Open Writing

I was still living in town and working at 66M when this episode happened.

This guy had a Luger pistol, Second World War vintage. Where he got it from I don’t know, but it was a beautiful gun with German symbols and a swastika engraved into the grip and all that sort of stuff. With South West being an ex-German colony and a big German speaking population I guess there were lots of ex-war memorabilia and weapons and so on. He didn’t have a licence for the gun so had to be careful that security never found out about it.

We became reasonable friends and hung out together in our spare time. One night I’m getting ready to go to bed and I hear these gunshots - about 10 or 12 of them. I don’t pay too much attention, until about 10 or 15 minutes later there’s a knock on the door. It’s L_. He’s out of breath and as I let him in, he’s holding something wrapped in a rag.

He tells me to lock the door and keep quiet for a few minutes. He listens and there is not a sound coming from outside or in the corridors.

Finally he tells me what is going on.

Apparently he and a few mates had a few beers, and the result was that his mates dared him to shoot up a few street signs. Not any street signs, but the street signs right outside the main admin building in town.

Our friend, who is never afraid of a dare, goes and gets his Luger, loads it and proceeds to the admin building with his two mates following discretely behind. The admin building is only about two blocks away from the single quarters so it’s an easy walk.

When they get there, they have a quick look around and L_ proceeds to shoot the s--- out of the two stop signs near the building. He reloads and pumps another six shots into another sign close by. Easy. All the signs are now shredded.

The only problem is that it seems that security patrols the area around the admin building. How often we don’t know – probably only once a year, knowing security. But as luck would have it, as L_ finishes demolishing the signs, a security Land Rover turns into the very street where they are standing. Talk about bad timing.

They scatter and run like hell in all directions. L_ is terrified. If he gets caught, he’s history. He would end up being fired and possibly fined, chucked into jail, flogged and tortured by being made to listen to Ge Korsten sing “My hart verlang na die Boland”, “My heart longs for the Boland” - which everybody universally hated - 50 million times. All those sorts of things. What the hell would his parents say?

So he makes it back to his room. Suddenly he’s stone cold sober. He’s not sure if any of the others got caught. If they were, they were sure to tell security everything to save their own arses.

He collects all the ammo and cleaning gear – basically all the evidence - to prove that he has a gun and tries to decide where he can hide it. He goes to the other guys’ rooms and they are both there, also scared. He tells them that they must not say a thing to anyone about what had happened or else they are all dead meat. They refuse to hide the gun and want nothing to do with it, even though they were the ones that dared L_ in the first place. That’s friendship for you.

So here he was.

“What do want from me?” I asked.

L_ handed me the bundle.

“I want you to keep this for me. At least for a few weeks anyway, just until all the heat dies down.”

I look at him. “You realise I could also get the boot don’t you?”

“I know.”

At least he was honest. So I decide to hide the gun for him.

Surprisingly nothing is heard or mentioned about the episode. Not a thing. Perhaps security were trying to investigate behind the scenes, but we’ll never know.

After a few weeks L_ starts to relax a bit and realises that he might have gotten away with it. He takes the gun back and sells it to another guy who interestingly enough lived at Affenrucken.

The street signs were replaced a few days later.