by Al Venter
That evening, taking stock of what had suddenly become a critical issue, the three pilots worked out something of a contingency plan should they be left on their own or if Kabila’s army should suddenly arrive. Nellis recalled:
Obviously, we could not get away, although we thought that morning might offer a few more options. Because of our air force training, Juba and I were thoroughly conversant with the essentials of escape and evasion, but we realized it was not the sort of thing to do after dark, certainly not in a heavily forested environment secreting a multitude of threats. In contrast, JJ was all for leaving Gbadolite immediately, but in the end we prevailed.
We were staying in Baramoto’s country house in Gbadolite. A couple of hours after sunset, one of Baramoto’s female servants, who had been friendly to us, poked her head around the door and warned us that we were in the gravest danger. They knew we were at the house, she said, and it was only a matter of time before some of the troops, who by now had mutinied, would come looking for the mercenaires. We settled on the unlikely story that we were all Air Zaire pilots who were stranded there, but it was obvious that we’d already been spotted tinkering with the gunships and the other aircraft.
At about two in the morning, the same night that legions of mosquitoes were devouring Le Roux in the one of Africa’s filthiest jails, Nellis was awakened by the sound of a passenger aircraft gunning its engines. He didn’t have to be told that Mobutu and his entourage were fleeing. A couple of hours later, the thumps of heavy explosions and continuing small arms fire reached the house. The noise came from the edge of town and seemed to intensify as a dismal grey dawn approached.
The two South Africans grabbed their clothes and went outside. The first hint of light had barely begun to appear over the jungle when strings of tracers arched across the sky. There were troops shooting everywhere, seemingly not at any specific target, but in all directions at once. It was impossible to tell whether it was a rebel attack or FAZ troops on the rampage. When they checked the guards at the compound gates, they discovered that they too had disappeared, as had all the Russians.
By now JJ had joined them outside and there they stood, the last three white men in a region almost 1,000km from the nearest civilization, in a country that was coming apart at the seams. Nellis recalls:
There wasn’t an officer in sight. The only troops we saw were on the rampage, many of them drunk and firing their weapons at anything that moved, their own people included. Some were as aggressive as hell, furious at having been abandoned by their leaders, others on liquor and drugs were just going berserk. All we knew was that we had to get our butts out of there, but how to do so? So we got our heads together.
The tiny group had very few options left open to them. At first they believed that they had a remote chance of getting to the remaining Mi-24 at the airfield. While the gunship wasn’t altogether airworthy, Juba said that it had enough fuel to get them into the Central African Republic. The only alternative would be to make for the border on foot. The first idea was discarded when firing picked up again, as this time there was some heavy automatic stuff coming from the direction of the airport. Clearly, had they gone that way it would have been obvious to everybody what they were trying to do and they would almost certainly have been shot.
Having been in those parts before, Nellis knew that the closest border post was at Mobayi-Mbongo, about 60km away. However, that was along a road that would have been packed with Zairean refugees, as well as government soldiers, who were also fleeing Kabila’s people.
The army had mutinied, and already there were reports of soldiers going berserk. Some of the mutineers, including a few who had already discarded their uniforms, had come by the house earlier that day and most were already high. While not hostile towards the mercenaries, they certainly were not their usual smiling selves. If the shooting continued, Nellis realized that things could only get worse.
There was one other possibility, JJ suggested. He was aware of a bush track that led straight north from Gbadolite to the frontier. He’d spotted it in the past when he’d circled the area prior to landing. Although there was no border post at the end of it, the route could be their salvation because it headed in a straight line for the river. The Central African Republic (CAR) lay just beyond.
They made their decision immediately. Meanwhile, Nellis used his satellite phone to call home and tell Zelda of their plans and JJ spoke to friends in Paris. His contacts there said they would advise the Ministry of Defence about their predicament. Also, he was assured that French Army units in the CAR would be watching for them. As it was, in anticipation of a full-scale rebellion in Zaire, France had already deployed troops along the CAR’s north bank of the Congo. At this point, some Zairean soldiers who had stayed behind came into the house, forced open the general’s cellar, and began the party in earnest. More soldiers arrived with a truck shortly afterwards and began loading furniture, drapes, TVs, kitchenware and mattresses. One of them even ripped a bidet from the bathroom floor and carried it outside on his head.
One of the women in the general’s compound then came forwards and said that she was worried for the safety of the three whites. She told them that the word had gone out on the local radio for the army to be on the lookout for three white mercenaries who had infiltrated Gbadolite and suggested that they take refuge in her shack. It was well away from the main house and at least they’d be safe there until the main body of soldiers left.
Also, she promised to divert the attention of anybody who came looking for them. They were in serious danger, she warned, words that were echoed by a priest who arrived shortly afterwards. They would be dead within hours if they didn’t get away, he said
Nellis’ flight from Zaire into the CAR with Juba and JJ, all of it on foot except for the final leg, which was undertaken in a leaking dugout canoe, lasted two days. Along the way they were beaten, spat upon, robbed, shot at and pistol-whipped. They hadn’t even got to the far side of town before they were grabbed by some troops and told that they should prepare themselves for execution. Even today Nellis is not certain why it didn’t happen because ‘the bastards seemed pretty set on it’. Hardly a religious man, he admits to having prayed more in those 48 hours than in all the previous years of his life.
Initially, the woman who had befriended the men instructed her son to guide them out of the town, and they started their escape. Although the firing in the town had calmed down a little, there were groups of soldiers, hyped up on marijuana and alcohol, walking around. Nellis said:
Then they saw us and, guns pointed at our torsos, they stopped and interrogated us. Systematically, they stole any articles of value they found while doing the search: cash, watches, cameras, everything they fancied. That was basically it, as we progressed from one group of thuggish troops to another. They even forced us to remove our clothes and left the others in their underpants. I don’t wear jockeys, so I was allowed to keep my trousers. Fortunately, JJ was able to talk to them in French and calm them down. However, he ended up losing $11,000 and I had $3,000 taken from me, while Juba lost his last $1,000.
Then we ran into a bunch of troops who were totally out of control. After some argument, they instructed JJ to leave and told Juba and me to walk down the road and keep our arms high above our heads. After about 20 paces, they shouted for us to stop and then told us to turn around. Once we were facing them, three of them opened fire with their AK-47s. Fortunately, they were so high on drugs and booze, the rounds weren’t accurate and went over our heads or hit the ground in front of us.
Juba took some shrapnel and fragments of stone in his legs and face. A couple of women who’d been watching this impromptu firing squad with some amusement started shouting at the soldiers, which distracted their attention. I said to Juba, ‘Run’, and we bolted off between some houses on the edge of the road. The guide—the son of the woman who had taken us in tow when we left Baramoto’s house—led us to a building where we met up with JJ and some of the general’s soldi
ers who hadn’t taken part in the looting.
Our troubles weren’t yet over. Although Baramoto’s soldiers were friendly, we didn’t trust them so we slept in an outhouse, ready to run at the first sign of danger. That night we could hear plenty of firing from drunken troops, and vehicles driving around town with the occupants calling for ‘mercenaires blancs’ to surrender. Fat chance of that happening!
We eventually reached the border between Zaire and the Central African Republic, which was demarcated by the Oubangui River. The only way to cross was by pirogue, and we managed to find an old man who owned one and was prepared to take us to a police post in the neighbouring state, some way down the river. He demanded cash as payment, but as we had none he initially refused to take us.
However, with hostile troops following, he immediately agreed to let us board his boat and when he saw them approach he powered up the motor. Within minutes he’d put distance between us and those drunken louts.
How the three men ultimately managed to escape from Zaire remains a mystery to Nellis. The odds were so heavily stacked against them that they’d all written off the possibility of ever seeing their families again.
After a couple of hours on the river, the men reached a police post in the Central African Republic where local police took them in and gave them food and a place to sleep. Nellis recalls:
As I mentioned earlier, before we’d left the house in Gbadolite, JJ had managed to contact one of his friends in the French security services who, in turn, had managed to inform the French authorities in CAR of our probable arrival. The police at the post were expecting us, so for the first time in a couple of days we were able to relax.
The following morning, we were uplifted by a French Army Puma helicopter and flown to Bangui, where we were confined to the French Army Barracks while our story was pieced together. JJ was flown out of Bangui to France that same evening, while we stayed with the French military for another two days before Mauritz made arrangements to fly us to Brazzaville, the Congolese capital.
Once the French security authorities had established that the two South Africans were who they said they were, the men were looked after quite well.
They were actually very friendly towards us, but we weren’t allowed out of the building in which we were billeted. Two days later, we were put on a flight to Brazzaville, where we were secreted in what I can best describe as ‘a safe hotel’, while Mauritz arranged for us to be flown back to South Africa. Our time in Brazzaville was quite traumatic because the individual appointed by Mauritz to handle our affairs during the stay kept on telling us that Kabila’s people were searching for us. He warned us that we shouldn’t leave the hotel.
We stayed put for three days, each night waiting for someone to barge through the door and kill us. It didn’t help our state of mind that some of the people living there with us were actually refugees from Mobutu’s Zaire, and sympathetic towards Kabila. It was an immense relief when we were finally taken to Brazzaville Airport and able to board a plane to South Africa.
CHAPTER TWELVE
BACK TO SIERRA LEONE— THE SANDLINE DEBACLE
In early February 1998, Neall Ellis was back home again when he got a call from one of his old friends from EO. He asked whether Neall would look at working in Sierra Leone again. Neall remembers:
The money was good and once more I was broke. The company I would be working for was Sandline International, which was run by Lieutenant-Colonel Tim Spicer OBE, a former British Army officer. There was a specific demand and should I be interested, I was to be in Johannesburg ‘within hours’ to talk, which tells you that nothing really changes in this business.
I’d already heard of Spicer and the private military company for which he worked. He’d emerged from the Falklands War as one of Britain’s leading battalion commanders, having fought in battles such as the Battle of Mount Tumbledown.
The offer from Spicer represented a much-needed lifeline for Nellis and a day later he was heading for Conakry, the capital of the Republic of Guinea, Sierra Leone’s nearest neighbour on the far west coast of Africa. From there, he was told, he would be flown to Freetown by the company. He remembers:
Obviously the question of visas did arise at some point, but nobody thought it important enough to examine the matter in detail. We thought Sandline would take care of all that. However, we thought wrong and when I arrived at Conakry, sans visa, I was put straight back on the plane and returned to South Africa. What it meant for me was the inconvenience of a journey of more than 12,000km and all the dubious African travel crap that went with it—bad food, sleepless nights, mosquito-infested airport terminals and, of course, the obfuscations of legions of what can best be termed as ‘Little Hitlers’, each one of them wishing to impose their will on us transients just wanting to board our planes and move on.
When Nellis did eventually get to Freetown it was on an Embraer that was in such bad shape that he believed it should never have been allowed out of the hangar, never mind carry passengers. He was met at Lungi International Airport by former EO senior officer Bert Sachse, the Country Manager, and his old pal ‘Juba’ Joubert, with whom he had escaped from Zaire. Nellis takes up the story:
My first impression of Sierra Leone was that not much had changed, except that Freetown was more run down than before and was showing its scars. There was evidence of the serious fighting at the airfield the previous year, when the RUF rebels had been ensconced on one side of the airport and the Nigerian Army on the other. It had apparently been a classic showdown and the Lagos team won, with the ‘home side’ forced to evacuate their positions and flee into the jungle.
Once formalities were over, I was taken to a house that had originally been commandeered by the Nigerians and offered to Sandline as a temporary base. It was a big place, and was eventually turned into the Mahera Beach Hotel. However, when I was there it was blessed with neither power nor water. Since the crew wouldn’t have been able to manage without cold beer, a generator had been installed to keep the fridge working and that kept the guys content. Beds and bedding came with the deal, but no air conditioning so I slept on the wide veranda, which faced the bay and enjoyed the nightly onshore breeze that also tended to keep malaria at bay.
Our water problem was solved by a group of locals who would hoist 20-litre containers onto the roof and fill the tank so that at least we were able to shower. It wouldn’t have done to drink from that tank because it also contained water drained off the roof when it rained. Said roof was populated by half a dozen vultures that did their bit by picking at the cadavers littering the fields in the vicinity.
Nellis discovered that, in keeping with what was clearly a strong British Army tradition, Tim Spicer ran an exceptionally thorough military-type operation. He ran the company with Bernie McCabe, an American. Ostensibly, their objective was to recover the mineral interests, ergo diamond concessions, that had been given to another EO subsidiary and to protect the Sierra Rutile, an oxide mineral used in the production of titanium metal.
To achieve this, Sandline needed to be loosely linked to the local Nigerian head of ECOMOG1, Colonel Maxwell Kholbe, and the Deputy Minister of Defence in the government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, Chief Hinga Norman. These two men coordinated the activities of the Kamajors, a tribal group from the jungle that was arguably the best fighting unit in the country. They had been brought in to replace EO as the principal anti-rebel reactionary force and it was left to Sandline to train the Kamajor combatants in some of the fundamentals of counterinsurgency warfare. Nellis comments:
By the time I arrived, Juba was already flying the Sandline Mi-17, dubbed ‘Bokkie’, and had an Ethiopian ground crew led by Sindaba Meri. Sindaba was to become one of the most valuable members of our team and after Sandline had been forced out of the country, he basically kept our chopper flying.
They also had former SAS operative Fred Marafono as a side gunner, loader, observer, advisor, ‘bruiser at the door to stop unwanted people from entering’ an
d general factotum who knew more about Sierra Leone than most. Originally from Fiji, he was one of those traditional fighting men who bowed to nobody, and feared nothing. While with the Regiment, he had been awarded a gong by Queen Elizabeth for the role he played in freeing hostages taken prisoners at the Iranian Embassy at Princess Gate, South Kensington, in April, 1980.
As Nellis recalls, their basic task in Sierra Leone was to fly in support of ECOMOG forces that were mainly based in Monrovia in Liberia, although there was a small detachment of two or three battalions in Freetown itself. They also flew support missions for the Kamajors operating in the interior.
Initially, we were regularly tasked to fly the Freetown–Monrovia leg, taking ECOMOG troops on R&R and returning with supplies for those soldiers who were operating against the rebels. It wasn’t easy. Freetown was in a state of war and every soldier tried to make money by bringing in something to sell in local markets, which meant that we were sometimes so overweight on take-off that we couldn’t get off the ground. Then Fred would go to the back and, virtually at gunpoint, hurl some of the ‘cargoes’ out of the open hatch.
At the time, we were working in and out of an open field at the ECOMOG base in Monrovia, but we weren’t allowed to go into the city itself because Charles Taylor, the local oligarch, had put a bounty on the heads of all us helicopter crews, with a bonus if somebody could knock ‘Bokkie’ out of the supply equation. The reason for this was simple. Taylor was not only in cahoots with the rebels, but he was also supplying Sankoh and his RUF with all the weapons and ammunition they needed, the idea being that he would eventually get a stake in the Sierra Leonean diamond fields.