19 With a Bullet (11 page)

He struck me as a capable man who knew his business. He was also definitely not like the rank that we had just endured in Bloemfontein. The seniors had told us that as long as we brought in kills he was a great guy, but that he could get very upset when you let Boy slip through your fingers. We were going to spend most of the four months at Ondangwa on Fireforce, while our sister H Company, who we hardly ever saw, would be doing patrols in another part of Owamboland. This is a section of Namibia (or South West Africa, whatever you want to call it) named after the Owambo tribe who lived in the roughly 600-square-kilometre area. It is a dry and sandy area, like the rest of South West Africa, which is basically desert, but the terrain can change in a few kilometres from open sparse bush to thick bush with high brown grass that is impenetrable by man or vehicle. But always the ground beneath you is white sand. Always sand.

They said you couldn’t find a rock or stone in Owamboland, and they were right. There were no stones to be found; maybe hard-packed clod but no stones. The sand was sometimes as hard as rock and sometimes as loose as a beach, but there was always sand—hence the nickname of our base, ‘the white sands of Ondangs’. But things change in the rainy season when the dry sandy ground springs to life, as it does in Africa when the rain falls on the thirsty earth. Small flowers of every imaginable colour bloom thickly. In the place of long dead grass rises thin, new green grass and the long flat
chanas
and sandy areas sprout fine, thick, short green grass that gives the area the look of a well-kept lawn or a golf driving range.

Chanas
, or
shonas,
are clearings in the dry Owamboland bush with no trees or brush. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some are long clearings hundreds of metres wide that meander through the bush like a fat dry snake for many kilometres until they fade out and blend into the bush. Others are just a wide clearing in the middle of the bush that are sometimes 400 metres and sometimes 20 metres across. These
chanas
are as sure as the sand—they are all over Owamboland and southern Angola.

We soon all got settled into our new home and John Delaney, John the Fox, Stander and I ended up together in a tent that was a lot closer to the crappers than we would have liked. At night when a slow breeze blew, we got the sickly smell of a full cesspool wafting through our tent flaps. Besides the unfortunate location of the tent, it was quite a cozy set-up. The tents were semi-permanent; they had a little table and chairs in the centre and four beds in the four corners. Brown mosquito nets hung from the roof of the tent and draped over each bed, giving it a snug bushveld feel, with a bit more privacy when you were lying in your bed at night. John Delaney bitched and moaned about being the one closest to the crappers but he had been the first to throw his kit on the back bed when we were assigned the tent, only realizeing his folly a couple of hours later.

“That will teach him,” smiled John Fox as he pulled his gear from his
balsak
, his kitbag, and packed his drawers, placing his clothes in impeccably neat squares on the first shelf and folding all his brown pants in the same way on the middle shelf. “He’s always quick to claim what he wants ... let him enjoy what he’s got this time!”

We found it amusing how Delaney tried to con and bribe his way out of his situation, to no avail.

Later that afternoon we were brought out and told how Fireforce worked. There would always be at least one platoon on standby with light kit packed for three days in the bush in case of any follow-up after contacts or hotpursuits across the border. If any infantry or any other unit made contact we would immediately be flown and dropped into the contact area or on the spoor. The platoons on Fireforce were not allowed to leave the tent area and had to keep their long pants and boots on. All we would do was lounge around the small plastic-lined swimming pool and suntan, sleep or play pool in the recreation room at the canteen until the siren wailed, signalling us to ‘kit up’ and move to the choppers in doublequick time.

Each platoon would spend a week at a time doing Fireforce. The platoons not on Fireforce would be doing foot patrols or vehicle patrols in Owamboland or along the Angolan border. It went without saying that Fireforce quickly became the preferred activity.
Valk
2 got the first week of Fireforce, while the rest of the company pulled the old hard and torn sandbags off the bunkers outside each tent, filling hundreds of new bags and packing them into place. Even
Valk
2 got to do their share of it, as the ‘activity’ was inside the tent square. So we were all pleased when Lieutenant du Plessis brought
Valk
4 together and announced that we must draw rat packs
⁵
for a four-day patrol.

We would be patrolling an area of Owamboland just south of the
kaplyn
, the cut-line, that he said was a well-used infiltration route. He added that we had better buck up because this was the real thing and there was to be no more goofing off. We lined up eagerly to draw our rats and went to the tent to pack. We handed in our old, thick, green canvas backpacks in exchange for the newest type of thin H-frame backpack that looked the same as a civvy hiker’s Bergen pack, with a thin metal tube for the frame and a big back-pouch that sat high on the back with a thick band that tightened around your waist for extra support.

We had also been issued a Fireforce vest—a sleeveless, light canvas-type vest, almost like a waistcoat—that was worn over your shirt. It had pouches in the front against the chest for six long 30-round magazines and other pouches on the side for smoke grenades or M27 fragmentation grenades.

“This is where we reap the rewards of a year of shitting off,” I announced as I excitedly checked out the new kit.

“Nobody else has got kit like this—probably just the Recces and 32 Battalion.”

32 Battalion was a black fighting unit made up of tough ex-Angolan FNLA and Bushmen soldiers who had spent years fighting in Angola. They were veterans, battlehardened by countless clashes against the Portuguese during the long Angolan liberation war and later against the MPLA. South Africa had backed them in the race for Luanda in 1975, a race that was lost to the communist-backed MPLA. After South Africa pulled out of Angola in 1975 they had brought many of them over to our side, forming them into a tough fighting unit that became legendary in the bush war.

“Yeah,” added Stan, “most of these infantry units are up at the border after six or seven months’ training and probably see only four kills in their whole year of service. We’ve had a whole year of hell but we’ve already seen four kills in our first two hours up here.”

“You guys need to take it a bit easy. You’re too eager to get into a fight. When it comes, then it comes,” said Doogy in a slow voice. He had mooched over from the next tent to try and swop his rat-pack corned beef for steak and onions, but found no takers.

“Yeah … when a fucking cheese mine blows your arse into the sky then you’ll wish we got them in an ambush a little earlier,” Stan snickered.

“Well, when you run headlong into a fucking L-shape company ambush then you’ll wish you had taken things little bit slower,” said Doogy, leaving with his corned beef.

It was a strange feeling finally being out in what we called Indian Country. We had spent the previous night in a small TB
⁶
and had dug in for the night. Nobody slept very well the first night out and, sure enough, around one in the morning, what sounded like a fire fight broke out a couple of kilometres away. Green tracers could be seen arching lazily and haphazardly into the black night. It lasted for about 30 seconds, then stopped. We all sat tight and no one said a word until daybreak, when a security patrol was sent out to scout the area around our TB.

Lieutenant du Plessis called in on the radio and reported what we had seen and heard the night before, saying that we should head into the area and check it out.

“No contact has been reported,” he said in a hushed voice, “and we’re the only troops in the area, so it must have been a SWAPO patrol that got spooked by something and let fly with everything they had.” It was the first time Lieutenant du Plessis had seen live enemy fire; he seemed just as jumpy as we were and snapped at us too readily.

I had done my jump course with Lieutenant du Plessis; he was probably about three years older than us. He was tall, with very blond hair and a pale complexion that would colour very quickly at the first sign of exertion. He had an angular, shark-like face with very thin lips and deep brown eyes that shone like those of a Great white when he got excited, which was often. He was a little lumbering and unco-ordinated, quick to shoot his mouth off without thinking what he was saying. He had been assigned to our platoon about four months before our bush trip and was to be our permanent lieutenant. No one was too happy about this because he had not really built any kind of relationship with us and still spoke to us as though he had just arrived in the platoon. Now he rushed us to get our kit packed and said that we could have breakfast later … after we had investigated the area where we had seen the shooting.

The terrain had changed; we moved cautiously through the thickening trees, trying to peer into the bush for any sign of movement. We had been trained at Bloemfontein to look for any unnatural impressions in the bush like a rifle barrel or the shape of a cap. SWAPO always wore small peaked caps. They would be dressed in a plain thick khaki uniform or the Chinese tiger-stripe camo. Even blue jeans were popular among the cadres but they weren’t well known for doing themselves up in full camouflage with leaves.

They would be carrying AK-47 assault rifles, RPD machine guns, which had a belt drum and were excellent machine guns that experienced few jams, and RPG-2 and -7 rocket launchers—actually anti-tank weapons, but in Africa RPGs, or rocket-propelled grenades, had become an effective antipersonnel weapon. They would also usually have a big backpack as they invariably carried landmines to plant on the long deserted dirt roads. They could be, the instructors had told us, walking in company strength before splitting up into smaller parties, or they could be in a small eight-man squad. We had been told earlier by some black South West African troops that it was important that we should learn to look
through
the bush and not
at
the bush. This in itself was an art that none of us had yet mastered and we stared blankly at the bush as we moved warily along in V-shaped formation.

Somehow I could not picture seeing a live SWAPO terrorist walking or sneaking around in the bush. I had seen dead ones and a hundred pictures of them during training, but in my mind I could not imagine looking through the bush and spotting one sitting or walking in front of me. I was troubled that I could be looking right at one and not register what I was seeing. Or perhaps look right past him and not even see him. He would see me first and blast me with an RPG. It was stupid, but I couldn’t get the mental picture.

We slowly and cautiously scouted the area where we thought the shots had been fired. It was pretty thick bush, with a lot of short sturdy thorn bushes which made it hard going. We found no spoor or explanation for the shooting we’d heard in the night. After a couple of hours we stopped for a cold breakfast. I mixed up a powdered milkshake in a plastic bag with water and condensed milk, shook it up till it was thoroughly mixed, then bit a small corner off the bag.

“This milkshake tastes great!” I said, sucking the plastic bag like a tit. “It’s just as good as any milkshake I’ve had in Civvy Street.”

“Yeah … these rats aren’t bad. These are the new ones that just came out this year. I heard the old ones were horrible.” Stan was chowing down a cold corned beef hash. We shared a smoke and discussed why we hadn’t found any tracks and came to the conclusion that it was probably a lot farther than it had looked at night and that we were far off the mark. I said that we should move about five more clicks in a southwesterly direction.

“Nah … it was more west … three or four clicks,” Stan said, squatting on his haunches like a Bushman and trying to follow my milkshake recipe.

It was a strange feeling knowing that someone else was in the bush with you who would kill you if they got half a chance. I looked around in a full circle and stared hard into the high trees and thick shrubs that surrounded our TB.

“This is how those seniors get that crazy look,” I thought, “from staring into the fucking bush all day looking for terrs.”

For some reason Lieutenant du Plessis called off the search, as we headed north and spent the next three days walking stealthily near the Angolan border. The only excitement came on our last day when we found a huge unlit night flare which had apparently been jettisoned from one of our fighter jets. Lieutenant du Plessis got permission from Ondangwa and we lined up and shot at it. The flare ignited with a huge blinding flash of light that lasted for at least a minute. I had found a metre-long parachute that had been connected to the flare and I managed to grab the parachute before anyone could get near it.

We met our four Buffels at a prearranged spot and drove the 50 clicks back to Ondangs, winding through the bush and then down the infamous
Oom Willie se pad,
a long straight road of white sand that was well known for its landmines and ambushes. We arrived at base, still ‘cherries’, back from our first patrol. That night we had a
braai
of huge army pork chops over long concrete fire pits with iron grids that were burned black by the many paratroopers’
braais
before us.

We told the
Valk
2 guys what it was like out in the bush and that we had seen SWAPO shooting their green tracers in the night pretty close to us, but never found any spoor. At least we had seen enemy fire first time out. The chops were just getting done and I was just opening my second Castle lager when Lieutenant du Plessis came running out the ops room and shouted for
Valk
4 to get kitted up in double time. We piled into the Buffels and careened out of Ondangwa base, heading out on the main tar road that ran past Ondangs all the way to the Etosha National Park, about 350 kilometres away.