The bodies of 13 fallen South African soldiers were laid out in a row in the improvised mortuary set up by Lieutenant Colonel Bucibe and Captain Mahlo at the French base. On Sunday night, most of Charlie Company slept soundly in their sleeping bags in the hangar they had been allocated. But the medics were woken by their hosts. The bodies, which had lain in the tropical sun all day, were beginning to putrefy. One of the sub-standard body bags was leaking. “Now we must transfer it to another bag because they don’t want all these fluids leaking onto the floor. We had to deal with that – me and her,” Bucibe said, referring to Mahlo. “We were undertakers.”