My reprieve
By now it was the end of February and a message came through that Commandant Ferreira was on his way and I was to prepare to leave Omauni. My fear was that he was coming to personally throw me out of the Battalion, as he had threatened to do at Dirico. I went out to meet the big Puma on the airfield and await my fate. With the helicopter turbines still winding down in the background, Falcon stopped and looked at me steadily “I hear you have retrained yourself … ??” He then went on to inform me that I was to accompany him to Sector One-Zero, the western part of the Operational Area. With relief, I realised that at last I had won a reprieve.
We joined the Tac HQ in a base that might have been Umbalantu. The radios had already been set up by a very organized Permanent Force signals NCO from a regular infantry battalion. All I had to do was man the radio net for the companies in Angola, up to the north of us. We were part of a much larger force operating just across the border which included regular South African Army platoons, some of whom were ‘campers’ – Citizen Force guys called up for a three month ‘camp’. One helluva thing those camps, living an ordinary life back in civvy street one minute and then only a few days later finding yourself fighting in Angola!
It was on this operation that I first met the legendary gunship pilots Arthur Walker and Neall Ellis. They worked very well as a team and this, combined with the tenacity with which they applied themselves, made them a deadly combination. Arthur Walker was a blond, stocky guy with a boxer’s nose who went on to become the only double recipient of South Africa’s highest bravery award (Honoris Crux). Neall Ellis was a more suave-looking guy who, some twenty years later, I saw on TV that he was still plying his trade. Only now he had upgraded from the small Alouette gunship and was flying the awesome Russian Hind helicopter gunship for a West African country. As always, he was still intent on subduing rebel fighters!
It wasn’t long before one of our platoons hit a contact and we dispatched the Alouette helicopter gunships in support. It so happened that the Chief of the SADF, General Constand Viljoen, was visiting the Tac HQ at the time. He stood behind my shoulder for the duration of the contact whilst I handled the radio traffic, trying to remain calm and cool. The tactic was to try and get the gooks visual and then initiate the contact just as the helicopter gunships arrived overhead. The ground troops would then advance while the gunships circled above, their deadly 20mm cannons killing any that tried to break away from the pursuit. Some eight guerrilla bodies were brought back by the Pumas sent in at the end of the contact with the ammunition resupply. They were laid out in a row alongside the helipad like broken dolls, all hideously disfigured by the 20mm cannon. One had half his skull blown off, another had an entry hole the size of a large coin in the centre of his chest whereas his back had been blown open by the exiting explosive head of the cannon shell … it was a gruesome and sobering sight.
A few days later it was our turn to take casualties. The ‘campers’ attached to the regular infantry battalion that was working with our guys in Southern Angola were mortared during the night. They hadn’t dug in, which was supposed to be a standard operating procedure and most of one of the platoons had been wounded and a number killed. They were trooped back by the Pumas and laid out on the helipad. Lying on their ground sheets in three rows, some with their shirts removed and their pale white skin looking very fragile and out of place while the medics worked quietly and intently on them. The platoon commander, a Lieutenant, was brought into the Tac HQ unharmed but in a state of shock. I didn’t envy him having to live with not having instructed his men to dig in.
On a lighter note, and in complete contrast to the awful events just described, there was a young pet donkey in the base to whom the troops supplied copious amounts of beer. One evening, I arrived back at my tent to find that it had passed out on a bed next to mine! This typified the incredulous world we seemed to be living and fighting in.