An Unpopular War
Page 15
– Anonymous
In the early hours of the morning we boarded a chopper and headed out over the Kruger National Park. We landed in Mozambique, where we met up with a reconnaissance unit. They gave us a whole lot of boxes to load into the chopper. We then flew back to Phalaborwa. I don’t know what was in them. Perhaps documents? It was rather strange.
– Clint, age 18
It was 1982, and we flew out from Swartkops AFB to a destination defined only by co-ordinates. It ended up being a farmer’s field in the Orange Free State. We landed the two Pumas carrying Special Forces generals near a big shed. When we entered it, it was filled with about 70 black Recces dressed in Basotho blankets. On the wall was a huge enlarged map showing Maseru in great detail. We were all told that that night, at H-hour, we were to hit a dozen or so targets in Maseru. These were safe houses used by the ANC, and the Recces hoped to remain undetected and move among the local population for as long as possible. We were shown photos of the houses, photos of those living there, and were given details of exactly who they were. The Recces were going to cross the Caledon River in inflatables and attack various targets simultaneously. As a helicopter pilot I was on standby in case a hot extraction was required. A C-160 was our telstar. A telstar is any aircraft that acts as a repeater station providing communications between various points. The Orange Free State farm was our HAG, and was so close to the border we could see Maseru’s lights reflected in the sky.
The Recces left, and it was after midnight when we got the call to scramble. One of the guys had thrown a bomb through a window, but the walls were prefab and he was badly injured in the blast. The flight up into the mountains was hazardous. It was pitch dark and we couldn’t use lights, ’cause we would make ourselves targets. We flew over our troops trying to make their way back to the river – they were to exit Lesotho where they had entered, and they were under attack from Lesotho forces, who must have known that they were heading for the river. We were shot at and took fire, even when we came in to land and pick up the injured Recce and his teammates. When we landed back at the HAG in SA, outside the farmer’s big shed, the ground crew couldn’t believe we had made it back, because small arms fire had ruptured a hydraulic pipe and there was this mist of hydraulic fluid spraying everywhere.
– Anonymous
We had to get across to this one place, Cuito Cuanavale, which was very far into Angola. There was a large bridge that crossed the Cuito River and spanned a gorge. The enemy had a large air base, lots of support and infrastructure there, and we needed to blow up this bridge before they could get equipment and tanks across the river. The bridge was where they would cross to come south. It wasn’t easy to approach the bridge because of the terrain. So we sent in Recce Operators. These are Special Forces guys, like the SAS or Selous Scouts. They are trained extensively in a lot of unconventional tactics, and they undergo training in diving, weapons, unarmed combat, interrogation and such. Only once they graduate and if they are the best, the cream of the crop, are they then classified as Recce Operators. Anyway, a small group, three or four, set off at night in canoes towards the bridge. When they were close, the guys scuba-ed the rest of the way, laid charges and blew the bridge to shit. It was an amazing operation, which the guys did helluva well. Unfortunately, on the way back, one of the guys was attacked by a croc. He was bitten on the ass and mauled across his thigh and waist and almost lost his dick. Not humorous for him at the time, but he survived, and apparently they sorted the croc out.
– Greg, age 25
There were three of us in each inflatable, and we had deployed from a submarine off the Angolan coast, travelling in two inflatables parallel to the Angolan coastline and heading for a specific harbour town. Once there, we were to measure strategic installations and calculate the distances, heights of buildings, distances between them and so on, to get a full understanding of what went on in that environment. This information would be used to assess when and how we should launch activities there. It would enable us to work out time frames and equipment required. If there was climbing to be done and you are going to launch activities into that site, you needed to know what distances were to be taken into consideration, the number of troops to be deployed and withdrawal options. For example, if there was an eight-metre-high wall, you would need ropes of a suitable length. The object was to get in, get the full picture, take photos and get out without being observed. No one should ever know you were even in these areas. The minute they know you’ve been in the area, they will heighten security, and you don’t want them to do that when you are coming in with a large operation. It was night and we were moving just outside the breaker line. You always think you are extremely visible on the water, but you are not. We were very tense and alert, very on edge, as you can imagine. As we cruised past this one part of the town, there was a party going on. We were crouched down low, just passing it, when shots were fired. I tell you, we nearly fell out of the boat! We froze, thinking they had seen us and were shooting at us. They weren’t. They were just partying and firing shots in the air. We slowed down, checked that the boats hadn’t been hit, waited a little, watched, and then carried on to the harbour, where we continued with our work, obtaining the information that we required.
After that, but before we launched our attack, I took a ‘re-affirm’ trip to ensure that nothing had changed that could jeopardise the operation. I also had to take a team on an orientation trip – a boat ride through the harbour at night to show them drop-off points and orientate them with the layout of the harbour. Two or three days later, our Special Forces hit the place. They blew up major installations, oil farms, railway lines and ‘dropped’ quite a few Russian ships. I was proud of the fact that the operations that I had planned and implemented were completed successfully and without compromise.
– Anonymous
The States
One of the most exciting days of my life was when we were hoping to go home for Christmas. I hadn’t been home since January. Our sergeant wouldn’t tell us if we had pass or not. We were in Oshakati driving southwards in Casspirs, and we didn’t know if we were going home or to Grootfontein, where we could be sent all over the place. There’s a point on the road where you either turn off to Ondangwa, to the air force base where we fly home from, or keep going to Grootfontein. The suspense was unbelievable. The intersection came up, and the driver continued on to the Grootfontein road, then laughed and pulled it back onto the Ondangwa road. This meant my first leave of seven days, and it was to be my only leave in two years. Maybe that’s why they left me alone and I never got called up for camps or anything. I still get goosebumps when I remember the excitement of going home.
– Andy, age 18
You flew up from and back to the States on this white aircraft called the Rum Run, so called because it flew up all the booze. It was also called the Milk Run, because of the colour of the aircraft – or maybe it was only the dominee who called it that. You went up to Ondangwa for three months and got on the Rum Run to fly home only once your release, another aircraft mechanic, arrived. He was your replacement. Usually when he arrived, there was a two-day handover and then off you went. I was missing my wife so much and couldn’t wait to get back. This specific Thursday I was on the tarmac waiting and my release didn’t get off the aircraft. I called and spoke to the sergeant major, and asked where was this guy who was supposed to be relieving me? Why wasn’t he on the plane? He said he wouldn’t be coming, because he had committed suicide. I waited an extra two weeks until the next guy arrived.
– Tallies, age 23
Eenhana was classified as a red base, because it was attacked frequently. It was also the place where my letters and packages from home became legendary. I had a girlfriend who used to write me three letters a day. We hadn’t had mail for six weeks, so you can imagine how much post I got when it finally came in on a Dak. They used to bundle the letters and call your name and toss you the bundle. Lots of guys got nothing – ever. I got 10 or 15 bundles and two h
uge packages from my mom. Inside she’d packed Marie biscuits, Romany Creams, sweets, cartons and cartons of Camel Plain cigarettes, for my own use and for bartering, and my personal favourite, Southern Comfort. My mom could have worked for MI6. She’d decant the alcohol into old Jik plastic containers. She’d also send Aromat, which was a necessity to improve skrapnel (corned beef and onion in gravy). We cooked our tins of skrapnel on an Esbit stove. This was metal and shaped like a packet of cigarettes. It had two flaps that you pulled up; you put an Esbit, which looked like a big white pill, in the middle, lit it and heated up the tin. The Esbit was also known as a PB Sweet. Legend had it that some crazy Dutchmen used to give the plaaslike bevolking these toxic white tables instead of the orange glucose sweets in our rat packs, which we usually gave to village kids. The glucose sweets were just as gross, as far as I was concerned. So the name, PB Sweet, stuck.
My girlfriend had numbered all the letters, so that I could read them in the order she’d written them, and sprayed some with perfume. That was a big thing to get: perfumed letters. The guys never teased me, ’cause so many of them got nothing, no letters or packages. I would go down into our tent – the tents at Eenhana were actually pitched under the surface of the ground, with only the roof sticking out and lots of sandbags stacked around the edges – and lie on my bed and read them. Guys would come and sit by my bed, desperate for news about anything back home. I read them excerpts from my letters – not the personal stuff, just the general news. Once I was reading about the snow that had fallen over Joburg in September and there was a picture of my girlfriend standing outside the Carlton Centre in the snow. I had mopane flies buzzing around my face and it must have been about 40 degrees, but just reading about how cold it was and looking at that picture made me feel cooler.
– Clint, age 18
It was the saddest day of my life. She was my school girlfriend and we had been going out since I was in Standard 8. She hurt me, man. I will be honest and say she did hurt me. I loved her. She was in matric and I’d been on the Border doing my army for six months. Women are very clever. She knew that a mate of mine, whom she was now seeing, was coming up to the Border and I’d find out, from him or somehow. So just before he got there, she wrote me a Dear John letter. I’ll never forget the way it started; she wrote: ‘This is very hard for me to say …’ and she wrote some little poem, lyrics or some shit from a Lionel Ritchie song. I was devastated, heartbroken. I thought I was going to die. We were all guys up there, so you couldn’t cry. This gay chef came up to me and put his arm around my shoulders and said I should go on my own and cry. But you don’t, you’re too proud. You keep everything in. I got totally drunk. I never picked up a pen and wrote back. I never contacted her again.
– Anthony, age 18
We were resting up in a large temporary base after chasing the terrs for a change. Just near where I was lying there was this little helicopter, an Alouette. Flight Sergeant Soutie was there. I’ll never forget him as long as I live. He had a handlebar moustache that looked like Harley-Davidson handlebars. I was lying in the shade of the helicopter and he said to me, ‘Sargie, are you all right?’ I was exhausted. We had been chasing terrs for days. I hadn’t seen clean water, a bed or a razor for two weeks. But I said to him, ‘Flight, I’m fine, I’m just missing home.’ He said, ‘Ja, I can see that. Wanna talk to your folks?’ Of course I said yes, I would love to talk to them, thinking he was pulling the piss. He said, ‘Come.’ We get into the helicopter. He switches on the radio and gets onto Radiospoor in Walvis Bay. This woman with the sexiest voice I’d ever heard comes on. It was soft. Flight asks for my home telephone number and we get connected. And there, in the middle of the Operational Area, I hear my mom’s voice and I say, ‘Mom.’ I just started to cry. I spoke with my dad too, and I realised nothing else mattered, everything became irrelevant. I was talking to the two most important people in my life. Flight Sergeant Soutie had made that possible for me.
– Ric, age 18
It was very easy to hitch-hike in those days, and especially if you were in uniform. People picked you up very quickly. I think people also stopped if you had a maroon beret because they wanted to talk about your experiences as a Parabat. This one old guy and his wife must have been moving home, ’cause he had everything but the kitchen sink in his car. They stopped for me and somehow I managed to squeeze in. Near Cradock there were always speed traps and, sure enough, this poor guy got caught. Three times. And three times he gave different excuses. His wife was pregnant, I had to get back to camp and so on, but it didn’t work and he got fined three times. I never forgot it because he was not even supposed to be on that road. He had detoured from his intended destination of Cape Town to drop me off in PE. I never saw him again, but I never forgot his kindness.
– John, age 19
I was called up for a three-month Border camp during varsity holidays at the end of 1987. I didn’t want to go. I took my call-up papers to the Dean of the faculty at Wits, and I asked him to write me a letter to say that I had vacation work to do and that I must be exempted from the camp. He looked at me and said that it was not his problem, and that it was my own fault for getting ‘involved in these things’. I thought, what a doos, had he forgotten that this was all compulsory? All I wanted from him was a letter to send to the army so I did not have to go on the camp. A few years later I read in the Citizen that the professor had jumped from the Parktonian Hotel in Braamfontein and had greased himself. My eyes were very dry.
So, on 1 December, there I was flying into Ondangwa. We were doing fire force from there at the time of Operation Modular, Hooper and Packer, which were taking place in Angola around Cuito. I was up there for three months and of course had this serious tan. On the 14th of February 1988, I’m back at Wits and sitting by the Wits pool, and this very gay guy comes up to me and says, ‘You are so tanned! You must have been in Plett.’ I had such a kak houding at the time that I thought I was going to drown him in the fucking pool.
– John, age 22
Oh My Fok
I swear most fatalities or injuries in the army were because of stupid accidents rather than combat. One of the guys in our bungalow had to be put in a neck brace because he was injured when the corporal overturned his bed. Guys got injured when vehicles rolled. There were these three guys who called themselves the A-Team. We were on this range where you throw grenades, fire mortars and everything. During a rest period, they wandered off. One of them picked up unexploded ordnance, a practice hand grenade, one of those blue ones where the detonator explodes but the grenade isn’t filled with explosives. This guy wanted to pick it up and pull the pin with his teeth. The pin sometimes catches, and this one came loose and went off. It blew a hole in his hand and took off most of his thumb. I’ll never forget them running back towards us, this guy with a mutilated hand bleeding everywhere, screaming for an ambulance. Blatant stupidity from the A-Team.
– Nick, age 20
I was a young officer, a 2nd lieutenant, only 18 years old, when I had a troop killed right in front of me. We were in Oshivello, not far from Grootfontein, doing fire and movement exercises. It was final touch-up training prior to being sent to the Operational Area. We had just finished and were sitting talking in a group, in the veld. I switched the radio frequency to the company net just as they were talking about an accident in which someone had been injured. I held up the receiver and said to the guys, ‘This is how easily these things can happen.’ As I said that, a shot went off. The guy next to me slumped down dead. He’d taken a round from a machine gun in the temple. The weapon was standing on its tripod and another guy had noticed that it hadn’t been cleared properly. As he touched it, the expended cartridge dropped clear, allowing the working parts to move forward with a round, and it fired. It was very traumatic, both professionally and personally, for the guys who witnessed it. But it was especially difficult for the guys who had handled the machine gun. There are two men assigned to each machine gun, and these two had swopped around. The g
uy who was supposed to have been on the weapon was on a guilt trip, thinking if he had been doing what he was supposed to, this wouldn’t have happened. The guy who was using it was on a guilt trip because he hadn’t cleared the weapon properly, and I was on a guilt trip because I had made the assumption that all weapons had been cleared and made safe. It traumatised all of us involved, but counselling in those days was minimal – you’re fucked up, that’s all there is to it.
– Anonymous
It was a Sunday afternoon, 1978, in Ondangwa, and I was having a nap. I woke up to this tremendous explosion – it was as loud as the dynamite explosions used in the mining industry. This nearby camp, allegedly a Recce camp with alleged explosive experts working at defusing Black Widows, POM-Z and Claymore mines, just went up with this ‘boom’. We were told that two guys had been blown to smithereens. About a week later, in one of the Afrikaans newspapers that made it up to the Border, I read this detailed account of how these two guys had been killed in a follow-up operation. The whole story was contrived. I knew the names, and it was the same two guys who had been blown up. There is this whole blab that had no bearing or connection to what had actually happened. I know ’cause I had been present when it happened. I saw the propaganda machine in action, and it taught me that ‘seeing is believing’.