Free Moffie by Andre Carl van der Merwe Page A

child!’
    I am hoping the neighbours will hear and come running.
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PART THREE

1
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    I t is too late to hand out our kit. We are marched to the tents, neatly erected on the side of a hill. There are no beds inside.
    Finding a place on the canvas ground sheet, I am so apprehensive that I become consumed by the thought of escaping—all the way home, to understanding parents who are prepared to send me overseas to avoid all this. But like neon writing on a dark wall, I know it won’t happen.
    And AWOL equals DB.
    In a corrugated-iron structure I find the showers and toilets. Sitting on the black plastic seat, I stare at the green partitions on either side, the concrete floor and the crudely constructed door. For a fleeting moment it feels safe to be on my own—secure in this small, hidden space, realising my need for solitude.
    Beyond the door I hear the hundreds of strangers I now have to live with, jostling for position, friendship, survival, opinion, showers and toilets. The sounds are somewhere between excitement and foreboding.
    At the top of the partition wall I see a series of holes in the shape of a cross. This is a sign, I decide. That I should have chosen this one is a good omen. This space will be my private ‘chapel,’
my
toilet. I memorise its position in the row—seventh from the right, my lucky number. Then I summon up the courage to step back into army life.
    A whistle sounds and the corporals shout: ‘Lights-out in five minutes. Lights-out, you fucking
rowe
! Lights-out!’ With it there is frantic scurrying and nervous chatter.
    A single bulb dangles from the centre of the tent, its tepid light sucked from it by the canvas. Then it is switched off.
    Dark . . . dark inside and out, dark the future, dark my life.
    From under the ground sheet the stones of Middelburg press against my shins as I kneel and pray for deliverance.
    During the night I am woken by a thunderstorm. I focus on the grey letters of my digital watch—02:28. Muddy water starts flooding through the tent, and we huddle together on the dry side. Shivering and miserable, we wait for daybreak. I remember the clouds I admired as we rolled into Middelburg. Now even that one thing of beauty has betrayed me, as if nothing has respect for us.
    Tired, frightened and wet, I fight hard not to allow panic to whip me out of my precarious control. If that should happen, I know I would not be able to claw my way back.
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    One week for issuing kit, assessing our physical fitness and health, and then we start basics. If you are classified G1K1, the army regards you as physically and mentally fit. If you have passed matric, you will do the basic training in six weeks instead of three months. Then you are sent to Oudtshoorn Infantry School.
    We are repeatedly told that the nine months training at Infantry School, to become junior leaders, is much harder than basics—only a few, they say, ever complete that course.
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    Swearing and shouting start our day as the lights are all switched on at the same time.
    Dripping canvas, unwashed men—sour and pungent—and outside the relentless profanity.
    It feels as if yet another door is slammed shut, irrevocably, like a cell door. I am giving up, each step taking me deeper and deeper down.
    â€˜Quiet time, quiet time, get in and read your fucking Bibles you . . . you snail-shit, you! Where the fuck is your Bible? What are you? A fucking atheist
poes
, non-believer cunt? Ten minutes and you’d better be on that parade ground, ready. This is a day you’ll never forget, so you’d better fucking pray . . .’
    I read Psalm 17 from verse 9:
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    . . . from the wicked who assail me, from my mortal enemies who surround me. They close up their callous hearts, and their mouths speak with arrogance. They have tracked me down; they now surround me, with eyes alert, to throw me to the ground. They are like a lion hungry