MARIUS OELSCHIG
Your Grace, I repeat that I have been a soldier, a professional soldier of 35 years standing.  I do not know how else to express myself than in purely professional terms.  I have seen combat, I have seen fighting and I have lost friends, I have lost family and I have lost people under my command.  It is not given to the commander to publicly show, not even to his soldiers, the grief that he feels.
 A commander grieves on his own and he grieves quietly.  You learn through the years to accept it as such.   I apologise if the Commission expected me really to open my heart and to put it out for public display.  That, that is my grief, that is my concern that I live with as I have during my professional career and as I will until the end of my days.  I am a committed, loyal South African.  I feel very, very deeply about everything that has happened in our country and I have made my contribution where I could.  I have done my very best as an officer and as a South African, to promote what is happening in this country today.  I have honestly, really, professionally done so.
 I accept the feelings of the previous speaker.  I am however, concerned that if it was an attempt to publicly humiliate me and to speak down to me and to slap me down like some precocious young dog, I don't appreciate that.  If that was not the intention, I accept the words that have been directed at me.  I would like to conclude, Your Grace, by insisting that I be allowed to grieve the way I grieve and if in my professional language of expressing my regret that loved ones have been lost and injured, if that is not sufficient, I apologise for that, but that is how I feel.  I am a soldier and I have been taught to hide my tears and I have been taught to grieve on my own.