Where there's a will, there's a way

Some silly stuff

Some silly stuff

Before wrapping this up, in one of my drunken states, I’d had a tattoo done while on leave and this really embarrassed me. In my day, only sailors or inmates had tattoos, and I desperately wanted the f**king thing gone. I asked the army doctor, but was met with a resounding no, so I had no choice other than to turn to a medic mate of mine. “Are you out of your f**king mind?”

“Of course not, I just want you to cut the f**king thing out.’

Oh, f**king really, how’re we gonna do that?

Anyway, a bottle of Southern Comfort and a bottle of Tequila got me all loose, and he did the best he could before I passed out. When I eventually woke up, it literally felt as if something had tried to chew by arm off and to add to my new woes, I was hospitalized with ethanol intoxication (alcohol poisoning ) for nine days.

My mate had cut squarish chunks out of my skin, so my arm looked like a chess board made up of blood and gunk. To fix it, they had to carve my skin out in a semi-circle, and then when it was healed enough, they cut out another semi-circle, stretched them together and stitched them up. During the healing process, my staff sergeant, bless him, made me go on patrol and half the stiches burst open, leaving me with a six-inch scar that looks remarkably like a squashed centipede.

You might also like to know that our company mascot (a monkey) r***d or tried to r**e a chicken, which was pretty funny at the time, and or that some filthy bottom-feeding scum-sucker stole my dirty underpants while I was taking a shower.

I’ve tried to keep this as light as possible, but whichever way you look at it, these weren’t good times. It was a lot more complicated, there was a whole lot more going down, it was scary, it was unpleasant, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

The conflict between us, SWAPO, MPLA, FAPLA and the Cubans in Angola, is now long over. The soldiers on both sides fought for a system they believed in, but those days are in the past now. Military service was a harsh f**king wake-up call and probably the best thing that ever happened to me.