Willem Steenkamp

“A few weeks after I returned to Cape Town from Angola I wrote an article in which I tried to analyse the benefits, if any, accruing to us from the angolan intervention. I named several and said in conclusion that many of us had to come back a little quieter, a little sadder, a little more difficult to sell a bill of goods to because our priorities had been drastically renumbered by what we had seen and felt. Next day I had to go down to the Castle on an assignment and there I met a senior officer I know well. he is a man who has seen savage fighting, one of the few still in uniform who served in the Eight Army and Italy during World War II, and when he had greeted me he said: "I was interested to read your article this morning, particulary the last part of it."
Oh-oh, I thought, I overstated that last premise of mine and now this man who has seen death and wounds and bitter fighting is going to tear me off a strip.
Instead he said: "When I joined the army the old blokes from the first was used to tell us how we'd change after we'd been in action. We laughed at them and thought: 'That's just what they say.' But we were wrong, you know, and they were right.”
― Willem Steenkamp

“I have told you a fair amount about us and about those who fled. What about the ones we left behind? I can see them all in my mind's eye as I write these words, each of them sharp and clear as if I had just turned my back on him.

The last of my faces is not a face at all but a voice - a soft and rather pretty one - whose owner was never seen by any South African soldier who set foot in Angola. But to us all she was a close... well... "friend" is too strong a word. Call her an acquaintance and leave it at that.
The lady could be heard broadcasting every morning from Luanda, and her theme, needless to say was out presence on Angolan soil.

But I can't love the lady, I'm afraid. Now now, not ever.”
― Willem Steenkamp