ANNUAL MEMORIAL SERVICES AND PARADES

The flag ship event of the 61 Mech Veterans Association is the annual memorial service and parade which is held at the Ditsong National Museum for Military History at 22 Erswold Way, Saxonwald, Johannesburg, usually on the third Saturday in August. Since Covid a separate memorial service and parade is held in the Western Cape each year too.

The first memorial service and parade was held on 12 June 2010. This was a particular memorable one, for two reasons.

Firstly, Operation Sceptic was the specific operation which was commemorated that year, with a presentation afterwards by the commander of 61 Battalion Groups at the time, Commandant Johann Dippenaar. This operation and the action at the Smokeshell target occupy a very special niche in the 61 Mech story, as it was the first conventional bush-warfare action of the kind for which the unit had been specifically designed, and the attack on Smokeshell was its baptism of fire.

This presentation, and all those to follow in respect of all the respective military operations conducted by 61 Mech Battalion Group, helped give past members clarity and perspective about the events in which they had been involved and which had influenced their later lives, for good of for ill; past commanding officers could deliver their thanks and a word of encouragement for a generation that had not been able to come to terms with the fast-paced changes which had permanently changed South Africa’s political landscape since April 1989. The implicit message in all of this was, as Roland de Vries put it, that the officers, NCOs and men of 61 Mech had fought to obtain a better type of peace.

Secondly, the problem of finding a permanent home for 61 Mech’s regimental memorabilia had finally be resolved. It had been an unsatisfactory situation in the years following the regiment’s disbandment. The connection with Lohatla had died in 2005, and the Combat Training Centre was so remote that for practical purposes the collection was not accessible to the bulk of 61 Mech veterans and therefore could not serve its primary purpose; in addition, the items lodged at 1 SAI had initially been looked after, as had been agreed, but in the course of time the responsible officers had been posted away and their successors had made no effort to continue honouring the original solemn undertaking.

General Johann Dippenaar’s efforts with the SANDF command structure to get everything transferred to the custodianship of the 61 Mech Veterans Association had worked; Jan Malan tackled the task of securing suitable premises at the Ditsong National Museum for Military History and by early autumn of 2010 had succeeded. Kobus Smit, who had retired and re-invented himself as an architect, poured his skills and empathy into a suitable design that would fit into the allocated space. Jaap Steyn inspanned a team of builders from Postmasburg to remove the memorial column, the Hind Memorial Bell and other items from Lohatla and 1 SAI to Saxonwald.

A regiment may lay down its arms, but it lives as long as there are people who honour its memory, even after the last few men who served in the ranks have marched into history.