June, 1977 - Bethlehem

In the Summer of '76, I like many thousands of my fellow South African young men, got my marching papers. Literary. I was called up for military training to commence in July '77, and I was allocated to 2nd Field Engineering Regiment, which was based in the town of Bethlehem in the then Orange Free State.
The call up was no surprise, as we knew it would come, as soon as you finished school, and all we could hope for was being sent to a reasonable place, and hopefully, with someone you knew. I got neither of these. Bethlehem is the second coldest place in South Africa in winter! And no one else I knew was going there.

I arrived on the Troop Train, with hundreds of other who had boarded with me at Johannesburg's then Rand Show Grounds. My hair hung below my shoulders, I had attitude, and an iron in my bag. I still was not shaving. Dammit, I was barely 17!!!

Disembarked at the station, they made us line up in three rows, and run to the camp. it was 4 am, and probably -5deg C! Are these guys completely fucking mental?
At camp we arranged ourselves on the parade ground, some idiot (The RSM) told us how useless we were, how he would break us down and rebuild us, how he was now our mother, father and girlfriend, (I wasn't too sure he would fit that bill, but anyway...) and how he would turn us into real men.
Then we went for haircuts, and everyone came out of that room a changed person. They took it all off!! Every last hair. It was amazing to see the conversion of some of the guys from long haired real mean looking types, to bald headed, meek and mild lamb!

So commenced my stint with the SADF, it would continue for a full 24 months, uninterrupted, and thereafter for 3 month camps annually. The annual camps were to go on for about 10 years, but I managed to get mine terminated after 5, but that's another story!

What I did do, when I was demobbed in July '79, was swear that I would never go back to Bethlehem again. And I haven't! I've even driven 100 - 200 km detours in the past, just so as not to go to that town..
Tomorrow we go to Clarense. Tomorrow I go through Bethlehem!!!

Salagatle!