Our crew included a chap from Virginia in the Orange Free State whom we all called ‘Soapy’. Now, Soapy had a pathological fear of leopards and… the dark. As there were leopards resident in the bush surrounding the radar station, subjecting Soapy to any night-time activity, such as guard duty, was inviting an incident, and he didn’t disappoint us.
Rather than deploy our team of radar operators in the role for which we had been trained, the powers that be decided that we would best counter the expected enemy assault by tramping around the perimeter of the radar station armed with a 7.62 mm R1 semi-automatic assault rifle and 20 rounds of live ammunition. Around and around and around we tramped, about 500 metres apart, three of us per shift interspersed with three dog handlers, hour after hour after hour.
In the northeast corner of the radar station stood the 20-metre-tall radar antenna that was used to determine the altitude of target aircraft and hence was called ‘the height-finder’. It resembled a marabou stork or perhaps a Dickensian undertaker. As with almost every spooky-looking structure or tower on any military base anywhere in the world, rumour had it that a manically depressed young national serviceman had once committed suicide by hanging himself from one of the crossbeams.
To make matters even worse, for Soapy in particular, a number of the security lights on the double barbed-wire perimeter fence adjacent to the antenna were inoperative and there were consequently long shadows along the beat in that section.
At about 03h00 one morning, Soapy was making his way, at double pace, through the shadowy and badly lit height-finder segment when he became aware of something climbing onto the perimeter fence. Immediately he deduced that it was at the least a leopard or a fiendish attacker.
Taught during Basic Training to warn any attacker that they should ‘Halt or I will shoot!’, and to do so three times before firing, Soapy, in a bout of fear and panic, trumpeted, ‘Halt or I will shoot times three!’
He then proceeded to empty all 20 rounds in his magazine into the unfortunate adolescent baboon that was having some fun by ‘riding’ the fence, as baboons have a habit of doing.
After seven months, my holding pattern at Ellisras was drawing to a close and the Pilot Selection Board for the Pupil Pilot’s Course 1/77 (known as the Pupe’s Course) was looming on the horizon. I left Ellisras for the last time as a national serviceman on a Friday afternoon, accompanied by a few of my radar-operating mates. The pilot selection process was to commence the following Monday morning.
And so it was, about three weeks later, that I emerged, battered and broken and in acute pain from the shortest Pilot Selection Board in history, the details of which are described in the prologue of this book. After exiting the scene of the disaster, I’d found a wooden post outside and quietly started banging my head against it. I became aware of the SAMS brigadier (the chief psychologist), who, it appeared, had followed me out of the room and was watching my antics quizzically.
‘Joubert,’ he said scornfully, ‘please stop doing that. You will need all of your already limited faculties when you start Pupe’s Course at Central Flying School Dunnottar in two months!’
And with that he turned around and went back into the room.
I stood in shocked silence for quite a while. Surely I had misheard him, or, almost certainly, I reasoned, he’d got me mixed up with someone else?
So, I resolved to tell no one until the official notification came, which was expected in a couple of weeks. Those two weeks passed agonisingly slowly as I whiled away the time playing for Strike Command in the Air Force cricket championships. The seven-wicket win that we achieved two weeks later was the first time that Strike Command had ever won the Air Force Championships.
At the prizegiving function that evening I was informed that the SAMS headshrinker who’d spoken to me outside the Selection Board two weeks earlier had been absolutely correct and that I had, amazingly, been selected for SAAF Pupil Pilot’s Course 1 of 1977 (1/77). The next few weeks passed in a blur of farewell parties, good-luck parties, any-excuse-for-a-party parties and partying hard between parties.
The next phase of my Air Force career commenced with a day or two spent at the SAAF Gymnasium signing indemnity forms, contracts and insurance policies. There was a lot of small print, and no lawyers or parents were permitted to be on hand to offer advice to prevent exploitation. This was the price to be paid for the opportunity of being trained as a pilot in the world’s second-oldest air force.
Sixty-six candidate officers reported for duty at the Central Flying School (CFS) Dunnottar, or Harvard University as it was (and still is) widely known in aviation circles. The base is located approximately five kilometres southeast of Springs. CFS was the final operational home of the North American Aviation Texan AT-6 trainer, also known as the Harvard. In southern Africa the Harvard was often nicknamed the Spamcan or Spammy, as it was said to resemble a tin of Spam.
The Harvard had been widely used as a training aircraft since the late 1930s. Although then in the twilight of its operational use, it was effective in sharpening the reflexes of fledgling pilots and demanded accurate and concise decision-making at all times. The CFS Harvards were painted silver with dayglow-orange noses, wings and tails. Few people who ever flew this lady were neutral about her. You either loved the Harvard or you hated her.
Fortunately, I fell into the former category.
Within just a few hours of our arrival at CFS, the first of many memorable events took place involving a chap who would, we had been warned by previous pupes (pupil pilots), be the bane of our lives for the duration of our time at the schooclass="underline" Sergeant ‘Wollies’ Wolmarans, the RSM’s choice of dissip (disciplinarian) for the pupes. Now, Wollies was not a man of great physical stature but, like dissips through the ages, he had a voice that could turn any cocky pupe into a gibbering wreck should he attract Wollies’ ire.
Our first encounter with Sergeant Wolmarans, unfortunately for him, set the tone for the next seven months. On the first morning at CFS, the 66 brand-new pupes were lounging around in the road outside the Quartermaster’s store, drawing bedding one at a time. Some were smoking and others were playing with a ball when we heard the noise of an over-revving motorcycle engine and what sounded like a donkey being tortured with a red-hot poker.
Looking down the road we saw a helmetless, fuming, moustachioed apparition, mounted on his mechanical beast, hurtling towards us, foaming at the mouth and shouting loudly. The trumpeting vision of doom turned out to be Wollies on his 250 cc Honda Benly motorcycle.
It was the most laid-back character in the group who first observed, ‘Who’s the doos (plonker) on the bike?’
Wollies was travelling at a good 80 kilometres per hour when he slammed on the brakes right in front of us and tried to whip the back wheel around, as a teenager riding a bicycle on a dirt road would do. I may be wrong, but Wollies was clearly new to the art of riding a motorcycle. Had he been a little more experienced, he would have realised that there was only one possible result of his ‘broad-sliding’ action.
The Benly high-sided him over the handlebars and he performed a so-so somersault (four and a half out of ten, give-or-take, at any gymnastics competition) before landing in an undignified heap in the knee-high khaki bush at the edge of the road. To a man, the pupes stood and roared their approval at Wollies’ spectacular gymnastic display.