Gunship Over Angola

‘Joubert,’ he said scornfully, ‘please stop doing that. You will need all of your already limited faculties when you start Pupe’s Course at Central Flying School Dunnottar in two months!’

And with that he turned around and went back into the room.

I stood in shocked silence for quite a while. Surely I had misheard him, or, almost certainly, I reasoned, he’d got me mixed up with someone else?

So, I resolved to tell no one until the official notification came, which was expected in a couple of weeks. Those two weeks passed agonisingly slowly as I whiled away the time playing for Strike Command in the Air Force cricket championships. The seven-wicket win that we achieved two weeks later was the first time that Strike Command had ever won the Air Force Championships.

At the prizegiving function that evening I was informed that the SAMS headshrinker who’d spoken to me outside the Selection Board two weeks earlier had been absolutely correct and that I had, amazingly, been selected for SAAF Pupil Pilot’s Course 1 of 1977 (1/77). The next few weeks passed in a blur of farewell parties, good-luck parties, any-excuse-for-a-party parties and partying hard between parties.

*

The next phase of my Air Force career commenced with a day or two spent at the SAAF Gymnasium signing indemnity forms, contracts and insurance policies. There was a lot of small print, and no lawyers or parents were permitted to be on hand to offer advice to prevent exploitation. This was the price to be paid for the opportunity of being trained as a pilot in the world’s second-oldest air force.

Sixty-six candidate officers reported for duty at the Central Flying School (CFS) Dunnottar, or Harvard University as it was (and still is) widely known in aviation circles. The base is located approximately five kilometres southeast of Springs. CFS was the final operational home of the North American Aviation Texan AT-6 trainer, also known as the Harvard. In southern Africa the Harvard was often nicknamed the Spamcan or Spammy, as it was said to resemble a tin of Spam.

The Harvard had been widely used as a training aircraft since the late 1930s. Although then in the twilight of its operational use, it was effective in sharpening the reflexes of fledgling pilots and demanded accurate and concise decision-making at all times. The CFS Harvards were painted silver with dayglow-orange noses, wings and tails. Few people who ever flew this lady were neutral about her. You either loved the Harvard or you hated her.

Fortunately, I fell into the former category.

Within just a few hours of our arrival at CFS, the first of many memorable events took place involving a chap who would, we had been warned by previous pupes (pupil pilots), be the bane of our lives for the duration of our time at the school: Sergeant ‘Wollies’ Wolmarans, the RSM’s choice of dissip (disciplinarian) for the pupes. Now, Wollies was not a man of great physical stature but, like dissips through the ages, he had a voice that could turn any cocky pupe into a gibbering wreck should he attract Wollies’ ire.

Our first encounter with Sergeant Wolmarans, unfortunately for him, set the tone for the next seven months. On the first morning at CFS, the 66 brand-new pupes were lounging around in the road outside the Quartermaster’s store, drawing bedding one at a time. Some were smoking and others were playing with a ball when we heard the noise of an over-revving motorcycle engine and what sounded like a donkey being tortured with a red-hot poker.

Looking down the road we saw a helmetless, fuming, moustachioed apparition, mounted on his mechanical beast, hurtling towards us, foaming at the mouth and shouting loudly. The trumpeting vision of doom turned out to be Wollies on his 250 cc Honda Benly motorcycle.

It was the most laid-back character in the group who first observed, ‘Who’s the doos (plonker) on the bike?’

Wollies was travelling at a good 80 kilometres per hour when he slammed on the brakes right in front of us and tried to whip the back wheel around, as a teenager riding a bicycle on a dirt road would do. I may be wrong, but Wollies was clearly new to the art of riding a motorcycle. Had he been a little more experienced, he would have realised that there was only one possible result of his ‘broad-sliding’ action.

The Benly high-sided him over the handlebars and he performed a so-so somersault (four and a half out of ten, give-or-take, at any gymnastics competition) before landing in an undignified heap in the knee-high khaki bush at the edge of the road. To a man, the pupes stood and roared their approval at Wollies’ spectacular gymnastic display.

Wollies never was able to intimidate our group after that.