by J H Thompson
– Chris, age 18
In the Bush
Angola is an incredibly flat, dirty-coloured, sea-sand terrain with host upon host of haak-en-steek thorn trees and open shonas that are usually dry. Only in the rainy season do they become full of water. Under such circumstances one could liken them to the rice paddies of Vietnam. Subtle difference: ‘Who stole the rice?’ There was always an incredible shortage of water, although there were a few primitive dams and some square-shaped Portuguese dams. We called them that because you could see at one time the Portuguese had used them for watering their farmlands. Sometimes there were these little water wells close to a kraal. The water was invariably brown or green in colour, no matter where you got it. But it wasn’t a huge issue. Initially you used your purification tablets, but soon that fell by the wayside and eventually you even stopped boiling the water. Your constitution does adapt. When scooping water out with your fire bucket and pouring it into your water bottle, the object was to try and avoid getting tadpoles in your drinking water. We also had these empty plastic sachets, part and parcel of your rat pack, and you emptied a naartjie-or strawberryflavoured powder, whatever the wonderful flavoured variant was in those days, into it. When you added green or brown unpurified water, it didn’t take on the colour of the powder but remained green or brown, but at least it tasted better. We didn’t see many males around kraals, mainly females or younger children. They couldn’t speak our language, so communication was always through an interpreter. I felt for them. They were beaten by SWAPO on one side and by us on the other, although I never allowed my troops to do that. Adjacent to the kraals were pens made of branches and thorn trees to house their livestock, and they cleared patches of land and grew mielies or mahango. There also seemed to be an abundance of watermelons. I never saw any game except kudu, once.
– Dudley, age 21
We were members from various Special Forces units doing patrol in western Angola, south of the town of Namibe. It was in a mountainous area of the western Angolan highlands and we were looking for specific enemy bases. Our job was not to attack the bases, but to gather information on them. We’d been deployed into the area in groups of six and carried with us what we could, as there was no possibility of re-supply. We deployed for about four to six weeks to walk around in the mountains and gather specifics on bases. We lived on rat packs and counted on finding a waterhole to replenish our initial water supply. It was incredibly hot, and to conserve energy we moved around mainly at night. We’d been out for about four weeks and hadn’t spoken with anyone other than each other. I don’t know if you can imagine what it is like not to have contact in any way with anybody else for a month. We also ran out of water and couldn’t find any in the mountains. We got so thirsty our tongues swelled up. It’s unbelievable how thick your tongue becomes when you dehydrate that badly. We even started drinking the drips from our medical supplies. It was rather challenging. This one night we were resting up in a hide, just prior to moving out, when we noticed that the sky looked strange. The moon was up but it looked weird. We couldn’t understand what was happening. There was this funny light in the sky and we saw this apparition. We were convinced it was the end of the world and everybody had forgotten about us in those bloody highlands. It took us a while to click and realise what it was. An eclipse. If you are not aware that one is going to occur and have no prior knowledge whatsoever about it and all of a sudden it happens, under those circumstances, it can be rather unsettling.
– Anonymous
We got a rat pack a day to survive on. I swear I only utilised about 10 percent of mine. If I had to eat another tin of mixed veg swimming in a kind of watered-down mayonnaise or eat another guava piel … I hated that stuff. UNITA got these nice cammo packs that obviously came in from somewhere else. They had a nice variety and the stuff was more continental and exotic, with a Portuguese flair. Things like meatballs, and their bully beef was different to ours. What can I say, it was just tastier. We used to swop out packs. Of course, the first item I swopped out was my mixed veg. Our packs also had an energy bar, which was like synthetic plastic – it was quite nauseating. There was also that minced fruit rolled in sugar, which was not bad, and cheese in a tube, wrapped like polony in plastic. You’d cut off the end and suck the cheese out. All extremely synthetic and equally nauseating. Depending on which number rat pack you got, sometimes there was condensed milk. The packs were numbered one to five. No matter which number rat pack you got, you always got two coffees, two sugars and two dog biscuits. Those were nice. I used to boil up water in my fire bucket, throw in the sugar and coffee, and enjoy it with my dog biscuits. Towards the end, I didn’t even eat the tinned food. For about the first three weeks we were in Angola we hadn’t adapted and still craved meat; sometimes if the guys saw a buck, like a Steenbok, they shot it. We’d skin it and hang it out to dry before braaing it. I lost about 12 kilos in my time there.
– Greg, age 25
Amongst all the stuff we used to get in our rat packs was a plastic bag that you could make juice or coffee in. You squeezed your tube of condensed milk into it, threw in your powdered coffee and some water, sealed the bag, shook it up and drank it cold. Hey man, we were making Frappuccinos way back in those days!
– Andy, age 18
It was late in ’81 and we were quite far into Angola, having been flown in to prevent terrorists from fleeing north. We were the front line on the northern side of a big operation. We had been there for three weeks. We were filthy and had been eating rat packs all this time. One day, while occupying one of the many temporary helicopter bases we had set up, a senior sergeant major and I’m pretty sure it was the General Viljoen flew in on a helicopter for a visit. They brought with them boxes and boxes of T-bone steaks. It was fantastic! It was the first non-tinned food we had eaten in almost a month. There were only so many ways to heat and eat bully beef or meatballs. The steaks were enormous as only a South African farmer can make them and only the army could supply. There must have been about 100 of us and we each got a T-bone.
– Chris, age 18
We had been in the bush living off our rat packs for 40 days. They wanted to land a plane on the airstrip, but there were all these cattle. So they brought in the gunships, not to shoot them but to kind of scare them away, to herd them off the field. But one cow got shot, killed. We rushed onto the field with our knives and cut a leg off. We skinned it and hung it to cure. We had a braai for three nights in a row! That was a high point of my two years.
– Andy, age 18
On the Border we had this Buffel full of food and were stopped in a camp when these tired and hungry infantry guys came walking past. They stared at all our stuff and said, ‘Check daardie rats’ [Look at those rations]. We were very casual and said something like, ‘Oh this? Here, have some,’ and threw them a little tin of beans and a tiny packet of colddrink mix. The guys went crazy, stampeding as they tried to grab it. This poor one-liner was trying to control his guys and not lose face. We had fun like that sometimes.
– Paul, age 17
Army sleeping bags resemble cocoons. They taper at your feet and you can tie them so only your face sticks out. When we were in a TB we slept in our sleeping bags fully dressed and with our boots on. Our webbing was laid out in such a way that in one move we could wake up, roll out of the sleeping bag into our webbing, grab our rifle and be ready to go in seconds. We were moving through an area in which we knew there were terrs, so we were moving silently through haak-en-steek bushes. Perfectly named, because they haak you and steek you. Usually you carefully held a branch back so the person behind you could pass without getting snagged, but if there was a diknek behind you whom you didn’t particularly like, you just let the branch whip back and catch him in the face. Of course, he couldn’t scream or say anything, ’cause we had to be totally silent. At dawn, after a shake awake, one guy whispers that he can’t get up because there’s something at his feet inside his sleeping bag. Moving carefully and talking in whispers, we slowly
unzip his sleeping bag. Two guys then grabbed his shoulders and two others carefully parted the sleeping bag at the bottom. In one move, and without anyone being able to make any sound, they opened the sleeping bag and yanked him out. It was a snake. We didn’t kill it – we tried to leave wildlife alone – although I remember an accident involving baboons once. There was this model base on the Border in the Caprivi Strip. Visiting dignitaries flew in with SADF senior officers to see what a perfect base should be like and what life in the bush was like for a soldier. We had these demonstrations involving Impalas, wrecked tanks and white phosphorous grenades. But we didn’t realise there was a troop of baboons in the area. The phosphorus is sticky, burns like hell and you can’t get it off. Some of it landed on this one baboon’s stomach and it was awful watching him ripping himself open trying to get the pain out of his stomach.
– Clint, age 18
The most awe-inspiring thing that happened to me was at a temporary base in western Zambia. At last light you take up your position, and at first light you get the hell out of there. The area was pretty flat, so there wasn’t much of a vantage point, but we set up camp. I was only on third watch, so I went to sleep. Around 3 a.m. I was wakened and I noticed that it was pitch dark – when I’d gone to sleep there had been stars visible. I couldn’t understand it. The guy who’d woken me put his face right next to mine and he said, ‘We’re surrounded.’ And I thought, oh my God, and he told me to look. There was a herd of elephants around us. About 50 jumbo. But the scary part was that they were all looking in one direction, away from us. I told the guys we had to move. We moved about two kilometres and the elephants moved off too. At first light our previous position was mortared. To this day I believe those elephants warned us.
– Ric, age 18
There were a lot of animals around where we were, a platoon base 100 kilometres west of Rundu. We had this little buck with big ears and called him Oortjies. He was still there when I left, and I still wonder what happened to him. The one time this civil engineer came up and we gave him a Land Rover to drive around in. It was lekker being able to tell him to go this way to see hippo and that way if he wanted to see elephant. But he got out of his vehicle to take photos and was killed by an elephant. Weird, hey. Myself and two NSMs once had a close call while collecting firewood. I could just hear one of them busy in the nearby bush – branches snapping and breaking. I thought, man, this guy is enthusiastic. Next thing I turn around to look and it’s an elephant! Right there. We heard nothing, it never made a sound until it started feeding. It wasn’t easy alerting the one guy to get away without attracting the attention of the elephant. We yelled a warning, but he didn’t believe that there was an elephant just metres away. We ran. Another time I remember being in a trench and hearing these scratching sounds. I was so scared, because I had no idea what was making the sounds. Turned out it was a porcupine. We also fished with dynamite. It wasn’t my fault or my idea! I saw them making a movie near Kroonstad and they wanted realistic explosions in the water. They used thunderflashes to do this, and I saw all these dead fish floating in the water afterwards. So I put it into practice on the river. We used PE4 and were fishing away when these civvies started shouting at us and telling us we couldn’t fish like that ’cause we were killing everything. We told them, we’re the ones with rifles – basically, piss off. Who the hell did these civvies think they were? Monday I get hauled in and told off about how I am ruining the military’s name and how hard they’ve worked to have credibility in the area and now this. Turns out the civvies were Nature Conservation.
– Paul, age 17
You’ve got to picture the whole scene. You’ve got savannah bush with shonas and the ground is made up of this greyish sand, which is churned up by our vehicles. These were 10-ton vehicles, 50 or 60 of them. Then the choppers would come in at night, usually from Rundu, a field hospital in Sector 2Ø. They flew low to make it more difficult for a SAM-7 missile to shoot them down. It wasn’t just one helicopter on its eis. It was a few of them. The Puma is a big helicopter; it can carry 20 people. It’s a fairsized machine with powerful rotors. We’d give our coords and there had to be a bit of a clearing, which had usually been burnt or looied, and when that thing landed, it was just a blizzard of black dust. A black snowstorm.
– Greg, age 25
We spent weeks in the bush, sometimes months, either in Angola or just out of base. Coming back, one always had to make adjustments to the relative civilisation of the base. I remember an occasion when the base doctor and a female nurse offered me a lift to my house. To this day, I can still recall, with absolute olfactory clarity, the incredible sensation of smelling the woman’s perfume as it drifted back to me across the open Land Rover. It reminded me that there was still beauty in the world and that not all my appreciation for the softer side of human beings had been completely numbed. It was an intoxicating five-minute trip.
– Chris, age 18
For seven months, most of us never had the luxury of showering or bathing. Angola is mostly desert-like, with some bush and savannah grasslands. The sand is pretty much black from fires and the fighting, and there are these swamp-like areas called shonas. For obvious reasons we never wore rank, and our uniform was a T-shirt worn with either cammo or brown pants. I had two T-shirts and one pair of trousers. It doesn’t take long for your clothes to get filthy. Our trousers were shiny, black and oily from the black sand and from wearing them every day. After a while your skin goes this dark grey colour and then goes black too. We had shaved our heads before leaving South West Africa, so my hair wasn’t too bad. But we hadn’t shaved, because there was not much water to spare. You all smell the same and you are all pitch black. After a while, though, you become so accustomed to the smell, you don’t really notice it. We had been out of base for two weeks, when we stopped at this one shona. It was late afternoon; the sun was just going down. I took the gap and stripped off, removed my skeleton webbing, eight or ten magazines of 40 rounds, my R5, and had a wash. No soap or anything. I paid for my wash when a tsetse fly bit me on my inner thigh. Almost on my dick! The next time I managed to wash, it was the most unforgettable shower I’ve ever had in my life. It was months later and we flew out of Mavinga at midnight. We flew in Flossies, these amazing transport planes, Lockheed C-160s and C-130s, from the candle-lit runway. The planes flew late at night, with almost no lights. We flew to Rundu, Sector 2Ø’s HQ. We arrived at 01h00, I reported to my OC, phoned my wife and then went to shower. I’ll never forget it. I didn’t know where to start. I stripped off my uniform, which I later burnt, as it was so filthy. I looked in the mirror at this animal-like creature that sort of resembled me. I had this reddish-brown beard that turned black closer to my face. I had to cut that before I could shave. And even then I must have shaved about three times. I’d had a Number One cut in Mavinga. That was a laugh. We all used the same barbers, who used electric razors, and you had to sit on a trommel. About 30 guys lined up at a time: black, white, UNITA, FNLA, us. And it’s not like the officers went anywhere else for a cut; we all went to the trommel. I didn’t see lice, but, man, I thought about them! It was very casual and reminded me of the barbers you see on the pavements in Joburg. So my hair wasn’t too long, but I still had to wash it five times before it and my scalp felt clean. Then I washed and scrubbed with soap and a scrubbing brush to try and get my slightly cleaner skin free of all the impregnated sand and burnt offerings. I even used Handy Andy at one stage to try and get this black colour out. I finally got out of the shower at 05h30. A four-and-a-half-hour shower! It was a total transformation. I tell you, one thing I learnt from that whole experience – to appreciate things. In civvy street you are so used to just switching on a tap and there’s clean, warm water. But when you go months without being able to wash or have clean clothes, you learn not to take it for granted. It’s like sleeping on a Sealy Posturepedic every night; you never truly appreciate it. But if you sleep in a hole with a rock sticking into your side and it’s raining, and you sleep lik
e that for nights on end, when you do go to sleep on a Sealy, you really, really appreciate it. I learnt to truly appreciate a comfortable bed and sanitation.
– Greg, age 25
Plaaslike Bevolking
We called it the Dead Zone. It was a strip of a few kilometres where nothing lived. We killed everything that moved. It was a scorched-earth policy. There was a sense that we could mete out any sort of justice to stop the violence there in South West Africa and ensure it didn’t move south to our country. We were dressed in terrorist camouflage, with no identification on us, painted with Black Is Beautiful and using captured weapons. We dressed like SWAPO and carried terrorist weapons. If our helicopters had to extract us, the only way they would be able to tell us apart from terrorists was if we turned our hats inside out and they saw the bright orange patch inside our cammo bush hats. It showed up clearly, even through dust. We spent days in the bush or waiting at temporary helicopter bases, sleeping in narrow slit trenches, living off rat packs, helping ourselves to the odd cow belonging to the few locals brave enough to try and live in this Dead Zone. The very few villagers who stayed in the Dead Zone, probably because they had nowhere else to go, had the worst of both worlds. We would question them about their support for the terrorists, and if they gave the wrong answer or we thought they needed to be taught a lesson, we would destroy their bush huts and scatter or kill their livestock. Once we had been through, the terrorists – the other baddies – would go through raping and murdering, physically reminding everyone who they were.