by J H Thompson
It was very strange: I couldn’t recall hearing any huge noise, any explosion or loud bang whatsoever. I just remember being dazed and bewildered by where I was and why I was lying on the floor. How had I reached the top of the stairs? Had I walked up or been blown up there by the blast? I just couldn’t register what had happened. I immediately stood up, feeling very disorientated. I heard a guy shouting from one of the offices, ‘Lê laag! Lê laag!’ [Lie low! Lie low!] And I immediately dropped back to the ground. There was dust everywhere, and I was covered in it and pieces of glass. A car bomb had gone off outside the gates where I had been standing less than a minute earlier. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was. Seconds before, I would have been facing the windows and they would’ve imploded in my face.
They expected the bomb to be the first of two, and that the second bomb would probably kill more people, as everyone would be confused by the first bomb and would rush to help. When we were given the order to evacuate, I remember, even then, being extremely impressed by the rapid organisation and efficiency of everything after the bomb blast. In less than five minutes of the bomb going off, they had cordoned off roads and had everything under control. There was no panic and not too many injuries. I saw only two people who were wounded. One was a black woman, who I later found out worked at Wits Command. She was lying outside the building, bleeding. I thought that was quite ironic. Only two injuries and one was a black woman. I saw that the gates, which were massive, were completely gone – blown to pieces. There was a hole in the ground and the two cars that had been parked at the gate inside the compound were completely destroyed. The engine of one of the cars had been blown through a wall into the nearby Ster-Kinekor complex, according to later reports. Fortunately, it was early and there was no one in the cinema. It must have made a hang of a noise, but I didn’t recall hearing an explosion.
We were quickly evacuated to one end of Joubert Park and sat around, not saying much. I looked around at the civilians milling about in the park, and even though I was very liberal – I’d been involved with political rallies at Wits and been called a kaffirboetie – I felt like I could have taken a gun and shot every person in that park who was not white. These people wanted to blow me up! A guy who knew it was my first day walked past and said, ‘Great welcome to Wits Command for you.’ Ha ha. I caught the bus home that day, and en route it picked up students from Wits. They were talking about the bomb blast in a really light-hearted fashion, almost joking about it, and I sat in my filthy uniform covered in dust, still clutching my briefcase, thinking that if they had any idea what it was like to actually be there, they wouldn’t be so jocular.
Two things stand out after that car bomb. One was when I went to see my doctor and he asked me if I’d been on the beach recently, because I had sand so deep in my ears. The other was alerting the university to the fact that I had been in the bomb blast, and, as I was due to write an exam in three days, I asked them to please keep the option open for me to write the main exam and the sub if necessary. I wasn’t sure how I would do, but I wanted to try and write the main exam first to get it over and done with. They said no. I could only write one or the other. I wrote the main exam and passed it, and to this day I couldn’t tell you what I wrote or what the course was.
– Michael, age 21
It might have been a terrorist who carried only one mine, as they didn’t have the same amount of ordnance that we did at their disposal. He’d laid the mine on an old disused track, so it could have been there for ages before the Buffel went over it. It was a separate patrol from ours, but we were nearby and heard the explosion. When we got to the area, our first concern was that it could be an ambush or some kind of booby trap, although that didn’t happen very often. The Buffel had been blown up and there were bits of bodies and clothing in the surrounding trees. A steel door on the Buffel had blown upwards and slammed down across a guy’s legs, severing them right off. His legs were shreds of meat hanging in the tree above. He was conscious but there was no conversation. Our medic put him on a drip and I held his hand while he died. The helicopters came and collected the wounded and the bodies to fly them out of Angola and back to South Africa. When we carried on with our patrol, we did all the right things, like wearing our seat belts. There was no feeling really. It just was.
– Chris, age 17
I had some time off and went up on one of the Bosbok’s regular 5 p.m. late-afternoon flights to do a reconnaissance of the jati – the kaplyn. I loved flying and just wanted to spend some time in the air. We had been up for about half an hour when I saw tracers coming up behind the plane. It was terrifying. I thought, should I pray now? I was convinced my time was up and I was about to die. I had my R1 with me, but otherwise was completely defenceless. It’s a horrible situation to be in, where you can’t fight back. I remember calmly saying to the pilot, ‘I think we are being fired upon.’ He looked and said, ‘Oh my God!’ We were flying fairly low, and he went for height straight away. The air was filled with tracers, under us, over us, next to us; just everywhere I looked I saw these glaring arcs glowing in the air around us. Let me tell you, when the terrs used to fire, it wasn’t selectively. Their modus operandi was to fire off a lot of rounds at once, and tracers were the order of the day. Tracers are selectable, so normally you loaded them by alternating with more regular rounds than tracer rounds, but the terrorists loved them. It was their big thing. If you got hit by a tracer it could cause septicaemia and gangrene if not treated. It burnt like hell. We had unintentionally flown over this contact, and they must have thought we were doing an aerial surveillance for our troops and they had a go at us. It was quite impressive, because the pilot tipped the plane on its wing and then circled in one spot, gaining height. I thought he deserved an Honoris Crux, because he stayed in the area to look down and see what was happening. There was fire and smoke from the mortar explosions, and I would have just wanted to get out of the area immediately.
– John, age 18
During Ops Mebos we were flying into southern and south-western Angola a lot. We knew which Angolan towns to avoid, as they were marked on our maps with a big red circle. They were the ones that had a protective umbrella over them, as they had very powerful and accurate radar-guided missiles. The terrs would infiltrate south, penetrating as far as Tsumeb sometimes, and then run back north to this protective umbrella. This happened particularly in the wet season, when we had difficulty in tracking them. For three weeks I was Echo, which meant I flew my Puma in position five in the formation. On this one day, 9 August 1982, I was moved from Echo to Golf – seventh position. My Puma was an H-model, which was more powerful than the C-model. My mate, J, took my Echo position, and as he had more troops than I did, I told him to send over a couple of the guys to my helicopter. They ran over and we took off, following a direct track to the drop zone. The Pumas were troop carriers, used for casevac, cargo slinging and re-rats. As far as casevacs go, I must say that only about one in ten was because of enemy action; the rest were stupid things like fights or accidents. The Alouettes were the gunships. The terrs called them taka-taks, because of the noise of the cannons. So we flew out in formation behind two Alouettes. Suddenly, as we were flying low level, a battery of anti-aircraft guns opened up on the fifth Puma in the formation. J’s helicopter pitched up violently before rolling over and exploding in mid-air; bodies and debris fell to the ground, where all the remaining fuel exploded. It was like watching Apocalypse Now! Some of the guys were in the doorway of the helicopter and fell out, but most were burnt to death. The guys who had fallen were later found propped against trees with bullet holes in their heads. I think that was more of a symbolic thing by SWAPO, ’cause the guys couldn’t have survived the fall. Hitting the ground at 200 kilometres per hour pretty much smashes every bone in the body. Another Puma was shot to pieces by small arms fire, and some of the troops were also badly wounded. When we got back to the HAG, one of the Reconnaissance guys responsible for checking out the areas we went into, came and asked me
where it had happened. I showed him on the map. With great anger and tears of frustration he said he had told the colonel not to go into that area. There were several hundred Angolans camped on the one side of the ravine and an anti-aircraft battery with eight 14,5-mm cannons on the northern side. We shouldn’t have been anywhere near their base. That night I went and lay on J’s bed. I didn’t cry or anything. I just lay there.
– Anonymous
32 Battalion Reconnaissance unit was to determine the position of the SWAPO bases, and two 32 Battalion companies and ourselves were to assault these SWAPO bases once they had been pinpointed and identified. We’d been on a number of lemon operations. These happened when supposed camps had been identified and we would fly in for the assault and the base either wasn’t there or the people had abandoned it and moved northwards. On this particular day, two 32 Battalion companies had been dropped by helicopter and they were to sweep in a particular direction and try to determine the base position. I think the pressure was on to deliver results. We were the third company, Alpha Company, and were flown out from the forward Helicopter Administration Area.
We went in, flying in formation, in eight Puma helicopters. There was one stick – that’s about 12 people, excluding the three flight crew – in each helicopter. Two choppers transport what we called a valk, and the eight choppers made up the company. Unfortunately, we flew right over the SWAPO base position. Until then, we hadn’t known exactly where the base was. That’s why we had dropped all these companies – to sweep and try to find it. We were sitting in the doorway of the chopper with our feet resting on the step. This was customary practice; when the chopper banked, you were held in place by the centrifugal force – quite an amazing experience. In addition to the antiaircraft fire there was small arms fire, and our company intelligence officer was shot through the leg (which eventually had to be amputated). It obviously took the SWAPO crew a while to react, because they fired at the fifth chopper and hit the sixth chopper with a SAM-7. They destroyed the section between the rear rotor and the fuselage. Obviously, the pilots lost control and I saw the chopper loop, and next thing there was an explosion and smoke as it hit the ground. We couldn’t see if anybody got out. We had banked around to come back, but were told to immediately head straight back to our temporary base, or HAA. That night there were mixed emotions. Up until that point we had felt fairly invincible, but after seeing 12 paratroopers and three flight crew shot down, we were aware that we could also become a statistic. There was a sadness, a truth, but also a need for revenge. We also felt an element of anger because we had been on so many of these lemon operations and it clearly hadn’t been part of the big plan to fly over this base. The next morning we flew in again in the choppers, but the enemy had moved north, deeper into the bush. A spotter plane was used to assist with the tracking down of the enemy, and we caught up with them approximately 35 kilometres from the original position where they had shot down our chopper. They moved with their heavy equipment, which slowed them down and afforded us the opportunity to catch up with them and initiate an assault. We even shot a couple of stragglers who were behind the line where we were dropped by the Pumas. The Alouettes, which provided us with air cover, directed us to where some of these individuals were hiding. During the contact we retrieved a couple of web belts, damaged sections of rifle and some dog tags from the bodies of our guys that had been shot. These had obviously been taken as proof that they had shot down the chopper, or maybe just as souvenirs. Revenge was sweet. However, it did not offset the experience we had just lived through or the loss of colleagues. In summary, an incredibly sad experience.
– Dudley, age 21
When we stopped for the day we were supposed to dig a loopgraaf, or foxhole, which you were supposed to jump into when you were under attack. To be effective it should be as deep as you are tall. The guys got slack quickly and very few dug loopgrawe, even though they could save your life. The Russians had this amazing aircraft, an Antonov, that used to fly over at about 70–75 000 feet. It had excellent equipment and sophisticated infrared cameras. They had these experts who would interpret the photos taken on reconnaissance, and then they would ID the co-ords where they thought we were and bomb that. If the Russians dropped one of their 1 000-pound bombs on you and you were within the possible kill zone of 1 000 metres, you would die from the shock waves, unless you were under the surface in your loopgraaf. But we would have moved on by the time they had analysed their intelligence and sent the MiGs with their bombs. They often bombed the last place we had stopped. Even though we were about 50 kays away, you felt the earth vibrate, like an earthquake, and then this low boom as the sound waves hit.
– Greg, age 25
There were five of us on a ‘look-see’ mission in eastern Angola. We walked into an ambush. None of us were killed, but they chased us for three days. It was poor training on their side. Their ambush just wasn’t that effective, and it enabled us to get out of the killing zone – and we ran. There were 60 of them. We just ran, as hard as we could. We dumped kit, we dropped all the heavy stuff, we dropped all our food, sleeping bags, blankets, and whatever else we had, we threw away. We kept our ammo, grenades, water and our radio, and we ran for three days. Whenever they caught up with us or when they had the high ground, they shot at us. We’d shoot back and run again. We split up and met at RV points and we didn’t have much time for anti-tracking. The guys were good: natural-born trackers. They were baying at us like bloodhounds, and they’d taunt us: ‘Boertjie! Boertjie! White man, I’m gonna kill you!’ Fortunately they didn’t set the bush alight this time, which is something they’d done in the past. They’d burnt thousands of hectares trying to trap us. This time there was thick cloud cover and we couldn’t get radio communications to call a helicopter to take them out, so we just kept running for the border. We drank water on the run. We never slept, because we figured they wouldn’t chase us at night, so we ran as hard as we could at night and then, in the early hours of the morning, we’d try to catch half an hour’s kip. We were tied to one another with a piece of string, and the guy standing guard would pull it. No one had to move or whisper or do a thing other than tug on the string to wake the others up. Our Escape and Evasion training kicked in, but I think it was my fear that kept me alive. I didn’t want my arse looking like a tea strainer. We ran about 120 kays. It was terrible. I don’t even like to think about it, but I am grateful for being taught endurance. For being taught that little word vasbyt. We were taught that when you’ve had enough, your body can still take seven times more. This situation was proof. After running for five, six hours straight, I said I’d had enough. Everyone looked at one another. We were pitch black, hadn’t shaved for two weeks, had cracked lips, we were smelly, thirsty, hungry and scared, and then we started to run again because if we didn’t, we’d die.
– Ric, age 18
We were with the 81-mm mortar okes, and we got word that a group was coming down south. We had to provide support for one of our groups that was going to looi the enemy group coming down. Now the mortars didn’t give us too much buffer space – we had to be within five to seven kays. We moved into place at sunset and we had to get in quite close. We got the co-ords and started looing them. Shoop shoop shoop with the 81s, and they were boom boom boom back at us. Next thing the mortar guys said there was another group of enemy armoured vehicles coming south, moving towards our flank, and they were accompanied by Russian Hind gunships. These were choppers that were armed to the teeth. They were armour-plated, had rockets on either side, heavy machine guns, everything. If you picked up one of those mothers, you were in serious shit. They were evil, evil looking things. They would come at you just over the tree tops. We had to pack up and move out of the area very quickly because obviously they knew our co-ords. So we’re moving at night, parking lights on, guys in front of you and guys behind. Rushing to get away from the area. Then, through the bush, I just saw lights. I thought, hey, away you go, thank you very much, this is the end of the story – th
ey’ve flanked us and now they’re going to take us out. It was the most frightening experience. Then I saw that they were our own Ratels, racing to place themselves between us and them.
– Greg, age 25
Bosbefok
I went to help my buddies in Com Ops load their chopper. They used to do pamphlet drops. I wasn’t involved in their work. I just remember this one time I helped them ’cause they wanted to take photographs of these bodies. They had four bodies in the chopper and they wanted to take photographs to put on pamphlets, which they’d drop in Angola. They’d put something like ‘We’ve got your friend’, written in Portuguese, underneath it. I used this cardboard beer crate to fan the flies off the dead guys while they took their photos, and I remember we were joking and laughing and all eating chocolate, for goodness’ sake. I thought I was such a hero. The more I think about it now, the more I realise it was pure propaganda.
– Anthony, age 18
We moved a lot of Recces and 32 Battalion guys. They were mainly Portuguese-speaking former Angolan fighters. They had a great sense of humour and they loved us pilots. We flew food in for them and flew them to hospital when needed. There’d been a big operation, and one of our more unpleasant jobs was to fly the bodies of dead terrs back to Oshakati. There they would be photographed and IDed. The photos and names were printed on A6-size flyers in black and white with accompanying messages like ‘Look What Has Happened to Your Friends! Surrender Now!’ in Portuguese. An Impala dropped the flyers from a high altitude all over Angola. The flyers were loaded into the speed brake and, at the push of a button, could be released. Before an operation, they would also drop flyers over villages, warning locals to move out of the area if they did not support SWAPO. If they remained, they would be bombed.