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Life in The Bike Squad in the early 70’s.
Howzit, everyone. First off, thanks for allowing me into the group. I was feeling nostalgic and wondering if I could find anything on the Bike Squad from the 70’s. A bit of searching brought me to this forum and when I saw those photos on page one of two guys on XRs flying through the bush, it made me crazy envious. Really wish I was there!
In my time, the early BS was justifying itself as a public relations service (a sort of extension of the Entertainment Corps) and, although there was obviously a larger plan further down the line, it was more of a biker’s playground than any kind of threat to the enemy.
Having said which, I (personally) would have had no compunctions in those days about using terrs as traction.
In 1971, when I was in Std 6 at Lyttleton Manor, I moved from Tek Camp in Verwoerdburg to Windhoek. At that time - certainly while I was going to school there (in Wnk) - there was no sense of conflict or even a whiff of any kind of impending ‘border war’. None that I was aware of, anyway.
After leaving school and working in the darkroom at the Suidwester Newspaper for a year, processing film and making the image plates for the printing presses, I got called up at the clueless age of 17 to do my 12 months (the last of the 12-month January intake) at 1 Sigs in Heidelberg. I turned 18 in the army.
When the army okes came around to our school (Centaurus High) a couple of years previously to do their recruiting for the SADF, I listed my interests as sound engineering and writing. It was true, but I really thought that would leave them scratching their heads. Naturally, they put me down for Signals.
Although I’d been riding barefoot in the bush since I was 14 and bunked many days (weeks, actually) to take long weekends in Swakop to ride the dunes on our unroadworthy bikes with my mates and had, later – at 17 - done a stint of game herding on the Etosha border for a local game trader, it never occurred to me, as I made the 3-day train trip to Heidelberg in ‘the Republic’, that the army would have bikes or that I would ever ride again till at least my 7-day pass. I was the only one from South West in the intake.
Being roofies, we were all put into the roofie building (Louw Weppener, I think it was called) and divided up into different groups, according to our mustering (mine being COMSEN - telex, dispatch, langdraad, pigeon, etc.) and the other being Radio Ops (they became the Band) and I seriously forget what the other bunch were – Tiffies, I think. Hey, it was a long time ago.
Anyway, one Saturday morning, after a few weeks in basics (we didn’t get weekend passes till after basics), all the COMSEN okes in our building were told by our PF Corporal to tree aan outside, even though we were dressed in our weekend civvies, where a big and intimidating-looking Staff Sergeant - whom we’d never seen before - was standing waiting for us. He had a characteristic nervous tick in his neck, like his collar was bugging him or something. O vok. Wat nou?
After we’d all gotten into a straight stripe, the Staff asked if anybody knew how to ride a motorbike. Almost all the hands went up. Those who didn’t respond probably thought it was a trick question and weren’t about to volunteer for niks! Seeing the abstention, some of the up hands quickly went down again.
Those (us) with hands up were told to step forward, while the rest were told to fall out and ‘gaan aan’. While the ‘smart’ ones were shuffling back into the building, the Staff called us to attention, told us to report to the parade ground in 15 minutes in our browns and then left the Corporal to tree us out.
The smart ones were lingering around the entrance to the building to see what was going to happen and when we tree’d out, they started laughing. “Ja - julle gaan lekker afka-ak!”
Fifteen minutes later, we were standing at ease on the earthen parade ground next to the dam, wondering if we hadn’t made a mistake. We usually had the crap drilled out of us on that parade ground. But, as we all stood there, noticing the lack of power-hungry one-stripers to bark the usual drill orders at us roowers, Staff van Schalkwyk (we later named him Staff Steel, but that’s another story) rode up on a 360 Yamaha, called us to attention again and gave us a good once-over. Couldn’t tell if he was shaking his head in disapproval or if it was just his collar hassling him again. Inspection over, “Staan rustig”, he said casually.
When he asked who had actually ridden a bike before, only about half the hands went up. With a knowing smile, he turned and just said: “Tree uit - kom!” As we followed him to one corner of the parade ground, even I hadn’t noticed the lone 350XL parked there. Resplendent in its army green, it looked a bit the worse for wear. The reason became evident in the following minutes. I just thought: wtf – the army just became my favourite place!
The try-out was simple: ride from this corner of the parade ground to the other, turn around and come back. Roughly 200m each way, as I recall.
I remember thinking: “Nooit! What kind of a test it that?” Again, the answer soon became evident. One by one, the volunteers were called forward to get on the bike, start it and ride there and back. I swear I nearly pissed myself. Some couldn’t even start the 350 because of the compression and fell over trying, others stalled it and then fell off, some lost balance and crashed in a straight line, others couldn’t even keep it in a straight line – one oke veered off towards the dam and bailed just in time to save the bike from being salvaged, others fell off at the other end because they couldn’t stop, using their feet as brakes(!) All in all, about 25 okes made it happen, some of them quite competently, to be fair.
All this time, I was shuffling my way to the back of the Q. Being the smallest and skinniest oke there (not anymore, I’m pleased to say), I reckon they thought I was chickening out. Actually, I had a plan.
Being the last one left, all the okes who had made it were standing on one side, smirking and making comments to each other, while all the okes who didn’t make it and weren’t on their way to the sick bay for light duty were watching in another group to see what “Windhoek” was going to do. “Komaan, Windhoek!” They obviously thought I needed some encouragement. Siestog…
The surface was hard, some loose dirt to make traction a bit tricky – but no problem – it was just a very wide dirt road to me. At home, I had ridden my boet’s Honda SL125 (first offroad bike I think with a 21 inch front wheel) at our makeshift 'track' at Brakwater, just outside Windhoek and was used to jumping on the kick starter, being a bit light in the pants and all.
Seeing as the 350 was already warmed up, I primed the starter just past the compression stroke and then jumped on it, cracking the throttle and snaking off in 1st, banged into 2nd and once there was enough traction, leaned back to get the front wheel off the ground for a bit, crashed into 3rd (without clutch) until making a speedway-style turn at the other end to come back, heading straight for the Staff, gooing sideways anchors to stop right in front of him in a cloud of dust.
At first there was silence as I hit the kill switch, kicked the side stand out and hopped off with a big smile on my face. I got a few handclaps from the reject line. Staff gave me a long, hard look with that nervous tick in his neck and said, matter-of-factly: “Ja nee – jy’s nie meer Windhoek nie. Van nou af is jy Wind-gat!”
On our first official visit to the hangar-like vehicle park across the river, where the bikes were stored, I was pleasantly surprised to see quite a collection of machinery. Starting with the 1966 Triumph Tiger 650’s, they were like 2-wheel tanks with ass-about-face gears and foot brake (gears on the right, brake on the left). Then there were a bunch of Honda CD175 Twins, which some of the brass and MPs got around on and which went on to become one of the most popular commercial delivery bikes in the country. Then there were the new (1973) Honda 350 Four road bikes, about 10 of them that had some of the okes drooling – also used by MPs and some officers. Then – aaahh – a row of about 20 Honda XL350s (1973 models). That got me drooling. And, finally, there were about 5 or 6 Yamaha RE360’s (with the reed valves) – but I still only had eyes for the Hondas. All of the above were resplendent in their army green with half inch steel bash plates.
Then, to one side, there were two yellow and orange Triumph 650 ‘clown bikes’ with offset hubs, so they rode like broncos, two Harley 1200s, one green and the other orange and yellow with a trick sidecar, which I ended up handling in the shows (yet another story).
While we were still doing our basics, we were only allowed to ride the heavy Triumphs with the ass-about-face gears and brake. We used them during manoeuvres as dispatch bikes to deliver ‘secret’ messages to HQ, although we mainly fetched and delivered toasted sarmies and burgers for the officers.
One of our punishments for making droog in the camp (which happened a lot) was to take the spark plugs out, put the triumphs in 4th (only had 4 gears) and push them around the koppie – uphill and downhill and back to camp – about 3 or 4 k’s as I recall – maybe a bit more. It was a big place, where the 3-week campers used to train, so it was quite a haul – all dirt roads. As it turned out, Staff VS was actually a reasonable guy and a biker at heart. He had to afkak with us, because he was the Bike Squad 1IC. Korporaal Lerm was our 2IC, so he had to afkak with us too.
When we took the plugs out at camp, Staff told us to put them in our pockets. The RSM was there to see us off and check that we were actually pushing the bikes. As soon as we’d pushed far enough to be out of earshot, Staff would tell us to stop and yell “Vonkproppe in!” and then we’d ride almost at idle speed, so they couldn’t hear us in camp, up the slopes to the other side of the koppie to a place where we could chill and have a smoke break for about half an hour.
After a reasonable time, he’d tell us: "Vonkproppe uit!” and we’d start pushing the bikes again the rest of the way, which was mostly downhill anyway, to arrive back at the camp looking like we’d all learnt our lesson, as the RSM stood by his window watching us with his trademark cup of tea, nodding approvingly, probably thinking to himself: “Ja, julle bliksems!”.
With reference to Upsun’s point that all the top riders and MX champions (I know that Mark Connely was one of them) went on to form a demo team in the mid 80’s after deployment, and his comment about the old Bike Squad that: “I can tell you that it was NOT clowns on blue bikes going around in circles in an arena (blood-curdling "stunt" that is)", I feel obliged to point out that we did all that stuff back then already – not a national MX champion among us. We were even going to do an Evel-Knievel stunt and jump over a Bedford full of troeppies – well, I was, until Staff pretzelled my bike while testing the ramp that the Tiffies had made for us. That’s when we started calling him Staff Steel. (story later)
There were, indeed, four clowns, dressed up in colourful dungarees and wild wigs, two of which rode the yellow and orange Triumph 650s (not blue) with offset hubs and the other two rode the Harley with the sidecar. Then there was the formation demonstration where we would all ride in a circle and stand, sit, squat, lie, and climb all over our bikes - without wobbling or breaking formation and then peel off to the middle of the circle in four groups to start the cloverleaf formation, where we rode in between each other for a couple of rounds. There were also two guys who had triumphs with special reinforced front mudguards so that they could climb over the handles, sit on the front wheel and ride the bikes backwards.
Then there was the 4-way cross jump, where four of us would gun it from opposite corners of the field and hit the ramps in the middle of the field at exactly the right moment to prevent mid-air collisions. Once, during rehearsal, the timing was spectacularly off and the oke coming towards me and the oke approaching from the left (can’t for the life of me remember their names) collected each other in mid air. But they were back the following week. I think it was Varty and Moolman.
The Harley sans sidecar was used to make the human pyramid, where (usually) a minimum of 12 of us would clamber on, forming a base for the okes who climbed on top of us and then the rider (‘Skrik’ deWet) would take off carefully and do one full circle. The Harley was set to idle a bit high and had so much grunt that all Skrik had to do was let the clutch out slowly and we would set off just fast enough to keep balance.
The Harley with the sidecar (on the left side) was part of the Clown’s act. One would ride, while the other sat in the sidecar. Then the rider would pitch the sidecar in the air and wobble around on two wheels, like keystone cops, while the clown in the sidecar would make like he was shitting himself and trying to jump out. Always got the crowd laughing. With the passenger moving about like that, the rider had to counter steer a bit and let it wobble for show.
So at the end of each display, everyone would take their bows in front of the grandstand / audience, except me, because I would be hidden in the sidecar (being the smallest oke). We made the switch out of sight of the spectators. I would lie/crouch down inside the sidecar, which had a disguised metal gauze panel in front to see through, a bar with an extra clutch lever and an ‘L’ bracket connected directly to the front forks so I could steer. Then the clown would literally sit on top of me as we rode out for the finale.
At the appropriate moment, both the clowns would climb off to take a dramatic bow in front of the main crowd, leaving the Harley (also idling a bit high) in 1st gear with me holding the second clutch. At that point, I would take off and swerve around the field with the entire squad giving chase, creating the impression that the bike had a mind of its own. Sometimes, I’d turn it around as if the bike was now chasing them and they’d all suddenly run in every direction. The audiences lapped it up.
Now and a gain, I’d pull back hard on the steering lever to pitch the Harley to the left and put the sidecar in the air, but only when the spectators could see the bottom of the car while it was tilted and not see me inside it. That was before the days of radio control and it was a fact that spectators absolutely believed the bike was radio controlled – sommer just because it was an army bike.
Actually, we were talking to each other all the time on the field and, at some point, one of the clowns would grab hold and say “ok - clutch” and I’d pull clutch and keep straight so both clowns could climb back on and ride off the field waving victoriously to the cheering crowd.
While I have many other stories of the shit we got up to and into, suffice it to say that a small group of us agreed that we would uphold our reputation as true bikers and defy as much authority as possible and whenever possible, since we had been told flatly that we were only ever going to be part of the public relations effort for the army and give demos for the duration of our call-up.
The only thing close to combat training we got was 3 weeks of D-formation riot control and ten bloody rounds a month at the shooting range(!), about half of which, my mate, Pottie and I put into the shooting range flag pole (with the red flag) to make it look like we couldn’t shoot for shit. The gunsmith eventually gave up trying to adjust our sights when the oke in the skietgat waved his paddle to indicate yet another ‘miss’.
I heard via the grapevine a few years later that the pole eventually broke and fell over – don’t know if it was true, but it was good to hear our rounds were on target. Truth is, we were both actually marksmen. But we were bikers first and totally prepared to forgo the potential marksman badges (basically a brooch in the shape of an R1).
FYI - my old man was a Flight Sergeant who went to Egypt in WW2, trained radio ops at STT, sometimes did night duty at ZRB and represented the SADF in bisley competitions.
The list goes on but, unfortunately, the sun also goes down. There just isn't enough time to share all my Bike Squad recollections at once. Like the time Pottie crashed my bike right outside the stadium in Nigel before a show, after sneaking out to the local cafe to get some slap chips. And the time the Colonel bust two MP's for AWOL when they unwittingly tried to dice him in his civvy car on the main street of Heidelberg one Saturday night on a pair of the 175 Honda twins. And the time I took down about 50 meters of barbed wire fence at full taps on one of the Triumphs when the throttle jammed open. And the time a storm hit the town and blew away the entire vehicle park and the only way to reach it was on the scramblers, because the dam wall, which, at the time, was the only access to that side of the camp, got washed away.
So I say to you, Upsun, don’t give up on your idea of writing your story. As you see, it can be a hellova lot of fun, despite the seriousness of the times.
Respect to the guys who went up North. Especially the ones who didn’t make it back.
Anyway, I hope this was at least interesting if not informative. Thanks for the platform.
(Tie a rocket to your sprocket.)
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A corner is just a straight piece of road that's bent.
Last edited by Ouman on 23 Jul 2022, 16:27, edited 1 time in total.
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