THE WATCHPIG
During Leliefontein celebrations in ‘72 with the RCD we aquired the Watch Pig. Small lead in though. Leliefontein lasted for about a week at that time, lot‘s of parties and sports along with the parades. Sports were always accompanied by copious amounts of drink. During the games the MO was always on duty. Two or three guys went to the hospital during the bicycle jousts and another six or seven with sprains and breaks during the Sqn vs Sqn murder ball game. For some reason though, when the greased pig competition started, the MO found it to inhumane and made us stop. So, now what to do with the little pink piglet?
It was decided the pig would be auctioned off at the smoker, figuring one of the guys living on a local farm would buy it for the landlord. Nope. The single guys pooled our money and won the pig. For the rest of the night he kept up with the boys drinking beer. A can would get tossed to him, he‘d bite into it, and drink the beer that flowed out. Within a couple of days he was a raving alchoholic. He‘d roam the hallway of T4 searching for his elixar. He‘d get extremley agitated as he sobered up and attack you if you had no beer for him. Hence the Watch Pig moniker. You had to know how to disarm the guard. As we returned to the shack at night, you always had a can of beer. On entering the darkened shack, you‘d listen for the clip clop of his cloven hooves and toss the beer to the other end. When he went for it, you went the other way to your room.
The Black Forest Officer‘s Mess had a large silver punch bowl. During the RCD Officer‘s Leliefontein soiree, it disappeared about the same time as the Stewards. The MP‘s show up at the shack to recover it and rousted us all out. Ignoring our drunken taunts, they ask for it back under threat of us all ending up in cells. They‘re told the "pig" in the end room has it. They knock at the door and listen. Snorting and snuffling is heard. Thinking the occupant passed out, they use their pass key. Upon rushing in, they slip on the pig shyte on the floor (cleaned up twice daily BTW) and are confronted face to face with a very drunken and ornary swine. His punch bowl, which had previously been full was now empty and he wanted it replenished. So that was strike one for the Watch Pig. Ordered out of the shacks by the SSM, he was given a spot between the wings, tied to the Snowball tower. The SSM stated he was our responsibility and we were on thin ice. It took Watch Pig about two hours to turn the lawn into a muddy, circular sty, about twenty feet in diameter. The length of his rope. German CE type complains, strike two.
Pete D is elected to ensure the Watch Pig behaves properly as the whole thing was his idea. Him being the drunkest when we bought it and not being able to remember, he seemed the best candidate.
The final straw came about a week later, on a Sunday morning. The day broke sunny and warm. Too nice to sleep in, even after a hard night in the CC Keller Bar. One of the fellas looked out and raised the alarm. Watch Pig was loose! Pete D was roused and told to go out and tie him up. Forgetting the beer bait, Pete goes out in nothing but his jockeys. Without incentive to listen (no beer) Watch Pig takes off down the road. Pete D is in hot pursuit as Watch Pig rounds the corner and heads up the main road behind the shacks. Watch Pig is clippity clopping along as fast as he can, straight down the middle of the road, considering the twenty or thiry pounds he has put on while on his three week beer diet and Pete‘s not doing much better. They are about twenty yards short of the Church, when the congregation, led by the Base Commander, his family and the Padre step out into the morning sun. Ringside to see Watch Pig being pusued by a drunken RCD wearing nothing but yellow jockey shorts and screaming profanity at the pig. We can only imagine the thoughts that were racing through the various minds. Needless to say, that was Strike Three for Watch Pig. He was given to a local farmer who could not believe his size for his age. Nor could he understand Watch Pig‘s horrible disposition...and Watch Pig being family, we didn‘t tell him.