An Unpopular War
Page 16
– John, age 18
Once, while waiting around for a personnel changeover, we snuck away from our outpost base to buy beers from one of the local cuca shops. We were mellowing out in the cuca shop garden, pretending to be civilians for the afternoon, when we heard a mighty explosion and saw a pall of black smoke rising from the base. We rushed back and found the tent alongside ours burning. The air stank of foam and burning flesh. While we were gone, new troops and post had arrived. One of our troops had just read a letter saying that a certain soldier had had an affair with his wife while he was away. The husband then walked into the tent where his wife’s lover was lying on a bed. He threw a white phosphorous grenade into the tent, burning the lover to death and covering another seven soldiers in burning phosphorus. We spent the rest of the day checking drips and administering painkillers while waiting to evacuate the wounded. Who knows if the husband was ever tried for murder?
– Chris, age 17
We manned the big 40-mm Bofors guns on top of the towers around towns. The towers looked like those big steel scaffolding water towers that you’d see on farms. They were about 40 feet high, and we had the big World War II anti-aircraft guns, which we used for ground attacks, on top of them. One guy was on watch 24/7, and if he saw the so-called enemy coming he would radio it in, and three of us would run up to join him and man the guns. There was a barrel-shaped hessian-covered cage-like structure over the length of the metal ladder so no one could see us using it. Three people manned the guns: one checked elevation, another checked direction or bearings, and one guy loaded in these clips of four rounds. And there was one guy to give commands. At night-time we used night-vision sights. We never saw the enemy, and our only wartime experience was when a parcel bomb exploded one night in the nearby post office and blew a hole in the roof.
Another time we thought we would see action was when we were told to get ready as there was trouble. We were so hyped and so pumped full of adrenaline that we were not even afraid. We had our rifles ready, full ammo, and were ready to go. We leapt into the Buffel and charged off, expecting action. We headed for a tower next to a Koevoet base where this trouble allegedly was. Turns out this one Koevoet guy is threatening to blow up the tower because one of the Artillery guys has stolen a Koevoet sandbag. We thought we were going to fight terrorists and meantime we were there to sort out a fight about a sandbag! What a waste of time.
The only shots we fired were practice rounds – once a week. We shot across the main road just outside of Oshakati and hit our targets, which were burnt-out old trucks piled in a heap on what used to be the golf course. We usually did this at night, using HE tracer rounds, which were really loud and provided a very impressive explosion, which was to impress the plaaslike bevolking. There was no warning, so they never knew when it was coming. We’d just get a call on the radio telling us it was our time to go, and we’d go up the tower and fire. There was this bunch of campers standing guard – sleeping, more likely – near the main gate of Oshakati. We get the call to fire, and we run up and start turning the wheels to set the sights. Now we are supposed to check one another. So the guy doing the bearings is checked by the guy doing the elevation and vice versa. We both said that everything was fine, but the round explodes in the sand embankment on the opposite side of the road and nowhere near the target on the old golf course. Only then do I realise that my sight was a bit loose, so I tighten it, raise the elevation and we fire another round, this time hitting what we were supposed to. The radio starts squawking and the guys at the gate are shouting and screaming that they are under attack. Meantime it’s us! Their officer said we had endangered his men, but it wasn’t really dangerous, as his guys were about 200 metres away. We were nowhere near them. Honestly.
– Dave, age 19
On our way back into South West from Angola, my troops wanted to fire the RPGs at these watermelons growing at a riverside. It’s awesome shooting an RPG. You look through the sight, pull the trigger, and whatever you are looking at disappears. I said it was a bad idea in case we needed the rockets later. I told them, once we were back in camp, then they could let off a few RPG bombs. Now, if you returned to camp at any other time than first thing in the morning, you had to work the rest of the day. So we positioned ourselves not far from Oshakati Base and decided to clean our equipment, repack things neatly, and enter base first thing the following morning. However, that night the base was attacked. In the event of that happening you are supposed to look for the flashes from the terrs’ weapons and engage them. When all this broke loose, I said I would shoot the first person to move. It could’ve been a mock attack, anything. So we sat vas. At daybreak the Bosbok was up looking for the terrs. Then one of my guys lets off a Mindae flare. It’s a 1 000-foot flare with a little PE4 and it makes a huge bang. Not ten minutes later, these Koevoet Casspirs roared up, MAGs pointed at us, and the Koevoet guys screamed that we’d tried to bring down the Bosbok and wanted the person in charge. I didn’t have rank on, because we never did when we were in Angola, and we all just looked around and said we didn’t know where he was. It was very tense. Luckily, we could honestly say we had all our ammo and our RPGs could all be accounted for. They screamed off, looking for the terrs, and we quickly counted our RPGs. We only found five of the six. I thought, that’s it, I’m going to be court-martialled and shot for treason. But we eventually found it amongst the stuff we had already packed up. I still think about what would’ve happened to me if we’d fired the RPGs at the watermelons and come up short on the ammo count.
– Paul, age 24
I travelled around the country doing weapon shows for the military. We’d have a huge stand at places like the Rand Easter Show. It was to show the public what South Africa was doing. Of course it was a whole propaganda thing. They gave me an Olifant tank, a Ratel, Buffel, G6 and a G5. We had limpet mines, and hundreds and hundreds of different SADF and terrorist weapons. We’d set up cammo netting, have troops talking to the civilians about the weapons, and the public could go inside the trucks. So many guys had been in the army, and they would come around with their families and show them an actual AK-47, which they could hold. They could even fire an R1 or R4, using blank rounds. We even offered civilians rides around the showgrounds in a Ratel which fired blank rounds.
This one night, we were at the Brits show, where they had a Miss Brits Competition. She was going to arrive by chopper. We had a whole motorbike squad, who, instead of patrolling borders and such, spent a lot of their time doing shows. I suppose the Brits show was a really large event and a PR exercise for the SADF, so maybe it’s understandable. I took this 1 000-foot flare and put a thunderflash in it. It was supposed to go straight up and go off, but the bloody thing veered off and hit a bank of stadium lights. Well, there was a helluva explosion and glass everywhere. The audience loved it! They cheered and clapped and thought it was all part of the show. My troops looked at me, and we just thought, oh man, we fucked up.
– Brett, age 18
If your horse ran away, you had to go and fetch it. We used to hobble our horses, but this one guy’s horse kept getting away. So he decides to tie his horse to himself. We all told him it was a bad idea, but, no, he had to go ahead and do it. In the middle of the night we hear this screaming and the sound of a horse galloping away. This guy is dragged about half a kilometre through the bush. We all woke up and looked at one another, and there was a general consensus because he hadn’t listened to us when we told him not to do it: we thought, stuff that, and we just left him. The next morning they found him and took him off to hospital. That was an example of our attitude.
– Martin, age 23
The G6 had technology beyond belief. But it wasn’t just the firepower; it was the capabilities of the vehicle itself which were awesome. It could go anywhere, over any terrain. It had six gears, and you could throw it into reverse from sixth gear and you’d just hear it winding and slowing down and then it was ready to go. It never fell over and it never got stuck. Unfortunately I c
ouldn’t drive it around, but I did have this Olifant tank, a 60-something-ton tank. The way it turns is remarkable: one track remains stationary while the other moves. I decided to do a 360, but I turned it so hard it was almost on its side and it ripped up huge chunks of this public road in Witbank. I was always in trouble, so this was just one more time.
– Brett, age 18
C was a rather controversial helicopter pilot with us at Ysterplaat. In order to remain current on all aspects of helicopter flying, a certain amount of flying hours had to be flown every three months. A request was submitted the day before, and in the morning off you went. There’d been a heavy snowfall on the mountains around Franschhoek, and everyone wanted to put in for mountain flying. C and his flight engineer flew off and decided to land in the snow and build a snowman. They then decided it would be a great idea to bring a snowball back to Cape Town as a prank. They made one that stood about half a metre tall and flew it back. They radioed ahead to Ysterplaat and told everyone to come outside and watch their fly-past, meaning to drop the snowball on everyone as a joke. It backfired, because in the 20-minute flight back from the mountains the inside of the snowball had solidified, so when they dropped it, it hit a female corporal and broke her jaw and a few ribs. C was grounded and sent to Southern Air Command to fly a desk.
– Anonymous
We jumped with a PWC – personal weapons container – a canvas rucksack in which you usually kept all your ammo, goods and equipment required when going into operations. We also trained with a concrete block, which weighed somewhere around 60 kilograms, in our backpacks. We were doing this night jump at 600 feet and jumped out in the usual way, releasing our individual PWC so that it was suspended beneath us on a cord as we parachuted down. But I hadn’t fastened mine correctly, and when I tried to jettison it so that it fell clear of me and hung below, the whole thing came loose and it fell away completely. When I landed, I used my torch to look for it and I found a huge crater in the ground. A lot of my equipment was stuffed; my dixies were completely flattened and unrecognisable. People were still landing all around me and I couldn’t believe no one had been hit. I was a bit freaked out that I could’ve killed somebody. I would have been in such shit if my PWC had struck somebody. For punishment, the major told me to find my own way back with my flattened equipment and my concrete block, which he signed to make sure I didn’t gyppo and simply collect someone else’s when I got back to camp. I didn’t have a compass and it was freezing. There were no space blankets or anything like that in ’77.
– John, age 18
I was tasked with lifting a huge 40-mm Bofors anti-aircraft gun from one of the towers in Oshakati. It had a crack in the breech and needed to be replaced. It would be removed and taken to Ondangwa, where it would be stripped down and repaired. We had another one, in perfect condition, still covered in protective grease, ready to replace it. I knew the weight of the massive gun, 5 000 pounds, was close to the limit that my Puma could lift, but it could be done. Everything was unbolted on the damaged gun, and as I hovered above the 75-foot tower, the cables were fastened and I lifted the Bofors off with no problem. I gently set it down and moved the helicopter over to the replacement gun. They connected that up, and I slowly rose with this massive weight suspended beneath the Puma. I started to move the helicopter sideways, thumbing the trim button and watching the shadows where I could see the shape of my helicopter and the Bofors beneath it. As I touched the trim button, I felt my finger touch the cargo jettison, and in a split second I saw the two shadows separate as we suddenly shot up several hundred feet into the air and the 5 000-pound Bofors crashed to the ground. It landed on the unit’s entertainment tent, right on top of the only snooker table in the area. Man, were they pissed off! ‘Kaptein, wat de fok het jy gedoen? Kyk ons snooker tafel!’ [Captain, what the fuck did you do? Look at our snooker table!] I told them it had been an electrical fault, but when I got back to Ondangwa and the colonel wanted an explanation, I couldn’t lie. I said that I had just pushed the wrong button. He told me I was an honest boy and I never heard anything about it again.
– Anonymous
We were in a HAG in Angola when a call came in that there was a contact. When that happened it was a mad rush and the pilots scrambled to the helicopters to get airborne as soon as possible. There’s a small inspection window, and as the pilot starts up the engines, the flight engineer looks through it to check there is no fuel leak and everything is okay. Although he’s outside the helicopter, he’s plugged in and has comms with the pilot and he can tell him it’s all clear before jumping in too. The contact was very close to our HAG, so I was extra keen to get up and out there. I take off and scream over to where the contact is. I see the terrs and bank sideways, screaming at my flight engineer to open up and get them! Nothing happens. I look back and the chopper is empty. No one is behind the machine gun! The cabin is empty. I’d left in such a hurry that he had fallen out of the helicopter just as he was climbing in after the inspection. Luckily he wasn’t hurt. I picked him up and went straight back to the contact.
– Trevor, age 25
Coming out of Angola, we used the Santa Clara water tower as a landmark and flew our helicopters past it, and we often used the road from Santa Clara to Ondangwa as the route back to base. T was excited ’cause he’s been in the bush for two and a half weeks and he was looking forward to a cold beer. The child in him came out when, in the distance, he saw a black guy pedalling along the road, and he decides to give him a fright. He’ll descend between the trees, onto the road, and then when this guy comes around the corner, he’ll get a helluva fright. As he manoeuvres down he hits a telephone wire, which wraps around the tail rotor. Just before it crashes to the ground he manages to bring the helicopter down without damaging it. He was so lucky. He knew if anything had gone wrong, he couldn’t explain what he had been doing there or why he had landed. As he’s unravelling the telephone wire he looks up and sees the black guy standing next to his bicycle just looking at him, checking out the scene.
– Anonymous
The navy was environmentally aware. We had to keep our distance from whales and other marine life, which was not always easy. Dolphins loved to play in the bow spray, and whales loved the bubbles and spray kicked up by the Voith Schneiders. Trying to outrun a whale was not easy, and manoeuvring among them when trying to get into harbour was sometimes impossible. Sometimes you came into the harbour with a whale following like a puppy. However, I do recall an unfortunate incident that wasn’t in line with the navy’s green reputation. We were far off the Garden Route coastline and about six boats were preparing to refuel from the Tafelberg. It’s quite an involved procedure. The Tafelberg trails cables and lines about 100 metres behind her, and the smaller vessels have to hook onto one of these, attach bollards, and then it is literally towed behind the Tafelberg while the fuel lines are fastened and the fuel pumped on board. Because we were in the smallest ship, we went in first. The smallest boat usually tested the waters, so to speak, for the larger vessels. For example, in a convoy, the smallest boat hugs the coastline, which means we are closest to the rocks too! Small craft are usually the first to leave the harbour and the first to tackle refuelling. We went in and connected and pumped about 4 000 gallons of fuel and disconnected in less than ten minutes. It was pretty smooth and we got a Bravo Zulu – a well done – from the admiral. Next up was a sweeper, which snagged the cables, fouled the props and became entangled in the lines. Divers had to go down and sort everything out. The admiral was pissed off and sent it to the back of the queue. Yes, there are politics even out there! The next ship that went in caught the tow but broke away from the fuel couplings before they were disconnected properly. There’s a lot of fuel in those pipelines, and it went straight into the sea. I actually think there was a problem with one of the Tafelberg’s fuel tanks, because they often had oil in their drinking water. I was hoisted by helicopter to the Tafelberg for a debrief, and when I was there I went into the engine rooms – what a rust
y archaic mess that was. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the oil leak came from a leaky fuel tank and not only from the botched refuelling. My captain and I had to race back to shore to handle the media queries about the oil spill. Once again the small ship had to do the dirty work.
– Louis, age 17
H was a huge guy. He played prop forward for the air force, so you can imagine what a big guy he was. He was G’s flight engineer, and we went out to assist with a contact. Normally, immediately after a contact we’d push off back to HAG. This time they were circling and looking down at all the bodies lying around. G suggests to H that they go down and look for souvenirs: money, belts, buckles, boots, things like that. They land in the middle of the dead bodies, and H hops out and runs over to a dead guy and starts pulling off his belt. Suddenly the guy jumps up – he was only faking being dead. They fought, and it was rough. It was a fight to the death. G couldn’t go and help, ’cause you can’t leave an Alouette’s controls while the engine is still turning. They fought, but, like I said, H was a huge guy. He managed to draw his 9-mill and he shot the terr in the head. He ran back to the helicopter, without the belt, and his face was completely white with shock.
I bumped into H again when we were both on board SS Tafelberg. A request would come in for such and such a number of helicopters and pilots on specified dates, and we would fly and land on the Tafelberg when we had to. We never knew where we were going or what we would be required to do. I hated it, because you could be steaming along for weeks, not knowing anything. We could be off the coast of Angola to carry out operations with the Special Forces or off the coast of Mozambique cargo-slinging supplies to RENAMO. We were 50 miles off the coast one night and it was pitch black. We had been doing Dark Moon Operations, no moon so no one could see us, and no lights other than two small ones mounted on the helicopter roof. They shone straight up and couldn’t be seen from below. We’d just landed back on the ship’s helipad, and H was standing with one foot on one of the nets. The nets were dropped out horizontally from the helipad during take-offs and landings, and extended over the sea while the crew hosed down the helicopters with fresh water and chained them down. Things corroded quickly, and with the embargo we couldn’t afford to be careless with our equipment.