My disappointment at being held back in Windhoek was eased somewhat by finding two men there that I had known at school. The latter were an old school friend of my brother's, Dennis Adeline, who was a National Serviceman in the SAAF and had already been in Windhoek for about three months by the time I arrived, and Graham Dickson, a dog handler in the army, whom I had played rugby with at Forest High School some three years before. Graham had been in Windhoek for two months. I wasn't to form long or lasting friendships with either, but it was great to see familiar faces other than my fellow chefs, especially at the start, and I spent a lot of time in Graham's company particularly.

At the base camp kitchen we were introduced to the routine, and gradually got to know the men already working there. These were a mixture of PF's and National Servicemen, and a very odd lot indeed. In charge was Staff Sergeant de Souza, a short man with glasses, who had a fiery temper at times and was inclined to sit on his backside in the office, and leave everyone else to do the work. He lived on the base, in one of the PF houses, with his wife and kids.

His second in command was another Staff Sergeant, Lourens, also a married PF who lived off base. Lourens was a gentler soul, although he could be as fierce as the rest when needed. He had an absolute tart for a wife, a pretty young woman whom I understood to be the daughter of some other high ranking PF in Pretoria. This woman whored around the base with a number of other men, and was a constant source of embarrassment to Staff Sergeant Lourens. They had evidently married very young, and by the time I got to know him, they were in their mid twenties but had four young children already. I think his wife just flipped out and rebelled at her dreary life, and started screwing around.

I came to be quite friendly with Staff Lourens while I was stationed in Windhoek, and felt very sorry for him. He had the saddest eyes I ever saw in any man, and my one photo of him shows this nicely. One night, after we had finished up in the kitchen, I walked home with him to his house, at his invitation. When we arrived there it was already dark, but all the lights in the house were off, despite the fact that he was expecting to find his wife and kids at home. We went in, to discover all the children scrabbling around in the dark, in various dirty states, as small children do get, and their mother nowhere to be seen. She had gone out with one of her men friends again and just left the kids to their own devices. A couple had soiled themselves and it was just lucky that they were too small to do much damage to themselves in the time they were alone. The Staff busied himself with attending to the children, all the while apologising to me, and I made an awkward and hasty exit, mumbling some excuse about having to get back to the camp before my absence was discovered, as I was out without permission. I was so embarrassed, more for Staff Lourens than myself. I think the saddest thing was that his shoulders just went down that little bit more, yet he said nothing to his wife. Around her he was like a beaten dog.

Mrs Lourens' boyfriend of the moment when I arrived in Windhoek was a Navy Leading Seaman, or Killick, who also worked in the kitchen. How a navy man came to be working in an army kitchen I never found out, and he wasn't the only one I was to encounter while in Windhoek. Anyway, he wasn't there long as the situation was clearly untenable with him and Staff Lourens working in the same kitchen and he having sex with Staff Lourens' wife. The Killick was quickly transferred elsewhere, I think at the instigation of Staff de Souza.

There were three resident Corporals, two PF and one National Serviceman. The former were Corporal Cees van Helden and Corporal Venter, and the latter was Egon von Bentheim. All were Afrikaans, although van Helden's ancestry was Dutch. He was quite fierce at first, but became a firm mate later on. He was married to Lizette, a former army nurse whom he had met while in hospital some year or two before. She was a very plain looking girl but had the kindest heart one could hope to meet. Nothing was too much trouble for her, and the two of them made a lovely couple.

Corporal Venter was gay, which always amused us National Servicemen as openly gay people were not allowed to serve in the South African army. He was always immaculately groomed, and spoke with an affected air and drove an e-type Jaguar, which was his pride and joy. To be honest, he never attempted to hit on any of us, although he did take up with a young National Serviceman later that year, for which I understand he received a severe censure! This was again after my time in Windhoek though.

Corporal von Bentheim was a local man, from Mariental, south of Windhoek, and was quite a flamboyant character. He too was always immaculately dressed in white, and looked upon being a chef as the pinnacle of achievement, whereas the rest of us were chefs by force, not choice. I see today (2006) that there is an Egon von Bentheim who is a highly regarded member of the Namibian Chef's Association, so perhaps the Egon that I knew went on to greater things. He never completed his two year National Service, somehow managing to get himself discharged about four months early, and only about two months after I arrived at the base kitchen.

The last NCO whose name I can still recall was Lance Corporal Steyn, another National Serviceman who was quite a friendly but simple fellow. I found him easy to put off his stride, and didn't really look upon him as being my superior in rank, only when it suited my purpose, e.g. if I wanted someone to sign a leave pass so that I could go into the city centre. On the other hand, he was not nearly as full of crap as the other Corporals, and was inclined to hang out with the Privates rather than the other NCOs.

Besides these NCOs, there were only a couple of Privates like us new men, and the kitchen ranks were decidedly `top heavy' before we arrived! One of the `ou manne' was also a local English speaking lad, from Windhoek itself. I remember that he klaared out in July 1979, but don't remember his name.

Once settled in, we were quickly appraised of the routine that prevailed at the base camp kitchen. The chefs worked permanent shifts, and if rostered to make breakfast, your day began at about 3.30 am, an ungodly hour at best! This was when you woke and did your shaving, washing etc. before reporting in the kitchen at 4.30 am. What amused me was that no PF's ever turned up at that time, and breakfast preparation was almost entirely done by us National Servicemen, the PF's only showed up for work at about 6 am, just before you were ready to serve breakfast.

Menus were done by the Staff Sergeant in charge, in this case de Souza, and he decided what each day's meals would be, usually in advance so that he didn't have to turn up for work until well after breakfast!

In Windhoek food was plentiful and the men ate well generally, and this included breakfast. The latter could comprise of eggs of various kinds (boiled, scrambled or fried), cereals, toast or bread, orange juice, coffee and sometimes even sausages. It took us all of the two and a half hours before breakfast started, which was at 6.30 am, to get the breakfast cooked, as we not only cooked for the men at the base camp, but those on duty at outlying posts around the city.

There were a lot of stations around the city and its environs, including engineer workshops, where vehicles were repaired. The Eros airport was another military facility, being staffed mainly by SAAF guys but with a smattering of army signallers and clerks around to run things. The main headquarters of South West Africa Command was in a large multi-story building in the city centre, known as the Bastion, and there were also a few guards scattered around at sensitive civilian and military installations, like power stations, and also at Major General Jannie Geldenhuys' private residence. He was the officer commanding SWA Command, and his house was guarded night and day by the infantry dog handlers. My friend Graham Dickson did most of his duty here.

All of the men at all these outlying posts took meal breaks, and travelled to the base camp to get their meals, but the sentries and signallers had no way of getting to the mess for meals when on duty, and we had to drive the meals out to them. For this purpose we had a duty driver attached to the kitchen at all times. His tasks included the fetching of supplies and the distribution of rations to these outlying posts. I often volunteered to accompany the driver, as this gave us a break from the kitchen and allowed us to see something of the city and its surrounds.

The food for these men was stored in metal containers after preparation, and the driver and chef went out on their rounds before the same meal was served at the mess itself. The food was always hot to start off with, but it was a long drive to get around to all the different guards, and took over an hour and a half to complete, by which stage the last few stops received cold food, poor bastards. They couldn't reheat it either, as this was all in the days before microwave ovens. The men would often not bother if the food was cold, merely helping themselves to generous amounts of bread, which we always took along with us.

My first few trips with the kitchen duty driver were interesting. He was a grizzled `ou man' with just under six months to go before he finished his two year National Service, and he had little or no military discipline, and it was quite an education for a roof like me to see how much disdain he treated the PFs with. I can't remember his name now, but he was a particularly keen Citizen Band (CB) radio enthusiast, which was the latest fad at the time. He used to bring his CB radio with him and just install it into whichever vehicle he was issued at the vehicle park, and spent the entire trip trying to chat up female CB radio hams, or talking to long distance truckies.

To get back to our routine though, once breakfast was finished for the day there was the big clean up, and then the same shift started the preparations for lunch. The kitchen had a lot of black civilian kitchen hands, who cleaned the kitchen and washed pots and pans, as well as peeled vegetables and potatoes, leaving the food preparation to us chefs. The kitchen hands weren't allowed to handle the meat however, and this was something we did from start to finish, butchering carcasses and cooking the meat in whatever form it was required for a particular meal. We National Servicemen also had to help with the cleaning, and occasionally the peeling, but our main task was to cook, under the direction of our NCOs.

The rule that seemed to be in force at Base camp was that nobody above Corporal actually did much work, with Staff de Souza and his fellow NCOs congregating in the Staff's office, where they talked and drank coffee all day. Staff Lourens was probably most hard working senior NCO, as he would often cut up meat for us, using the butchery saw, or at least come out and see that we were doing our jobs properly.

Lunch was served at about 12.30 pm as I recall, and followed the same pattern as all meals; one of us went out with the driver to deliver food to the sentries around the city and environs, while the rest of us served the food we had cooked to the men coming in to eat at the mess from these same locations.

At the end of lunch, we again cleaned up, and then handed over to the new incoming shift at about 2 pm. Once we had done so, and been dismissed, we had the rest of the day off to do our own thing, although all this meant in reality was catch up on sleep (we had been up since 3.20 am, after all!), or do the many housekeeping chores we had like washing our dirty uniforms or cleaning gear and boots. It was usually too hot in summer to sleep, and I used the time to do my washing and write letters home.

The shift that cooked dinner finished in the kitchen at about 7.30 pm, but were then required to cook breakfast and lunch the following day too. This meant that you had a maximum of eight and a half hours between your shifts, during which you were expected to do your normal daily tasks and sleep. In the case of the shift that had been off the previous afternoon, they had the next morning off too, and started just after lunch.

By far the most punishing though were weekends. We would get every second weekend off, but this meant that the shift who were on duty had to cover the whole day, every day, from 4.30 am until 7 pm. On the weekends we worked, I usually used what little spare time we had to sleep, and wrote letters only to my fiancee Sharon then.

To summarise, the roster would have looked something like this:

WEEK ONE

and back round to week one.

In my entire National Service, I found every camp operated this shift pattern, and although it sounds exhausting at times, I got used to it very quickly. Besides, there were a number of obvious advantages to being a chef, and it wasn't just because of the easy access to food! Because we worked weird hours, we were not required to stand weekly inspections, which were still carried out at South West Africa Command. This meant even the guys who were not on duty on Friday mornings, when the inspections were generally held.

Easy access to food, in fact, was a distinct disadvantage in my case, as I grew to hate the stuff. Working with it all day very quickly put me off, and when I was first in Windhoek I started the rather unhealthy habit of eating cans of evaporated milk only, pilfered from the kitchen stores, which caused me a few bowel problems. The local medic doctor told me that I was damaging the lining of my stomach by drinking only the highly concentrated milk, and once I stopped doing so my ailment subsided, never to return. Throughout my service, and despite the excellent meals we sometimes cooked, I resorted to living off the most weird and wonderful foods at times, rather than eat what we had cooked for any particular meal. For example, I hated cabbage as a child, but took to eating plate loads of the stuff, spiced up with pepper, and nothing else. All of us used to make toasted cheese sandwiches too, using the hot plates on the kitchen stoves.

Eating a toasted sandwich in bed, in our tent, which was located some 20 yards behind the kitchen.

Hotlink to the Next Chapter.