about

Hi. My name is Dallas Dahms.

I was born in the city of Durban, South Africa back in January of 1968. My life has not been filled with the kind of adventure that warrants a memoir to be published, but as the modern world continues to try and erase or pervert history in its quest to advance an agenda I am not in agreement with, I feel it is my duty to tell my own story and let the world absorb that in whatever way it wants to. 

The original idea for this memoir was sparked by watching the movie “Moffie” which is based on the experiences of a young man with sexuality issues who finds himself conscripted into the South African Army during the 1980’s. I found the movie to be inaccurate as far as the military element is concerned and thought I would write about my own experiences during that time so that there is at least one more voice added to those who have also written about their experiences in the SADF. 

Is This Real?

When my father passed away in 2009 all the documentation and personal stuff that my Mom had collected over the years came to me. Amongst that stuff was a bundle of army letters that I had written to my parents. Reading these letters gave me a timeline of how basics and second phase training played out. It also sparked a lot of memories. I have also kept many of the letters I received from my friends and family during that time and they too sparked my memories of what life was life back in those days. It was certainly different to what we know today!

The space of time between these events and when I have written them down is more than 30 years, so I have re-created certain conversations in my mind, but the circumstances surrounding those conversations were all authentic. Nothing is made up.

Why A Blog?

I thought that I would dismantle the traditional publishing apparatus which entails submitting a completed script to a publisher and then letting them decide if they want to put it into a printing press and deliver it to the world. As a website designer I have all the tools at my disposal to publish the words electronically and do my own type of marketing and monetisation of the project. I have done that in the form of a WordPress blog which you are looking at now. 

I am adding posts piecemeal in a timeline that is consistent with when they happened, but at the same time I am also dividing up my experiences into different epochs, some of which overlap, so presenting it in a website blog format is actually quite convenient as it will allow readers to follow different branches of the memoir as they are categorised. Obviously I didn’t spend my entire life in the SADF, so while it may have served as the catalyst for this project, I intend writing about other interesting periods of history in my life. They will fall into their own epochs and will probably be haphazardly added.

Stylistically I am writing the Army epoch in a stream of consciousness and I am also not using traditional punctuation for dialog. For this I thank the late, great Frank McCourt (Pulitzer Prize winning author of Angela’s Ashes).

Support Me

You can support this writing project by making a financial contribution via PayPal. You’ll find a link in the main sidebar of the home page and a link at the bottom of each post. No obligation. I don’t write these stories to make money, but it does help me with the costs of maintaining and hosting the website when you make a donation.

Oh, I should mention that I have changed many of the names of people close to me. But they will know who they are.

I hope you enjoy the stories. Feel free to email me your thoughts (I don’t allow comments on the posts because of spam and hackers).

Dallas