19 With a Bullet (34 page)

“What did they say about it?”

“Angola contacted South Africa and said they were going to wipe out any South African forces in the area north of the line; that’s why we had to run for it!”

“We started a fucking international dispute!” John Delaney stood up, did one of his trademark jigs and shook his head in disbelief. “We’ve started a war! Trust fucking
Valk
4 to start a war!”

We all smiled stupidly at each other.

“Oh, I can just fucking see it now …
Valk
4 will be asked to step forward at parade to be congratulated for finally starting the long-awaited war with Angola and the 50,000 Cuban troops stationed there. We’ll get special recommendations and 21 days’ leave when Russia and East Germany send in their reinforcements to help against the South African racist aggressors. Then, when America steps in to help us, we’ll get even more praise and a chestful of medals for being the match-head that lit the global nuclear war!”

“Did we know about the boundary?” I asked, smiling at John’s performance.

“Yes.” Doep’s brown eyes twinkled for a couple of seconds and he smiled. “Never knew it was so damn close!”

We all chuckled together and finished our cigarettes. Lieutenant Doep field-stripped his cigarette butt and instinctively put the filter in his pocket. Serious again, he looked around at his little group of
soutpiele
—John Fox, John Delaney, Stan, Doogy and me—as he nodded his head stiffly and got down to saying what he had come over to say, somewhat awkwardly.

“You guys have done some good work in the last couple of days; keep it up.” He quickly looked at each of us, seriously, making eye contact, then got up, nodded again and left our little group under the tree.

It sounded strange, coming from Lieutenant Doep in the tone that he’d said it, as though it had been difficult for him to say, that he had rehearsed it a couple of times in his head before coming over and spitting it out. He would normally blurt out something like that to the whole platoon when we came back from a run or a chasing, but there wasn’t much sincerity on those occasions. This was a different Lieutenant Doep we were beginning to see. Not so lumbering, brash and quick to blurt out orders like a school prefect. It was Doep’s first action as well as ours; we were all maturing together ... very quickly.

Yeah! It was about time someone noticed that the
soutpiele
were a sharp bunch and didn’t horse around with brown-nosing platoon politics and bullshit, but that we were always there when the shit hit the fan.

We spent a few more uneventful days patrolling the area half-heartedly. Then one morning came the order from Commandant Lindsay for the whole company to head back to South West Africa. The walk would take us a couple of days, as our
valk
had already back-tracked south a fair bit since the FAPLA incident when we had run for half the night. The other platoons were still a day’s walk farther north into Angola than us. We would be the leading platoon on the long walk home. We were dirty and fatigued after three weeks in the bush, with bad sleep and rat pack food. We looked like a platoon of SWAPO ourselves, with three weeks’ growth and old, crusty, black camo grease that was still applied every couple of days. We were glad to turn south and start the long walk out of fucking Angola.

We walked back, not in the cautious way we had been patrolling the last three weeks, but crashing noisily and confidently through dry brush and across open
chanas
as we headed south in a V formation like marathon bush-walkers … not paying much heed to a quiet withdrawal. No one was going to stand in our way.

Besides, we had met both FAPLA and SWAPO in their own backyards and had licked them both.

“Mess with the best; you’ll die like the rest!”

I had my H-frame tied tightly round my chest and high on my back, with my SWAPO satchel over one shoulder, containing my boots and a few water bottles. My rifle strap was looped sloppily over my neck and hung in front of me like a tray on which I rested both arms. Fuck SWAPO and fuck FAPLA. Enough of this bush already. Let’s get out of here, have a nice hot shower and a shave. I knew they would definitely give us a big
braai
and piss-up after this operation. Who knows how many kills the company had brought in. Our platoon alone had over 20 in the two contacts we’d had. The company together could probably account for maybe 80 kills. Shit, that’s not bad for just legging around Angola looking for trouble, and we didn’t even hit a base really. Worth a
braai
, I’m sure. Big pork chops and cold beer. To sleep on an army foam mattress sounded like too much to ask.

I realized I hadn’t even whacked off in more than three weeks either. Must be some kind of record.

I was daydreaming of home, of going out with my friends to a nightclub, of dancing and getting rip-roaring drunk, puking and passing out. I was dreaming of Taina’s beautiful big breasts and green eyes and little freckles and …

“SWAPO! There! ... SWAPO!”

Bang, bang, bang
!

Five figures dashed 50-odd metres in front of us, weaving in and out of the thin brush as they ran. The black 101 Battalion tracker walking point had spotted them first and had already opened up on them with his heavy 7.62 G3, shattering the stillness.

I was close to the front of the formation and snapped out of my dreamland in an instant. I pulled my rifle strap off my neck, flipped the switch to ‘fire’ and started forward, shooting at the running figures as I ran.

John Delaney was at my side, throwing off his bulky kit. I did the same and swore as my SWAPO satchel hooked up in my H-frame but after a few vicious tugs it came loose. I ran a couple of yards, then stopped and fired at a couple more fleeing figures following their comrades. I picked one with a light-coloured shirt and blasted at him as he ran behind some tall grass.

A shout came: “Mortars!”

I had barely hit the ground when a mortar bomb exploded deafeningly 20 metres ahead of me. I was up again, shooting. Because of my forward position in the formation I was in front of the charge with just John Delaney ahead of me and our section leader, Dan Pienaar, abreast of me.

Pop!
from behind me.

“Get down, Gungie!” Pienaar shouted.

Boom!
... an explosion again just in front of us. I hit the dirt just in time, landing on my side. Mortar shrapnel whizzed overhead like angry bees.

Boom
… another one close by, not 30 metres away. Both Pienaar and I turned while still on the ground and angrily shouted at Kleingeld who had hastily set up his 60-millimetre pipe behind us and was popping off mortars as fast as he could drop them down the pipe. Then it registered.

“What the fuck are you doing? They’re landing in among us! You’re too short ... you’re too short!” Pienaar shouted at Kleingeld. I made eye contact with the mortar man and he stared at me, momentarily unable to hear what I was saying, but my eyes told the story as I shook my fist at him, pointing to where his last bomb had fallen. By good adjustment or fluke, his next bomb exploded 20 metres behind the last fleeing figure who ran on unscathed until he too disappeared from sight.

More troops had caught up with us now as we ran forward, covering about 30 metres through some scattered scrub and caught sight again of the fleeing band, who were now gaining ground and were about 70 metres in front of us. I came to an abrupt stop and, while standing, let loose a long volley of shots. I thought I saw the lead man falter but he ran on and disappeared again behind trees.

As we came closer I was surprised to see a kraal, a few untidy grass huts nestled behind a cattle barricade made from old dry branches.

“There’s a kraal. They ran into the kraal.” Delaney pointed out to Lieutenant Doep who was coming up from behind, running crouched with his radio handset loose, slapping him in the face.

“Cease fire ... cease fire!” he yelled, and the call was carried down. He yelled again as one of Kleingeld’s mortars just missed the small circle of huts.

“Cease fire … spread out in a line … spread out in a line!”

We shook out into an extended line.

“Okay ... forward!”

We advanced slowly towards the kraal. Doogy had caught up and was next to me, holding his LMG low and ready.

“Gungie, where did they go?”

“Into the kraal!”

“How many?”

“I dunno ... five, six!”

I moved cautiously around the side through some dead trees that had been stripped clean of their branches for firewood. A small herd of skinny goats took off, making me spin around and almost pull off a shot. Doogy and I moved slowly forward together. Everybody had stopped shooting as we crept in a semicircle up to 30 metres from the kraal.

“You see anything?”

“No, watch it.”

I looked down the sweep line. Lieutenant Doep was signalling us to get down. I dropped to one knee, my rifle trained on the little grass huts just in front of us. They would have no chance in a shootout; we’d cut them down.

“Horn, get ready with that RPG right into that hut if they fire!” Doep barked, running hunched over and catching up with us again. He had been on the radio reporting the contact.

Horn went down on one knee with the rocket-launcher over his shoulder and bent his head to the sights. We knelt low in a semicircle, 20 metres from the kraal now, and waited, our rifles trained on the five huts. Not a soul stirred in the kraal.

“Forward!” Doep waved his hand slowly.

I moved forward, around towards a wide entrance on my side of the kraal.

“Get ready, Doogy.”

“I’m ready,
boet
, I’m right here.” We inched forward as Doogy and I slowly came to the entrance, stepping inside the perimeter of the branch barricade. Not a sound was heard from the huts. I duckwalked around the smaller, outer grass huts and came to a low entrance covered with a hanging piece of cloth. I motioned that I was going to check the hut. Doogy nodded at me, standing back and locking his legs into a wide stance with his LMG pointed stiffly at the hut. I noticed as I moved that John Delaney and a handful of troops had gained entrance from the other side and now moved equally as cautiously towards one of the larger huts. John too was duckwalking with his rifle in his shoulder.

I pushed my rifle in front of me, flipped up the cloth that hung in the doorway, then jumped aside and waited for a few seconds. I looked at Doogy with his LMG, who by now had been joined by Kurt and Greef, both with their rifles pointed into the darkness of the hut. Watching their faces for a reading of what they saw, I was just about to spin into the door when I heard a commotion at the big hut and above the din the word ‘PBs’.
¹⁸

“Here, over here ... there’re PBs over here!”

After quickly searching the small hut, which was empty, we approached the main one where half the platoon was now gathered. Five black civilians were in the hut. One, in a clean white shirt, was lying on his back, rolling back and forth in pain. His comrades, once they saw they weren’t going to be shot, started gabbling frantically to one another and to our black tracker who was listening to them with a frown on his forehead. They were all talking at once with wide eyes and frantic arm gestures. After a minute they began to slow down a bit.

“Why did they run away?” Doep almost shouted at the tracker who in turn shouted at the four who were now quiet. They gabbled back, all talking at once again with wild hand gestures, pointing at the kraal and their injured comrade writhing on the floor in front of us.

“They say that they had been drinking beer and were on their way back home to this kraal when they saw us coming and, not knowing who we were, they were scared and ran away.”

“Are they SWAPO?” Doep snapped, glaring at them.

“No, they say that they are not SWAPO and that they live at this kraal and these two live in a kraal not far from here.”

I bent down to look at the old man lying rocking on the floor, his face screwed up in pain. His tan-coloured pants were saturated in blood from the knee down. I signalled to him to ascertain where he was hurt. He pointed to his knee and then to his grey head, at a tuft of hair scuffed up where a bullet had grazed him, making a small open furrow in his scalp. Then he pointed to his hip. I pulled his shirt aside and also found a nick in the soft flesh just below his hip bone that was hardly bleeding, fortunately only a few millimetres deep.

“Shit, this old guy is fucking lucky,” someone commented behind me.

I pulled up his baggy trouser leg as he grimaced and wailed in agony. “Give me the scissors,” I said to Kurt, the platoon medic, kneeling next to me. I cut the trouser leg off above the knee to reveal a horrible wound. A bullet had gone right through the middle of his shinbone ten centimetres or so below the knee, shattering the bone completely. The bottom half of his shin had shifted and lay at a grotesque 45-degree angle to the top half. It seemed to be attached only by a few bits of skin, with a huge black bullet hole in the centre. It did not appear that an artery had been hit because the bleeding had slowed and the blood oozed only slowly from the jagged wound.

He groaned in pain as I laid my hand on it. “Where’s that Sosagon?” I had quickly taken control of the situation. Not because I knew what I was doing but because no one else seemed to want to do anything. Kurt was standing by and seemed happy to let me do what I could to help the old man, whose face was contorted in pain. Kurt emptied the contents of his medical bag on the floor and handed me the syringe of Sosagon. I quickly popped the seal off and lifted the old man’s arm, looking for a vein, while Kurt began to set up a glucose drip. Even though I knew that Sosagon was supposed to be given intra-muscularly, I decided that the situation called for drastic measures, so I was going to slam this old boy into the clouds above because he was going to need it when I tried to move that leg back into place. I found a vein on his skinny arm and slowly drew some blood back into the syringe, mixing it with the liquid painkiller, then shot the full dose into his vein.