As my throat constricted and panic threatened to make me beg and plead for mercy, Kevin, who despite this contribution never became a lawyer, said quickly: ‘Jurgen is the only one who is 18. They will try him as an adult. We other three are just kids.’
We later found out that Jurgen’s mom had been a young girl in occupied Holland during the Second World War and had been pressed into helping fugitives escaping from the SS. Over her dead body was her son going to be arrested and tried for terrorism while his snivelling mates walked free.
‘Is anyone dead?’ she asked.
‘No!’ came the unified answer.
‘Anyone hurt?’
‘No!’
‘If I find that you are lying…!’ she let the threat hang there.
Then, resolutely, she said, ‘Quickly, off with your clothes. They need washing. And clean up the dust, every speck of it!’
I don’t know whether the cops ever did call at their house or if the investigation just flummoxed the detectives, but I do know that the bond of silence between the group of four and Jurgen’s mother remained unbroken until it no longer mattered.
Still, somewhere in Wierda Bridge police station archives, among the dusty old case files, is one that’s probably titled ‘Bomb in the Six Mile Spruit – perpetrators unknown’.
2
Joining the Air Force
Then suddenly it was 7 January 1976 and I was standing at the gates of the SAAF Gymnasium reporting for my two years of national service. When it came to doing my national service, there was only ever one choice for me: I would join the SAAF. After all, I shared my dad’s love of planes and my dream was to become an airline pilot (or member of the Permanent Force). At the time, we also didn’t have the funds to pay for private training as a pilot, so joining the SAAF offered another route.
In the bungalow to which I was assigned, my roommates were an eclectic cross-section of South African society. There was a Michaelhouse-educated Junior Springbok polo player, and a shepherd from the vast expanse of the northern Cape, and then there was Gavin Endres, the ‘Boytjie from Benoni’, who became a lifelong friend. As the Gymnasium was located barely two kilometres from my home, it wasn’t long before I took to jumping over the wall in the evening and running home for supper.
A number of us had applied to become pilots, and after about three weeks we were summoned to the Gym’s main gate to be briefed on our immediate future by an Air Force legend, Sergeant Major ‘Bronkies’ Bronkhorst. The roll call, conducted on that first evening before pilot’s selection by Bronkies went something like this:
‘Klopper!’
‘Sar’ Major!’
‘Webster!’
‘Sar’ Major!’
‘Ellis!’
‘Sar’ Major!’
Then…
‘Pilkington!’
‘Corporal!’ squeaked Pilkington.
‘PILKINGTON!’ screamed Bronkies.
‘I’m here, Corporal!’ bleated Pilkington, with an edge of frustration in his voice.
‘Good shit, Pilkington!’ said Bronkies, the tip of his oversized, whisky-nurtured nose twitching spasmodically. ‘I was last in 1945 a fucking corporal!’
‘Yes, sir, Sergeant Major!’
I don’t know what happened to Pilkington after that, but the rest of us spent the next two weeks or so at the Military Medical Institute (MMI) – today the Institute for Aviation Medicine, part of the South African Military Health Service – being examined physically and mentally by a horde of interested medicos who seemed intent on finding even the slightest flaw in an applicant’s make-up or character that would warrant disqualification.
For the 150 or so survivors from the original batch of about 7 500 applicants, the day finally arrived for the grand finale of the selection process – the Pilot Selection Board.
We all waited nervously outside for our turn to be called, some praying quietly, others arsing around and some just staring into space. My name was called at mid-morning, the door into the hallowed room was opened, and I was ushered inside.
I marched in, brimming with the confidence that I could convince the assembled brass that the SAAF’s new Sailor Malan or Edwin Swales had arrived. Move over, Douglas Bader.
My uniform was perfectly pressed, the buttons and badges sparkled like diamonds and my shoes shone. I sat down in the plastic chair, which immediately became my throne.
The answers to their questions flew off my lips.
I was a walking, talking current affairs aficionado.
I knew who was who, what was what and how it all worked.
No doubt about it: I was their man.
After 15 minutes, they told me to piss off and try again in 12 months.
In the aftermath of the 1976 Pilot Selection Board’s decision, I went through the full range of emotions. Disbelief was followed by anger, devastation and even embarrassment. I felt that I’d failed in what I’d set out to do and a deep depression set in.
At some point, late in the Basic Training phase at the Air Force Gymnasium, a few of my bungalow friends, including the Boytjie from Benoni, applied to become radar operators and so I listlessly went along with them. When Basic Training finished, we transferred to the Air Defence School at AFB Waterkloof for the basic radar operator’s course before being posted to Devon, where the central control of the country’s Northern Air Defence Sector was housed. We received more advanced training in the nuclear-bomb-proof ‘gat’ (hole), an underground warren of nooks and crannies filled with a range of expensive radar equipment, all programmed to utter ‘wrong number, twit,’ in a metallic voice whenever a student made an input error. We delighted in coaxing this robotic response at every available opportunity.
When the course ended, a few weeks later, it was time for our operational deployment and I ended up being sent to 2 Satellite Radar Station in Ellisras, 350 kilometres northwest of Pretoria. Now, in those days Ellisras (today Lephalale) was not the thriving metropolis that it is today. You reached it in three to four hours by travelling northwards on the Great North Road to Warmbaths (today Bela-Bela), then on to Nylstroom (today Modimolle), where you branched off to the left, through Vaalwater and on to Bulge River. If you reached the end of the tar road you had gone too far and needed to turn back before you fell off the edge of the world!
Coming into Ellisras from the Bulge River side, the first building you encountered was the Ellisras Hotel on the left. That was followed by 200 metres of thick bush on both sides before the Post Office appeared on the left, more thick bush and the padkamp (road workers’ camp) on the right, more bush, a café and butchery on the left, more bush, then the high school on the left, the Air Force Base on the right. Just beyond that, the tar ended.
We arrived just as the previous intake of radar operators was preparing to depart. Our predecessors’ greatest claim was that they had impregnated a number of girls from Ellisras High/Hoër School – the only coed boarding school for a radius of 200 kilometres. Consequently, the good name of the SAAF had become somewhat sullied and was not held in great esteem by the Ellisras townspeople, nor by the residents of the surrounding areas.
The first line of the briefing we received from the regimental sergeant major (RSM), one Flight Sergeant Snyman, was: ‘The Ellisras Hotel are out-of-bounds to all South African Air Force peoples!’
So, we went there for a drink that evening. And every evening after that, until the farmers came in for their monthly co-op meeting a couple of weeks later…
That particular evening, we had arranged to meet in the hotel’s main bar as usual after work. The first two to arrive were Klerksdorp Chris and a chap from Durban. I arrived with three others about an hour later, and as we walked in, Klerksdorp Chris flew across the pub, closely followed by his mate, as if they were darts being thrown.