LET ME GO!

Early in 1920 a bonny boy, Pierre, was born into the le Roux family in the up-market section of  Rondebosch in Cape Town. His father was a Professor of Mathematics at the University and his mother, an avid reader and academic herself, had recently embarked on a career as a fiction author with much promise. Genetically, it could be predicted with some degree of confidence that Pierre was likely to excel should he pursue a career in the hallowed halls of academia.

Growing up in a neighbourhood that was home to some of the finest schools in South Africa, it didn’t take him long to make his mark as a student with an eclectic range of interests that included reading, the playing of sport and a keen fascination with mechanics and electronics. It seemed increasingly likely that he would pursue a career in the field of mechanical engineering, as his mathematics and physical science results placed him in the top percentile of his academic peers. By the time he attained his school leaving qualification, Pierre was capped as the Dux (Academic Leader) of his school. His formidable intellect ensured he was a “shoo-in” for registration in the competitive Engineering Faculty – his own efforts guaranteeing his acceptance and not his familial links to the institutions of higher learning. 

In 1938 he immersed himself in his studies and began to read prolifically in his field as well as tinker with innovative gadgets that his agile mind could conceive of creating. Having been “let loose” in his high school career to engage in activities that captured his interest, it was no less so at university where his mentors “let him go” with alacrity to innovate and apply learnt knowledge in equal measure  and produce useful outcomes that would inevitably someday be honed and fashioned for the benefit of society. Pierre was not materialistic and his focus was on expanding a body of knowledge and instruments that would widely benefit his country and mankind at large.

Life, though, has a way of disrupting the best laid plans of humanity. A hiatus in Pierre’s academic pursuits was foisted on his generation by world events. The gathering storm clouds in the political climate of Europe were about to burst and the fallout would be so immense that much of the world would become engulfed in the resultant conflict, one way or another. On the 3rd September 1939 Britain and France joined forces to call a halt to Hitler’s Nazi German invasion of Poland. On the 6th, the South African Parliament voted to reject neutrality and join the War on the side of the British Commonwealth. These political machinations in Europe gave ordinary folk in many regions of the world pause to reflect on their own positions vis a vis the ideologies engaged in conflicts erupting in many quarters of the globe. In South Africa there would be no conscription, but young men were certainly confronted with the dilemma of putting their careers on hold and joining in the battle for democratic values and freedom, or sitting this out, or even supporting those who were sympathetic to the autocratic Nazi regime in Germany. Heady times. Profound choices.

Barely nineteen years old, Pierre engaged in an internal dialogue about the “right choice” and a more intense debate with his parents on the decisions facing him. His parents, understandably, were not wildly enthusiastic about him trotting off to fight in some “foreign” war, despite their own conviction that South Africa’s choice to reject neutrality was the right one. In the end, Pierre once again had to be “let go” to follow his convictions and affirm his inclination to “do his bit” for the wellbeing of mankind – this time as an enlisted soldier prepared to join the battle outside South Africa’s borders. For him, there could have been a multitude of good reasons to preferably make a contribution in the field of academia, but peer pressure and the recruitment drives of the Smuts government tipped the scales for him. He would join the hundreds of other young men making their way north to the deserts of Africa where they would ultimately come face to face with the tank brigades of Field Marshal Rommel, the wily old Desert Fox.

As generations of soldiers find out for themselves, once conscripted or enlisted as volunteers, when one alights from the troop train taking recruits to the training camps dotted all over the country, ONE KNOWS ONE IS IN THE ARMY. The barking of orders begins on the platform of the station, persists all the way into the Bedford trucks and continues throughout the process of issuing kit and assigning bunks in the bungalows. Crude military terms for the bags in which uniforms are squashed (Ball Bags) and the ubiquitous bellowing of four letter expletives (including the ones beginning with “F”) become part of the everyday nomenclature of “army-speak”. Barked orders to fall in line in platoons rapidly turn recruits into fledgling soldiers. On the “holy” Parade Ground the Sergeant Major is King. Young officers think better of trifling with him despite the technical disparity between Commissioned Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers amongst whom Regimental Sergeants Major are theoretically part. The handlebar moustache that is for good reason associated with the Sergeant Major, the usually rotund frame that most of them galumph around the parade ground with, and the quintessential raspy vocal cords leave no doubt about who is in charge. At the base, during the initial phase of training, no walking is permitted. Running to and fro is the order of things. Saluting. Push-ups for perceived infringements – major or minor - and pole PT as well as the dreaded obstacle course are normal fare. Smoke breaks were declared for the smokers amongst the troops and Pierre took up the vice for no particular reason other than to fit in with his buddies. The shooting range, buddy PT (carrying a chum who is unequally yoked by weight differentiation), making up of beds with bedding ironed “square” and kit polished and laid out immaculately for inspection, are all standard procedure. By the end of lectures, training and endless full kit running (steel helmet, webbing and rifle) in heavy leather boots – many hours of “fire and movement” and other activities too numerous to name, a long route march over rough terrain, all weather conditions, little water and many night slogs – after all of this the recruits are somewhat ready for deployment. Officer and NCO (Junior Leadership) training would likely have taken place on the trot and with the experience of the actual battlefield given the rapid rate at which the enemy would have had to be engaged. Nevertheless, it was with simple basic training that Pierre was shunted off to North Africa with the rest of his new military buddies.

North Africa was an unanticipated shock to most of these youngsters. Doing nothing and “hurry up and wait” was the name of the game while the Axis and Allied forces started to get themselves into position to actually engage the enemy. The dust and flies became a perennial irritation during both the idle period and when combat began and then rolled out across the deserts. Most incessant according to all combatants in that sector was the presence of flies. When engaging with veterans they would periodically stop regaling one about the actual combat and check whether they have actually told you about the FLIES!

Engagement with the enemy started some months into the war. Pierre was caught up in the utter disaster  of June 1942 in Tobruk when Rommel’s Stuka dive bombers and Mark III and Mark IV tanks pounded General Klopper’s boys into submission. 33000 Allied soldiers were captured, of whom 10722 were members of Klopper’s South African Second Division. The Allies had too few anti-aircraft and anti-tank guns supplied by the atrocious logistical support lines. Outgunned and in the frenzy and confusion of battle, Klopper surrendered to Rommel in a devastating blow to the Allies. Pierre’s constant refrain when relating the events was that he either could not hear commands from the Officers in the fog of war, or the commands were indeed not forthcoming. That was a tale related many times over by the poor fellows at the sharp end of the conflict in the Fall of Tobruk.

The sheer number of Prisoners of War overwhelmed the Germans and Italians. Rommel, who regarded South African soldiers highly and showed a good deal of respect to them, was most apologetic that he had to hand them over to the Italian forces for whom he had contempt as unfit for war (and they were his so-called allies). The conditions under which the Italians kept the POWs were in breach of the 1929 Geneva Convention rules of war, but most South Africans held no grudges against them because they were aware that the numbers involved were so huge that they were totally unprepared for the influx of soldiers they would now be responsible for incarcerating.  Pierre was among the POWs transferred to Benghazi, and then shipped to Italy, where he wound up in Brundisi and  Camp 85 at Tuturano after a brief stay in Naples and a day or two in Palermo. Tents pitched in the mud and snow were not conducive to a comfortable sojourn there, but he was at least in a work party on the farms in the area that dispelled some of the drudgery of incarceration. The good offices of the Red Cross ensured that the POW conditions remained much better than those of the poor suckers who found themselves victims of the Japanese in the East. Sought-after Springbok cigarettes were a welcome distraction – but Pierre would live to regret the addiction that came with it. Mail arrived only intermittently – so much so that most soldiers felt their families had forgotten about them entirely. The ”Dear John” letters from bored housewives and girlfriends breaking up with their missing fellows, were the least welcome of those that did arrive. The abiding thought of soldiers in the POW camps was: “Get me out of here – LET ME GO!”

The tide of war began to change when the British Commonwealth was joined after the 7 December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour brought the USA into the conflict. The French had long since surrendered to the Nazis and left the British as sole defenders of Democracy. Hitler’s imbecilic Operation Barbarossa (the invasion of the USSR) and the push-back by the Soviets after the Battle of Stalingrad, sealed the fate of the Axis. Mussolini was toppled from power in Italy in 1943 and this resulted in a whole new POW dynamic that saw Pierre wind up in a German POW camp for the rest of the war. Liberation, though was not swift. Much to the chagrin of Allied POWs, demobilisation turned out to be a long, tedious affair after the fall of the Third Reich in May 1945. Sitting around and twiddling thumbs, smoking, card games, smoking, smoking smoking…. Eventually, in 1947, Pierre was back in South Africa. Only in 1948 could he resume his studies – mercifully with some financial support to which veterans were entitled ( even if begrudgingly once the National Party had swept Smuts from power and installed a government and party that had been sympathetic to the Axis cause).

The smoking vice proved difficult to dispense with and Pierre ended up becoming a chain smoker. His academic career took off by leaps and bounds and he was well on his way up the ladder to a Professorship, Dean of Faculty, Vice Chancellor or who knows how high a position, by the 1960s.

Marriage in 1958 and the birth of a child in 1960 changed him into a family man. Hardened soldier turned resentful POW started to recede into oblivion as this Veteran of the Fall of Tobruk began to soften at the edges. The War left no lasting scars – except for the smoking that blighted the life of this prodigious academic.

The end of 1967 brought with it a severe bout of influenza. A lingering cough persisted despite courses of antibiotics and inhalers. Rust-coloured sputum and coughing up the odd clot of blood instilled a fear of Tuberculosis – afflicting South Africans in large numbers at that time. Some tests relegated that to the backburner. It wasn’t TB. Chest pain, hoarseness, loss of appetite and weight loss caused some grave concern as the year ticked over into 1968. Shortness of breath and weakness chased Pierre back to the general practitioner and thence lung specialists. The diagnosis finally threw a spanner in the works for this brilliant scholar. Cancer. Lung cancer!

It was only in 1964 that the first really plausible connection between smoking and lung cancer had been made by researchers in the USA – amidst much blow-back by the giant tobacco manufacturing industry. In 1968 the debate was in full swing regarding cause and effect.

Pierre’s deterioration persisted throughout the first quarter of 1968. The pain became incessant. Gamma rays from the radio isotope Cobalt-60 were administered in ever stronger doses. Every visit left him with a burning sensation and indescribable weakness. Dyspnoea (laboured breathing), delirium and pain – oh the PAIN! His infrequent lectures at the university became even less frequent than at the end of 1967 when he found it ever more difficult to drag his body to the University or his office. 

Towards the end of April 1968 Pierre spent an inordinate amount of time cloistered in his bedroom and lying in his bed. His wife tasked a nursing sister neighbour with injecting the prescribed volumes of Morphine to still the excessive pain. The bouts of delirium increased exponentially and he began to lose touch with reality. He began to wade in and out of lucidity and his once robust frame was now  a mere sliver of translucent skin over a well defined skeleton. His sunken eyes pleaded with the Nursing Sister for a last, powerful generous dose of Morphine to release him from this dreadful and devastating condition. “Let me go!” This silent request he indicated with his pleading eyes could not be granted.

By May of 1968, this 48 year old chain smoking man – a shadow of his former self, stared into light streaming in through the bedroom fanlight. As he settled his head onto his down pillow an expression of puzzlement and wonder lit his features one last time. Eyes still open, soaking in the last rays of light, he exhaled for the last excruciating time. “Let me go …..”

©Paul M Haupt