By Raffique Shah
June 21, 2025
Simon and Garfunkel sang: Old Friends, Sat on their park bench like bookends; Winter companions, the old men, Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sunset; Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly. How terribly strange to be seventy; Old Friends.
I lost an old friend last week. A comrade in arms. An old soldier with a philosophical soul. One whom I could spend hours chatting with on the phone and never get tired because there was always something to talk about. David Brizan, whom I fondly called Obi, passed on after ailing for some time.
That night, at some ungodly hour, as I lay awake, what flashed through my mind was the memory of an incident in which five of us, young men at the time, were seeking adventure in Europe. When I arrived in England in September 1964, I met three Trinidadians, Tobagonians, who were ahead of me at Sandhurst. In short order we became good friends—Charles Hull, Hugh Vidal and Selwyn Derrick. Mike Bazie was with me from day one, and to follow in a few months were Rex Lasalle, David Brizan and Lennox Gordon. Last to enter was a man called Orville Bobby Hogan.
Coming from poor to middle-class backgrounds, we recognised that we could fulfil our search for adventure during our Easter vacation. We would rent a vehicle with five of us sharing the cost, take a ferry from England’s South-East coast, sail across to Calais in France and begin driving and enjoying Europe in Springtime for our entire Easter vacation of 1966, the year we would leave Sandhurst. I was charged with organising the trip.
One morning we were pushing the drive from one city to another and I believe one country to another—France to Switzerland—when we stopped to change drivers, I acted as navigator throughout, Bobby Hogan handed over to Squingy Gordon and proceeded to occupy the back seat.
Whilst driving through France, Bobby, who was now in the back seat, proceeded to make one of the biggest club sandwiches I’d ever seen. I watched as he made each layer with great anticipation mixed with hunger. When he finished making the sandwich, he then began packing away various cheeses, breads, relish, etc.
David Brizan, who was halfway asleep during the drive, timed Hogan and stealthily snatched the sandwich and bit into it with the hunger of a man not fed for days. When Hogan saw David’s mouth accommodating almost half of the sandwich, he flew off the handle and piled some expletives on David, much to the raucous laughter of the rest of us in the car.
We knew David had done him wrong, but all we could do was laugh. Hogan exclaimed, “I from Belmont, yuh know!” to which David responded, “I born in Trou Macaque.”
Realising their behaviour was disruptive, I appealed to them to stop the fight. When they did not listen, I ordered Squingy to pull into the nearest lay-by, which he did, whereupon I came out, opened the doors and ordered them out, and said to them, “Go ahead, fight! Trou Macaque vs Belmont… Allyuh eh shame, two Sandhurst officers fighting over a sandwich in rural France.” The situation immediately lightened and everyone laughed.
I remember that after I heard of David’s passing because it was one of the conflicts in his personality he never seemed to resolve—that being where he was from, Trou Macaque. Coming from Trou Macaque is a red flag from as far back as the colonial days and it continues today. This is why David would have used his father’s address at Dorrington Gardens upon applying for the Cadetship to Sandhurst. But when he got to the Academy, he found an Indian there who was boasting that he was from Bokaro.
In the discussions we had during that tumultuous period in world history, when decolonisation was in progress, many of the colonised people fought to keep their identities in tact. Places like Trou Macaque and Bokaro were badges of honour. I who chose myself to be the man who would distribute black power names to all the cadets at Sandhurst gave David his “Obi”, named for a top black activist in Nigeria. My name already had an identity in it, but Mike added Shabaaz for me.
Most people know little or nothing about David. He was the fourth man in the mutineers’ order of command coming after Rex, Mike and me. He was, however, the first officer to be court-martialled and handed a two-year jail sentence. When we did our thing here, David had already arrived at a military college in Canada to pursue a course in heavy weapons. At Sandhurst he had won the best overseas cadet award in his Intake #39.
Trou Macaque can be proud of this son who went on to excel academically and become a business coach. Farewell, my friend.