19 With a Bullet (45 page)

The anti-aircraft gun was five times as loud now that we were on the receiving end of it. I saw a huge limb crash down from a tree behind us; leaves rained down like a thousand drifting snowflakes. We hugged the little cover that we had.

“Fuck!” My brain was still trying to process and catalogue the sound but it couldn’t. It had never heard a sound anything like that before. We had also begun to take some heavy small-arms fire as rounds cracked close overhead. The anti-aircraft gun was not very constant, but every few minutes he would cut loose again and more limbs would come crashing down.

“They’re not dug in. They can’t shoot lower than seven or eight feet ... they’re set too high!”

Stan and I stayed in the shallow hole and hardly said a word, our full concentration on what was going on around us. The whole company was hugging cover again and no one moved. The anti-aircraft gun would
burp
every so often, sending foliage flying, but we soon learned that his guns indeed were not dug in and so his rounds could only fly two or three metres over our heads. They could scare the shit out of us but couldn’t seem to hit us.

We appeared to be pinned down again but at least now we had cover. We had hardly fired any shots at all. So far FAPLA was the one dishing it out as we had done little more than dive for cover all the time. I still had not seen a FAPLA soldier. All the fire was coming from a spread-out area behind sand walls, inside deep trenches and tree lines and we were doing a good job at keeping our heads down. It was hard to gauge time accurately; looking back this had all happened in 45 minutes or perhaps an hour.

I lay on my back and took the opportunity to get my breath. The anti-aircraft gunner finally seemed to have quit his post—at any rate, we hadn’t heard from him for a while—but now a machine gun was rattling sporadic ally from a hidden position ahead. I wiped the stinging sweat from my eyes with my soaked bandana.

I was surprised what a slow process it was. Not having trained for this full-on conventional attack, I thought we would hit it in a
blitzkrieg
, charging forward and shooting like in the movies, but apparently not. We had been at it for well over an hour and were moving merely yards at a time, if that.

“Where is the spare headset?” I heard Sergeant-Major Sakkie’s voice roaring during a lull in the firing. I lay still, not much bothered, but then in a flash I remembered that I had been appointed to carry the spare radio receiver and had stuffed it in the side pocket of my pants.

“Aw, shit!” I popped my head up and saw that Sakkie was about 30 metres to my left, a little closer to the sand wall where all the bullshit was going on. Sakkie boomed again as if he was on the fucking parade ground.

“Stan, cover me. I’ve got the receiver.”

“What?”

“I’ve got the fucking spare radio receiver.”

“Well, you’d better go!”

“I know! Cover me!”

I shouted as loud as I could that I had it and that I was on my way. Stan seemed reluctant to lift his head too high but he nodded and pulled his R4 up to his shoulder. I readied my legs under me, took a deep breath, jumped up and ran across the 30 or 40 metres in one mad dash, jumping feet first into a two-metre-deep hole that seemed like an old bomb crater or a broken-down bunker. I heard Stan’s covering shots behind me.

I was a few yards from Sakkie and a couple of troops who were huddled behind some trees. I tossed the headset over to them.

“Good man!” Sakkie shouted. He seemed to be enjoying himself. I slid back into the crater.

There was also a medic lying in the hole; we smiled at each other. “Can you believe it?” he said, shaking his head.

“Fucking hell,” was all I could say and I also shook my head. Safe in the two-metre crater I lay on my back, pulled a crumpled box of Marlboro from my top pocket and offered him one. He took it and I lit it for him with my red lighter. We puffed in silence.

Sakkie’s famous paradeground bellow came again, like a bullhorn on the front line of battle. “
Waar is die LMG? … bring daardie donnerse LMG vorentoe
,” he roared across to
Valk
4 who were spread out over 70 metres of pretty-much flat ground. Each para lay flat in the tiny bit of cover he had managed to find.

“Here! The fucking LMG’s here, sergeant-major,” Doogy’s faint voice drifted through the din.

With the medic next to me I had to keep up the paratrooper image, so I moved up the hole and lay on my shoulder with my head just sticking over the edge, still smoking my Marlboro and monitoring the scene while the medic lay at the bottom of the hole. I clutched my rifle, ready. The FAPLA machine gun fire was sporadic, but constant with its long 20-and 30-round bursts.

I watched Doogy, with his MAG, doing the same gauntlet run that I had just done but further, as he had to come from the far right of the line. He ran doubled over, carrying the heavy LMG, with his number two behind him.

Sakkie was now standing up as though he was on a fucking parade ground with another troop crouching next to him behind the tree. He seemed to have pinpointed where the FAPLA machine-gun fire was coming from. Doogy came sliding up to him. Sakkie put one arm on Doogy’s shoulder, and with the other pointed towards a high sand wall 100 metres ahead, beyond the trench 30 metres in front of us and shook his hand vigorously.

Doogy wrapped the LMG’s strap over his shoulder, took a wide stance and opened up with long bursts. The sand wall exploded in a cloud of dust and leaves flew. He kept on shooting, his number two feeding in the belt. He changed belts and fired again, almost disappearing in his own gunsmoke. The FAPLA machine gun fell silent.

We kept our positions for a while as no one really knew what to do. I saw a round brown helmet bobbing up ahead to my right, at the sand wall of the trench ahead. It was some of our guys.
Valk
3 had entered the trench from the right flank and were now in it, moving down towards us, going from bunker to bunker. Shots rang out but no return fire. A few shouts went up.

“C’mon, lets go!” I jumped out of my safe, two-metre-deep crater, leaving the medic still sitting in the bottom. For the first time we were able to get up without the crack of bullets flying past our heads. I ran crouched the remaining 30 metres to the trench ahead, and jumped in. It was a model trench with a level floor, straight walls and wooden steps with little nooks cut into the walls. It was well maintained and clean, except for the piles of spent AK-47 cartridges that lay everywhere and clothing and equipment that had been hastily abandoned. A grenade thumped and a cloud of dust erupted from a bunker at the end of the trench.

Lieutenant Doep was now back on the scene, shouting the odds. He waved one arm excitedly as he leaned against the wall of the trench and fiddled with the radio receiver on his shoulder. It was the first time we had been together as a platoon since we’d disembarked the Buffels almost an hour and a half ago. A few guys lit up cigarettes. In the mad scramble of taking heavy fire as we disembarked the Buffel, with almost no cover and what with the Canberra jet coming in low and dropping a bomb close in front of us and the fucking anti-aircraft fire, it had been pretty well every man for himself, with no real leadership except for Sergeant-Major Sakkie calling for the LMG. But now Doep was back in charge.

“Don’t pick anything up, don’t touch anything! Be careful of booby traps and don’t go into the bunkers!” Doep shouted.

He bent his head and started talking into the receiver in rapid Afrikaans. “Tango Lima… Tango Lima, Victor Four. We’re in the third row of trenches. Under control and clear at this time.”

I saw Kurt and I lifted my eyebrows at him but could not smile. His shirt was black with sweat and he looked at me blankly, his usually pink face flushed bright red as he stood quietly catching his breath and gripping his rifle tightly with both hands. He did not look as though he was enjoying himself, probably thinking that it would be a lot nicer to be back in a kitchen right now, standing over a pot and stirring potatoes as they boiled.

Stan was next to me and looked grim with his helmet pulled low over his eyes. He resembled a German stormtrooper, his desired look, as he took long, quick pulls on a cigarette. His face was also red with exertion. Mortars still boomed a few clicks to the east in the civilian town of Ongiva as black smoke curled in a thick column 300 or 400 metres into the sky. It looked like we weren’t the only ones having fun. The infantry had thought that taking the town would be easy. I peered into a neat-looking bunker that had a wooden door hanging on a hinge, now flung open, and saw what looked to be crates of ammo and supplies stacked inside.

There were dozens of shiny new AK-47 rounds lying on the dusty floor that must have been dropped in a hasty ammunition hand-out. There was no sign of FAPLA or of any bodies. I took a deep slug from my water bottle. The water was hot but slid down my throat like chilled Champagne.

“Okay, form up. We’re going over here and forward. Boy’s moved to the next trench line. Keep your eyes open and watch for bunkers. Okay, form up ... let’s go!” Doep shouted, too loudly.

He seemed more under control now; he was still loud but not shouting orders at the very top of his voice as he had done in the Buffel.

We were now in the thicket of trees which until now had been pretty much all we could see. Now, as I peered over the top of the trench for the first time, I could see the vast FAPLA base spread out in front of us. It was a huge expanse of sand mounds and scattered, single-storey brick buildings built on acres of ground that was a combination of open
chanas
and trees. The small buildings seemed to be mostly under trees; some had camouflage-netting spread over them. There were telephone poles and well-used sand roads running between the trees and buildings that lay up ahead and close by a few dark-green Soviet GAZ-66 trucks were dug into ramps in the ground, just visible. The ramps were hidden from the air by a roof topped with branches and netting.

The terrain was a spiderweb of small, well-trodden footpaths leading in every direction. Immediately in front of us was an open
chana
about 100 metres wide, with a few lonely clumps of trees scattered in the middle. Around these trees were small mounds of sand that seemed to be bunkers. I noticed that I was stuck in a sort of tunnel vision, unable to take in much with my peripheral vision. Like an animal, I could only focus on a small area almost dead ahead with unnatural clarity, but had to move my head like a crow to take in what was around me.

“Let’s go!”

The guys closest to the wooden steps gingerly clambered out and when they drew no fire the rest of us jumped up out of the trench and lay flat, looking around.

“Fire and movement, c’mon. Across this
chana
straight ahead!” Doep was clearly back in charge.

I ran forward and dived into the ground.
Ooooff
! Up again, three paces, then down. Up again, three paces, then down. Sweat poured off my body. I could hear myself breathing heavily, grunting as I landed in the sand. Shit! I hadn’t spent three weeks training for this like everyone else had. I must be the only troop in the whole operation with three weeks’ training stuffed into a half-hour crash course, and I felt like it. Every time I hit the ground my heavy jump helmet banged down under my eyes, blinding me and I had to shove it up again. Then it was my turn to get up and run three paces and dive down again. I decided that, seeing we were not taking fire right now, I would rather go onto my knees first then drop down, and also run a little further than three paces because I wasn’t getting anywhere very fucking quickly. Also, I wanted to reduce the number of times I had to plough into the dirt. I did it a few times; it felt a lot better. I ran about eight paces, then slowly sagged to my knees and lay down, rather than diving.

“Korff! They’re going to take you out! Keep it short. Just three paces at a time!” Doep shouted. He was three men down from me, on my left.

I felt embarrassed to be singled out and reprimanded. Minutes later, the chance came to castigate myself for my stupidity. Twenty metres straight in front of me, under a tree, was a small mound of sand with a square wood-frame opening on top.

Doep turned his head towards me as he lay in the sand. “Korff … Green … clear that bunker!” he yelled furiously, his face flushed red against his long blond hair.

21 AT LAST

Hellhound on my trail—Robert Johnson

I looked at Kevin Green on my right. He looked back at me deadpan. I rolled onto my side and fumbled in my little pouch for a smooth M27 grenade. I nodded at Kevin and, with the whole platoon keeping cover, we both leaped up and ran across the short space to the bunker and dived down close to it. Although I had never thrown a live grenade before (I must have missed that class during basic training for some reason), I felt no hesitation about doing so. I pulled hard on the pin and held the lever down. Kevin lay on his stomach a few yards from me with his rifle trained on the bunker. I rolled over as I had seen it being done in the movies, lobbed the grenade into the dark hole and rolled away again, stopping only a metre from the bunker with my arms over my head.

Whomp
!

The ground beneath me shook and a cloud of white dust and smoke billowed up from the small hole about a metre off. The bunker seemed to be empty. If it wasn’t, they died quietly. We reached a small trench and a long mound of dirt. Shots cracked over our heads.

Fifty yards ahead was a group of FAPLA troops who seemed to have been caught in mid-crossing to another trench. They ran with long strides to make the best of what little cover they had. Fucking targets at last! Their gunsmoke marked them clearly as their comrades already in cover blasted away at us. We got behind the cover of the long mound of sand and fired furiously. I was on one knee with just my upper body exposed above the wall of sand. I could see a couple of woolly black heads bobbing as the group of five or six who had been caught in the open now ran, bent over and at the speed of sound, diving for their lives into the thin trees, where a few brave comrades already lay in the scanty cover. These gentlemen kept up a furious rate of fire in single shots and not automatic, which was the norm. At least when they fired on automatic fire they usually shot high but not this time. Bullets cracked around us. Fighting the instinct to duck down, I stayed up and aimed at the rapidly disappearing bobbing heads. I knew I was shooting too fast and moving my barrel from side to side without staying on one target but I was stuck in a mode and unable to slow down as I pulled the trigger as fast as I could.