Top secret

The end of my two-year military conscription stint truly does seem imminent. This last batch of drawings were contained in a "top secret" manilla folder which was probably left lying around at 1 Intelligence Unit, Kimberley, where I spent some 21 months up till June, 1981. I hereby release the contents of this folder in the interests of transparency.

The top left corner of the folder with a "top secret", "streng geheim", "amptelik, official" stamp - and a few lines of shading.

The written words here offer a hint of the sort of top-secret work we were involved in at the base media centre, while the drawings are clearly aimed at devising clever disguises for SADF operatives.

I worked one of the homilies fed to conscripts into a fun bit of abstract design.

Politics was always on my mind and, going by the dates, I completed these just days before I was due to "klaar out" of the army. Top shows the verkrampte Andries Treurnicht and the verligte Pik Botha slugging it out for control of the National Party while prime minister and soon to be president PW Botha looks on. In the bottom one, the figure of "apart-hate" looks on as "Andries Ageruitgang" argues with "Pik-en-betaal", which was a play on the name of a famous supermarket chain.

I slugged this picture, "grub", but it should have been "grubby". It is a look at one of our chefs, the okes who made our grub. And a hallmark of theirs was their grubby, food-bespattered, attire. But how would you like to spend a day peeling potatoes, or any of the other boring chores these guys did? However, they certainly didn't starve.

I think this owes something to an etching by Picasso. Here yours truly seems to be the little lad bottom right, back under the protective wing of his mother, as Life, symbolised by the menacing bull, beckons.

I rather enjoy this odd-looking toothy post box, which seems to emerge out of a tree trunk.

A new dawn beckons. But of course I had no plans. My only ambition was to get out of the army.

To get out of the army and be free as a bird. But obviously that was not to be, because the army itself would soon enough be grabbing me for my first "camp", an awful euphemism for more conscription.

So I guess I felt pretty worm-like. This was a pyrrhic victory. I had spent two years in a wilderness, with the only useful thing done being a myriad drawings.

This was another of those works where I combined a couple of drawings from life (top) with others out of my imagination, or more accurately, subconscious, because I find the less I am consciously thinking about drawing, the more creative I become.

You can't be in the military without military images invading your mind, and drawings. In the end I guess the crazily happy guy at the top must be seen alongside his military alter ego, in this case one wearing a First World War tin hat.

It had to happen. One of those drawings I sometimes did inspired by the random markings left on paper by others perhaps cleaning their brushes, or testing an airbrush, ended up as a bizarre image of copulation.

Too much time spent with pens and pencils leads to ... well a picture incorporating pens and pencils.

This was a bit of fun using preparatory work for a "canteen times" poster.

A river runs through it and, in the distance, mountains await the traveller.

How I arrived at this comic book character I can't say, but here he is.

Andy Warhol created something called the "exploding plastic inevitables", or suchlike, for a Velvet Underground "happening". This floating shape has no detonator.

Somehow this drawing of John Lennon, done from my imagination while in sick bay with shingles when he died in December, 1980, got into that top secret folder. I suspect the CIA, FBI, BBC and Doris Day.

Boys will be ... A couple of sketches of colleagues are shown here alongside a rather scatological look at an elephant. These are shown on a letter in Afrikaans about some or other fundraising social function.

I never fully divined whether 11th Commando actually ceased to exist when 1 Intelligence Unit was born in Kimberley, but this was the coat of arms/letterhead for the former, on which I embellished with a drawing. Strangely, I have no images of the jackal head which was the logo of the Intelligence Unit and which I had to paint on numerous walls.

Another bit of fun combining words and images.

There is a Milligan-like quality to this drawing of two lads at the circus.

Finally, this little image was done on the top right of an A4 piece of card - one of many such doodles that I did which show a freedom of line not often seen in consciously drawn pictures.

Surely the end is nigh?

God willing, these are the last pictures I have been able to find done during my two years' military conscription from mid-1979 till mid-1981. If others crop up, I might include them later, but also bear in mind that I was still facing one- and three-month camps through the 1980s. That was the lot of my generation of white males, currently deemed to have been advantaged by apartheid. Many a career was stifled by the military's hold on our lives.

The signing fetish, noticed on my last posting, seems to have continued with this sketch of my colleague, Mr Selkirk, mentioned earlier, who seemed to have injured a leg, hence the pair of crutches behind him.

Some damage has been done by light to this drawing, but I think it shows again that my work has come of age after this long period of practice.

This seems to be the same Mr Selkirk with his leg in plaster, and the suggestion of crutches just behind that bloated foot.

The two-year sentence seemed to go on forever, which might have been behind this attempt to show me doing a drawing of a drawing I was doing. Or something like that.

Worn out by waiting for the end to come.

Former colleague Mr McIntyre as the end approached.

No idea who these were, but I quite like the contrast between the quick sketches and the figure study.

I did a few weeks standing guard at a place called Jan Kemp Dorp north of Kimberley. This, I think, was a bungalow among the trees, done on blotting-type paper. The ammo dump we guarded was said, at the time, to have been the largest in the southern hemisphere.

While at Jan Kemp Dorp I recall having this yellow writing pad. Again, I quite like the contrast between the main figure and the one suggested to the left.

Officers

On a few rare occasions I got to draw some of the brass at the base - that is, 1 Intelligence Unit, which, as shown in the last posting, was situated just south of Kimberley and still seems to be there, in some guise, nearly 30 years since I "klaared out" in June, 1981, after spending some 21 months there. About 18 months were spent in the unit's media centre, where I had brief dealings with the odd larnie.

This is a photograph of a drawing I did from a photograph of the regimental sergeant major, "Sammajoor" Blignaut. I think I had to do this sketch for the unit and it was presented to him, possibly after he'd reached some or other milestone. I even signed the thing, which one of my colleagues photographed for me, printing me a copy. That means we would have had a darkroom there too. Ah, the wonders of the steam age!

I don't know who the oke at the top of the page is, but below is one Major Nel, who seemed to be the officer in charge of us. I remember he would not let us use black in our work. He said it meant death. Not sure if this was a racial thing.

How I got to do this quickie of our Commandant, the top-ranking officer at the unit, I can't recall. I'm pretty sure it was not done from life - possibly also from a photo. His name eludes me.

Kimberley digitally revisited

This was the ultimate deja vu trip. I've just travelled back 30 years in time to Kimberley's outskirts where, thanks to Google Earth, I have located what was the newly opened 1 Intelligence Unit. It was there that I spent about 21 months from 1979 till 1981 as a military conscript, and where the bulk of the drawings shown on this blog thus far were done. It was bizarre trying to find the place, because I only had a vague memory of it being somewhat south and, I thought, west of the city. It turns out it is not very far south-east. Also, the place looks a lot bigger than I thought, although I'm sure there was plenty of expansion during the military's massive growth phase throughout the 1980s. Clearly the place is still used by the military. Below are two "grabs" from Google Earth.

Those massive bungalows I spoke of seem to be the larger orange-roofed buildings on the left. If I recall correctly, the building with two courtyards above it was the mess, which included offices, kitchen, a shop and bar/games room, where much of our drinking, snooker and so on occurred. The media centre was in a couple of offices around the middle of one of the curved rows of buildings, although the three blue-roofed buildings north of it weren't there. The headquarters, to which we reported, was the U-shaped building on the left of the curved rows. There was a soccer field (yes, soccer!) just south of that, with the main rugby field and stadium visible further south, with tennis courts to the left. In my June 25 posting, Around Kimberley, a watercolour view of the water tower, visible top right, can be seen. I did it while sitting in the stand at the rugby field/parade ground.

I had a recollection that to get to 1 Intelligence Unit you passed I Maintenance Unit, and this seems to be it, north-west of the Int Unit, and across the road from the airport. 1 Int Unit used to be known earlier as 11th Commando, and also the Danie Theron Combat School. Indeed, I recall there was a statue of said Danie Theron, an Anglo-Boer War hero, which was later apparently moved to the site of the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria. In fact, I recall then President Nelson Mandela being present on that occasion in a typical show of reconciliation.

Media centre revisited

I stumbled upon another envelope full of drawings from my final months in the media centre at 1 Intelligence Unit, Kimberley, to which I had been assigned after being unceremoniously dumped from their "Civic Action" activities. It was 1981, and my first two years of conscription would end in June.

I've tried to fathom what sort of crayon I used here, but can't. It's not a pastel and it's too hard for charcoal, yet it gives a lovely soft, lithograph-type line. Isn't this a typical pose in an office where people have too much time on their hands, and the old chair is tipped back on its rear legs?

This seems to be a look at the interior of our little office/studio, with tins of enamel paint on a counter. I recall having to paint a huge mural of an armoured vehicle of some sort, possibly a Ratel, on the outside wall of a bungalow to celebrate some or other "operation" in SWA.

This guy's face comes back to me immediately, but I can't recall his name. He arrived about six months after me and earned a stripe while I was there.

A quick sketch of the same guy using that nice soft crayon.

Yet another of my colleagues, complete with moustache, which it was the prerogative only of conscripts who had finished I think their first six months to grow. What a privilege! Of course the fact that everyone had short hair meant you always stood out like a sore thumb in the "outside world".

Probably the same oke at a drawing board.

I don't recall this vertical board. It looks like a scene from drawing class at art school, except Cpl Craig Glenday is in uniform.

I had a bit of fun here, contrasting the aquamarine lines with some bright yellow enamel paint.

Lopped off at the chin, I rather enjoy the unfinished nature of this quick sketch.

I drew with whatever was to hand. Again, briskly drawn, accurately seen lines are, to my mind, the hallmark of a good drawing.

This is the same guy done with fine, sensitive lines.

The fellow from a few pictures up, with the accent on the elongation of the Caucasian nose from this angle.

Mr Terence Keyter, whom I mentioned earlier, earning his stripes.

The beauty of drawing is that it is often a feeling for form on the page. While the face was laid down without redrawing, not so his right shoulder, where several lines seek out the truth.

I rarely signed my work, but in a few instances found I had some fun putting my mark on the drawings. Generally, I find signatures on drawings distracting. My lines are my signature.

Another oke with not much to do except sit back and chat.

This seems to be the first green drawing I've found. Note the list of tasks, in someone else's hand, top left.

Mr Glenday, again, with the two views seeming to merge.

One of the young Durbs ous, earning his pittance.

Another medium, another technique. Felt-tip pens have a different quality which perhaps lacks a bit of subtlety.

Which came first, my little spiel about the role of drawing, or the sketch of someone writing, which I think is quite a good study of hands.

This and succeeding drawings again illustrate how a few lines can capture a pose.

Here there is a strong sculptural quality to that raised shoulder.

Again, just a few lines, but you are instantly aware this is someone bending over a table working.

I don't know how these two crept in, because they seem clearly to have been drawn while standing guard. Often the light was poor in those guard sleeping rooms, hence the darkness of the drawings.

Again, I don't think this was in the media centre. It just shows the huge variety of faces out there.

I suspect this is two quick sketches of our regimental sergeant-major, possibly on a visit to the media centre.

Again, feeling for the form. This guy from Durbs would recognise himself if he saw this.

Finally, often while drawing from life, a work takes on a life of its own. Here a few lines taken from some oke's face leave an image that is a metaphor for, well, the absurdity that is the army.

The studio

In my previous posting I showed a couple of self-portraits done from reflections in windows. The following three drawings I did while viewing people through glass. Part of the media centre at 1 Intelligence Unit, Kimberley, where I whiled away some 18 months up till mid-1981, encompassed a sort of recording studio set-up. This was run by a different set of okes, but we got to visit it on occasions, during one of which I obviously did these drawings.

Seen through glass, this oke seems to be seated at some kind of recording device. I do recall that there was talk that in this section the officers were shown videos made by the "enemies of South Africa", such as I think it was the BBC's Last Grave at Dimbaza, a scathing indictment of forced removals. Happily, some of our mates recorded every edition of Pop Shop, that half-hour slot on SABC which often included some great bands. These we would go and watch avidly at weekends.

Another oke, another angle. I'm not sure what's happening here, or why the word Sony is on that curved component.

Here, too, the thing is a mystery. Why I did two okes in the same pose I can't explain. But it made for quite an interesting sketch.