The Cold Before the Dawn

By Peter Hart

The story starts on a farm in the Orange Free State in South Africa. The main character is a Helicopter Pilot, named Piet Du Toit. He volunteers for duty in the Bush War, raging at that time in Rhodesia.(Later to become Zimbabwe) There are various adventures involving big game hunting and there is a romantic element. It covers two generations of a family in South Africa. The story moves to Europe and then back to South Africa, where it reaches its conclusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Nov 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465373502

Peter Hart

Peter Hart is the oral historian at the Imperial War Museum and has written several titles on the First World War. His latest books for Profile are Gallipoli, The Great War andVoices from the Front.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Two men sat huddled in a slit trench. One white, one black.

They embraced each other, sharing their body heat against the bitter cold. It was just before dawn, the coldest part of the night.

The sky in the east began to pale as the sun approached the horizon.

Piet Du Toit had the classic good looks of his Huguenot forbears. His father Jano Du Toit’s family had moved up to the Free State with the Trek Boers, intent on getting away from the British in the Cape and had established themselves as farmers on the land that they pioneered. Piet was six feet four tall and solidly built with bulging muscles. His strong body was developed while working on his father’s farm. His hair was thick, blond and reached down to his collar. He brushed it everyday, but by mid-morning it would become unruly under his wide bush hat.

He had driven tractors, ploughing large tracts of land to be planted with maize, which grew prolifically in the rich soil and fair weather conditions in what is known as the ‘Maize Triangle’ in South Africa.

He had done his National Service in the South African Air Force flying helicopters and had now volunteered to fly for the Rhodesian Air Force in the Bush War.

David Dube, the other man who crouched with Piet in the trench, was an Ndebele. Dark black not quite as tall as Piet, slim at the waist, and immensely strong for his size. His sculptured features were handsome in the African way.

As they shivered there, Piet’s mind went back to the home farm, Luipards Vlei, where he was born and grew up.

CHAPTER 2

Luipards Vlei

The bright morning sun was just coming over the horizon. Piet was on his horse Prins, a bay gelding. He looked out over the flat Free State grassland to the small hills on the horizon, behind which the boundary fence of their farm ran.

As he rode out on to the veld, his horse’s hooves crunched on the small crystals of frost lying on the brown grass, and his breath billowed out with condensation like a chain-smoker exhaling.

He sat for a moment savouring the view that stretched out under an azure blue sky before him, and he had a deep feeling of contentment. The heat was just beginning to rise, and he could see shimmering mirages on the horizon. These mirages had on many occasions fooled travellers into believing that there were pools of water in the distance, only to find nothing but dry grass or sand.

It was Piet’s duty to ride the boundary of his father’s 9,000-hectare farm to ensure that the fences were erect and, if necessary, to repair any damage. He had his .30-06 hunting rifle slung over his shoulder, a small coil of wire, and a large pair of pliers.

Occasionally he shot a springbok for meat, or to make biltong, the salted dried meat so enjoyed by most South Africans.

He arrived at the furthest boundary point which was the division between his father’s farm and that of his uncle, Herklaas Van der Merwe, his mother Anna’s brother.

Herklaas was an enormous man, weighing somewhere around 290 pounds. He was purported to eat half a sheep a day, usually starting off at breakfast with a large grilled rib on top of his rough-ground boer porridge and thick gravy. Now and again, his family would persuade him to visit Dr Pretorius in the local dorp for a physical examination. Amazingly, his cholesterol level always seemed to be within limits.

As Piet sat his horse, he looked over to the western boundary of the farm to his neighbour’s farm. It held particular interest to him because that is where Sarie lived.

Sarie Kriel was a blonde with lightly suntanned face under her stark white bonnet. Her features were even; her nose was small well shaped, and her golden blonde hair fell down almost to her waist. She wore no make-up, and her blue eyes were pale in the sunlight, but seemed to darken at night under the paraffin lanterns in the thatched farmhouse with its two-feet-thick walls, designed mainly to keep the heat of the day out and keep the warmth of the fire at night in.

The fireplace of the homestead was very wide, and copper pots were hung on spikes over the fire for cooking the evening meals. The back of the fireplace was charred black from the many fires that had been lit there over the years.

The family always had Nagtmaal prayers before dinner, sticking to the strict Calvinistic traditions of the Boer people.

Sarie had met Piet when he came over to the farm with a message to her family from his father, and thereafter, Piet used any excuse he could think of to ride over to the Kriel’s farm.

After a short while, Piet and Sarie had fallen in love. There was never any question of sex. That was sacred and could wait until after marriage, but on lonely nights, Piet always thought of Sarie and of the day when they would eventually get married.

CHAPTER 3

Piet’s thoughts came back to the present. He was back in the slit trench, huddled with David Dube against the cold.

What was known as the Bush War was taking place in Rhodesia. Piet had done his National Service as a helicopter pilot on the Namibian border, so he was well experienced in operational flying.

He spoke to his father, and it was agreed that Piet would volunteer for service as a helicopter pilot in the Rhodesian Air Force.

The Rhodesian Security Forces accepted him with alacrity, and he travelled to Salisbury to join a number of other South African volunteers, and took command of an Alouette helicopter. There were a number of foreign pilots flying for the Rhodesian Security Forces, including other South Africans and even a couple of Americans.

His particular task was to identify