CHAPTER EIGHT

NEW DIRECTIONS—DANGEROUS CHALLENGES

Leaving the air force was an enormous challenge. It was the only real life Neall knew. The men and women in uniform who had been part of his life for decades, almost since leaving school, were not only like family, they were his family.

But I’d made the break and I knew that I couldn’t go back. Anyway, I had good money in the bank, my entire pension. Unfortunately that didn’t last because, like so many military people who had little experience of the world outside, I was soon persuaded to part with most of it by investing in a sharp-edged fishing venture and that was that—money all gone

It was a catastrophe. I could see everything going wrong and there was nothing I could do about it, which was when I started getting panicky. Meanwhile Zelda, a nurse, had been working intermittently and at that time wasn’t earning. She went back to her old nursing career, starting with a fairly good job in Hermanus. It took her away from home most of the time, although she would join me for weekends at the Arniston fishing village where we were living. Apart from what she earned, there was nothing else coming in which complicated things somewhat because we had the two elder children at boarding school at Bredasdorp. Things were starting to get tough.

I was finally offered a job by Richard Devine, a friend from way back, who had made his packet in horse racing. He had a farm just outside Paarl exporting flowers and fruit to Europe. He also had seven or eight hectares of carrots, some of which became my responsibility. However, I wasn’t earning much—R3,000 a month (about $700 at the time)—and it was difficult because the children still had to be educated. Somehow we managed though.

I’d see Pumas from the air force base at Ysterplaat flying over the valley where I lived, and my heart would leap. Still, I kept at it for about 18 months until Zelda asked me: ‘why don’t you go back to flying?’

With the war in the Balkans gathering pace, things were tense in Europe at the time and I’d been following events carefully. A couple of weeks after the NATO bombings of August 1995, Slade Healy, an old air force chopper pilot pal of mine, called and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. He said he’d been in the Balkans flying Mi-17 helicopters for a bunch of rebels in Bosnia and was looking for some willing hands to join him. The money was good—$6,000 up front with an additional $1,000 an hour flying time. Obviously there were risks, but then that was what it was all about, were his words. I spoke to Zelda about the prospect and she said I should go. It was what I wanted to do anyway. She declared she’d manage on her own until things were more settled. Richard arrived at the farm the following morning and I told him I was leaving. I was stagnating and just had to make the move, I stated, which was the truth.

Shortly after I’d spoken to Slade, I got the call from Johannesburg. ‘How does flying for a crazy bunch of Islamic militants appeal to you?’ asked a fellow named Mario, Slade’s colleague. I’d worked with Mario in the past while flying combat in Angola and he was one of the most experienced pilots in the game. My reply was guarded: ‘Depends on which bunch of Muslims.’ I wasn’t exactly hesitant, but I didn’t want to sound overenthusiastic. After all, the Balkans had already acquired the kind of reputation that caused most freelancers to shy away, not only because of the lack of money but the word coming out of there was that most of the equipment was sub-standard and poorly maintained. Even worse was the fact that both sides had little regard for the fundamental ethics of combat. The Geneva Convention might have been a parlour game and everybody knew that you’d be fortunate to survive if you managed to live through being shot down and were taken prisoner. The odds were stacked against us. I was also testy because of the experiences of some of my friends who had volunteered to fly in the Balkans: some hadn’t been paid, others were killed.

‘There is a limit to what I will do for money’, I told Mario.

‘This is different, though’, said the other man. ‘You’ll be working for Muslim separatists in Bosnia. They’re a tough bunch and they’re reliable.’ Mario went on to describe the mission.

‘Done!’ replied Nellis, unequivocal because he trusted Mario, although they still hadn’t discussed money.

‘Where do you want me?’ he asked.

‘Jan Smuts, at four this afternoon’, came the reply.

That was a tall order, since the main international airport in Johannesburg was a two-hour flight away, with another hour on the road to Cape Town’s airport, and Nellis still had to make his booking. However, he got going anyway.

Mario had said that Nellis would be working with friends on the new assignment. Two of them, Jakes Jacobs and Jaco Klopper, were still serving members of the South African Air Force. They would have to take ‘unofficial’ leave and wouldn’t be telling their bosses where they were heading or what they’d be doing. As in any regular force, flying combat for a foreign government was what the Americans like to call an effective career terminator. Others in the team were Phil Scott, Pete Minnaar, and Mike Hill, all veteran former SAAF chopper crews with years of combat experience. Hill had been a member of the team in one of the final phases of the war in Angola when Nellis was commanding the chopper wing.

The way Mario explained it, the men would be handling a pair of Bosnian Mi-8s in ground support roles in outlying areas such as Gorazde, Bihac, and other enclaves. Since the Serbian Army had isolated most Islamic settlements from the world outside, either by laying siege or ambushing all the approaches, these people used helicopters to bring in supplies.

Although the South African pilots finally settled on the financial details and agreed to go, the assignment worried Nellis as it did the others, although Nellis did not discover this until they later discussed it. For a start, this was an unusually hazardous undertaking with a few twists to it. It would be winter by the time they arrived, and winters in Yugoslavia could be harsh. Because much of the flying would be over the mountains, the terrain would be difficult to traverse, especially when cloud cover obscured towns, which could happen for weeks at a time, and high ground constantly loomed over them.

Then came the bloody-minded Serbs, whose territory they would have to traverse in their aircraft and whose arsenal included some of the most sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons available. Only after they reached Bosnia were they to discover that the choppers had no navigational aids to speak of, and that almost all the flying was at night. It was a tough call!

Still, the pay was excellent and all the ‘volunteers’ were broke. Weather allowing, the men would be required to fly as many missions as they could, two a day if possible. They would get an extra $500 for each sortie completed, and, as was agreed up front with Mario, operational flights would be in tandem with two Mi-8s to a mission, very much as they had operated in Africa. If one of the machines was forced down, the other could pick up survivors.

In Johannesburg, Nellis and the others were briefed by Slade Healy. He had just returned to South Africa, having flown for the Bosnians. It was his job to negotiate terms for this new group of aviators and he told them that his link in the Balkans was a fellow by the name of Zarif: a ‘heavy Muslim political character from Zenica’, were his words.

It was also Healy who warned Nellis and company at that first briefing that the job was not easy. He used the word ‘precarious’, emphasizing the threat by detailing his first flight from Zenica, a city north-west of Sarajevo. That mission had been planned to reach Gorazde, then completely surrounded by Serbian forces.

‘Our chopper took some heavy ground fire, much of it sustained’, Healy explained, adding that there was a lot more battle damage than they would have liked before they were able to make it safely into a landing zone in the mountains. Also, the crew had to fly in both directions using night vision goggles. ‘This is going to be hard work’, he declared. However, it seemed worth it, considering that South Africa was in a recession. Universally, this kind of freelance military activity was in short supply just then, so it was a welcome opportunity for them all.

Healy also cautioned the new arrivals about the machines they would be flying. Since none of them had piloted Mi-8s before, they wouldn’t have time to conventionally convert to the Russian helicopters before going operational. It wasn’t an ideal situation, he cautioned, but there wasn’t any other way. He also hinted that if they didn’t accept the contract, there would be others who would.

Arriving at Zagreb, the Croatian capital, was an experience for the men. Nellis recalled that it was the first time he’d been out of Africa, so he was excited at the prospect of something different.

The group was met on arrival by Zarif, a short, slim man with a moustache, and taken to a small, dismal hotel where he arranged dinner. He left them to spend the night on their own, and in Nellis’ view this combination of events did not bode well for the future. The following morning they were driven to a Croatian Army military airfield on the outskirts of town, where they boarded an Mi-8MTV destined for Zenica. Once there, they would be taken to the Bosnian front line, said Zarif.

Along the way, their helicopter halted briefly in Banja Luka to pick up a couple of mysterious characters dressed totally in black. With their faces hidden behind balaclavas, they were obviously the local version of Special Forces. They didn’t utter a greeting or a word throughout, which wasn’t that unusual. Neall recalls that many of the troops the South Africans encountered in the following days were dressed in black and were uncommunicative. What really worried him was that these people didn’t look or act like professionals, especially considering that this was a country at war. The men didn’t have that seasoned military look about them, either in appear ance or in the way they handled their weapons. For all that, wherever they landed there was a lot of military hardware about, including tanks and former Soviet APCs, 20mm cannon, 14.5mm heavy machine guns and 23mm quads (four-barrelled, heavy machine guns). Seeing all that made it really hit home that there was some really serious fighting going on.

While heading to their final destination, they were able to check out the terrain in which they would be operating. It was bleak and mountainous with little tree cover. Generally, recalls Nellis, it was all quite uninviting and not the kind of country that made hostilities easy.

The first afternoon after they arrived, after several stops along the way, the group landed at Zenica and were taken to a house by the river, a couple of kilometres from the local military headquarters. Zarif said that it would be their home for the duration. While there was a rumbling of artillery in the mountains, there was not much evidence of fighting around town, although most of the buildings were scarred by shell fire. Whenever a UN vehicle came past the people would shout abuse at their blue helmeted occupants and hurl rocks. Neall recalls that ‘it was all pretty sinister, actually, especially since this was our first exposure to the world of Islam’.

It was also the first time he had sat at the controls of an Mi-8. Fortunately, Pete Minnaar had spent time with Executive Outcomes in Angola and was experienced on these helicopters. He ended up giving the crew the full technical conversion course in their kitchen. They were also briefed by Zarif and his military cronies on what they were going to be doing and exactly what was expected.

Nellis takes up the story:

Essentially, he said, our job was to ferry supplies into garrisons in the interior that were under attack by the Serbians. At that point somebody raised the issue of the promised second support chopper as we’d only seen one on the improvised flight line Suddenly he started back-pedalling. He said something about some Russians also flying for them and that they were using it but he couldn’t, or rather wouldn’t, tell us anything definite.

We also told Zarif that the chopper we’d seen on the pad wasn’t the right colour for the kind of military operations he envisaged. The machine still had its original Aeroflot paint job, much of it blue and white, and we demanded that it be black all over. We’d be flying at night, we explained, and we didn’t want to give the opposition the opportunity to shoot at something that would stand out like a neon sign should there be moonlight.

Zarif said he’d think about it, although he did produce a couple of Russian NVGs which he believed were OK. We thought they were not as streamlined as we were accustomed to and weighed too much. Fortunately, we’d brought with us some Litton NVGs from South Africa. We still had to adapt the helicopter’s interior lighting system with green LEDs to make the cockpit as NVG compatible as possible, something that was tackled by Phil and Pete.

It didn’t take the South Africans long to accept that while morale within the Bosnian Army was at a broadly acceptable level, discipline throughout was poor. Quite often, Nellis recalls, the soldiers would start shooting into the air for no reason or someone would throw a grenade or two because it was what he felt like doing. Nellis sensed that part of it might have been a reaction to the nightly bombardments to which the population was being subjected. The Serbs were using some heavy stuff, including 155mm guns, and Zenica was at the receiving end of artillery and mortar bombardments just about every night. Usually, the Serbian Army would fire five or six rounds and then there would be a lull. That could last minutes or even several hours, and then it would start all over again. While there was a steady flow of casualties, the city’s inhabitants seemed to have become accustomed to rounds falling about their buildings.

Although the Bosnians demanded that the new arrivals be put through their paces on the Mi-8 ‘Hip’ to demonstrate that they could actually fly the machine, Nellis didn’t feel that he needed to disclose that he had never flown a Hip before. As he reckoned, he had a basic understanding of the chopper and although he tended to overshoot quite a lot at first, with some high-nose attitudes, it took only a couple of approaches to master the right speed. He did one 30-minute daytime flight and another after dark and it was quite exciting, he recalls

One of the immediate concerns among the newcomers was the acknowledged anti-aircraft capability of their adversaries, the Serbians. A series of sophisticated radar-guided SAM systems had been installed at vantage points in the mountains throughout the region and, by all accounts, there were a lot of them. Nellis had long been aware that SAM8s were one of the better Soviet anti-aircraft weapons systems, especially against low-flying aircraft. As he explained: ‘We had seen what these missiles were capable of in Angola. We were familiar with the threat—the weapon was deadly, especially in the right hands.’ He continued:

Although the local people said they were still trying to get us another chopper, we split ourselves into two crews. I’d fly with Jakes, who was designated commander, and Phil Scott while the other crew would be Mike, Jaco and Piet.

Meanwhile, Jakes and Jaco approached Zarif again to discuss the support helicopter that had originally been promised, and they were adamant. They were still serving members of the South African Air Force and technically ‘on vacation’, they told him, so their concern about going down and being taken captive by the Serbs was real. Should that happen, it would be a huge embarrassment for them personally and, of course, for the South African government as well. For that reason alone, they declared, a second Mi-8 had to be produced if they were to go ahead with the contract. This development reflected some of their concerns about their role as a whole. It was obvious that the work involved was dangerous, critically so. That they accepted. However, they also felt that their hosts had to meet the criteria that had originally been agreed upon.

Their immediate problem with Zarif was that he had broken a cardinal promise on which the entire operation hinged. Before leaving Johannesburg, the team had been assured by Slade Healy that every flight would be a two-ship operation. On arriving in Zenica, however, that was countermanded by Zarif. He declared that it was not possible to have two helicopters airborne at the same time. He argued that his forces did not have the necessary resources to deploy two choppers for a single operation, which the South Africans felt was duplicitous. Further, he told the group that the matter was a fait accompli. The subject warranted no further discussion, he said bluntly.

‘That was that,’ recalls Nellis. ‘The man had said his piece and we were obliged to accept. However, since we’d always been accustomed to flying in pairs, in some of the remotest corners of the globe, his backtracking on that vital issue caused our first real rift with our employers.’

However, that was not all that bothered the South Africans. The other matter they had raised, said Nellis, was that of the radio set. They had been assured that there was a High Frequency radio set at the apartment. The equipment was needed for the guys who stayed behind so that they could monitor flights to make sure there were no problems. The way they worked was that one team would go out and the other would keep track as things unfolded. However, the South Africans were given VHF equipment, which was limited to line-of-sight reception. Consequently, once the aircraft went into the hills the crew would have no communication with their people. That really bothered the pilots and they said as much. No radio set ever materialized.

The first flight was taken up by Mike, Jaco and Pete from a sports field in the heart of Zenica, late in September 1995. The weather wasn’t kind. The helicopter was loaded with ammunition and medical supplies. However, they were hardly airborne before they had to return to base because of a powerful weather front that had closed in. They were stymied for the rest of the day and after dark a mist enveloped the hills. With winter almost upon them, bad flying conditions were inevitable, but this was a lot worse than they’d anticipated.

The next evening, things improved and they tried a second time. This time they made it to Gorazde, their destination. Although the flight was only about 35 minutes each way, with another 15 minutes or so on the ground for offloading, it was about as problematic as it gets. Things weren’t helped by the fact that the LZ into which they were supposed to go was perched on the side of a hill. The reasoning behind this, as offered by their hosts, was something to do with protection against enemy snipers. Mike Hill recalled afterwards that it was a very difficult approach: ‘We had ground fire coming up at us just about all the way … the chopper was hit several times but there was no serious damage. In the end, we brought out a batch of sick and wounded troops and some civilians.’

On touchdown back at Zenica, the South Africans became overnight celebrities: everybody wanted to pump their hands and, Islamic or not, buy them hefty shots of slivovitz. However, it was during their debriefing that they realized that their mission wasn’t as straightforward as they might have hoped. In fact, it was a lot dodgier than any of them had anticipated because in getting to the target areas, they had to cross several rows of enemy lines, which stretched from the Yugoslavian border all the way to Sarajevo and beyond. Worse, nothing was in a straight line. Mike Hills said that they were required ‘to fly a jagged, winding course that more or less followed the road from the border’. He continued:

A second, more persistent issue was the deployment of enemy forces around Gorazde itself. Once the helicopter had crossed the first hurdle, enemy troops dug into positions around Gorazde would have been told by radio that there was a helicopter heading their way, so the Serbs would be waiting for us, having been allowed about 15 minutes to prepare for our arrival. Consequently, there would be quite a volume of incoming fire heading for us as we approached.

Getting to the target LZ was only half the battle. Mike continued:

Whether that first leg of the sortie was successful or not, we still had to bring the chopper back to Zenica, our home base. So the chances of us getting hit whenever we took the machine out were just about a hundred per cent.

Because Serb defences around Gorazde were not as concentrated to the immediate west of the enclave, the crew thought that the best route on the return leg would be over the mountains towards the coast. Just then, however, the weather turned nasty again, so they had no alternative but to follow more or less the same flight path home that they had used on the way in. The other possibility was to go high and seek cloud cover, but that would have meant flying blind in the mountains and it just wasn’t an option. Also, Serb radar would have picked them up in a jiffy and the Serbs would have been able to fire their SAMs.

It didn’t take the South Africans long to accept that since there were no airfields or let-down facilities anywhere between Gorazde and Zenica, their options were constrained, severely, as it transpired. It was a hell of a way to be earning bucks, the guys joked afterwards. Writing about his experiences in the Balkans a few years later, Nellis said that the stark reality of almost certainly being shot down at some stage or other meant that some members of the group were seriously unhappy with the setup in the Balkans. He continued:

Going into a strange country about which none of us knew shit and dealing with people who didn’t speak English, made us decide very early on that if one of us was unhappy with the situation, then we’d all be unhappy. It wasn’t an ideal solution, but it did create something of a common bond.

It was also agreed that if they couldn’t sort things out, they would all leave. Obviously, it didn’t help that they could not really trust their hosts because they had gone back on their word more than once. ‘In fact,’ he added, ‘they’d lied fluently from the start, and we knew that in their eyes, we were expendable.’

Consequently, the mercenary group felt that if they stuck together, their chances of success would be better, especially if they had to make a dash for it. Nellis continues:

A few nights after Mike’s mission, it was our turn, with the crew consisting of me, Jakes and Phil. Again, Gorazde was our objective. This time the weather was perfect and we left for the helipad just before sundown. We’d already seen how these people operated so we decided to supervise the loading of the helicopter and do a proper pre-flight check ourselves before it became too dark.

The helicopter had, meanwhile, been moved to a hilltop outside the town where it was out of sight of anyone who didn’t need to know what was happening. However, intelligence was coming through that the Serbs were being informed by their own sources or, possibly, observation posts in the surrounding hills each time we lifted off. Consequently, nobody had to tell us that the bastards would open fire the moment we approached their positions.

Leaving Zenica that night was an event. We were just about to cross the first line of Serb defences when we came under some really heavy fire. What was coming up at us wasn’t just cursory, it was big stuff. We could hear the bird take hits, you couldn’t miss it. It was like somebody using a giant hammer on the fuselage.

This was not the ‘typing pool’ clatter of AKs.

I felt a heavy thump underneath my seat accompanied by a loud bang. A moment later ‘Natasha’ started screeching.¹We knew enough about cockpit warning systems to be aware that something was seriously wrong and, while we couldn’t detect any immediate damage because all the instruments seemed in order, Jakes decided that it might be better to take her back. It was a sudden, impulsive move. Although we were flying a bit high, he turned and dived towards the ground. Luckily, there was a full moon and we couldn’t miss the ground coming up at us. Once we’d levelled out, we stayed low to reduce the threat of incoming fire.

As it happened, Jakes’ decision wasn’t the best option facing the South Africans. What he’d done was turn the helicopter directly towards enemy gun emplacements. More rounds followed and after taking more punishment, the Hip finally moved out of range. Nellis takes up the story again:

Back at base, nobody was chuffed with this performance. We’d come back without completing a mission. An immediate result was that we got nothing for our efforts even though the flight was about as perilous as any that I’d experienced in my career. The passengers in the back were even more shaken by the time they emerged; they’d been sitting on three tons of explosive mortar and artillery rounds.

The team waited several days for the chopper to be repaired and then tried again.

We had just got to the LZ when the weather started to close in once more. This time Jakes told the Bosnians that neither he nor anybody else was prepared to take her up in those conditions and we were promptly taken back to the house.

Zarif was furious, and the pilots accepted that he probably had a right to be. In the four weeks that the crew had been in Bosnia, the South Africans had notched up one successful flight. Apart from losing money, Zarif had also lost face with his own people.

At a confab later that night, Jakes decided that he wasn’t prepared to go on. He told us that he wanted to return home and that was that. We had sensed it coming over the previous weeks because relations with Zarif had deteriorated to the point where he had become both obnoxious and aggressive. He insulted the men, once or twice in public. At one stage he threatened us with arrest if we didn’t fly.

We stood by our earlier decision that if somebody decided to pull out, the rest would follow. I wasn’t too happy with the idea because I needed the money, but once the decision had been made, that was it. Actually, I was desperate, but since none of the others were prepared to hang in there, and I didn’t have the experience on type to try it alone, I ended up on the plane back to Zagreb with the rest of the gang.