My Buddies (A Reply To Boris Slutsky) Poem by Gert Strydom

All young white men at a time
was forced into the military, into war
or had to serve a three year jail term

and most of my buddies came home,
but some did not:

Parachuting into a enemy camp
there was one close friend that died,
the other three I hardly knew
and to the government it was
an incidental small thing against
seven hundred and fifty
enemy SWAPO and Cuban casualties

and on one patrol one close buddy
stepped on a landmine
were blown up and no one else was hurt,
and to the government it was
an incidental small thing against
the enemy that had lost
little lest than a full platoon.

In Angola when we met enemy armour,
turned FAPLA / Cuban divisions
under Soviet leadership into junk

I saw a Ratel armoured car
that was trapped in a landmine field
that had been shot out
with the holes
were enemy tank projectiles went in
and every one inside was burnt, incinerated
if not blown to bits, turned into ash

and it had been only one of eleven
armoured cars
and troop carriers that was lost
some of only thirty-one soldiers dead
but there was pain that flashed through me
when I saw it

and to the government it was
an incidental small thing against
four thousand seven hundred and eighty five killed
on the Cuban/FAPLAN side,94 tanks
and hundreds of enemy combat vehicles destroyed

and now no one thinks
of the sacrifice that all of these soldiers made,
of the hundreds of thousands
of returning citizen force soldiers
who were nuts, bomb happy
with post traumatic stress syndrome
or whatever you want to call it

as to the government it is
an incidental small thing,
that happened in a distant past
as if the ex-soldiers are non-existing,
even seen as apartheid criminals by some.

[References: Buddies here used as name used in the South African Defence Force for comrades. Ex-soldiers here used instead of war veterans, as in African circles the word war veterans has got a new derogatory meaning connected to it. My Comrades by Boris Slutsky.]