Читать книгу A Just Defiance - Peter Harris - Страница 28

Neo Potsane had never been so cold in his life. Thick snow covered the military camp at Teterow, some fifty kilometres from the German Democratic Republic’s Baltic Sea port of Rostock. The clothing the East Germans had given him was good but provided little barrier against a winter that the instructors described as the coldest in years.

About forty MK soldiers had arrived at Teterow in January 1981 for specialist training in guerrilla warfare and tactics. At first, Neo had been excited, honoured at being among a select few chosen for special training. The flight from Luanda to East Berlin was an adventure, a hell of a long time in an aeroplane, but worth it to get to Europe, to the Eastern bloc, places he had only read about.

After a few months in Teterow, Neo felt less inspired, mainly because he and the others were stuck out on an isolated farm miles from anywhere. There was no relief. They were under orders not to leave the camp.

For all that, the training was absorbing, if demanding. Physical, but also intellectually stimulating. Classes on the theory of guerrilla warfare, and lectures on South African history and politics by Pallo Jordan. Neo enjoyed Jordan’s quiet presentations, the thought-provoking debates he initiated.

Throughout their training an MK representative was present, a veteran of Teterow who spoke fluent German and would act as their liaison officer whenever difficulties arose. Not that there were many. The food was good and plentiful – five meals a day including tea and cake. Lots of mashed potato, although Neo longed for pap.

What irked Neo, however, were the drinking sessions. Drink, for him, was a relaxation. The instructors turned it into a chore. Made them measure their intake so that they never lost control. Drinking was part of their training. They’d drink only on weekends: vodka, beer and a local brandy, brown vicious stuff that made you ill-tempered and depressed the next morning.

The instructors drank with them. Occasionally, when the recruits were relaxed, slightly intoxicated, they would call an emergency. This meant changing into full combat uniform, pack and helmet, standing there, swaying, the liquor fogging their brains. The instructors would time them. Chastise them for being slow. Neo hated this. Drinking was a social occasion. Something to be enjoyed, not a task to be monitored.

Nevertheless, after hours in the warm house were generally relaxing. Their instructors were billeted with them, friendly men, always helpful and courteous. In the long evenings, the recruits shared stories with these men as they sat around watching television.

Exhausted by the cold and the day’s training, Neo would collapse in front of the TV, not minding that it was in German, even thankful for the foreign language, letting it flow over him. Of general interest was the coverage of the Winter Olympics with the men marvelling at the speed of the downhill racers and gasping in horror at the accidents. Neo was amazed that anyone could survive such spectacular falls.

Although he was absorbed by the training, and, despite the cold, enjoyed his time on the shooting range, Neo often found himself thinking of home. This place was so completely different to his house in Dube, Soweto, where he shared a room with his four brothers. For one thing the Dube house could have fitted into the living room of this grand house. Often he wondered about his mother, a domestic worker in the white suburbs of Johannesburg. Wondered what she would think of this huge house sunk in the snow, filled with men training for war. Each of them with their cleaning duties. There were no servants here.

When the cold ached in his feet, he remembered the heat and humidity of Angola, the thick green bush alive with snakes, insects and animals. Here the land was dead: no movement, no life, no leaves, just snow and ice. The cold throbbed in his wounds, an ache deep inside him that stiffened his leg and ankle, made them tender to the touch.

He’d been wounded in a firefight while travelling in the back of a big Mercedes truck from the military camp to Luanda. It’d happened in late 1979. He’d been selected for specialist training in East Germany. Only that time he didn’t make it. Nearly didn’t make it full stop.

There were a bunch of them in the back of the truck. Not talking much, tired from their training. Without warning, they drove into an ambush. Intense gunfire from all sides, bullets ricocheting off the truck. A Unita ambush. Blindly, they returned fire. The truck came to a halt and then backed into the bush. Neo and his comrades jumped out and hit the ground running. A short distance off they dropped to the ground. Neo felt a numbness in his left hand and saw it was covered in blood. As was his arm. He’d been shot above the elbow, the flesh around the entry wound a pulp of blood.

He bit back the pain. About him Neo could hear his wounded comrades moaning. Their cries for help carrying through the gunfire. He could see a man twenty metres away, his chest gushing blood. As the gunfire became more sporadic, Neo decided he had to help this man. Get him into the hollow out of the crossfire. Don’t risk it, the others told him. Wait. Unita never stayed long in a contact. Neo shook his head.

He remembered going to church with his parents, singing in the choir. He recalled the vlei where he’d played near his home. He wondered if he would die in this foreign jungle. He shouted at the man that he was coming. As he rushed into the open, the injured man, fear and panic in his eyes, swung his AK-47 on Neo, a bullet smashing into Neo’s left leg above the knee, another hitting him in the right ankle. He fell. Thought that he was going to die in Angola.

Neo lay still, the firing from the injured man had drawn fire from Unita. His face pressed into the ground, Neo heard the zip of the bullets, prayed that he would not be hit again, that the contact would end before his life had bled into the soil. He knew that a full hit from an AK-47, in most areas of the body, would result in the victim dying of shock. Lying there, he couldn’t believe that he’d been shot by both the enemy and one of his own comrades. If that guy survived, he thought, he was going to wish he hadn’t.

Two years later in Teterow, Neo hated the cold and the memories it brought and sought refuge in the well-stocked library. The books were mostly political although there were novels from the Soviet Union translated from the Russian, but they were long and boring, lacking life and colour. He read them anyway to pass the weekends. You could only watch so much East German television.

When spring came the vibrancy of the countryside bursting into leaf, the sound of birds and insects, enthralled him. It was a magical transformation. In a few short months life had returned.

In June 1981, Neo was taken to East Berlin for vaccinations and a medical check-up. It was a welcome break from the training camp. Although this was his first outing in civvy street since arriving in East Germany, he was under strict instructions not to speak to anyone. As it happened there was little chance of contact with civilians as he was driven straight to the hospital and escorted to the doctor’s rooms. On the way he stared at the people in the streets. As much an outsider here as he was in the white cities of his homeland.

After the check-up, Neo waited in an anteroom for the medical report. A middle-aged man and a young woman entered and the man took a seat next to Neo. Neo kept his face blank, looked straight ahead.

The man turned to him, said in English, ‘How are you?’

Taken by surprise, responding to the English, Neo answered, ‘I’m fine.’ Then remembering his instructions, he kept his eyes averted.

‘Where are you from?’ the man asked. The woman was leaning forward, looking at Neo, hair golden and soft, falling gently over her face.

‘Kenya,’ said Neo.

‘Oh, really,’ said the man. ‘I have just spent six months there. What part are you from?’

Neo had never been to Kenya. Knew only that the capital was Nairobi. ‘Nairobi,’ he replied.

‘Lovely city, which part?’ the man probed, sensing something.

‘The eastern part,’ Neo stammered. He noticed the man shoot a glance at the woman. ‘What is your favourite club?’

Neo was stuck. ‘Jazz,’ he mumbled, looking down at the floor.

The man and woman turned away, irritated at his lies.

And suddenly he was angry that he had to play this game, that he couldn’t be himself.

His medical report arrived and he left the room, nodding at the man and the young woman. He was tired of this place. Tired of not being able to speak to people.

When he’d arrived, he’d been told not to drink the water. Not a problem, he’d thought. He enjoyed fizzy drinks. But the drinks like Coke and Fanta carried other names and tasted different. Now, six months later, he longed for the taste of pure water. Tried to remember its crystal sweet taste. It was time to go home.