Ops Loodvoet
We had a brief spell back in Rundu and then were back for Ops Loodvoet in March-April. This we initially ran from the army base at Elundu and then Nkongo. It had been a frustrating time for us, having a few companies patrolling in Southern Angola directly to the north of us, during which I had a distinct feeling that the enemy knew exactly what our plans where. We were up against SWAPO Commander Bulanganga’s detachment and he turned out to be a very capable guerrilla leader. He ran circles around us and we just did not seem to be able to pin him or his cadres down. They gave us the slip time and again, and on a few occasions mortared our platoons with uncanny, pin-point, accuracy. We lost one white Sergeant and six black troops wounded through a mortar attack while the enemy continued to evade our troops. The Sergeant had the flesh stripped off his legs below the knee by shrapnel. He tragically bled to death before we could casevac him. We had no ‘kills’ against Commander Bulanganga’s troops that time round.
My later analysis of the battalion’s radio traffic, messages and codes pointed to the very likely case that they got their intelligence from this source. Prior to any deployment or attack, our radio traffic spiked. All they then had to do was decipher our very basic code system and they would get a wealth of information – even if the really sensitive stuff wasn’t sent over the radio. We used this to good effect in our future planning. The number of messages sent on a daily basis was kept constant and most of the information specific to any operation was relayed by courier or through order groups and face-to-face briefings. The East Germans (who I suspected were the ones behind the monitoring of our radio frequencies) would therefore have had little to indicate what we were planning operationally.
Nkongo was a bleak army base but, nonetheless, afforded a time of pleasant braais in the evening, sitting round a roaring fire, thick steaks and plenty of Castle Lager … the beer greatly facilitating robust debates as to the realities and virtues of the war we were fighting. Commander Bulanganga was giving us a fine display of guerrilla tactics. A very small number of SWAPO guerrilla fighters were using hit-and-run tactics that tied down a large conventional army in counter-insurgency operations, the South African Defence Force. I was now experiencing first hand, Mao Tse Tung’s ‘war of the flea’; the father of guerrilla warfare, he likened the guerrillas to a flea biting a dog as by the time the dog (being the conventional army) got to scratch the affected area, the flea was gone … and the dog scratched a far bigger area than had been bitten. In other words, by the time we reacted to the guerrilla action, they more often than not had cut and run, and we had to cover an area far greater than that actually affected. Furthermore, the conventional army’s efforts to combat the guerrillas usually resulted in civilians getting caught in the crossfire, encouraging even more of them to turn towards the guerrillas cause. And why were we fighting SWAPO in South West Africa anyway? South Africa was the aggressor, having ‘annexed’ South West Africa after the Second World War. The guerrillas were doing what I would do if I were in their shoes. Were we somehow fighting for Apartheid back in South Africa? While I didn’t quite know what the alternative was, the principle of Apartheid didn’t sit too well with me. I knew I had to ‘do my bit’ as it were so I was comfortable about serving in the Army. So, all in all, there were some complex and sensitive issues here!
As delicate as most of this was at the time, discussing it around the open fire, night after night with copious amounts of beer in the company of my friend, 2nd Lieutenant Heinz Muller, made for some good laughs and fun evenings. Heinz had been lightly wounded a few weeks previously and was assigned to the Tac HQ until ready to rejoin his platoon in the bush. Heinz was an Afrikaans guy of medium height and build, with a fit, athletic air about him. While I reasoned there had to be a smarter way to fight this guerrilla war, he advocated a more direct approach … ‘Ons moet vok net voort’ (‘We must just fuck forward’), meaning we must just attack and keep attacking! The more beer we had, the more entertaining the debate become, and the more Heinz would leap to his feet, eyes blazing, to eloquently re-iterate his grand strategy … ‘Ons moet net voort fok!’
I eventually found most of the answers I was looking for towards the end of the year. However, fate was soon to play its hand because for Heinz and me, the Battle of Savate lay ahead.