NINETEEN WITH A BULLET
A Parabat in Angola
Granger Korff
ISBN: 9781920143312
Paperback
£18.95 delivered
approx 352 pages 234 x 153mm 6 x 9
approx 75 colour & b/w photos, 2 maps
A rough, tough ’Bat in the bush wars of Namibia and Angola
Nineteen with a Bullet—A Parabat in Angola is a fast-moving, action-packed account of Granger Korff’s two years’ service during 1980/81 with 1 Parachute Battalion at the height of the South African ‘bush war’ in South West Africa (Namibia) and Angola. Apart from the ‘standard’ counter-insurgency activities of Fireforce operations, ambushing and patrols, to contact and destroy SWAPO guerrillas, he was involved in several massive South African Defence Force (SADF) conventional cross-border operations, such as Protea, Daisy and Carnation, into Angola to take on FAPLA (Angolan MPLA troops) and their Cuban and Soviet allies.
Having grown up as an East Rand rebel street-fighter, Korff’s military ‘career’ is marred with controversy. He is always in trouble—going AWOL on the eve of battle; facing a court martial for beating up, and reducing to tears, a sergeant-major in front of the troops; fist-fighting with Drug Squad agents; arrested at gunpoint after the gruelling seven-week, 700km Recce selection endurance march—are but some of the colourful anecdotes that lace this account of service in the SADF.
His writing style is ‘frontline’—punchy, brutal, self-deprecating and at times humorous—but always honest: “I was the company tattooist who, with needle and pen ink, did a number of tattoos—some good but others so bad that they were burned out. I even had one mate reaching for his rifle when the swooping para eagle on his shoulder came out like a frozen chicken pecking corn … and of course, the ‘missing’ Sossis [Sossagon, a form of morphine] … now there’s a tale.”
Granger Korff. 1960—Cassius Clay won Olympic gold in Rome; the Beatles made their debut in Germany; apartheid was ‘booming’ in South Africa; and Granger Korff was born on the East Rand near Johannesburg to a realtor father and budding-actress mother. “The apartheid system was sewn tight as a Zulu drum and the country moved to a slow beat,” he says of the times. He grew up in the mining town of Benoni, a quiet child initially, before ‘enjoying’ a colourful school career as a musician and quick-fisted rebel, attending a string of different schools for a string of different reasons. He graduated in 1979—alone from the public library.
In 1980 he volunteered for the crack 1 Parachute Battalion, fast becoming renowned for being at the forefront of the action in the bush war escalating on South Africa’s northern borders. After an action-packed two years fighting in the African bush, Granger took a newfound anger with him to the professional boxing ring where he quickly gained a reputation as one of the most exciting young middle-weight fighters in the country.
In 1985, plagued by his demons from the bush war, he travelled to the USA on a four-month boxing/vacation walkabout where he haunted the mean streets of Los Angeles, scrapping and boxing to survive. Ike Turner and Mickey Rourke were his drinking buddies and he almost became Jake LaMotta’s (‘The Raging Bull’) son-in-law. Twenty-four years later, Granger still lives in LA, where he runs a small plumbing business. He is divorced and has a 13-year-old daughter.