The Beret Must Have Been A Dead Give Away Poem by Gert Strydom

To this day I know that
the beret must have been
a dead give away,
and the shoulder flashes
also proclaimed something
of the military unit that I belonged to.

Tired and almost asleep on my feet
after the long military flight
out of the war zone,
the soft rain smelled
fresh and it was cold
where I hiked
the last stint home.

Fourteen days leave
came as a real blessing
and just being away
and back in the states
was really great

A Brand new blue BMW
stopped next to me
and the occupants were
very friendly
and it was warm inside the car.

It looked like a mom and dad
and beautiful eighteen-year old daughter,
but they were foreigners
and introduced themselves as American.

The girl really liked me
and their accents were all American,
but something was just not right
and I couldn’t put my finger on it
and just maybe they were just a little too much
into being Americans.

The man remarked that he find it curious
for a officer to be hiking
and I thought that NATO probably
had similar ranks
and I explained that my
camp was away in the war zone
and that there was no way
to take my motorbike
all the way there.

The woman was driving
and the man frowned
at the bars and badges
on the chest of my bush jacket,
as if the combination of them
did not make sense to him.

It’s another thing to be seconded
to different units
and to complete some
of their training
and I realised that for Americans,
they probably knew
a little to much about our army
and were most probably
intelligence for the enemy.

The girl treated me like a hero
and wanted to know
about my unit
and somewhere questions
about unit strengths
and targetable distances
crept into the conversation,
but I steered the conversation
in to another direction.

The man wanted to know
if we were really going to win the war
when the enemy use heavy armour
and I said that we would win
against any thing that they bring
and it would be better for everyone
if the Cubans just packed up
and went back home
and the man laughed at me doubtfully.

Maybe there was something prophetic
in those words
as was proved at the Cuito Cuanavale battle
and I told them how
my ancestors in a twenty thousand strong
Boer farmer citizen force army,
had subdued a British army of
four hundred and fifty thousand
for three years long.

Little did they know
that my words said much more
and that Ratel-90 crews
used the same tactics
of fast movement
and accurate shooting
and great bravery
in dealing with enemy tanks.

There’s something very brave
to stop dead still
with a Ratel armoured car
to stabilize the gun
to be able to get the shot off
while a enemy tank
that can shoot while it moves
is charging towards you,
but that piece of information
never came out.

[References: The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale “The results of the campaign up to April 1988 were 4,785 killed on the Cuban/Faplan side, with 94 tanks and hundreds of combat vehicles destroyed, against 31 South Africans killed in action,3 tanks destroyed (SADF tanks entered the war after the Lomba River campaign) and 11 SADF armoured cars and troop carriers lost. A total of 9 Migs were destroyed and only 1 SAAF Mirage shot down.” Jannie Geldenhuys.1994: At the front: 240 Johanathan Ball Publishers. The states= Back home in South Africa. NATO North Atlantic treaty organization.]