Gunship Ace

by Al Venter

  In an assessment of the situation much later, Nellis said that he and the others soon got the impression that the American Government had instructed PAE to help them where they could:

  including paying our fuel account so that we could remain active … in other respects they would invite us for the occasional meal or give us some of their surplus flying kit, which came in handy because we were almost in rags. Then we started working together and flew cross-country in three-ship formations. Sometimes we would move troops, other times food and ammunition for the soldiers in the field, who were having a really tough time against a much better equipped and motivated enemy.

  With Sandline abruptly departed and no extraneous security elements in place, the rebels started making substantial advances against Freetown. In a sense, Nellis said, ‘they’d already smelt blood and wanted more’.

  On the chopper side, recalls Nellis:

  It didn’t always work the way we intended it to because the Russian pilots liked to fly at about 1,000ft, while we hugged the deck. We warned them about SAMs and they said we were crazy. They would insist that there were none, maintaining that being Russian, they would be the first to know. They changed their minds after they had been shot at a few times and started to think like we did.

  There were some interesting contrasts in the mix. While the Americans would fly in full combat kit, with flak jackets, army boots and their M16s, the Russians preferred to don white shirts and slacks for their flying duties, much as they did in peacetime.

  Towards the end of November 1998, it was clear that the rebels had embarked on a serious anti-Nigerian offensive. They started to concentrate their assets in the north-east, around the diamond fields, and the intent was clear. The initiative, apparently, came from Charles Taylor who wanted to control Kono and have all its precious stones for himself.

  On the domestic front, Juba had all but stopped flying because of his lunchtime meetings with friends at Paddy’s Bar and Alex’s Restaurant so most of the time it was just Nellis and his Ethiopian engineer, Sindaba, in the cockpit. That suited him fine, he recalls today, because he was steadily building up his hours and gaining more experience on machines which, until a short while before, had been quite new to him.

  I recall going into Kono one morning and chatting to a Nigerian Army captain I’d met at the Cape Sierra Hotel a few weeks before. He told me that he was worried that Kono would come under serious attack sometime soon. He was right, because the RUF launched a major frontal assault two days later and captured him.

  They literally ripped him apart. After he had been suspended between two vehicles, which tore off his arms and legs, they disembowelled him. I was obviously shocked when I heard the news because I was aware that he had recently married a Sierra Leonean woman and when we talked at the airfield, he mentioned missing the love of his life.

  It disturbed Nellis that the ECOMOG High Command in Freetown didn’t appear to be unduly concerned at the possibility of losing the diamond fields. Kholbe, by then promoted to brigadier-general, was in his office when Nellis called to talk. Nellis told him that he’d got a mid-morning call from the squad from Lifeguard who said they were under siege and couldn’t hold out much longer.

  He and I both knew that the majority of these people were private military contractors from South Africa, and quite a few were formerly with EO. He was also aware that Lifeguard was integral to his defence structure and that the squad, and the Nigerian troops in the area, were desperately short of ammunition. He caught me a bit off-guard by sending me to his second-in-charge, Colonel Garba, who was also Nigerian. I mentioned that Lifeguard had 82mm mortars and a couple of 12.7mms and that they badly needed ammo. He was aware that they were holed up on Monkey Mountain, where the mine was.

  Instead of doing something positive, the idiot sent me on a ration run. I was tasked to deliver food to a Sierra Leonean Army base about 80km from Freetown, manned by a bunch of hooligan riff-raff who were still loyal to the government and under no threat at all. Barely an hour later, I got a call on the radio from Lifeguard and was told that the Nigerian lines had started to crumble. The gist of it was that the rebels had overwhelmed some of their positions, including those of two battalions of Kholbe’s soldiers. They were all about to be annihilated and were running away from their positions.

  My priority just then was to work out a way of helping the Lifeguard unit. I was able to get through to them again on the radio and they said that they had started to move to a stronger point about 15km away. They asked for immediate extraction.

  Since this was the kind of emergency that one always fears— the fellows were not only desperate, they were cut off and their ammunition was drying up—I went to look for Juba. I found him at the base and told him that because of bad visibility, the rescue attempt should be a two-pilot operation. I also mentioned that because of the Harmattan wind, visibility was likely to be down to 1,000 metres. Laden with fine Saharan sand and enveloping much of West Africa, the annual phenomenon can make navigation difficult.

  Juba refused outright. I should go on my own, he scoffed. With that, he was off into town for another lunch meeting with the Frenchman JJ.

  There were five of them in the Mi-17 when they lifted off from Cockerill Barracks. The crew included the engineer Sindaba, Fred Marafono and two side gunners in the rear, with Nellis as pilot. Nellis tells what happened next:

  One of the gunners was Mohammed, a Nigerian soldier seconded to us who had proved useful in some of the tight spots we’d found ourselves in.

  When I arrived at the GPS position that Lifeguard had given me, I found the place deserted. All I could do was set a course for Kono. However, this time I flew a little higher, aware that if the guys heard me coming, they’d call on the radio. Throughout, I tried to raise them, but got no reaction. I was very much aware that we were within sight of rebel positions and were picking up a bit of ground fire, some of it quite heavy. That’s when Fred came forward to the cockpit and said the bastards were using 12.7mms and 14.5mms against us, which was cheery. Finally, we were able to talk to the men who, by then, I regarded as ‘our people’.

  When Nellis finally managed to connect, the men trapped on the ground said they were only a couple of kilometres away, but because there was a heavy enemy presence, they’d hidden in a gulley. According to Nellis, this meant more problems because it was a particularly hot day and there were 16 of them. With their weapons and kit, he had a real fear that they might be too heavy for take-off. From past experience, he knew that when ground forces actually ask for a hot extraction, it is usually almost too late.

  Road to Makeni, where Nellis launched his ambush against many members of the rebel command structure. Author’s photo

  But they were friends and allies and we simply had to extricate them from a situation that was obviously critical.

  Once I had visual on them, I landed as fast as possible, took everybody on board and attempted to lift off. I knew it was not going to be easy, but the alternative was too ghastly to contemplate. Sindaba was looking at me, wide-eyed and shaking his head, which was when I knew we were in trouble.

  Having come down in the secluded gulley and quickly familiarised myself with the environment, I could see that the depression had its advantages. For a start, we were in dead ground, the rebels weren’t in sight and their fire passed harmlessly overhead. However, that advantage was soon lost because, when I pulled power, the effect of the long grass and up-slopes of the gulley caused a marked recirculation of the rotor wash, with a consequent loss of main rotor blade effectiveness.

  So even before attempting to move forward through transition, the rotor revs were already on the minimum of 92 per cent. I prayed for a nice flat area where I could nurse the chopper through transition but, had there been one, more likely than not we would have been full of holes as it was the defilade protecting us.

  Obviously, the thought of asking some of the guys to disembark crossed my mind, but that would have been suicide. Enough o
f them might have been able to hold out for a while, but the prospect of coming back to fetch them was not appealing as the area had suddenly become very hot indeed.

  Nellis had made his decision. It was an all or nothing situation, so he decided to give it a go. ‘We’d all get out of this shit or we’d perish together in the process if we were unsuccessful.’

  He didn’t give much thought to the negative side of it all, he admitted afterwards. He was determined to make it happen.

  I pulled collective, the revs dropped to 88 per cent and the red lights over the temperature panel on the engine started flashing. By then it was a matter of life or death, so I thought fuck the consequences which included the loss of our auto-pilot and electrics.

  In the process ‘Natasha’ was screeching blue murder, so I eased the power up slightly and we just managed to clear the lip of the gulley. Fortunately, there was a slight incline downwards so, using the curvature of the earth and the bounce technique—to the accompaniment of a volume of enemy small arms fire—we managed to stagger through transition and gain enough flying speed to maintain forward momentum and eventually shudder our way back in the direction of Freetown.

  Once out of the crap, a minute or two later, everybody on board was giggling like a bunch of schoolgirls. The elation of getting out of that mess intact, and picking up speed as we sped over huge clumps of jungle immediately below the fuselage, was incredible.

  We were in Freetown an hour later and the guys were ecstatic. Instead of being eaten by the rebels that night, they joked, they would be doing the eating. The beers flowed continuously in the hotel bar that night, which meant that by morning there wasn’t a man among us who didn’t suffer from the effects of our ‘gyros toppling’.

  Nellis and his crew were ordered back to Kono early the next day to try to extricate the remnants of those who had survived the night. However, as he recalls, it was hopeless.

  We spotted some of the troops escaping along the road but most had disappeared into the bush, only to reappear in Freetown weeks later, having walked all the way. As I approached Yengema, the bodies of dead soldiers were everywhere, which meant that we were well behind the rebel lines. It was pointless trying to find survivors at the ECOMOG headquarters in the town as they would certainly all be dead by then.

  I had become friendly with one of the Nigerian Amy majors based at Yengema. He was a quiet, competent fellow who was one of the few who was quite committed to his job. I was to hear later from some of the survivors that, shortly before turning in for the night, he’d wandered off into the dark on the perimeter of the base, probably to have a piss, when he was captured by a rebel scouting group.

  The poor fellow was taken a short distance from the Nigerian camp and his colleagues could hear his screams as the rebels dismembered his body while he was still alive. He was subjected to the most gruesome rituals, which went on for several hours as they cut away chunks of his flesh and roasted them over an open fire before eating them while he watched.

  Africa can be kind, someone once commented, and it is axiomatic that it can also be barbarously cruel.

  Had this happened to an officer from a British or American unit, Nellis believes there would have been no shortage of volunteers to head out immediately to end the carnage. Executive Outcomes operatives wouldn’t even have had to think about it, he added.

  What disturbed me and the others about all this, was that the Nigerian commanders did very little to help their troops. One couldn’t help but get the impression that their senior officers weren’t overly worried about the fact that they had lost so many of their soldiers, but then the Nigerians usually march to the beat of a different drum. It came as no surprise to hear shortly afterwards that their military structure had totally collapsed.

  A couple of days later, I spoke to Kholbe and asked why he hadn’t bothered to send some of his vehicles out to bring in the stragglers. His retort was something about not being able to afford to lose any more vehicles.

  Not long afterwards, some ECOMOG officers still in Sierra Leone were evacuated to Conakry, in Guinea. However, the majority decided to stay and fight the rebel advance. There was only one serviceable helicopter at that time—‘Bokkie’. All the others, PAE and ICI ones included, had left the country. By now Juba and JJ had also disappeared, the two men having decided that the Freetown was about to fall to the rebels. To give him his due, Juba had malaria and did need medical attention, ‘though I think that JJ was just shit scared’, was Nellis’ comment.

  A couple of days after Yengema and the diamond areas around Kono had been taken by the rebels, we had reports that the ECOMOG garrison at Makeni was under concentrated attack and that there were heavy casualties in the Nigerian ranks. We were also aware that their ammunition supplies were critically low.

  The day before Christmas, I was called to a meeting by Kholbe, who requested that we make a run to Makeni to deliver ammunition and uplift whatever casualties we could. Of course, according to him, the garrison was not under attack, and the fighting was on the outskirts of the town, which was not what we had heard. However, we were there to provide a service and also to help out buddies. We loaded the ammo at Cockerill Barracks, and took minimum fuel for the task.

  On the way to Makeni, there were signs of serious fighting everywhere. The town itself was on fire and the huge volume of smoke made visibility difficult. I elected to skirt around the outskirts of the town and stay as low as possible so our approach to the garrison was from the north-east. The flight in was quiet enough and we weren’t fired upon, which meant that our approach to the landing areas was normal and tactical.

  We’d been there before, so we knew that landing zone was in a small clearing just outside the camp perimeter. The trouble was that it was pretty exposed on the northern side. As soon as we landed, Fred jumped out to supervise the unloading but nobody came from the camp to assist. As Fred alighted from the chopper, I couldn’t miss the little puffs of dirt that were exploding on the ground directly in front of us, sending him scuttling back to the chopper and what should have been safety. We were being fired upon, but nothing had hit the helicopter yet.

  Meanwhile, with all that ammunition still on board, there was no chance of pulling out, as we were too heavy to clear the trees in front of us. Fred and Mohammed climbed out of the chopper and, assisted by Sindaba, started to offload the ammo. I stayed at the controls, rotors running.

  Soon after, some of the soldiers did arrive to assist and gradually their numbers increased. However, it wasn’t long before Fred came to the cockpit and said we had to leave. The Nigerian troops, seeing a rapidly emptying helicopter, had decided that this was the way out to safety and they were all going to remain on board. I couldn’t argue because RPG rounds were detonating all around us and in the surrounding trees.

  I knew too, that if too many of the Nigerian troops became aware of what their brothers were doing, we would have more people on board than the helicopter could carry. We could easily suffer the same fate as ‘Bokkie’s’ sister ship ‘Daisy’. She was lost when large numbers of Sierra Leonean troops had tried to escape from the battlefield by swamping the departing helicopter with their bodies. South African pilot ‘Tati’ Tate had no option but to abandon his chopper because it was too heavy for take-off.

  Fortunately, Juba was flying ‘Bokkie’ that day and was able to rescue the crew and get them away to safety. All the troops who had attempted to desert were killed by the rebels, who torched ‘Daisy’ the next day. These were pretty sobering considerations just then, especially since we were the only helicopter flying and there would be no rescue effort if we were overwhelmed by a bunch of mutinying Nigerian soldiers. I told Fred to get back inside, shut the doors and prepare for take-off. It didn’t matter that we still had some unloaded ammo on board, and it was even tougher that we’d have to leave the casualties behind. However, just then the situation was out of control, and worse, the Nigerian troops already on board would not disembark.

  Fred cam
e through over the intercom ‘Go, for fucks sake, go!’ he screamed. I asked whether the rear doors were closed, but he just called for me to get the hell out of there. When I pulled power, I suddenly realized that we were heavy, extremely so, but we did have enough power to clear the trees and head out to Freetown. There was quite a lot of smoke ahead of us, so visibility was restricted.

  Soon after take-off, we started receiving volumes of con centrated small arms fire as we flew over the town, so I kept the machine as low as possible over the houses, desperately hoping that we wouldn’t have a wire strike. What was more unnerving was the tracer fire coming at us, masses of it. It is one thing to be shot at but, when you can actually observe tracer heading directly at you, the psychological effect is unnerving. There were also different, heavier sounds and that could only have meant that we were being targeted by a 12.7mm or 14.5mm heavy machine gun.

  On the way out, I noticed one of the rebel troops standing in a clearing in between the houses. He had an RPG launcher on his shoulder and seemed to be aiming directly at my cockpit. Here we go, I thought, but the next moment his chest erupted as Fred opened up on him with his GPMG and the guy crumpled to the ground, dead.

  For all the problems in Sierra Leone, there was hope. We knew the government had been trying to buy two Mi-24 Hinds, but we were also aware that if they didn’t arrive within weeks, Freetown would fall.

  By early January, we heard that the first groups of rebels had arrived in the nearby town of Waterloo, a medium-sized town with its own airport. This, in itself, was ominous because the RUF would be able to create an air bridge to Monrovia. We had also been made uncomfortably aware that there were RUF elements already starting to infiltrate the outer suburbs of Freetown. Worse, there was nothing anybody could do to stop them.