by J H Thompson
The net broke, and H fell 50 feet off the side of the ship into the pitch-dark, cold ocean. We were travelling at about ten knots – heading for who knows where – and it took a while to turn the ship. Meanwhile, we jumped into the choppers and were quickly airborne. We searched but couldn’t see anything: the spray from the rotors threw up salt water and obscured the windows, and the spotlights reflected off the water, blinding us. I radioed back and said they’d have to launch boats to look for him. As we landed, they were launching a Delta boat. Two cables are used to lower the boat, and one snapped. The two guys were hanging on for dear life as they swung the boat back onto the ship. They were lucky they didn’t fall off into the ocean.
H had been in the water about 20 minutes by now. As was often the case, there were Special Forces on board the ship, and the Recces watching all this said they’d handle it. They rapidly launched – no, dropped is a better way to describe it – a Namacurra ski boat. The boat fell about 30 feet, and when it hit the water those big engines were already going and the guys shot off into the dark. It took seconds. And they found him. When they got back to the ship, they said they’d screamed up to the area they reckoned he would be and switched off to listen for him calling. They’d stopped right next to him. He didn’t even have to call out. He’d gone under for the second time and was contemplating just drowning and no longer fighting to stay afloat, but he kicked up once more and surfaced right next to the boat. They just leant over and pulled him on board. It was a miracle. A miracle that they had stopped at exactly the right spot, a miracle that they hadn’t run over him, a miracle that he hadn’t died of hypothermia and a miracle that he hadn’t drowned.
– Anonymous
We resurfaced the Congolese navy. An entire convoy sailed up the west coast of Africa to the main naval port on the Congo River called Banana. There we raised two Osa-class strike craft. The Congolese navy guys didn’t know how careful you had to be with ships. That’s why there are duty watches. If a valve goes at night, your ship could sink alongside (in harbour). There was always somebody on watch, day and night. The Congolese guys would go off for three days, leaving their boats completely unattended, and then be surprised when they returned to find nothing but masts sticking out of the water! You can’t do that.
– Louis, age 17
We received a Mayday call from some Koevoet guys. They were north of Etosha and an elephant had charged their Casspir. It rammed the front of the vehicle and broke off a tusk in the radiator, and then had really gone crazy and rammed into the side of the vehicle. Eight guys were trapped in the back of the Casspir. A Koevoet colonel came running into the SAAF HQ revetment at Oshakati wanting us to task a gunship to fly to the scene and shoot the elephant before it killed someone. There wasn’t one available, but there was an Alouette Trooper at Ondangwa. It didn’t have a 20-mm cannon like the gunship, it only had a .303 machine gun. But that was all there was. Bernie was a big game hunter and he figured he’d go out there and shoot the elephant from the helicopter. The only rifle he could find at such short notice was a 30.06, which is far too small to go elephant hunting with, but off he went. Wynand, the pilot from Ondangwa, flies in, picks him up and off the pair of them go. But they haven’t communicated properly with one another, and Wynand doesn’t realise that Bernie wants to shoot the elephant from the air. They find the Casspir and the elephant in an open shona, and Wynand lands and screams at Bernie to get out. He had to take off before the elephant charged the helicopter. Bernie leaps out and manages to get behind a little tree. The elephant is still going mad and is irritated by the chopper, which is now orbiting above its head, trying to distract it. Bernie gets off a few rounds and the elephant’s back legs give way. He said it then looked like the elephant had been given a litre shot of adrenalin, ’cause it realised where the shots were coming from and charges. Bernie gets off a few more shots, which have no impact whatsoever, before realising he’d better run for his life. He runs away, firing blindly over his shoulder, trying to scare off this crazed elephant that is chasing him. He then tries to duck behind one of the massive termite mounds, hoping the elephant would run past and he can shoot it from the rear, but it sees him. He says it was so close he could hear the huffing and snorting, and just when he thought it was all over, the Alouette Trooper comes around the termite mound, flying sideways, blades thwacking the air, and it empties its machine gun into the elephant. It finally fell because the rounds caught its legs, and it collapsed just metres away from Bernie, who finished it off with a few more rounds.
– Anonymous
We had a small contingent of MLOS Mirage pilots with us. Although we had no air support, they were there to work with the Intelligence guys. We had very sophisticated radio equipment, and between them and the interpreters, they would tune in to the MPLA, East German and Russian frequencies and listen in. They had MiG 21s and MiG 23s, which could take out F-14s without any problem. The Russians had the most experienced pilots flying the most sophisticated planes. As you went down the scale, you had the Cuban, who could fly reasonably well, but the lowest or worst were the MPLA pilots, who didn’t have the expertise or the skill of the others. We could tell who they were by the language they were speaking when they communicated with each other or the control tower. If the Russian or East German pilots were coming at you, you knew you were in a lot of shit, ’cause they were very good and very accurate. If you heard it was an MPLA pilot, you didn’t really shit yourself too much. Once we heard this MPLA pilot coming in to land in his MiG 21, and he didn’t deploy the parachute to slow the plane down and crashed off the end of the runway. We were all laughing and clapping; one MiG down the drain at however many millions of dollars. It was nice to have something to laugh about at their expense.
– Greg, age 25
Armscor were doing some tests and they needed some volunteers. We had no idea what they were testing or what they needed us for, but three of us went to the medics for a check-up, signed an indemnity form, and off we went to Armscor. They had this huge glass freezer, like a massive meat freezer but with glass walls, and they were using it to test uniforms, sleeping bags, all sorts of stuff, but all for extreme cold weather. We got dressed in the uniforms and had holes in our boots for them to place thermometers. They placed thermometers at various strategic points all over our bodies, including an internal thermometer that was up your bum. There was another just above the knee, and what they did was insert a little wire just under the skin so that they could disconnect and connect you up again more easily to a monitoring thermometer. We had to stand at a certain place in the freezer for a certain amount of time, sometimes until we fell down. It was pretty difficult at times. To avoid frostbite they had doctors come in to check us. Of course the doctors wore special suits ’cause it was bloody freezing in there. We were told it was for various reasons: a pilot having to eject, if we had to send troops to the South Pole or had to assist the British in South America. It was so cold and painful you couldn’t talk when you first came out, but there was a full medical team on standby. We did it for five days.
I also tested vehicles for landmine resistance. I drove over antipersonnel limpet mines, not the huge limpet mines. What we were testing and checking after the blast was the wiring and water tanks underneath the vehicles. The tanks provide water and absorb the impact of shrapnel. We also had to see to what degree a vehicle could tilt before it rolled over, what tyres were best and how well protected the electrical systems were from a blast. It wasn’t very dangerous. You really could only get hurt from being knocked around in the cab; sore elbows and such.
– Brett, age 18
During our braais, I’d be barman. I used to over-pour and overfill the glasses, and then I’d sip the drinks before giving them to the guys. My sergeant major told me I was drunk. I insisted I wasn’t, and told him I could drink him under the table and was even capable of running the 2,4. He ordered me to do it. In the middle of the night, there’s me running and falling and running and falling, and the
sergeant major is behind me in a Bedford. But he’s also pissed, and if it hadn’t been for my sober friend who kept stretching over and hitting the brakes when I fell, the sergeant major would have run me over. I always wondered how we won the war. The guys drank a lot.
– Dave, age 19
Late one Saturday night, after a particularly wild night in the bar, we’d gone back to our house to continue the party. Suddenly the doctor appeared, asking to use the radio to order a helicopter to evacuate a badly wounded woman. She was married to a sergeant who had discovered that she was having an affair, so he had set a claymore mine in a tree outside their married quarters. She was still alive but needed to be taken to the closest hospital. Only the base commander could authorise a helicopter to be dispatched, but when we found the major, he was in an alcoholic stupor and still clutching an empty bottle of brandy. When we tried to wake him, he seemed to think he was a steamboat captain. So we pretended to be him over the radio – anything is possible with a bit of mis-tuning. Two hours later, the helicopter arrived and the woman was flown off to hospital. The next day we were called up on orders in front of the now sober major, not because we had impersonated an officer and ordered a helicopter, but because his wife had wanted it to fly to town to do some shopping. When we started to explain why we had done what we did, he quickly chased us out his office, saying, ‘Moenie ’n fokkin’ woord vir iemand sê nie’ [Don’t say a fucking word to anyone about this]. Ja well no fine.
– Chris, age 18
One night a big rainstorm hit Bloemfontein, and we were so energised that we decided to strip and run naked around 1 SAI to bless the camp with some gay power. We were not allowed to do any physical activities, so we would really be in trouble if they caught us running – and in the nude! We managed to get halfway round the camp but then reached the main gate, where the guards on duty spotted us and chased us. You can imagine five naked screaming queens with these butch army guys chasing us. Our fear of being caught managed to make us faster and we got away.
– Rick, age 18
We had just been on a bombing raid into Angola and had dropped our four 125-kg bombs on some target outside a small town and were returning back to base. We usually flew the Impalas back at a sedate speed, but Ricky comes over the radio and says, ‘Leader, this is Number Two. Can we expedite our return?’ This means he wants to head back at full power. ‘What’s the problem?’ Lead asked. Ricky replied that he had gippo guts. During operations, jet jocks wear a flying overall, a G-suit and a survival jacket with all the kit like radio, pistol, some food and signalling equipment attached. It’s not quick or easy to get out of all that gear. We all took buster power and screamed off towards Ondangwa. We always used to do an initial low-level approach over the runway past the tower, bank and go around again, and then come in and land. Ricky comes on the radio again, ‘Leader, can we skip initial approach? I need to get down asap.’ As the first Impala lands, Ricky is coming in, and we just hear this ‘Moenie worry nie, dis te laat’ [Don’t worry, it is too late]. It wasn’t funny then, but it was funny that night in the pub.
– Anonymous
Japie was this very gullible aircraft mechanic. You could tell him anything, and he would believe it. Before he came up to do his tour of duty, the guys told him that Grootfontein was very dangerous: there was a lot of shooting up there, the food was very bad and you were only allowed to take your browns. So he packed only browns, half a balsak of tinned food and his .22 handgun, which he planned to sleep with. Grootfontein was like a civilian town, where you wear civilian clothes after hours. So poor Japie didn’t have any. Another time, Japie says he’s going off to the toilets. Grootfontein had a row of toilets with a service corridor behind them where the cisterns were. So we told Japie that there were a lot of ghosts at Grootfontein because a lot of people had died there. Off he goes, and I sneak into the service way and listen, until I know which specific toilet he is busy on. I open the cistern lid and pull the plug, flushing Japie’s toilet. I run back, but there’s no sign of Japie. We only saw him after lunch. He tells us he was sitting on the toilet and all of a sudden it mysteriously flushed. He stood up in such a hurry, the turd dropped into his overall. He tried to take it out but couldn’t, and he had to walk all the way back to the living quarters with his overalls half on. He then had to wash them and put on fresh ones. To this day he doesn’t know it was me.
– Tallies, age 19
I hated guard duty, but one time really stands out for me. We watched the first part of the horror film Carrie with all the guys, but then we had to walk beat. So two hours later we come back, and watch the rest of the film. Our base was an old convent and we had a great pub. It was a de-sanctified chapel and the altar was the bar. That was the nice part. It also had a cemetery, where the nuns were buried. Remember, in the film, how terrifying it was when she goes to put flowers on the grave and that hand comes out and grabs her? Let me tell you, there was no way we were going to walk through a cemetery on a pitch-black night after watching Carrie! We hid away.
– Paul, age 24
Stripes and Stars
My first impression of my battalion sergeant major was that everything about him was immaculate and impressive. He was a tall, thin Afrikaans guy with perfectly ironed browns; his boots were polished so much that they were bright and shiny. Even his moustache was impressive: it was one of those old-fashioned ones that looked like it had been waxed at the ends. You could tell just by looking at him that he was hardcore. He had faded combat browns with lines ironed across the back of his shirt to represent the number of Border tours he had completed. We were not allowed to call our NCOs ‘sir’. They said they worked for a living, unlike the officers, who were privileged and lazy. Faded browns as opposed to crisp new ones were a status symbol. Up on the Border it didn’t take long for them to fade ’cause of the way we had to wash them: by hand with a bar of Sunlight soap and a corrugated washboard.
– Clint, age 18
Training is critical. It makes one respond instinctively. If someone tells you to hit the deck, you must do so without asking why. It also drums into you the privilege and importance of rank. I never felt it as strongly as when one of my mates was killed. This RSM walked by and said – and I can quote him verbatim, because I never forgot his words – ‘Verwyder die fokkin’ ding, dis net ’n lyf’ [Remove that fucking thing, it’s only a body]. But rank works both ways, and unfortunately for him the commandant overheard his remark and lost it completely. We all wanted to kill this guy. That’s when training comes in. It wasn’t just the shock at what he had said, but the fact that he was an RSM and I wasn’t an officer that meant I didn’t deck him. He deserved his nickname Hägar the Horrible: he was an insult to humanity.
– Ric, age 18
‘I have often been asked why we do not have a medal for the wife of a soldier. The answer is simple: a medal worthy of a wife of a soldier has yet to be minted.’ That was a speech known by troops in the early eighties at Northern Transvaal Command as Speech 3B by the Command OC. He spouted this bullshit at every medal parade he presided over. We used to stand at these endless parades as he outlined the contributions made by various force members and the reasons why they were being given these medals. In most cases they were overweight quartermasters who had served 20 years and for the last ten had made sure that the best cuts of meat had been sent to their homes. Or in one case a PF corporal – yes, can you believe it, a Permanent Force corporal – was getting his ten-year service medal. Most of us who were called up, if we wanted to be instructors, got to that rank in one year! He was a two-liner and had been in the army for ten years! What was worse was that he wasn’t even an instructor! This man, whose wife the army could not mint a medal for, had given ten years’ service and was a fucking two-liner chef in the tiffies mess! Can you fucking believe it! I wanted to weep.
– Jay, age 18
There was this paraplegic captain in SAMS. He’d fallen out of a Samil and I was his run-around aide. One day we got a cal
l from his wife to say that his Staffies were fighting. We rushed to his house and the dogs were tearing chunks out of each other. We tried everything to make them stop: hitting them, turning the hose on them – everything. Next thing he takes his gun out and shoots his one dog. He shot it twice. I think he was extremely frustrated.
– Paul, age 18
The mess at Ondangwa was a tented-off area, and we had a problem with wild and feral animals like stray cats and dogs, meerkats and jackals that used to come in and pinch food. One night the sergeant major said he was going to set an ambush and put out bait to lure the animals in. He was then going to ‘take them out’ with his 9-mill. I had a sleepless night, because all I heard was this dwar dwar dwar, all night long. When we went through for breakfast, there was this pile – and I’m not joking – a massive pile of dead dogs, cats, and everything. They were stacked and their mouths hung open, blood and flies everywhere. That was how he thought he should deal with the problem. He was very proud of himself. He thought he was such a hero. The whole experience, from lack of sleep, to the pile of dead animals, to the stench at breakfast time, was very unsettling.