The piss under the army banquet table

I shake my head at the younger Chinese when they drink alcohol. They have to gun bei (literally: dry the cup) when they drink. Their faces turn that nauseous, icy white and they run off, sometimes not making it to the toilet. Why can’t they take their time and just enjoy a drink? Like many young okes in the old blerrie South Africa, I learned a thing or two about drinking in the army.

The best was the commandant’s banquet held in the old military police camp (known as a provost) in Boksburg, a decision the genial commandant Van Rooyen had decided was long overdue. All commissioned and non-commissioned personnel were “invited”: that is to say, if you did not pitch you would have been charged with AWOL. This included us plebs, the national servicemen, and I think I had just been promoted to lance corporal for no particular reason, as I was one of the laziest buggers around. I was in Signals, and had been transferred as a signalman to the Military Police. My simple duties were to send and receive telexes for awollers and for other crimes: military jeeps used for the night’s jolly and so forth, and generally keeping various army bases up to date with their rebels.

Of course, none of us had any intention of missing the commandant’s banquet because of the amount of free booze that was going to be available, never mind ou Van Rooyen’s love for savoury chow, so we knew there would be mouth-moistening items like potjiekos and baboetie that would be served in lavish proportions. Most of us nineteen-year-old rookies at the provost couldn’t tell a mug of tassies from a vintage twenty-year-old Stellenbosch pinotage. The former was just a hell of a lot cheaper and quicker.

The great thing about working in a MP provost is that the buggers who are supposed to be copping you for being drunken and disorderly are up to the same tricks themselves. At the old provost, arties, legal or otherwise, went from bring and braai to skop and dop to suip and gryp in no time.

I still remember that chubby, red-haired Permanent Force Dutch lass with the eyes for me. But she only improved after one or two bottles of tassies, which was a bit expensive, given National Serviceman salaries (about one hundred and twenty rands in 1983). Reminds me of the T-shirt slogan I invented at the time. Picture a sign on the back of your T-shirt: “Women suck … ” Then, after a large space comes my disclaimer: “ … and men are grateful”. But the okes at the Boksburg provost were more or less unanimous that the T-shirt idea was not going to help you score. “Uit soos boknaai voor ‘n polisie stasie”, said fellow lance-corporal, Hans Oberholzer, a chef at the provost’s mess, shaking his head with a grin.

Anyway, that infamous banquet. Armies virtually worship alcohol. First: a regulation few beers in our formal “step-outs” uniforms in the military pub, fondly known as the Stable & Balls though we weren’t allowed to put up the sign. A bell tinkled and we had to drift to the first buffet room, where plates of sarmies and sausage rolls stood heaped alongside large bottles of heady port. The smell alone, though heavenly, could have caused a gas leak.

Now some of my fellow diensmanne, the National Servicemen like me, just had no clue when it came to conservative consumption and they had that skraal, emaciated, rural look as they greedily eyed the port, a bloody strong, treacherous drink. In particular I was a wee bit concerned about Meintjies and Malone, a pair of thuggish National Servicemen who spent more time on secret AWOL missions at night and getting back at 6am to brag about sexual adventures (didn’t believe them, booze increases the desire but lessens the performance as the great bard says) and the amount of booze and dagga consumed (believed them, they looked like they had been walking on their eyeballs, or at least their blotchy faces, all night).

Like the Chinese, Meintjies and Malone could not grasp drinking slowly and just maintaining on an elegant, tongue-loosening buzz. I did my best to watch my consumption of the port, but as it was not a drink I was used to, things began to swim in and out of focus rather quickly. The grinning RSM, Van Aardt, was also not helping, as he cheerily preferred to be among the NCOs and us plebs, encouraging refilled glasses between wolfed-down sausage rolls. Then, on the sound of the bell again, we lurched through to the gymnasium, which had been converted into a banquet hall for the evening where we all solemnly stood to attention while we waited for the commandant to come in. He entered, nodded at us all, and ceremoniously sat down on a chair at the middle of the top table. The etiquette was like European royalty’s: we could only do something once Commandant Van Rooyen had done it, be it the first glass of wine or the first taste of a starter or main course or dessert. He nodded to a manservant who poured him a glass of wine and within seconds, every pair of eyes in the room discreetly on him, he sipped his glass. This was followed by a hundred or so glasses chinking throughout the mess and bottles popping and dop being poured out.

I looked at Meintjies and Malone across from me and they were in their chortling element, faces reddened already from a fair amount of beers and that perilous port which had fooled me completely. Starters arrived, in the form of soup and stew, and we watched through the corner of our eyes to see if the commandant would have a spoonful. Within a moment or two he did and we followed suit, tearing off pieces of bread as we were already getting peckish. “Easy, manne,” admonished the RSM, grinning through his overgrown grey moustache as he watched the gleeful plebs ram into the chow like sharks slamming into their prey. You have to remember National Servicemen in any country come from all parts of society and didn’t have the faintest clue about etiquette or that you raise your soup bowl away from you and genteelly scrape the spoon in the same direction as the bowl whilst you engage in the pitter patter of discreet conversation.

Not these manne. Why bother with that nonsense when you know one of the other okes are going to finish first and triumphantly nab the best of the seconds or thirds from the pot of soup or stew with all its lekker bits of oxtail meat and potato floating around? One of the main courses, pap, chops, boerie and sous arrived and was washed down with the generous supply of bottled wine. All tucked in as soon as the commandant did, who had waved away the manservant. The commandant had heaped his plate like any self-respecting Afrikaner or Zulu warrior.

After a while I looked across at Meintjies and Malone: both were red-eyed, what they called poeg-eyed, if my swak Afrikaans serves me well, and both were looking fidgety and nervous. “Hell’s teeth,” Meintjies exclaimed, I hope the commandant needs to go to the Gents’ soon, this is getting to crisis point. Seriously eina.” He was clutching his groin area under the table. There was a distinct lull in the feeding and drinking frenzy at our table as a dreadful truth dawned on us.

No one could go to the toilet until the commandant had gone.

Heads from more than one table were swivelling in the direction of the top table where the commandant was chatting with his captains, leaning back, lighting up a cigar. He did not look like he had had more than two glasses of wine and was nowhere near crisis point. Alarmed, I felt that first uncomfortable swelling and “hello, I’m here,” in my nether regions. I pushed away my wine glass. The okes at our table stared at one another in horror. Only the RSM seemed oblivious to the predicament. Mind you, I remember him slipping off somewhere before we entered the banquet room and coming back later. He was an old horse at the game.

The minutes dragged on and the commandant looked nowhere near ready to point Percy. In fact, one captain gave most of the tables a sharp look as, by now, too many of the okes were looking at the top table with wretched, desperate looks on their faces. A kind of electric, waiting hush began to settle over the mess, to which top table seemed blithely oblivious.

The look of pain on skinny Meintjies and Malone’s face became pitiable. Thin okes just don’t have the staying power, especially when those clowns had abused the beer, port and wine for the last two hours. Their eyes were popping and they were clutching their groins, showing no discretion. Malone’s pale blue eyes were starting to water as he doubled over, groaning. An uprising of sorts, in more than one sense of the word, was definitely on the way.

Some minutes later, the throbbing region between my legs was also starting to get to bursting point, and I was beginning to weep from the strain in more ways than one. I furtively looked over my shoulder at the commandant. The oke truly had the constitution of steel in that region of his anatomy.

Then I saw Malone suddenly sit back with a faint smirk on his face: an idea had obviously occurred to him. He eyed the empty wine bottles on the table. He whispered something to Meintjies who smiled and nodded and I got their drift. They glanced at the RSM who was enjoying a smoke and taking in the vista of the female officers on a nearby table — on more than one occasion he and I had agreed that military browns and boots with that large utility belt looked sexy on a woman — and then Malone and Meintjies quickly and quietly passed the empty bottles under the table. Their jaws sagged with relief and they looked to the ceiling with gratitude. All the okes on the table immediately got the solution and silently, unanimously, nodded aye.

Sure, we were as tactful as we could be about it — and to this day I have wondered what kind of court martial or summary trial we would have had and what charge we would have faced if we had been caught. I nearly filled my bottle, some humble blanc de blanc originally, and swiftly re-corked it as I placed it back on the table. The relief was so immediate and awesome I could have sworn dimply hollows had formed in my backside from the sudden, wonderful vacuum.

Just then there was a minor commotion and I turned around, fearing we had been caught out. The commandant at long last was purposefully striding to the men’s restroom and a number of okes on different tables had shifted their chairs in that direction for immediate take-off as soon as the big man re-emerged. Which duly he did: Three quarters of the mess immediately vacated chairs, heading in the general direction of the dames en here sign in the gymnasium and other parts of the provost while the remaining people, mostly female officers, looked on, giggly and amused.

Our table was conspicuous for the fact that no one moved and we tried not to look suspicious about it, airily cleaning our plates with bits of bread. Some national servicemen kitchen hands came to clear our tables, and somehow did not seem so suspicious about so many filled bottles still left on our table. I gingerly ensured the cork on my blanc de blanc was firmly on. This consequence to our desperate actions had not occurred to Meintjies and Malone, whose eyes widened as to what was going to transpire in the kitchen later. “My magtig,” Meintjies exclaimed, “ou Hans Oberholzer is going to think its blerrie Christmas in July”. The entire table began to cackle. The RSM looked back at us, giving up his scrutiny of the ladies on the nearby table, looking at us in amusement, but not with that much puzzlement, to this day I must admit, still wondering even now.

The commandant and senior COs left for a private cheese and biscuits for senior officers only. Shortly thereafter there was another rumpus as a brawl (inevitably, given the nature of armies) broke out in the men’s toilet over some kind of territorial possession, I assume.

Not much later chef Hans Oberholzer came over to our table, red-faced, cleaning his hands with a towel, shaking his head. “You skiem yous okes are funny, hey? Think yous clever, hey?” We didn’t say a word, pretending extreme drunkenness and tiredness, and we did not have to pretend much at that point. Then Oberholzer’s face split into a grin and he shook his head again and walked back to the kitchen, giving Meintjies a solid lummy* on the shoulder, (“ja, jou bliksem,”) on his way back.

We never had the heart to ask how he and the other kitchen okes actually figured out what was in the bottles.

* Non SA readers: swift punch, short for lumber-punch or a corruption of lame, I skiem.