I cannot remember a single instance when it was as cold as it is today while we lived in Natal, sure , it rained, sometimes a lot, but even the early mornings were mild to my recollection. Behind the Roadcamp, in the near distance was Talana Hill, a great battle took place there, I wandered up there once and came across a small heap of spent cartridges, rusted green and corroded away in spots, a reminder of the battle of Talana Hill, I used to go up there alone and wander around, soaking up the atmostphere of the place, I never could get myself to remove even a stone for my slingshot from the place, I sensed that it was a place of reverence and rememberance, an undocumented monument to the young men who died there, many of them thousands of miles from their homes.
I once visited a battlefield outside Bloemfontein on the Mazeru road, and I experieced the same feelings I had on Talana hill in Natal many years before, maybe the spirits of the soldiers never leave the battle ground, but gets mixed into the ground with their blood, funny thing is that even there I could not even disturb the dust in the area without feeling guilty.
When I was a lad I owned an airgun and used to go hunt with it in the veld around Tabankulu, strange thing though was that I could never hit anything in the local graveyard, the airgun became inexplicably inaccurate, it was old and full of quirks, but aquired skill usually made me compensate for errors instinctively and I was a crack shot anywhere else but in the graveyard, I stopped going there after my Grandpa was laid to rest, he would not have approved of killing anything unless you intended eating it.
Years later during military service doing a motorised patrol we came across a spot in the bush that made me feel quite uneasy, there was nothing to distinguish it from any other spot around there but I told the Lootie that it must have been a battleground sometime ago, much derision, but later one of the Police force members told me that a motorized patrol had been ambushed there a few years back, they shot the radio operator first and they found him sitting upright after the contact with a bullet wound through the eye, it was the scene of a short sharp battle that claimed a few of our guys, and it reached out with its clammy fingers and touched my concience on that hot sweltering day.
We dont know all the answers and we never will, some of us try to find explanation through research , others use the comfortable excuse of devine intervention and religion to explain away things that make them feel uncomfortable and the world for them becomes a comfortable place in which they never have to question or probe, yet when you think about it, we may from time to time fight each other, but collectively we are all fighting on the battlefield of life.
I once visited a battlefield outside Bloemfontein on the Mazeru road, and I experieced the same feelings I had on Talana hill in Natal many years before, maybe the spirits of the soldiers never leave the battle ground, but gets mixed into the ground with their blood, funny thing is that even there I could not even disturb the dust in the area without feeling guilty.
When I was a lad I owned an airgun and used to go hunt with it in the veld around Tabankulu, strange thing though was that I could never hit anything in the local graveyard, the airgun became inexplicably inaccurate, it was old and full of quirks, but aquired skill usually made me compensate for errors instinctively and I was a crack shot anywhere else but in the graveyard, I stopped going there after my Grandpa was laid to rest, he would not have approved of killing anything unless you intended eating it.
Years later during military service doing a motorised patrol we came across a spot in the bush that made me feel quite uneasy, there was nothing to distinguish it from any other spot around there but I told the Lootie that it must have been a battleground sometime ago, much derision, but later one of the Police force members told me that a motorized patrol had been ambushed there a few years back, they shot the radio operator first and they found him sitting upright after the contact with a bullet wound through the eye, it was the scene of a short sharp battle that claimed a few of our guys, and it reached out with its clammy fingers and touched my concience on that hot sweltering day.
We dont know all the answers and we never will, some of us try to find explanation through research , others use the comfortable excuse of devine intervention and religion to explain away things that make them feel uncomfortable and the world for them becomes a comfortable place in which they never have to question or probe, yet when you think about it, we may from time to time fight each other, but collectively we are all fighting on the battlefield of life.
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