“Through the Iron Gates” tells the true story of how I ended up in 1 Parachute Battalion during my two years of national service — something I never planned, never aimed for, and never imagined for myself.

It begins in Bloemfontein, the “City of Roses,” where I arrived at 1 Infantry with a broken left foot still in plaster of Paris. I was seventeen, in pain, and already feeling like life had taken a turn I didn’t choose. The first days were a shock: hair shaved off, a number written down, kitted out in stores while standing exposed, and then the real wake-up — a harsh 4am whistle and a sergeant shouting, “Don’t look at me like that, I’m not your mother.” By later that day, being assigned to clean toilets, I knew one thing: I had to get out of there.

Two weeks later, instructors from 1 Parachute Battalion arrived to select recruits. I was sitting with school friends when they called for volunteers to step outside and do the fitness test. Every friend I was with stood up and went. I realized: if I stay behind, I stay alone — and I stay stuck. I tried to explain my broken foot, but the answer was simple: pass the test within the cut-off time, or stay.

Somehow, I made it. And that afternoon we marched from 1 Infantry to 1 Parachute Battalion and entered the guarded iron gates — the first steps into a road I never planned, but that would shape me. This song is about that moment: fear, grit, and a hidden path opening in the hardest place.