Chapter 1: The South African Bush War
My Father
The photo above of the military helicopter dusting off reminds me of the 1970s musical band Hawkwind. Strange Music in line with our family life to be changed forever.
The loading of rifles had already begun by then in the 1966–1989 Bush War.
As an 11-year-old boy, we were living in the sleepy city of East London in 1978. I was in that year when I saw a large newspaper photo of what the South African government referred to as a terrorist. Those on the other side called him a freedom fighter. I am white, and since the close-up person in the photo was holding a rifle and running in my direction, I wished him dead.
My father, Major Dr Allan Wilson, got absorbed into the military through a colleague in his private medical practice who was involved with the army. He joined the military with the rank of Major, a lowly commissioned officer rank for a medical doctor. Still, after all, my father had no official combat training, not even the basics course. I was proud of my Dad joining the military as he was the type of person that wanted to help his fellow men.
In 1979, my father mysteriously disappeared from our pleasant East London home for extended periods, travelling on military business all over the country. He worked closely with the Surgeon General of the medical services. He had a job to do: to coordinate and enhance the medical services to the troops.
We once assembled with him in Port Elizabeth Airport, and he was wearing his officer’s uniform, making me mighty proud to be his son.
I never understood what was going on in South Africa, except to know that black people lived in places separate from the whites and that there was war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Mozambique.
My mother had become a soldier’s wife.
In 1979, my father had already seen the pro-life, anti-war Vietnam War movie The Deer Hunter, and we went to see it together, again. Starring Robert De Niro, it is about a group of steelworker friends from Pittsburgh, the USA who drafted into the Vietnam War. Before they go over to the NAM, they go deer hunting together and kill a deer. In Vietnam, subjected to extremely traumatic experiences, one of the friends psychologically cracks up and loses his mind, committing suicide with a revolver while playing Russian Roulette. De Niro’s character goes deer hunting again, alone this time, intentionally misses his target, realising that killing is immoral and ungodly. My father pointed out this lesson of the movie to me, and I will never forget it, preferably to love nature and life than to maim and kill.
My father often played the song “I don’t believe in If any more” by Roger Whittaker shortly before going to the Border War combat zone. Here is the song:
My dad suddenly was ordered to fly up to The Border in South West Africa (Namibia) at short notice in March 1980. His task was primarily to fix up wounded soldiers as a medical doctor. He must have felt out of place and an outsider there because the vast majority of officers were Afrikaners.
He told me one-on-one in a depressed state how a commanding officer next to him instructed a rifleman to shoot dead a black SWAPO terrorist in a tree. The Commandant’s exact words were, and I recall it clearly after all these years: “Sien jy die kaffir in die boom, skiet hom (see that kaffir in the tree, shoot him”).
My father had flown on a reconnaissance mission over enemy territory. He witnessed the coffins of three of his officer friends outside his sleeping quarters after terrorists killed them in a crash-and-burn. Blood and gore was nothing new to my father, as he had dissected cadavers as a student and performed many surgical operations on patients.
But the effect of seeing those coffins affected him profoundly.
The reason for cracking up psychologically and committing suicide, less than one month after returning from the South African Border War (the Bush War) in South West Africa (now Namibia), we shall never know.
I suspect that my father’s reconnaissance flight was in planning for a massive assault.
Just over two months after my dad’s return from The Border, and just over a month after his suicide. Operation Sceptic began when the 54 Battalion of the old SADF rumbled into Angola…
Authors Note: A long-standing friend and work companion told me this true story of his Dad’s involvement with the military and his suicide. The effect of it all on the Wilson family is described in horrific detail and verbalised in future stories.
Author: Mattheus Frederik
