24) Army Commitment

It was while we were living at 10 – 66th Ave, Haig Park that Jonny was first called to do some territorial training with the army. At first it was only weekend camps, to brush up on their weapons skills and to get a little fit, but the commitment was soon increased to two week camp every year. At that time, about 1970, all European men under the age of 38 were liable for army call up and as Jonny would have been 33 then we expected that it would go on for another 5 years, but as he got closer to the cut off age, so the cut of age increased. When the reserve force was eventually stood down in 1980 Jonny was 43 and still getting called up, but by then some men were doing about six weeks call up at the time. It depended on which unit one was in of course but some were doing six weeks in and six weeks out. The terrorist war got increasingly worse and so the territorial soldiers were called upon more and more to do active service in the bush.

Jonny remembers one time when he and his company the 8th Battalion, were sent in to relieve the SAS. They were the first territorial unit to ever do this. At the end of their journey they were all sitting around having a beer and relaxing. The young men from the SAS, who were on their way back to town after a spell in the bush, saw them and one of the regular soldiers was heard to say to his mate, “These fat old guys have come to take over from us. Can you believe it?” They were much younger than the reservists, they were regular soldiers and had just finished a call up in the bush so were at the peak of their fitness.

One time Jonny was in the signals corp. and he and some other soldiers where dropped by helicopter onto the top of mountain in the Zambesi Valley to set up a relay radio station, between the men in the valley and headquarters in the hills above. It was very isolated; the only way to the top was by helicopter.

It was not all bad though, he made a lot of good friends in the army and had a lot of laughs but it did eventually become a strain on everyone’s lives. On one fortnight camp the cook was called away and Jonny was put in charge of the kitchen. He managed the job very successfully. He was fortunate that one of the first aid officers was a qualified butcher and he advised Jonny on the cuts of meat and the quantities to cook. I usually cook too much, but some times too little. I don’t know how I would have managed with a big group like that. He must have done well though as he was often put in charge of the kitchen after that.

Jonny was always called JC by all his army friends and the joke went around that “JC” was really the colonel in disguise and the colonel was just a stand in decoy to stop the enemy getting to “JC”. Of course the colonel eventually heard about the joke and joined in. He saluted Jonny, called him colonel and Jonny returned the salute and told him to “Carry On Corporal”

The army was given the use a piece of land at Darwendale (located about 62 km east of Harare) to build a training camp and the unit set about getting it the way they wanted it. The disused barns were turned into accommodation and they built showers and ablution blocks. They erected obstacle courses and everything needed for a training camp. The men were given permission to build a bar and recreation room at the Darwendale camp and then much collecting and scrounging of materials of all kind started. Once when Jonny was away on call up one of his army friends arrived at our house in an army truck with some scrap steel pipes. He said that he had found them at one of the other camps and that they would be just the things for some job at Darwendale and so he unloaded them for Jonny at our house. When Jonny got back a few days latter he was telling me that he had been to one of the other camps and he was upset that some scrap pipes that he had tucked away with the idea of using them at Darwendale had just vanished. That reminded me of the visit from his friend and so we went and looked at the pipes that had been left for him. He recognised them straight away, they were the pipes that he had hidden to use for Darwendale but some “thief” had pinched them.

Once he went out to Darwendale to collect something from the storeroom there but when he got there he realised that he did not have a key to the padlock. Rather than go all the way back to town empty handed he broke the padlock and replace it with another one. When he got back to barracks his commanding officer was very cross that he had gone out without the keys and wasted all that time. Jonny told him that he had “picked the lock”. The officer was slightly mollified but wanted to know, “What did you use to pick the lock?” Jonny said “A four pound hammer sir”.

The army made Jonny the camp commandant of Darwendale, it was his job to go out and see that all was in order before a unit went to use the camp. Making sure that the showers and toilets were all clean and working and that the place was in a good state of repair. He had become friendly with one of his fellow soldiers, a man called Buster Rutter, whose family actually owned the farm that the camp was now standing on. It had been a very successful tobacco farm, in fact it was a prize winning farm but a great deal of the land had been flooded when a new dam had been built and the smaller acreage was no longer a viable farm. The old farmhouse was still there and Buster told Jonny to use the house instead of the camp when he went there. One weekend he got permission to take the boys and I out there for a treat. The Rutter family still kept a few servants on the property to keep an eye on things there. When we arrived we were greeted by what we thought was the oldest looking African we had ever seen. He was the house servant and he told us he could cook and do our washing for us, anything we wanted he would do. We chatted about his life there, how long he had been with the family and that sort of thing. I asked him if it was his job to do the garden too, he said “no, that is my father’s job”. We could not believe him but he was right, a little later another even older African came and introduced himself to us. As you can imagine they both worked very slowly but they managed to keep the place clean and tidy.

The boys went fishing on that weekend and once when Jonathan was called inside for lunch he left his fishing rod at the back door. He had not cleaned the worm off the hook and one of the chickens that were around the place thought that the worm was meant for him and took a bite of it. Poor chicken, he got caught on the hook. Whenever anyone asked Jonathan if he had caught anything he answered “Just one chicken”. There were also horses on the property and one of them used to come to the dinning room window, put his head in expecting to be fed. It reminded me of a painting that I liked as a child called “One of the Family”
I have just looked it up on the Internet and find that it was painted by Frederick Cotman 1850 –1920. (Isn’t the Internet wonderful?)

Another weekend that we were there an army unit was at the camp and they were practising mortar drill. We all went down to watch them one afternoon. One group had not secured their mortar correctly so when they fired the practice mortar bomb it went off course. It shot up into the air and turned towards where we were standing. Jonathan Dominic and I quickly dodged behind Jonny, pushing him slightly forward. He wanted to know why we had gone behind him, did we think that Dad was mortar bomb proof. We just knew he could protect us from anything that came our way. Fortunately he did not have to prove his super qualities as the practice round landed quite a long way from us.

It was in the army that Jonny met Mike Harris. He had a very successful used car business in Salisbury (now Harare) and was eventually to offer Jonny a job as a salesman with the company. It was work that Jonny really enjoyed and he did very well at. But that was quite a bit later. We still have contact with Mike, he and his wife Pattie are now living in Durban.