elderly couple. Are they John’s grandparents, I wonder, but no, they turn out to be his mom and dad. They had him late in life, their miracle child, long after they had given up any hope. This is going to be more difficult than I thought. There is a look of panic on their faces.
I introduce myself and they stammer something in return. Is it George and Grace? No matter, because they are not looking at me but around me, searching for their son, who is shadowing me so closely that for a moment he is lost to sight. I step aside and they all come together suddenly like some kind of conjurer’s trick. There is a moment of stunned silence as a parent’s worst fear gives way to relief, a release so profound that Mom and Dad shrink a little, right there before my eyes on the tarmac.
Mom is crying now. Dad places an arm around her shoulder. John doesn’t move. He seems lost. His father takes a hesitant step forward and then stops. He looks at me as if to ask: May I embrace my son? ‘Please,’ I say, my voice thickening, and I withdraw quickly, embarrassed by this deference. It is me who has no right to be here.
John’s parents take his silence very well. It is clear they feared something much worse. He looks fit and tanned. He is walking, he can run, he has his smarts, he is alive! What matter a small thing like speech? They will help him through it – Mom assures me there is nothing like home cooking and love.
She clasps my hand. ‘Thank you, Doctor, thank you.’ She is still crying. Dad has my other hand. He is shaking it vigorously. I am overwhelmed by his effusive gratitude. What have I done to deserve this? After all, I am just the chaperone who drew the short straw, the novice psychiatrist, a conscript like their son. The war is a shameful mess and I am sorry for their misfortune, their broken son and for handing him over like this.
But I say none of this.
Back at 1MIL bad news is waiting. The army is packing me and the Warthog off to the front lines. Up in northern South West Africa there is a garrison town called Oshakati, home to the largest military base in the war zone. We are to run a psychiatry triage service from there and screen the troops for post-traumatic stress disorder. The Warthog will go first and I will relieve him after a few months.
I am full of trepidation. Not so the Colonel and his sidekicks. They are bubbling with excitement and feeling very chuffed. We are implementing the PIE principle in the treatment of emotional trauma, they tell me: Proximity – to the battlefield; Immediacy – treat quickly; Expectancy – let the soldier know with no uncertainty that he will be returning to the front lines.
But first, cures are to be found at the hands of beginner psychiatrists. Even this is overstating our qualifications. I am not a psychiatrist. I have had just six months’ exposure to psychiatry and now I am to be a one-man unit managing combat stress in a war zone. Are we not rushing things? Hell no, I am told, we are at war, man. War! There is no time to lose. And no place for the faint-hearted. Stand tall! Straighten your shoulders!! Tighten your buttocks!!! Pack your bags and seize the moment. You leave shortly.
I start the long goodbyes. My anticipated melancholy is, however, held at bay by something quite unexpected – sex. Lots of it, and with a passion bordering on frenzy. There will be none for the next three months, so I go about it with gusto. If I am not packing, I am fornicating. A neurotic libido has been let loose and sex is a marvellous distraction. A good lay can blot out everything and there is no shortage of willing partners. War is a potent aphrodisiac, or perhaps it is the pending separation that drives our motors. Whatever the reason, I am not about to waste time in analysis. I simply accept that fortune has smiled on me at a difficult time.
On the day of departure I am enervated. I stand on the tarmac on a cold, dreary morning. It is raining. Before me looms the backside of a monster Hercules transport plane. The ramp is down and a giant anus beckons. Together with hundreds of other recruits I enter the cavernous interior. I am like Jonah in the belly of the whale. Soon we are airborne.
No one is saying much for we are all too tense. I pass the time by looking at photographs given to me by recent lovers. They are inscribed. Some of the messages are cryptic, referring in oblique ways to weeks of great passion. They make me smile. It already seems long ago.
A few hours later we land just south of the war zone and stagger out into the blinding sunlight. Trucks are waiting to transport us to a holding camp where we will spend the night. We each receive a can of bully beef for dinner. The place is like a prison, surrounded by barbed wire. We sit in the sand and wait. The atmosphere remains subdued. When night falls we crowd into a large, bare room without electricity.
I open my canned dinner. It smells off. I shine my torchlight into the contents. Dried puke looks back at me and I toss it away. There is nothing for it but to wait for morning to come. We lie down to sleep on the concrete floor. The night is cold. A few of the hungrier, more foolish men have eaten the canned bilge and their cramps start in the early hours. Soldiers stagger around in the dark with the runs, belching loudly, groaning, squeezing off Gatling-gun farts. A scuffle breaks out after one man is drenched in a shower of vomit.
We are off to a rocky start.
The morning dawns crisp and clear. Not even the penitentiary surroundings can dull the beauty of the sunrise. I look through the wire as the horizon turns pink and a light breeze washes away the fetid smells of the night before. The vista would be even more alluring if I wasn’t so hungry, but there is nothing to eat. A few of us slip away and go foraging. We find an inn-cum-bar not far from the camp. We wolf down breakfast and amble back in silence.
The hours pass idly as the heat builds. Around midday a swirl of dust appears in the distance. Our convoy has arrived. A Jeep leads the lorries into the camp at breakneck speed. Corporals are screaming: ‘Hurry up, hurry the fuck up.’ They are greatly agitated. Why the sudden haste, given the desultory pace thus far? Some of the men who ate the bad food are moving very slowly. They can barely lift their kit and they are in no mood to be told what to do. They answer back in a fury stoked by their aching guts. The scene is chaotic. Amid the pandemonium a stentorian voice bellows out, ‘Shaddup! Shaddup! Every one of you cunts, shaddup!’
We are greeted by a scruffy, pasty-looking major who I’ll soon get to know much better. He gets out of his Jeep waving a clipboard and a sheaf of papers. He wastes little time in telling us of the hazards that lie ahead. His language is the vernacular of war – red zones, ambushes, ammo, terrs, clicks, victor yankees – a barely comprehensible lingo. Among his papers is a list of men’s names divvied up according to their postings. I am one of six personnel assigned to Oshakati. We are each given a measly sandwich and magazines of live ammunition.
Our convoy sets off. We sit dumbly in rows on either side of the lorry, the canvas flaps pulled down and tightly secured. Air cannot circulate. Some of our escort have their shirts off and torsos glisten in the sauna-like conditions. The man opposite me has dozed off. The vehicle lurches. His head snaps back and then forward. He cracks his nose on the barrel of his rifle and blood spurts. We are all too lethargic to move. Even the bleeder, awake now, looks listlessly at the bright red drops that splash onto the floor, where they quickly congeal, turning crimson and then a dullish brown.
We arrive at Oshakati in the late afternoon. The base shimmers under a blazing sun. Thousands of conscripts would rather be elsewhere. They have set up home in a dustbowl, sand as far as the eye can see, their lives coated with layers of sweat and axle grease. I drop off my kit and go take a shower. The dirt and grime peel away under the powerful jets of cold water and with it the lingering fragrance of some exotic perfume, a final reminder of a dark-haired Cypriot beauty.
Stepping out for some fresh air en route to Oshakati.
Hunger and fatigue, not libido, compete
