61 MECH BATTALION GROUP MEMORABILIA
The 61 Mech Veterans Association, after its establishment as an officially recognised military veterans association, seeked a suitable permanent home for 61 Mech Battalion Group’s regimental memorabilia. The Memorial Needle was still lodged at the Combat Training Centre at Lohatla, but 61 Mech’s physical connection with the Combat Training Centre had died in 2005 after the regiment’s disbandment, and, more importantly, the CTC was remote from almost anywhere else in the country. This meant that for practical purposes the collection was not accessible to the bulk of 61 Mech veterans and therefore could not serve its primary purpose.
The situation of the items held at 1 South African Infantry Battalion, which included the Hind Memorial Bell, the flags, the regimental colour and other museum items originally entrusted to 1 SAI, plus an Olifant tank and a captured BRDM scout car, was even worse. Initially they had been looked after, as had been agreed, but in the course of time the officers concerned had been posted away.
A new permanent home would have to be found for 61 Mech’s treasures, and the association got to work. “The process began to drive itself,” Ariël Hugo recalls. “61 men began to take ownership of their renowned past, and from far and wide people began to make contact and offer help. Our history would be insensitive but for the eagerness and determination of the past members who tackled the relocating of the memorial needle, the Lomba clock and museum items. Our leaders took the lead, as we had learnt to know them.”
General Dippenaar immediately set about negotiating with the South African National Defence Force command structure to have all the 61 Mech memorabilia which were still in military possession transferred from the CTC and 1 SAI to the safekeeping of the Association. Inevitably this was a delicate and protracted process which was destined to take almost 18 months.
His determined efforts paid off, and on 30 April 2010, Lt Gen S. Z. Shoke the Chief of the Army of the SANDF at that time, issued the long-awaited letter confirming the appointment of the 61 Mech Veterans Association as the custodian of the 61 Mech Battalion Group memorabilia. This arrangement was subject to the 61 Mech Veterans Association entering into an availability agreement with the Ditsong National Museum for Military History in Saxonwold, Johannesburg, in terms of which the official memorabilia are on loan to the museum in terms of the provisions of Section 4(5)(b) of the Cultural Institutions Act, 1998 (No 119 of 1998).
On 12 June 2010, exactly three decades and two days after the attack on Smokeshell, there was a particularly memorable get-together at the National Museum of Military History at Saxonwold, Johannesburg. Smokeshell has always occupied a very special niche in 61 Mech’s annals. But what made the occasion especially memorable was that 61 Mech’s memorabilia had finally been united in a new home.
Everything had finally started coming together in the first half of 2010. General Dippenaar’s efforts (his “magic tricks”, as Ariël would have it) to get everything transferred to the custodianship of the veterans’ association had achieved success at last; Jan Malan had tackled the task of securing suitable premises at the National Museum of Military History and by the early autumn of 2010 had succeeded. Bok Smit, who had retired early and re-invented himself as an architect, poured his skills and empathy into a suitable design for the memorial site that would fit into the allocated space. Jaap Steyn inspanned a whole team of builders from Lichtenburg to move the 61 Needle and other items from Lohatla and 1 SAI to Saxonwold.
Given the time available it was an intensive process, but once again 61 Mech beat the clock, and by the 30th anniversary date everything was in place. The physical cost of the enterprise was R37 459.49 – not counting, of course, the many hours of unpaid effort by the Association team. It was accounted a worthwhile expenditure of time, energy and money; a regiment may lay down its arms, but it lives on as long as there are still people who honour its memory, even when the last of the men who actually served in its ranks have marched into history.
And so was born an enduring institution. Every year the Ratel men and their friends and colleagues of sister units gather at the museum on the third Saturday of day of August, a little older each time, with gaps in their ranks where some have passed on, but their rows of medals are as bright and their spirit as undimmed as ever. Some retired as generals, others returned to civilian life as riflemen; it makes no difference to the heartiness of the handshakes or the trading of stories about done long ago, because all the 61 men and those who fought with them belong to the fraternity of the little dagger badge they wear so proudly on their lapels.
