For Clemmens Mbeki life only offered a primitive and poor existence, but his days as a cattle herdsman was long passed now. It was at the high school where he was approached by his comrades, for he had proved to have promising leadership abilities, a quick mind, but most of all the determination to better himself and fight the odds what ever they were.
Fighting he did first against himself and now at last he was prepared to die, opposing the unjust system. The promise of a scholarship to further his education after matriculation, enticed him to join "Umkonto we sizwe."
At "Patrice Lebombo" university in the U.S.S.R. he wasn't granted the opportunity to become the medical Doctor he had envisaged to be, but instead the Soviets were turning him into a highly trained soldier.
He seemed to have a natural ability, with a variety of weapons. In the end though it was his will to be successful and superb fitness of body and mind, that saw him through the tough special forces training courses of the red army.
The other recruits over the passage of time started to trust in his leadership ability and respected him, for his toughness and sound judgment.
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Crossing the border from Botswana was done on foot without much difficulty, but the rough terrain started to take its toll on the group of insurgents and on their performance. The only available water was brackish, having the effect that the more a person drank, the more thirsty that person became. The excessive heat over 35 degrees centigrade worsened the situation, but the men were in high spirits.
The sudden appearance of three Allouette helicopter gunships shocked the group back to reality, but the choppers had already spotted them and were raking the bush with heavy machine gun fire. In a state of shock and fear one of the infiltrators launched a RPG 7V rocket at a passing chopper, but it was a fatal error. The infiltrator was in too much of a hurry and the rocket completely missed its target, betraying their exact position.
The nearing thundering whine of engines of both Ratel and Buffel infantry fighting vehicles and armoured cars confirmed Clemens’s suspicion that they where in the middle of a carefully sprang trap. Clemens did not agree with the decision of his commander to face the attacking semi conventional forces, as he had seen the effectiveness of the opposing soldiers and their weaponry numerous times in video briefings in Russia.
While the commander deployed his men, Clemmens slipped away unnoticed, carrying a RPG 7V rocket launcher, rockets, ammunition and his AK 47 submachine gun and some hand grenades. His training stood him in good stead, with him camouflaging himself further with grass from the vegetation around him and leaving behind the absolute minimum of tracts. He moved from thorn bush to thorn bush, as fast as he could proceed under circumstances.
Finally he crashed into exactly what he was looking for, quite by coincidence, a bush hog hole, which had been abandoned by the animal and to his luck had been overgrown by a big thorny bush. The hole was larger than normal and he managed to crawl into it, but with some scratches from the bush covering the hole. In the distance Clemmens could hear the thunder of ninety millimetre cannon of the fighting vehicles, heavy machine gun fire and the occasional exploding rocket and mortar.
All hell broke loose after the Mechanized infantry forces had driven the infiltrators, onto the path of destruction of the helicopter gun ships. Clemmens’s heart started pounding wildly at the sound of a approaching "Caspir" troop carrier and his first inclination was to run for his life, for surely the trackers had lead the vehicle to his position.
Never the less his snap logic paralysed him where he laid, as the vehicle draw to a halt next to the bush. A thin stream of salt water splashed against his face, when a soldier started to urinate from the top of the vehicle into the bush.
“Its hot. I wish it would rain," he heard another soldier saying. "Yes, I can't stand the humidity" somebody else replied. Clemmens could smell the aroma of a tin of bully beef being heated up and the hunger pangs started to awake in Clemmens’s stomach, but still Clemmens laid totally motionless and when the vehicle roared away he could breathe with ease again.
Clemmens then and there decided to return to the farmstead where he had grown up, but still to keep to his secret mission. For days patrols criss-crossed the entire border area, not only combing the huge Kalahari desert region and other regions for tracks, but for traces of arms catches.
The military forces where so confident that they had succeeded completely, that nobody
searched Clemmens or any of his newly purchase bags, when he boarded the second class carriage of the Johannesburg bound train.
Clemmens was nearing the farmstead walking pass familiar trees and rocks out of the days of his childhood, when he saw the small tinkling stream where he and Robert used to fish. A lean black woman was washing herself, in the stream and unnoticed he walked closer. Paulinki's huge breasts shone with wetness and her young attractive body, looked like that of a goddess to Clemmens.
He stepped on a stick and it broke cracking under his foot, drawing the woman's attention to him. She shrieked and covered her breasts, with both her hands. "Clemmens you mustn't frighten me like this," she said trying hard to hide her initial shock and excitement of the joy of seeing him again, after such a long time.
Clemmens knew that he was in love and when she jokingly splashed water in his direction, he stripped his clothes of his body in a hurry and was in the water with her. At first he was teasing her, but it didn't take long before their game turned to a more serious note.
(1021 Words)
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