Following my last page, we wait for news on Henrika, the Dutch lady who was traumatized in Bulgaria and after a week of horror on the street, the latest is that after some rest in Batak with Kerry and Kosta, she is now heading back to Velingrad to see her lawyer. This is happening in an ex-communist country, now part of the EU…which leads me to sit and ponder about many things and just how unpredictable our lives are.
This brings to mind the story of how I came about to own an armoured tank. Yes, a fully functional war machine. South Africa had been engaged for decades in a war against the Soviet backed forces on our borders from Mozambique on the east to Angola on the west. Due to sanctions against our country, (The rest of the world in its ignorance thought it was a racial war) we were left with no option but to invent and build our own weapons. From artillery to tanks, fighter jets and helicopters, and everything needed in war would all become part of the daily manufacture in South Africa.
Toward late 1988, we had spent more than two decades fighting communism, while the rest of the world languished in what they called a “Cold war”. We fought it to the end, until the Soviet Union had realized they were fighting a losing battle. They had reached Southern Africa, but we were not about to give up and retreat into the sea! After decades of fighting, Castro’s Cuban soldiers went home with their tails between their legs, and the surviving Russians went back to their villages to drown their sorrows in cheap Vodka. Communism had collapsed!
Nelson Mandela was now about to walk free, and most South Africans were on the edge of their seats. Our thousands of army troops had been withdrawn from the border, with huge army and air force bases shut down. It was 1994, and I had just seen an advert for ex-military vehicles being sold. There were armoured personal carriers for sale, all brand new, recently having been rebuilt in the event of things in the country going wrong. Now this new inter-mixed government had no use for them. The military order for all these armoured vehicles had apparently been cancelled, and they were now for sale. Within minutes I was on the phone, the person on the other end told me that they were not allowed to be sold to any private individual. Our weapons were actually going to be sold to north African countries, perhaps so that one day they could come back and attack us with our own guns! We did however get around that red tape by buying it as ‘scrap metal’. A few days later this massive six wheel vehicle arrived on a tank transporter at our front door. While neighbours watched in disbelief, it was unloaded and became a permanent fixture in our driveway, which soon started to sink from the weight!
Soon one day, I noticed a man in the street outside having what appeared to be a seizure. Amidst his shouting, gyrating arms and legs, I could only make out that he was screaming something about the tank parked in our driveway. He was a Brigadier from the Army, here to investigate the where abouts of a stolen tank! The charges brought against me of being in possession of a military vehicle were juggled between the Army and civilian police. The Army had instructed me not to move it, as they were about to return and recover their ‘stolen’ tank. Soon the police Colonel assigned was up to his head in paperwork, and advised me to “make the darn thing disappear”. That night we drove it across town and into a friends workshop, and spent the night spray painting it white. I had known that as long as it was not the army brown, we stood a better chance at proving it to be neutral, as white was the international UN colour.
Eventually with time, the tank became part of our daring jaunts across town. Powered by a twelve cylinder Rolls Royce engine, it would make a deafening noise, as we thundered along the roads through the city, cars would swerve off the road and people would gasp. The police would follow and then not know what to do. It was probably the best time to own this, as the country went through a change with many new laws, and a bit of confusion about most things. At the time, the United Nations had recently been in South West Africa, so white vehicles had been present.
Our tank would guzzle two hundred litres of fuel within a short time, as we tore though the bush at high speed with friends and pets aboard. The high pitched whine of drivetrain and deafening roar of the engine, accompanied by unbearable heat inside the drivers seat, always made it a fun filled adrenalin experience.
This was to be my introduction into the world of finding ex-military helicopters, old fighter jets scattered through Africa, Alouette helicopters from French Forces and twin rotor Kamov helicopters from Russia. There were many telephone calls to characters in Romania where I discovered more helicopters. It would eventually lead me onto searching for naval ships and submarines in this world of obsolete equipment and inventions. Everything boiled down to negotiating the price of scrap metal!
This has all been just another part of my journey filled with curiosity through life.
“ I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious. “
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