Dragons & Butterflies: Sentenced to Die, Choosing to Live (12 page)

I turned around and said loudly, ‘What’s the problem here? I will take on any one of you. Who wants to fight? I’ll show you what a Jew can do!’ Nobody said anything, but just as they were about to back away, this big, fat, dark-skinned guy came pushing his way through the crowd. He reminded me of a charging buffalo. Both thumbs pointing inward to his chest, he shouted, ‘
Ek sal jou opfok!
’ (I will fuck you up).

I stood my ground, waited and when he was within punching distance I hit him with all my strength smack on the jaw. He just stood there, like nothing had happened. Then, angrier than before, he raised his arms and attempted to grab me around the throat, at which moment I felt myself being pulled from behind and yanked out of his reach.

The two guys I had met on the train stepped in front of me and, in a threatening tone, told the fat guy to get the fuck out of there.
Fok off
. And they made it quite clear that anybody who fucked with me or my friends in the tent would have them to deal with. The fat guy wasn’t happy, but he backed off, rubbing his jaw ruefully, and the crowd dispersed. I thanked my two protectors, who had surely saved me from a good ass-kicking.

Later that afternoon, we Jews were all told to report to the first-aid tent. When we got there, the medic, who had the rank of lance corporal, said in a harsh tone, ‘
Hier is die fokken Jode – spuit hulle diep in
’ (Here are the fucking Jews – inject them deep).

I was totally taken aback. Up until then, I had never really encountered anti-Semitism, and certainly not so blatantly. Fortunately for me, I was first in line for our tetanus injection. This fucking medic used the same syringe on each of us and he really thrust the needle into our arms. Afterwards all eight of us were marched around the parade ground for some three hours. I had hardly been in the army a couple of days and already I was hating every moment. How I wished I had gone to college. Even repeating matric would have been better than this!

I don’t think that in the history of the SADF there had ever been a soldier or group of soldiers who’d refused to train on a Saturday or eat the food because it wasn’t kosher. In addition, we demanded extra vegetables. We were certainly audacious, but we had also given them something to think about. By the end of the week, our transfer papers to 3 SAI in Potchefstroom, where there was a kosher kitchen, had been signed. Most of us had been hoping to be moved to Voortrekkerhoogte but we guessed Potchefstroom had to be better than where we were.

On the train ride to Potch, the eight of us fellow Jews really bonded; we had beaten the system, which seemed like an excellent start to our army experience. When we arrived at the Potchefstroom military base, the authorities didn’t know the first thing about us or where we had come from, nor could they understand why we had been transferred so early into training. The new intake of conscripts was already into their second week of basic training. The fact that our heads were so closely shaven that we looked like convicts, compared to the moderate short back and sides of the ‘roofies’ (new recruits) at Potch, also made us stand out. Not knowing quite what to do with us, we were all put into a tent, where we lay around idly. It was quite a strange situation, watching the others training while we lazed about. After a week, they finally resolved the dilemma somehow and we were split up into different companies.

One good thing about the Potch camp was that there were very few tents; the new intake slept in bungalows. As I was making my way to my allocated spot in my bungalow, I exchanged greetings with a guy whose bed was close to the door. Mine was about six beds down on the opposite side. I had hardly reached my bed when I heard someone say in a loud voice: ‘
Hey, Joot!
’ (Hey, Jew!)

‘Fuck!’ I said. I couldn’t believe my ears. I hadn’t even put my bag down and already I was about to lose my cool. What the fuck? Spinning around and dropping my
baalsak
at the same time, I saw the tall frame of this red-headed, freckle-faced 2m-tall Afrikaner. Fuck, I thought, why’s it always the big guys getting in my face? I was about to open my mouth to retaliate and utter some profanity of my own when I realised he was not actually addressing me, but talking to the little guy I had just passed near the entrance a moment before. I walked up to this big Dutchman, jabbed my finger in his chest and, in Afrikaans, said, ‘
Ek is ook ’n Joot
’ (I am also a Jew) ‘and my name is Shani Krebs.’ And pointing towards my Jewish brother, I continued, still in Afrikaans: ‘
Hy het ook ’n naam. Maak seker jy gebruik dit
’ (He also has a name. Make sure you use it.)

My Afrikaans isn’t so perfect but he got the message. I turned away and went back to my spot and proceeded to unpack my things. The little guy came up to me, shook my hand, introduced himself and thanked me.

Once I was settled, I couldn’t believe how jacked-up this place was. Next door to our battalion was 4 Artillery Regiment, where there were also quite a few Jewish guys, and we all ate together in the mess hall. The two chefs there were Jewish, and the atmosphere at mealtimes was great and spirits were high. Basic training was quite tough, though. Every day we would run 2.4km with full kit, which meant with your webbing, magazines and ammunition, and your R1 rifle. Without fail, Stan Nathan, who was a marathon runner, came in first, winning by a good 50m. Depending on my mood, I usually ran in second, but Stan was the man to beat. Having two Jewish guys holding the best times for the 2.4 in our company gained us Jews a lot of respect.

Ironically, two of the slowest runners, who were always far behind the rest of the company, also happened to be Jewish. One was a lanky guy, quite skinny, but the other stood at around 1.8m and carried so much flab around his stomach I bet he struggled to see his toes. On a few occasions, while going on a 20km hike, which also entailed some running, my two Jewish brothers inevitably trailed far behind the rest of us. Sometimes the corporal would order, ‘
Gaan haal jou maatjie!
’ (Go fetch your friend). Normally, a couple of the guys who were in the front (the fittest and the strongest and most ‘
kop toe
’ (i.e. the arse-lickers) would run to the back to forcibly help along those who were trailing. On approaching they would slam their rifles into the chest of whomever it was who couldn’t keep up, knocking them to the ground, then pulling them by either the scruff of their collars or their webbing until they got to their feet. They would then either push them from behind or drag them along until they caught up with the rest of the squad. On one or two such occasions, I would run and get to them before the others could and carry their rifles or their webbing for them. This would ease their load and enable them to keep up with the rest of us, and also save them from some humiliation.

Basic training was hard, but inspection parades in our barracks were the worst. Our beds had to be square, and starch was used to make the edges flush. The men took hours to prepare, and whenever there was a major inspection everybody slept on the floor.

Theory classes were held outdoors, and I would often be so exhausted that I literally fell asleep standing up. When the officer in charge caught you sleeping he would say: ‘
Haai, troep, sien jy daardie boom? Is jy al terug
?’ (Hey, trooper, see that tree? Are you back already?). You would run to the tree as fast as possible, come back, only to be told it was the wrong tree, and then you had to run again. This could be repeated several times.

The soldiers who were there six months before us, from the previous year’s call-up, filled most of the clerical or admin positions, and they were called ‘
ou manne
’ (old men) – not that they were old, only that they required more respect as they had been there longer than us roofies. The food was not too bad and at least it was kosher. Everybody was required to line up as you entered the mess hall. There you helped yourself to a
varkpan
, a stainless-steel tray that had five divisions for your food. I don’t know why, but many of the guys suffered from gyppo-guts (diarrhoea). It was rumoured that our coffee was laced with ‘blue stone’ to suppress sexual desire, and we suspected this may have been the cause.

A few days after joining the company, we were issued with two metal dog tags, which had our name, army number, blood group and religion inscribed on them. That was the moment when the realisation that I was being trained to be a soldier to fight a war really came home to me. It was then that I started mulling over the idea of trying to avoid going to the border.

On our first expedition to the shooting range, which was also part of a 10km hike, I devised a plan. At the range we were issued with live ammunition, and because of this there were strict safety measures in place. We were split up into groups of 20 men. We had full kit and were required to wear our
staaldakke
. Our faces were painted in ‘Black is Beautiful’, our nickname for the camouflage paint we had to use.

We were instructed to lie down in the firing position, and each soldier was given a specific target to fire on. I emptied my entire magazine at the target set for the guy who was next to me, hoping that being a bad shot would disqualify me from going to the front line. After all of us had finished target practice, we had to get into company formation for the regimental sergeant major (RSM) to address us.

It was already midday and the sun was beating down. A mixture of sweat and black camouflage paste was pouring down my face. Out of the whole company, two of us were ordered to remain behind, while the others started the long march back to camp. I knew I was in trouble. I was asked how it was possible that I hadn’t managed to fire one single round into my target but had been consistently accurate when it came to the target next to mine. Perhaps this hadn’t been such a clever move. I guessed the RSM might have seen that trick once or twice before. I decided to act dumb anyway, like I didn’t know what he was talking about, but the RSM lost his temper and he ripped my rifle out of my arms. A corporal was appointed to take me for an
afkak
parade (a shitting-off parade). First I was made to leopard-crawl for about 20m, get up and run for another 20m, and then fall down and roll 20m. And then start the whole exercise all over again.

This carried on for at least 30 minutes. The heat was unbearable and I felt myself on the verge of collapse. Every muscle in my body ached, my head was spinning, my eyes, nostrils and mouth were full of grass and dust, and my elbows were raw and bleeding.

I don’t know why suddenly I needed to urinate – in fact, I almost pissed in my pants. I got up, proceeded to open my fly, and started to relieve myself. Aaaah, what a good feeling it was; it felt like I was in heaven. My eyes were actually closed when the corporal came running at me and, with my own rifle butt, hit me square in the chest, causing me literally to take off and land flat on my back. Dazed and gasping for air, I just lay there in the dirt. Then he threw my rifle at me and walked away. I think I must have passed out because when I came around there was nobody around.

Fuck, I thought, I could have died and they wouldn’t have known.

Luckily I still had water in my water bottle. I sat up and drank, and then tried to pull myself together and start the long hot walk back to base. I was not even a quarter of the way back when a jeep with two MPs in it pulled up beside me. They took one look at me, no doubt immediately realising what had happened. They didn’t ask and, anyway, I was too tired to explain. The lift back was a godsend, though. I stumbled into camp, not too long after the others, relieved to still be alive.

I missed civilian life. I thought about Melissa all the time. Whenever I had to do physical training, it was thinking of her that got me through. I wrote to her every week, and the anticipation of getting a letter from her in reply would keep me on tenterhooks. Our physical absence from each other’s lives was driving me crazy and my need to be with her was sometimes simply overwhelming. Melissa, however, was still with Derek – she never had dumped him – and the idea that she was more than likely having sex with him hurt me badly. I thought she would have got rid of him by now, but it was becoming apparent that Derek was going nowhere. More than anything, it seemed, she was afraid to leave him. The way I got letters through to her at Arcadia and preserved our secret was to address the envelopes to myself c/o Arcadia and arrange that Melissa would ‘keep’ them for me. We kept writing to each other, and in every letter I wrote to Melissa I told her that she was to burn or discard it as soon as she had read it. Of course I didn’t realise how hard it would be for her to do that, and in the end it was those letters that were my undoing.

A few weeks before the end of basic training, I received the letter I had been dreading. Our secret was out.

Melissa and Derek had had an argument. In his anger, he had stormed upstairs to her dormitory and begun to pull all her clothes out of her wardrobe, tearing and ripping everything he had bought her. The next thing, all my letters, which Melissa had hidden between her clothes, came tumbling out onto the floor. I tried to imagine my best friend’s confusion at all these envelopes addressed to me and how he would have ripped those open, too. When he read lines such as ‘Dearest Darling Melissa’ and, at the bottom, ‘Lots of Love, Shani’ our cover was completely blown and the depth of our deception revealed. I felt terrible, but in a way I was also relieved that the truth was out in the open. Now Melissa and I could get together properly.

Derek’s reaction was understandable. He couldn’t believe what I had done to him. I was no longer his friend. Instead I was his sworn enemy. My heart was in turmoil. I wasn’t sure what the outcome would be, but it still looked like there was no way Derek would leave Melissa. He was really into her. Anyway, I would have to wait until my first weekend pass, after three months’ basic training, to find out.