19 With a Bullet (53 page)

“What the fuck is Koevoet doing here?” I thought.

All these thoughts were in slow motion but in split second I realized this was a terr, calmly walking not 20 metres in front of me. I was the only one who had seen him. I stopped and lifted my rifle to my shoulder. I aimed at his midriff, then for some strange reason I called out to him, maybe thinking of trying to take him prisoner because he looked so lost and ill at ease.

“Hey!” It came out too softly.

He did not hear me. Kevin McKee had also seen him now and he shouted loudly. The terr spun around, his eyes large and white as he looked at us.

Kevin waved his arm. “Hey Illa!”

The terr took a second to register who we were and that he was dead. He and I locked eyes for a split second before I shot him and he began falling to the ground. I fired two shots and knew I had hit him. I ran forward ahead of the sweep line. Branches whipped into my face as I ran forward with my rifle still tucked into my shoulder. Together Kevin and I came onto the terr lying behind the bush. He was rolled up into a ball with his AK lying in the sand next to him. Kevin took aim and blew the top of his head off with two well-placed shots. The rest of the sweep line caught up and although all heads craned to see what was going on, they kept their positions. Lieutenant Doep was close by and came over quickly. He inspected the dead terr and looked at Kevin and me.

“Korff saw him, lieutenant.”

Doep glanced at me, nodded and said in Afrikaans “
Mooi
, Korff, well done.”

“I almost thought he was a Koevoet, lieutenant.”

Doep grunted.

We quickly searched the dead terr but found nothing. I reached into my pants-leg pocket, pulled out a small camera and took a picture. The early afternoon light was just right. It was a perfect Kodak moment. I was to take a photograph that haunted me for years until I burned it many years later.

“Left wheel, left wheel!” Doep shouted.

We turned the sweep line around and unavoidably grouped together as we scaled the steep koppie to get to the top, where the gunships had the terrs pinned down. As we topped the rocky hill we could, for the first time, see the two gunships that were flying in tight circles 30 metres in front of us and hammering down into the thick trees.

It was a nightmare scene. We could see figures running and crouching behind trees in the haze of dust and smoke as the gunships circled above them at an angle that looked as though the gunners would fall out but did not. Their long 20-millimetre cannons flashed and the explosive heads blew up waves of white sand. The smoke and dust was as thick as fog.

“Straight ahead! There, straight ahead!”

I dropped to one knee and aimed into the fog at the ghostly figures. I shot as fast as I could. My barrel moved from one spectre to the next, unable to stay on one target for long. I whipped over my quick-change magazine and kept on firing. I had fired 60 rounds. Our own gunsmoke enveloped us, burning my throat and eyes. Now I could see no targets. I pulled another magazine from my chest webbing and dropped my two empty mags into the sand. I fired the third magazine out into the haze.

“Cease fire… cease fire … cease fire!”

Slowly the mad shooting stopped. The gunships had ceased fire and hovered in tight circles over the dust and smoke-filled killing zone, their rotor blades chopping loudly,
whap
,
whap
,
whap
, as they turned.

“Forward … spread out ... spread out! Forward!” Lieutenant Doep turned and looked down the line, shouting at the top of his voice.

I sprang up and began to walk forward with my rifle socked tight in my shoulder. I stared intently into the smoke and dust haze now 25 metres in front of us. I saw no movement. I stepped over a log and almot stumbled to my knees as my boot hooked something. My eyes did not even waiver as I stumbled, viciously pulling my foot free. I walked fast, as usual, believing in the
blitzkrieg
policy that says moving fast into a situation gives you an edge. It was a tactic I always used in street brawls. To cut through the bullshit and get in before the other guy could get his mind working.

John Delaney was off to my right as we walked into the fog. I looked around at the carnage and in a second I realized there was not much danger here. The ground around me had been torn up and was burned white from the sustained cannon fire. Leaves and broken branches covered the ground which looked as if it had been ploughed by the grim reaper. It took a second or two to realize that there were bodies lying everywhere.

“These are children!” John Delaney shouted.

There were four or five kids ranging from five to ten years old. They were in a group, lying in the dust half naked and mangled by gunfire, their bodies caked with sand and blood.

I glared at the scattered small, broken bodies. I pulled my eyes off them and scanned in front of me, my rifle still tight in my shoulder. In front of me and to my left, among the leaves, lay a Bushman woman. There was no mistaking the wrinkled yellow skin and small, almost square-shaped head covered with tufts of peppercorn hair. She was topless and lying on her stomach. The left side of her chest and arm were gone, cut off raggedly by a 20-millimetre round. Her ribs and sternum were exposed; the huge gaping wound looked like a side of meat hanging in a butcher’s shop. In her other arm she still clutched an infant, holding him into her chest. The little tyke was naked and appeared unharmed but was dead from either shrapnel or terror. He lay with his face in the crook of his mother’s elbow. A turd stuck halfway out of his little bottom, testifying pathetically to his last terrified moment. I gingerly moved through the shattered trees.

Dead SWAPO in uniform lay chopped up or whole behind almost every bush and tree. I stood next to one who had circled around and around a tree trunk, hiding in vain from the gunships’ cannons. It looked like he lasted quite a long while as the tree trunk and the ground around him had taken many hits. He was cut in half. There were some more half-naked women and adolescents lying nearby. They were all dead.

Our platoon had split up, with each man on his own picking his way slowly through the carnage. Somehow our company commander had appeared on the scene. I did not know how the hell he got there. He and I stood side by side as we both surveyed the butchery.

A few yards away a SWAPO cadre who had heard our arrival groaned loudly. He tried to move but seemed mortally wounded and could only stare at us with watery eyes, like a dying animal with its head lolling in the sand. He groaned louder and louder as if asking for something but unable to say the words.

“Korff,” the captain called over to me and casually pointed to the terr with his chin.

I knew what he was saying and I had no hesitation in putting the poor bastard out of his misery. I stepped over the dying SWAPO’s feet, coming up behind him. I reached forward with my rifle and put the muzzle point-blank on the bump behind his ear. I looked at his ear and the back of his head for a second, then pulled the trigger. I realized too late that I should first have picked up the AK-47 that had been lying close to his head. I hesitated for a moment, then reached and grabbed it and slung it over my shoulder. It was messy, the light pinewood stock shattered by my rifle shot. Dan Pienaar put a couple of shots in the guy lying next to him as he too writhed and then lay still.

I walked through the stripped thicket. There were bodies everywhere. Thirty or forty of them. Most of the SWAPO men who lay in the sand were small, yellow Bushmen who wore an assortment of Chinese rice-pattern uniform with full kit and webbing. Some were blacks, also in SWAPO uniform. It became clear to me that we had wiped out an entire Bushman clan. The men had joined SWAPO and lived with their whole clan in or around the base, never thinking that it would be attacked being so deep in Angola. They had tried to make a break for it when the base was hit by H Company and would have made it if Commandant Lindsay hadn’t spotted them.

They looked small and broken, like dolls. Some of their wrinkled, wizened-looking faces still showed the terror of being trapped like animals and slaughtered to the man. The sweet smell of blood and guts is a cliché but it was, nevertheless, a reality and clawed at the back of my throat.

I walked out of the thicket and up a little rise. At the top, Paul Greeff stood looking at an old woman who was lying on her side. She was easily in her 90s or even older. Her hair was snow-white; it covered her old head like a cap of white tufts. Her wrinkled yellow skin hung from her body like old, loose, treated leather. She lay quietly on her side, with one elbow pulled up under her head as a makeshift pillow. When I got closer I saw that her abdomen was torn open and that her entrails and liver lay in the sand next to her. She slowly moved her eyes to look at me, like a child falling asleep. Her face was calm and showed no hostility whatsoever; there even seemed to be a faint smile. Three metres away were five or six children standing in a row. They were aged from five to about ten. They stood still and looked on. Their little faces were masks, ashen with fear and shock as they stood silent as statues. They had just seen their entire family wiped out; now they stood and gazed at what was probably their great-grandmother lying in front of them with her guts lying next to her. I put my rifle and the AK-47 in the sand and knelt beside the old lady. I touched her on her forehead and she smiled at me. I looked at her wound quickly, then back into her eyes.

“Its okay, its okay … you’ll be all right. Don’t worry, you’ll be okay.” I pointed up, making a whirling action with my arm over my head. “The helicopters will take you. They’ll fix you … you’ll be alright ... you’ll be okay.”

She had no idea what I was saying but she turned her face up and almost smiled at me again. She looked at me with her rheumy eyes and nodded her old white head as if she knew exactly what I was saying, believing that it would all be okay. Then she lay back on her elbow and gazed at the children. I took it as just that. She knew what I was saying. She believed me. I looked back at the children, standing right there looking at the scene. They stared at me blankly, their eyes huge in their faces. One kid, who was probably around seven, had her thumb stuck deep in her mouth and was sucking as though her life depended on it. I stood up.

Dan had been standing behind me and had watched the whole scene.

“Dan, I’m going to see if I can get a medic over here to help.” I shouldered my two weapons and walked down the little rise. A few metres over the rise, I heard a gunshot crack out. I turned to see Dan standing over the old lady, his rifle pointed down at her and a wisp of gunsmoke hanging around him like a shroud. The line of children stood behind him in mute terror. I stood quietly. I had really believed I was going to make an effort to save this grand old matriarch of the clan but as I’d turned my back, Dan had blown her brains out—in front of six children.

I stood looking back at the scene. I felt a detached, cold rage. I wondered what I should do. I wondered whether I should kill Dan. I knew that without a doubt I could just walk up to him, shoot him dead, not bat an eyelid and turn around and walk away. I went cold and calm as I looked at Dan standing over the shattered old lady.

I decided not to kill him and turned around and walked away.

Back in the macabre thicket I watched as the bodies were searched for documents and the area searched for stashed equipment. Nothing much was found on this scanty group that had been on the run.

We were busy loading the AK-47s in a pile when Lieutenant Doep came puffing through the trees, his face still bright red against his long blond hair. “
Valk
3 and 4 … form up in two lines and follow me.”

“What’s going on, lieutenant?”

“We’re going to form a stopper group. They spotted some more terrs and they’re heading this way. They’re going to use the gunships to drive them onto us.”

We heaved ourselves farther up the little hill and walked, dripping with sweat, for about 300 metres, then spread out in a long line in the thick bush. We were able to hide pretty well in the tall dead grass and bush, each man about a dozen metres apart. I sat crouched on one buttock with one knee up and peered into the bush. I heard a gunship’s 20-millimetre start hammering some distance in front of us. It had a sporadic rhythm and sounded like speculative fire.

I had the silver crucifix that hung around my neck clenched in my mouth again and was grinding away at it with my teeth. For some reason I was scared. For the first time I felt real fear sliding through my stomach and limbs like a slippery, treacherous eel. My arms felt weak and useless, like jelly, and my mind had locked into some nonsensical scared-shitless mode.

“What’s going on?” It felt as if some force was in control of me. “Snap out of it, man. It’s a stopper group ... all you have to do is shoot them as they run toward you, fucking asshole! C’mon, c’mon!” I screamed at myself silently but got no response. A tangible fear had taken over and I felt useless. So this is what it feels like to be scared? This is what it feels like to just about shit in your pants? I couldn’t understand why this was happening. I had faced many worse situations than this before.

I had been okay 20 minutes ago when we walked up the hill into the fire fight. I had not felt nearly as scared when the RPG-7s and anti-aircraft guns were flying a metre over my head or when we found ourselves in a FAPLA base with hundreds of spoor all around us. Or sneaking onto and ambushing the SWAPO at what had become known as the Breakfast Party. I had taken the forefront then. Sure, I had been scared in all of those actions but it had was controlled and buried deep down, disguised. I had felt emotionless and eager—a trained paratrooper ready to pay the ultimate price.

In seconds, I quickly tried to logic it out. If I died, I died. Why did there have to be fear in between? You live or you die. Forget getting scared in between. What’s the point? I remembered what my brother had once told me. He had said that fear was the Devil’s doing and had no place in a child of God. I said a prayer. I believed I was a child of God. If I died, then I died. It was in His hands, but please take this fear away.