolan troops as "The terrible ones", while the 101 Romeo Mikes were known as the "Murder Battalion".
That makes sense. Reminds me of a scene from Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night where the main guy is fighting in World War I and his French compatriots all running courageously into battle and all he can think is that we’re all a bunch of fucking idiots
Just as well I never ran into commenting that "I'd join the Taliban to escape Celine Dion's music." Instead, I googled your genius literary reference.
I was called up for compulsory military training in 1969 in NZ. I told them to stick it! Spent my time encouraging others to refuse as well. It did cause some consternation when I joined the Naval Volunteer Reserve some years later - but they did Fisheries protection work, which I cared about - also I had dive gear and they had boats! It also fucked with their beauracratic ideals .... I'm not a conchie, I'd defend my country if improperly invaded, but when it comes to it - no one should have to go through a war because of political egos!
If I lived in a just society run by representatives and not controllers, I would wish for national service, whether it be on the border, in a hospital or social welfare. But nationalism is dead. Nowadays, its used for brainwashing young adults into becoming slaves for rich folk's wars.
Brilliant stuff, Mike.
Thanks.
We understand nothing we have not experienced. Great article.
I am grateful for some things I haven't experienced.
It seems that the Army is th he same no matter what country is belongs too.
The enlisted men to all the shit work,and the officers set in comfortable chairs, while the grunt is out in the mud and snow.
Most of us leave our feelings at the intake door. Since bucking orders is rewarded with prison time, mostly we do as we are told.
Such is life.
Obedience is required, disobedience harshly punished.
It's the same way as baboons
Why should we be different?
The scarlet butt of a baboon doesn't mean its blushing...
You must be referring to the Senior Officers in certain countries, however I can tell you that was never true in regard to the Senior Officers of Specialised South African units, like 32 Bn or the SWATF Romeo Mikes, where there are several anecdotes of our Senior Officers getting down and dirty, and even wounded.
A case in point being Colonel Eddie Viljoen aka Big Daddy from 32 Bn who was shot in the neck in combat, and was yelling at the medic who was trying to stop the bleeding and patch him up, that the medic was walking too slowly, as the combat line was advancing with Big Daddy in the advance group, shot, bleeding and all.
Beautifully written, Mike. I learned a lot, and there was a lot I didn't understand. These conversations between you and other South Africans is also most enlightening. Thank you.
We may speak in a foreign language but our English is pretty good - bwah ha ha.
Wow, I did not expect this when I wrote that comment! I’m very glad you did though. Thanks for sharing your tale. I like how you teased it out. Looks like it’s resonated with a lot of people.
Suicides and broken necks in training… boy, your experience was a far cry from mine.
Scientifically termed the Ripple-Fucking-Effect.
I had more to say, but was being lazy. Consequently, the comments were unexpected and appreciated.
*the more outspoken cousin of the Butterfly Effect