It was only until years later, when I heard that he was still living with his parents, barely able to hang onto a job, that memories of his return flooded back. A braai at our place. My father saying a toast: "It's not every day that a guy comes back from the border,' he had said.

It was a noble, if futile, attempt to honour a soldier from someone who knew nothing about what had gone up there (it was an illegal campaign, in violation of the UN, so we knew nothing). But the soldier had just stood there, silently, staring vacantly into his beer. He wouldn't meet anybody's eyes.

I had met several other Angolan "vets" since then. Just a couple of years older than me ? imagine being labelled a war veteran at 19? ? they had told me snippets of what it had been like. One guy simply kept saying how he would never send his son to war. "Never," he said. "not even into the army ? it's all a load of bullshit." Over and over again, while knocking back whisky after whisky. I was shocked ? it was the first time I had heard this sort of "breaking of the ranks" before.

I have long held a fascination with war, the way it turns the rules of ordinary civilian existence upside down, creates its own morals and laws that have no place in our society. War is a reality of its own and crossing into it (and coming back again) comes at a huge price to its soldiers and those close to them. It is a lesson that the world, it seems, will never learn.

Bound by a sense of honour to their fellow troops, and the patriarchy still espoused by white South Africa, few men have come forward and spoken about their experiences, however barbaric and mundane, in South Africa's border wars.

As a result, the history of these ordinary men ? who went to war 17-year-old boys and came back 19-year-old veterans ? is fragmented. Save for a few amateurish websites and a smattering of books, they have no recorded collective history, and because of this their healing process, and part of South Africa's, has hardly begun.

Clive Holt's book 'At Thy Call We Did Not Falter' is exciting because it is part of the beginning of this healing process.

Holt begins by laying out the conditions for the war: the secrecy of South Africa's illegal operations in Angola made most of what happened there a complete mystery to the people these men left behind. He also illustrates how many soldiers themselves had little idea what they were doing there ? both when it came to the big picture (they were halting some vague "communist" threat backed by the Cubans), and their day-to-day troop movements.

Holt's story is twofold. The first part documents the activities of 61 Mechanised Battalion leading up to and including the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale. The second part looks at the aftermath of the conflict and Holt's own personal battle with overcoming Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

In the first part, Holt offers us a glimpse into one of the major battles of the Angolan campaign ? from the perspective of an ordinary soldier. The second part is a vindication of the SADF's scandalous position in what amounted to a wholescale inability, or unwillingness, to council troops suffering from PTSD. Holt's loyalty remains, infallibly, towards his fellow soldiers ? hence the title of the book.

The first part is riddled with self-effacing humour and stoic military pride. Holt's story is a testimony to what he feels is a conflicting desire to "tell it like it happened" in all it's grisliness and tragedy, while maintaining loyalty towards his fellow troops.

As a result, the horrors of war often come couched in a macho tone. Stories of donkey riding and brewing alcohol in jerry cans to fill the hours of boredom are undercut by gory details of how South African troops would find remains of Fapla soldiers, steal their uniforms and weapons and vie to see who could smuggle these bizarre trophies back home.

His pride in the performance of his battalion against Fapla is undermined by a constant sense of the futility of this war ? though this is thanks in part to hindsight as well as to the efforts of the author: "It was a really shitty t-shirt, emblazoned with the phrase Hooper ? Ek Was Daar. I Did My Bit? a rather pathetic gesture for a bunch of guys who had just been through hell?".

Don't look for any complicated literary tricks here ? Holt is no Joseph Heller and there are no philopsophical debates on the nature of war or any empathy with the enemy ? Fapla is, and remains, faceless: a coping mechanism, perhaps.

For all his openness, Holt's humour betrays that he is still "one of the boys" and I often got the sense that he was standing next to me beer in hand, stoking a piece of meat on the braai, while his story ? at times heroic, other times pathetic ? unfolded.

It is this open-hearted and honest tone that opens the reader to the daily stress suffered by soldiers who formed part of Operation Hooper, the second wave of South Africa's attempt to halt the Fapla advance towards the north-eastern corner of Namibia.

For the second thrust of the book ? the exploration of PTSD ? the reader must look deeper. It is when Holt's tone becomes vulnerable, when he allows us the privilege of being inside his head, both then and now, that we get a glimpse of the hell in its furthest corners. And it is here ? in the trauma of conflict and after ? that the story of one man's attempt to live with PTSD appears.

In this book, the horrors of conflict are only matched by the scandalous position the SADF had in dealing with (or rather, washing their hands of) soldiers suffering from PTSD. As a result these young men would keep recalling the trauma of conflict, and it would wreak havoc in their lives on Civvie Street (civilian society) for years after. It is a phenomenon for which nobody will ever likely be held accountable.

"During the two days when I was waiting to be flown out, I cried a lot and was alone, waiting for the helicopter. I prayed a LOT. When flown out of Angola, I had to sit on top of my buddy's Jiffy bays [body bags]? the stinking Jiffy bags were disgusting? I was taken to Rundu hospital, where I saw my other friends? We did not talk much; everyone seemed to try to reflect on what had happened to them? There I had a 30-minute talk with the [psychiatrists] and I told them that I found faith in God and that I was okay. After that, I received no more counselling or support from the SADF."

It is perhaps when Holt hears of the death of a close friend towards the end of the campaign, that the seeds of this book are planted: "In the army, the last thing you want to appear is weak in front of your fellow soldiers, so the only real option was to shut up, keep your feelings inside and carry on with life. I had done this over and over, and now it felt as if all the emotion bottled up inside needed to be released somehow?"

And what better way to release it than telling the story of where it came from?

Holt's book is no literary masterpiece. It is, in his own words, is an attempt to "light a candle", to leave a light on in the darkness for other Angolan vets to find a way to tell their stories. But it is also a "light" for those who didn't go there, who are struggling to find answers to those sons, brothers and friends, who have been lost, whether physically or in spirit.

Civvies like us should read this book, not for its literary value, and not to try to understand, but just to listen ? so that one day this forgotten hole in South Africa's history can be filled again, so that both collective and individual memories can be healed.

So that maybe one day, I'll invite that family friend of mine around again for another beer, and this time there will be no awkwardness. There will be no more ghosts.