SADF VIII

One of the funny things that happened in the army, and is probably common for most armies world wide, happens when the mail arrives!

During basics (first 3 months of training) we were not allowed any mail for the first 8 weeks. For some this was very difficult, as they needed some contact with the family / girlfriend to help them cope. And on top of that we had no access to phones for the first 4 weeks!

Anyway, this didn't phase me too much as I had been out of the house and living alone for 18 months already before I was conscripted, and I was never one for letters, and my girlfriend then, well, I didn't think any letters from her would help me cope. She was a girl for heavens sake! What would she know?

Once the mail was released there was more fun then ever. For the guys the worst thing to receive was a letter from a "typical" girlfriend. Pink envelopes, covered in kisses and lipsticked lips, and smelling like a ho from the south! Covered in perfume and or perfumed talc. This was suicidal for the guys. As soon as such a letter arrived, the corporal would make the guy do push ups, run around the parade ground, buy him cigarettes, whatever he wanted would be done!

And as for parcels, they were opened there and then, and the recepient would have to share his biltong, rusks, sweets immediately with the corporal.

I had been warned (but then so did most of the guys, but they didn't listen), so made sure that my girlfriend didn't do the pink envelope, kisses and perfume bit. Plain white envelopes, with the address written by her little brother, and my little brothers return address on the back.

This meant I got my mail with no pain, even though the corporal thought I didn't have a girlfriend, and found it strange that my little brother wrote so often..... DOOS!

Once we got to the border, it was more of the same. Just there, not all the guys paid a penalty for their mail. There were some guys that the corporals knew better than to mess with, so they just dished it out. The "softer" ones however, still had to do something for their mail.

The big thing there was to get a parcel. One guy knew his mom was sending him regular parcels, but they never contained any biltong. And that's the one thing his mom was sure to send. The problem was that parcels were opened and inspected before issues. Don't know why, maybe looking for dagga. So he set it up that his mom would lace the next batch of biltong with some of the hottest peri-peri known to man at the time.

When the next parcel arrived, the "postman" said he didn't know who had taken the biltong, as he said each time. Only this time, by about 7pm that night he was in serious pain, in the medics tent, looking for some relief from the flames coming out of his mouth, and his backside at the same time!!

There was much laughter and teasing after that, and the biltong never dissappeared again.
For some, getting mail was great, for others very depressing, as per the "Dear Johnnys" I refered to in a previous post.

Salagatle!