by Al Venter
A little more rotund than earlier in his career, his hair close-cropped so that it’s difficult to see whether it’s thinning or not, Neall Ellis has never been regarded as the archetypal soldier of fortune. In Sierra Leone, when he talked about his ‘office’ he was referring not to the barracks but to the helicopter he flew every day. Soft-spoken, articulate and well read, very few people ever saw him angry, although like everybody else on Freetown’s roads, he could be pretty cantankerous behind the wheel. Those who got to know him well were aware that there was a darkness in his eyes that was sometimes indefinable. His language could also be explicit, especially when he missed a target. In contrast, he was never critical of his crew, even though they all made mistakes at times.
On Nellis’ desk, which was on the left as you entered the office, were papers, more maps, his battered old laptop, electricity bills, cardboard plates from the previous day’s snack and several heavily bound catalogues offering the latest killing machines from the former Soviet Union. Most had the Rosvoorouzhenie imprint, which was formerly Moscow’s State Corporation for Export and Import of Armaments and Military Equipment. Other catalogues were from its successor, Rosoboronexport. Tucked away, almost unobtrusively in a pile of its own, was a letter from a British weapons supply company. Addressed to Nellis, it offered the Air Wing a reconditioned Mi-24 engine for $545,000 cash.
In another corner lay the remains of a pile of British Army ration packs. A small refrigerator held the day’s supply of butter, pita bread, sausage spread or whatever else Hassan had managed to scrounge from the Lebanese supermarket down the road in Wilkinson Street. The room was air-conditioned, but because there were so many power cuts, refrigeration was essential. For that reason, anyone who wanted to smoke went outside and stood alongside the pad where the unit’s second gunship was parked.
That second Hind was also fully equipped with a Gatling and underwing rocket pods, although these were 80mm, as opposed to the 57mm pods with which the other Hind was equipped. This second helicopter saw little action, the main reason being that the larger projectiles were in short supply and nobody was ever certain when more would be ordered. Also, it wasn’t air-conditioned. Nellis would go out and come back drenched in sweat; it would sometimes take him an hour or two to recover.
For much of the time that he worked out of Cockerill Barracks, Nellis’ domain at Army Headquarters kind of ran itself. Two or three times a day he would liaise with his bosses and then things would just happen. At one point, shortly after the Royal Marines had stabilised the situation in and around Freetown, Whitehall appointed an RAF squadron leader to ‘supervise’ Nellis’ team under the guise of what they termed their ‘Sierra Leone military training program’. It was a shrewd move.
The new RAF arrival, Nellis said, was technically an advisor and he was basically running the show. He added that ‘these guys also see that the money that the government owes us keeps on coming, which is good, because then we eat again’. Shortly after the arrival, a report appeared in the British press that claimed that the Royal Air Force was supporting mercenaries and it suggested a repeat of the Sandline debacle. It was expected that Whitehall would backtrack, but then the unexpected happened.
Days later, a London newspaper report written by Caroline Davies, said that the Ministry of Defence had stated that the RAF officer (based at Cockerill Barracks) was advising Sierra Leone on how to build up ‘a proper structured air wing’ and that the gunship ‘belonged to the government, not mercenaries’. The story went on: ‘If the Sierra Leoneans haven’t got anybody who can fly these helicopters and if they want to get South African nationals who can, then that’s up to them. The RAF does not advise them on their role on a day-to-day basis’.
It was the first time that a modern British government had actually acknowledged that it was in any way involved with irregular military forces such as a private military company (PMC), which was quite shocking in an age when hired guns were an anathema throughout the civilized world. One commentator suggested that this was the shape of things to come in an Africa that was in the process of unravelling. In fact, since then there has been a flurry of articles advocating the use of PMCs in some of the more isolated conflicts where any kind of regular intervention wouldn’t make good political or economic sense.
Nellis’ ops centre was run very differently from everything else that went on at Cockerill. It had a very distinctive atmosphere and for part of the day, the wails and squeaks from communications equipment in the radio shack next door would saturate everything. The technicians, even when they weren’t trying, would create noises that could invoke demons. It was at its worst if they had had to revert to batteries, which happened every time there was a power outage, which was often.
Basically, the technicians monitored enemy radio transmissions around the clock. As it was sensitive work, the ops centre was also the most heavily guarded area of the complex and there was an armed sentry on permanent duty outside the entrance. Most of the intercepts could be seen by anyone in the office as they came in, which almost certainly diminished the level of military security. However, that was the problem with the war from the start: secrets just didn’t keep in Freetown.
The majority of messages that came in weren’t coded and those that were in code took a bit longer to filter down to the ops centre. It was instructive that the rebels used a Slidex code in their more important messages. As Nellis noted, that, in itself, was unusual because the system was cumbersome. He felt it possibly reflected a South African presence among enemy ranks. The old SADF, he explained, was one of the last of the more sophisticated establishments still using Slidex and it might have been former SADF personnel who had passed it on to the Liberians.
To Nellis, it was unacceptable for former SADF personnel to go across to the enemy. He felt it was a betrayal and he took it personally. In Ondangua during Namibia’s border war days, and at Swartkops near Pretoria and elsewhere, they had all been good buddies. In a sense, being military, they were all part of one big family. The wives and children knew one another because they were often thrust together for months at a stretch in remote postings such as at the air force base at Ondangua.
It was no secret that some old EO hands were also fighting for, or training, rebel forces. The money was good and since opportunities for this kind of work were limited, many grabbed the opportunity when it came about.
There were many reasons why senior Sierra Leonean staff officers would sidle down to Nellis’ ops centre for a chat. For a start, because of his role, he was the best source of intelligence in the region. While flying, he missed very little that was going on below. Further, what he had to offer was always an accurate, reasonable and balanced assessment of enemy ground force activities, based mostly on the kind of subliminal instinct that comes with good experience. Years of flying in primal environments added a distinctive edge to his reports.
Invariably, he was spot on. For instance, while in the air, he could judge simply by a man’s actions on the ground—how he walked, what he was carrying and whether he was being evasive—whether he was the enemy or not. He could ‘read’ the bush and, having identified a target and gone in ‘hot’, it was often only at the last moment that anyone else would see what he was aiming at. Most of the time it was a cunningly camouflaged vehicle or building.
His actions could certainly galvanize the mind, especially when under fire. On one occasion he strafed a position, targeting something in the kind of primitive forest that most of the handbooks would classify as impenetrable. Only on his third pass did the fuel-carrying vehicle and its 12.7mm HMG explode in a fireball. Until then, it had been seemingly invisible. With time, Hassan also honed these skills.
On another occasion, he passed a fairly large boat heading down the Little Scarcies River, not far from the Guinea border. It wasn’t unlike several other partially enclosed motor craft plying the hundreds of kilometres of inland waterways that sometimes made Sierra Leone’s coastal plain remarkably like the Mekong Del
ta during the wet season. This one, a bit bigger than a Pam Pam, but not large enough to be ocean going, stopped in midstream as soon as his helicopter came into view.
On his second pass, Nellis said he was going in. The boat blew up when its cargo of fuel ignited. When asked about it later he admitted that there was no real reason for the strike, except that the first time round he could see that the crew was ready to swim for it.
‘They don’t normally do that, so what else to conclude but that there was something in that boat’s hold that could hurt. Also, the men on board were armed and jumpy’, he stated blandly. In Sierra Leone, he explained, that just about said it all. Since the entire region through which the Little Scarcies flowed was in rebel hands, he surmised that whatever those crewmen had on board was almost certainly destined for the RUF. A rebel radio intercept later proved him right, although Nellis is the first to admit that he sometimes made mistakes.
‘You must remember that this is a very real war. It’s not an exercise. Here, it’s us or them and many people are getting killed’, he told a visitor to Cockerill who had made an issue about innocents being targeted.
Nellis scoffs at the suggestion that being a mercenary is reprehensible, although there are those who use much stronger language when his name surfaces. One of his favourite comments was that ‘diagnosis of the problem was one thing, prescription quite another’. That, he believed, applied specifically to Sierra Leone. ‘We’re performing a service’, he would say whenever there was a discussion about the role of what was euphemistically termed ‘contract pilots’.
He would go on: ‘We’re the guys who are saving lives, killing the bad guys. You don’t think that doesn’t make me feel good? Think again!’ he’d erupt. He had a few premises of his own about war and one of them went something like this: ‘In conflict, all else being equal, raw aggression wins, most times anyway.’ To one of his colleagues he once said that war was the greatest game available to mankind: ‘either you kill or, if you are not good at your job, you end up dead.’
Anyway, he declared, it worked for him, and he’d explain that he’d seen the consequences of such aggression often enough. Whenever the gunship approached, the rebels would drop everything. They would discard their weapons, vehicles, supply packs, whatever and dash frantically for cover. Being Africa, the word gets about!
Avionics had an altogether different dimension when flying combat with Neall Ellis. The first consideration, he would say early on, was that if something happened, there would be no back up: ‘If we are forced down, either because of engine problems or incoming fire, we’re going to be on our own in the jungle’, were his words.
Nellis admitted that he might have been able to talk to one of the control towers before he swung the Hind into a bit of open ground, but in the jungle, he said, you never knew. There were places where the forest went on forever and sometimes there were no breaks anywhere. Also, taking the machine down in water would be the end for us in front. There was no easy way of exiting from either of the cockpit bubbles, he warned, although it had been done.
If he had time, he could possibly have given those listening on the same frequency a bearing. However, what they would do with that info was problematic. Perhaps a UN chopper team would be put on the alert, but even that wasn’t assured. The UN command structure—from Turtle Bay down, all the way to West Africa—was about as enthusiastic for what Nellis was doing, as was he for their shambolic ‘peacekeeping’ efforts. Nellis reckoned:
Every man on board was aware that, as with all helicopters, if we took a serious hit our survival would depend on finding a place to put the bird down safely. So, bottom line is that we’d then have to face the probability that if we crashed, there would be no rescue attempt.
‘To start with, we’d need a soft landing, which would be difficult in a 12-ton heavyweight.’ He would explain that once on the ground, the crew’s only real hope would be that one of the British helicopters from the carriers might react. However, even that would need authority all the way from the top, especially if an extensive search were to be launched. In the nether world of ‘contract’ flying, Nellis and his crew knew that such issues were borderline.1Also, much would depend on who was on duty at the time as Nellis wasn’t everybody’s favourite person.
The way Nellis moved about in a land where there were no navigational or flying aids was amazing. There were two modest air traffic controls systems in operation in the Freetown area: one for civilian helicopter as well as Air Wing activity centred at Lungi and the other, a mobile unit operated by the UN, was at the chopper pad at the Mammy Yoko Hotel. The mobile unit should have been deployed at Cockerill where there was a high-rise concrete tower built specially for the purpose. On arrival, however, the UN thought better of it as they preferred something a little closer to their headquarters. The government helicopter gunships across the narrow, mosquito-ridden swamp that separated them from the UN base probably had something to do with it. Whatever happened, if Nellis did crash, he’d have to talk to at least one of those stations, and even then, radio contact would almost certainly be erratic.
One of the problems relating to flying in Sierra Leone was that while there are some fine natural landmarks, especially among the mountains in the north and to the east of the country, a good deal of the south and central regions are desk-top flat; elsewhere the terrain is undulating. Although there was always something in sight on the horizon, flying 30ft above the jungle wasn’t conducive to good navigation unless you’d been doing it for a while. Also, with no co-pilot, Nellis was in absolute control. The crew might have helped with spotting and the occasional ancillary task such as tripping circuit breakers or activating the IR jamming system, but the rest was up to him.
He not only flew the helicopter, but he also picked out the targets and manually activated the weapons systems. Then, without any apparent reference to a marker, he would move across some of the wildest bush country in the world to the next target and do it all over again.
Getting directly to and from an objective over this green pea soup of a terrain must have taxed his skills. He constantly had to calculate fuel, distance, speed, reserves and much more. Also, there were no convenient army bases or towns where he could top up if he needed to. He always flew with a map on his lap. When something came into view, he’d first log it onto his portable GPS so that he could get back to the place later. Only then would he turn his attention to establishing whether the target was worth a strike.
Back at base afterwards, as the Chief of Defence Staff and British Army intelligence came and went, he would relay his findings. These would include grid and map references as well as an interpretation of events, enemy strengths, weaknesses and deployment. Most of what he had to say came from memory, which was remarkable, although he did have the occasional lapse, such as forgetting where he’d put his keys. He’d joke that he was suffering from what he termed ‘Tropical Halfheimers’. It was a regular crack that he could remember only half of everything that had happened the previous night.
Operational mishaps were nothing new, especially in Africa’s ongoing wars. There had been numerous incidents involving South African gunship crews in Angola and Sierra Leone having been shot down or come down unexpectedly for a myriad of reasons. In most cases, the crews survived. Obviously, much would be in store for a crew if they ended up in rebel hands, which was one of the reasons why Hassan was furious when somebody stole his Colt .45 pistol out of his desk. It was his ‘last resort’, he fumed. Not altogether tongue-in-cheek, he begged Allah for reparations.
Everyone knew that if they crashed, it would be difficult to outrun the rebels on their own turf, even if no-one was injured. As long as the crew had a few hours start, they could perhaps keep ahead of the pack and use the heavier automatic weapons such as the GPMG for the occasional ambush, but the odds certainly wouldn’t be in their favour. Nellis never flew anywhere without his issue AK-47 as well as his personal 9mm pistol for back-up. To that he would add his GPS, as we
ll as a tiny portable VHF radio that he might use to speak to aircraft if somebody came looking.
It was marginally reassuring that, weeks before, three British officers— Major Phil Ashby, Lieutenant-Commander Paul Rowland and Major Andy Samsonoff—and a New Zealand Army signals officer David Lingard, trudged across some of the most difficult country in Africa after having escaped from a camp that had been surrounded by an RUF rebel group armed with heavy weapons. Much of the country they traversed was jungle and, in places, barely penetrable. It took them four days to cover 80km to the nearest UN position, having left Magburaka, just south of Makeni, in the middle of the night. They moved only in the dark and spent daylight hours in thick undergrowth because rebel squads were out looking for them. Afterwards, they recounted their ordeal, which included having no food, and nothing but swamp water to drink (in which floated putrescent things) as well as being seriously devoured by mosquitoes, showing the amazing hardships the human body can endure.2
Birds were also a big problem facing flying crews while they moved about West Africa. In this tropical haven there were some really big species and bird strikes were a niggling fear. One moment Nellis would be ambling along, and the next he would slam the stick to the left or right and the chopper would shoot off tangentially. It could be very unnerving, when heading in low at 160 knots, to suddenly find vultures or a fish eagle directly in the flight path. It says much for Nellis’ ability that he avoided contact so many times.
In Sierra Leone, Nellis possessed a rather disjointed philosophy about conflict. He would taunt the enemy, rather as one would rag a pit bull. What he said he always hoped for was some sort of reaction that would expose what he liked to refer to as the ‘enemy’s underbelly’. He relished pushing his Hind forward into a vulnerable position in the hope that the rebels would use some of their bigger guns against him, perhaps their four-barrelled ZSU-23 quads. Talking to him afterwards, he’d light up, sit back and say: ‘Of course they shoot at us, but then they haven’t had my experience.’ After a slight pause he’d go on: ‘Anyway, I know how to retaliate and those mothers don’t!’