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The Wanderer: Part 6 of 73

The Wanderer by Callie Roos, motivational speaker and author.

Part 6 of 73

“I was a bit worried about this looming event. Conscription. When they came, the papers said I could go to the Air Force, to the Gymnasium. But that was only in July of the following year. I also wanted to go to university, which started in January. At that time I felt it might be a good thing to do my service first, sort of the right thing to do. It makes you mature for the life that follows.

A few weeks later I got the new documents calling me up to the Army in January. That was where my life began to change. … “In the beginning it was terrible. The train trip to Upington was a disaster, endless. Lunch was a blob of sloppy mashed potatoes in one of those plastic cups, with a chicken drumstick stuck into the top of it, the leg poking up. Two dry slices of bread balanced on top of the plastic coffee mug. The steam from the hot coffee made the bread soggy in the middle. “During the day it was hot, really hot.

I will never forget that first day on the new base in Upington. We had to carry all our beds, the large metal trunks called trommels and our knapsacks a long way; all the way from the store to the place where we were to set up our tents. I was walking in front and could feel my sweaty hands slowly slipping off the steel bed frame. It was at least a kilometre from the store to the place we had been allocated. Suddenly the bed clattered onto the red gravel behind me as the guy who was carrying with me, puked. All over the trommels and the knapsacks!

He was a thin fellow with glasses. ‘Luckily, it’s his own trommel’ shot through my mind. It only caught one corner of my trommel. We took a short rest so that he could regain some strength. The other guys passed us. When we carried on, the sour smell permeated the air. Now I was carrying behind. The sweat was pouring down my back. “There was little on the base to get excited about, very little. In effect, there were toilets, a kitchen, the odd office and other than that, only tents. I think it must have looked like the camps in the Anglo Boer war. We were the very first guys on the base. By nightfall our tent had been erected halfway. Only the roof was standing. In the middle of the night there was a cloudburst. Streams of water flowed under our beds and our cupboards. In no time, we were sopping, dripping, wringing wet and trying to stop our gear from floating away.

“Our Corporal was also difficult. He was different. He was a former South African amateur boxing champion. While the rest of the base was still snoring away, we were already leopard crawling around the munitions yard in the red sand. Before sunrise, we were already wet with perspiration. Our day had started a long time ago.

About the Author

Callie Roos is a motivational speaker, teambuilding and leadership training expert in South Africa.

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