The Unforgiving Road

The war has plenty of stories of the deeds of the heroes and heroism, which resulted in surrender to so much for cause and revenge. However, it has just as much of a beautiful narrative within it as anything else, relating to passion in life as well as in love and individual resilience in the context of challenges. Forged in Fire: The elements treated in this book, A Soldier’s Journey through War and Wilderness, in which one is sensitised/required to accompany the writer/witness along with John Venter, who ironically wages both the pragmatic war of the actual wilderness and the metaphysical war of the warfare of the wilderness.

Interestingly, this memoir plays out against the backdrop of the Bush War; hence, one can track down John’s achievements and blunders. This one, full of training, places fire and, with the Angolan jungle threat, tells a transformation direction of John. At the end of every chapter, a theme is underlined and chronicle of a soldier — his friends made, foes encountered, and the happiness and sorrow experienced via wars fought. However, in the letters from dear Marietjie, who keeps him safe, the story of John is a continuation of the war, relations, and hope that makes us survive in the midst of hopelessness.

In addition, a book narrates a soldier's life story, and thus, it is the story of perseverance. It analyses the circumstances in which man is created and the concept pointing to the fact that even on the blackest of nights, one can always find something. It is time to wake up and answer not only soma, the organisers of the human body’s readiness, but psyche and ethos, and the organisers of human subject possibility in conflict zones.

These pages not only tell a soldier’s tale, but it would be a tale set in a world where everything is a shade of grey, where hero and villain are almost inverted, and love is that which keeps a soldier human. It is a beautiful story read between the lip services of war and exterior conflict as this nurtures internal conflict, as well as the memories of legacies.

That is why I invite you to become John Venter and to feel all the sorrow and all the happiness and the price he finally paid. His story is truly illustrative of the courage, humanity and sheer determination of a soldier who would do anything he could to get back home — alive.

Enjoy the journey.

Military