CRAIG DAVIDSON

Picture it. End of times, man. DEFCON 1’s come and gone. Now, only scorched earth. All that’s left are mutant rats, cockroaches and, somewhere lurking in the radioactive rubble, Paul “The Mauler” Lazenby. The toughest sumbitch to walk the planet. Have you heard about the Mauler? Probably not. He’s the Kwai Chang Caine of tough guys, ghosting down dark alleyways and shying away from the light, just doing what he does. And what is it he does? Whatever pays the bills. You need an MMA fighter? He’s fought in Japan’s Pancrase organisation, tangling with world-class fighters like Ryüshi Yanagisawa. How about a professional wrestler? Lazenby has competed around the world, grappling in high school gymnasiums in scratch-ass rust-belt towns or under the bright lights of the Tokyo Bay NK Hall. Makes no nevermind to the Mauler; he picks up his lunch pail and wades into the fray. Powerlifter, strongman, stuntman, bouncer, body double for “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, video-game body model – at 47, he just keeps ploughing forward. He’s like a shark, my man the Mauler: he’s got to keep moving, keep eating, to survive. But the very best thing about Lazenby? He’s a kitten. A more genuinely kindhearted, easygoing man you will not find… although some of that has to do with the mellowing effects of age.

Back in his bouncer days, Lazenby was a hellion. He told me about this time he walked out to a bar’s parking lot to confront a trio of highly pissed dudes who wanted to murder him – and as the Mauler’s making his way towards them on that sultry summer eve, he snatched a low-flying beetle out of the air and ate it alive, without even breaking stride. “That took the fight right out of them,” he told me. “Nobody wants to fight a guy they suspect isn’t right between the ears, y’know? You have no clue what a dude like that might do.”

trains special operators in skiing, snowshoeing and other cold-weather skills.) But finding more special operators is neither quick nor easy. For instance, only 37 per cent of applicants are accepted for the Army’s Special Forces Qualification Course, which typically lasts more than a year.

“What it really takes to get through training isn’t just athleticism or even physical toughness,” says Jeff Eggers, a retired Navy SEAL officer and former special assistant to President Obama for National Security Affairs who now serves as a senior fellow for the non-partisan think tank New America. “It is a high degree of mental toughness, the ability to work with a team and the intellectual adaptability to approach problems from a variety of unorthodox ways. That’s the rare mix of qualities.”

Such problem-solving and maturity can’t always be taught in the classroom or in war games. Rather, it comes from real-life experience. “The average age of a Delta Force member is around 35,” says Reese. “We’re not recruiting high school quarterbacks. Delta is known as the Eagles, because eagles are not a flocking bird. They don’t follow the pack.”

To accommodate the demand, then, the pace of their deployments has quadrupled over the past decade. The ratio of time at home versus time deployed is close to one to one, though military officials hope to eventually get it to two to one.

“People can’t stay productive,” says Reese. “It’s the old Apache theory: run that horse till it drops, then eat it. You get guys who came in for a career in special ops, but after five or six years, they’re worn ragged.”

ike many special operators, Joshua Wheeler didn’t talk about the stresses of work with his wife – didn’t talk about his work at all. And Ashley didn’t ask. “My father spent 20 years in a plant and I never really knew what he did either,” she says. But Josh was starting to talk about life after the service.

He was 39. He had enlisted when he was 19 as a way to escape poverty in rural Oklahoma. His father died when he was young and he was raised mostly by his grandparents. In turn, he helped take care of his brother and four half-sisters – changing nappies, getting them off to school and making sure the fridge always had something in it, which sometimes meant hunting deer. Even with Ashley, he always insisted on keeping deer meat stocked in the freezer, his little way of ensuring she would never go without. “He was one of those very rare people who are able to claw their way out and just completely change their lives,” she says. “IT’S THE OLD APACHE THEORY,” SAYS A FORMER DELTA FORCE OPERATOR. “RUN THAT HORSE TILL IT DROPS, THEN EAT IT.”

All perfectly reasonable questions in another, earlier era of combat. But not now. Not in the grey zone.

“There will be more raids,” Carter said bluntly. “They will be in harm’s way. There’s no question about it.”

He was more eloquent about Wheeler’s sacrifice: “This is what is so consistent and so amazing about the American soldier: he ran to the sound of the guns… I’m immensely proud of this young man. But pride doesn’t make it any easier to welcome him home, fallen.” Josh had only 11 more days left in his tour. Months later, Ashley still sometimes feels like she is in shock. He did everything in life so well, so thoroughly and competently. “I never worried,” she says. “I never thought in a million years that anything would happen to him.”

The dream home in the woods is still much the same way Josh left it before returning to Iraq. The grill is still out back. The fridge is stocked like he would want it. But some things have changed. Ashley has disconnected the doorbell so she won’t have to hear it ring, like it did that night when military personnel showed up at her door, to tell her.

And in a place of honour in the living room, she keeps the copy of Sons and Lovers. Inside the front cover is a brief inscription Josh wrote to his family on that last flight home. Good book. I hope someone reads it. And to his unborn child, a simple declaration – one that suggested there would be plenty of time to say more.

I’m flying over the ocean right now to see your mother give birth to you.

SIX YEARS AGO, engineer Naadiya Moosajee and her NGO colleagues sat down to try to work out what makes a girl take up engineering as a career. The answer is as obvious as it was simple: mostly luck.

The aspirant engineer first needs to choose her family wisely. So one where the dad, uncle or acquaintance is an engineer. (Note the prevalence of males in all of that.)

Failing that, a guidance counsellor at school or other place of learning points her in that direction.

And finally… well, she needs a big helping of dumb luck. It was all a little discouraging. Still, even Moosajee herself today jokes that her own entry in the field was something of a fluke.

An engineer and sometime restaurateur, ten years ago she co-founded Womeng, a Cape Town-based nonprofit group of 120 volunteers aimed at encouraging girls to become engineers through workshops and mentoring. Womeng started life as Sawomeng, whose aim was to motivate, empower and celebrate women who are pursuing careers in engineering. They offered courses to those who were already converted – engineering students. But to nurture the next generation of female engineers required getting involved with a far younger audience. Mainly, those learners who were starting their secondary schooling.

That’s why, six years ago, they established Girleng.

After looking into why girls didn’t – and still don’t – want to study engi-