At The Places Of Death Poem by Gert Strydom

(in answer to George Weideman)

I cannot forget
how the Ratel IFV's and the Buffel troop carriers
made the soft red ground
hang almost sky high in a dust cloud
at Ondangwa
when we passed in a convoy as we did drive at speed
and on a farm
did find the slaughtered remains of a farmer,
his daughters
and wife were left in the bushes
where they were raped
and murdered without any mercy.

I cannot forget
how we did jump out of a Puma helicopter
near to Oshivelo
on a hot pursuit operation
at the Etosha pan
and a trooper on his first firefight
was shot out of his boots
and I did smell the blood and death,
did mechanically fire
with the LMG from the hip,
did sweep the bush clean
and the silence hanged with the smell of gunpowder.

Then I do remember Oshakati
from where we did track down Ovambo-women
as they were returning from Angola
and I did wonder how they could be terrorists?
Near the chop-line
one of the landmines that they did carry
was dropped by one of them
and there was a mighty blast
and only pieces of meat and blood did remain.

From Katima Mulillo
we were on patrol and without sensing danger
near Bukalo
between the termite-heaps Blackthorn
and Red-bark acacia trees in the desert-grass
we did walk into an ambush
where rockets and mortar-bombs did blindingly explode,
where the odd sweet smell
of human meat that burns made me vomit continuously
when a phosphorous bomb
did singe one of my fellow soldiers.

I cannot forget
how we did find the deserted fires at Omuhonga
and Okanguati,
when the school children were abducted,
had been taken away
to a enemy base in Angola
and the patches of maize
were scorched into the ground, into ash,
the goats
were slaughtered and were left for the predators
and the parents
that did resist were decimated.

l'Envoi
That desert-country
that is a God-forsaken place on the backside
of the world,
where the thirst and gnats do hang around you,
where every thorny-bush
continually does pierce and cling to you
I had left
when the army stopped
asking me to give a blood-price.

[References: "Herinneringe van die terugkeerende soldaat" (Recollections of the returning soldier) by George Weideman. A Ratel IFV is a Ratel Infantry Fighting Vehicle. The chop-line was a cleared aria on the border between South West Africa (now Namibia) and Angola. A LMG is a light machinegun.]