Dead Leaves

It is January 1979. Groups of nervous, dutiful white conscripts begin their National Service with Rhodesia's security forces. Ian Smith's minority regime is in its dying days and negotiations towards majority rule are already under way. For these inexperienced eighteen-year-olds, there is nothing to do but go on fighting, hold the line while the transition happens around them. This is a textured memoir in which an ordinary troopie grapples with unique dilemmas presented by an extraordinary period in history: the spectres of inner violence and death; the pressurised arrival of manhood; and the place of conscience, friendship and beauty in the pervasive atmosphere of futile warfare.