The presence of Sam-8s was unexpected and unwelcome. ‘It was a very good plus point for the quality of Russian equipment,’ said Durban-born Colonel Dick Lord, a graduate of the American Air Force ‘Top Gun’ school in Florida and a former British Royal Navy fighter-pilot. ‘We had worked on the assumption that it would be used as a strategic weapon for the protection of big installations. We couldn’t believe that a sophisticated weapon like that could stand up to hundreds of kilometres of bundu-bashing. It gave everybody a hell of a big fright.’
Herman Mulder reported that it was likely there were eight Sam-8 missile systems with the advancing Fapla brigades. The Angolans were closely following Soviet doctrine of two brigades working closely together: 47 and 59 Brigades formed one team, and 21 and 16 Brigades another. Soviet doctrine also called for one battery of Sam-8s to be attached to every pair of brigades, with each brigade receiving a troop of two Sam-8 systems.
Having failed initially to detect the Sam-8s, Hougaard decided it was likely there were yet other missile and weapons systems in the enemy brigades that threatened instant death. He sent out recce commandos on intensive patrols to look even more closely at 47, 59, 21 and 16 Brigades.
Meanwhile, there was a short halt in the SAAF bombing attacks on 47 Brigade, still edging its way bit by bit along the south bank of the Lomba. Hougaard protested, pointing out that whatever missiles or anti-aircraft guns Fapla were using, the toss-bombing technique so consistently caught them by surprise that the SAAF planes were usually five minutes into their return journey before the enemy opened fire: the enemy fire usually went on for about ten minutes in wasteful shock without any obvious kind of control and without any targets.
The SAAF withdrew the big, lumbering Canberras from the fight, but resumed hitting 47 Brigade with four or more Mirage F-1AZ toss-bombing attacks at sunrise each day.
★ ★ ★
General Jannie Geldenhuys, head of the SADF, together with his Army, Air Force and Navy chiefs, decided that the new situation called for a special man to take charge on the battlefield.
Colonel Deon Ferreira, a former commander of 32 Battalion, was kicking his heels on a joint staff course at Hoedspruit, near the Kruger Park, some 2,500 km away from the action in Angola.
Ferreira, in his early forties, knew the battle zone well. Tall, swarthy and portly, verging on tubby, he was a big man in every sense. During his time with 32 Battalion, he had been in and out of Angola regularly with his men on raids against SWAPO and in support of UNITA. In a two-day operation in May 1980, 32 Battalion attacked the southern Angolan town of Savate with three companies of infantry and a mortar platoon. Fifteen 32 Battalion soldiers died in the attack and about 40 were wounded. But the ‘Buffalos’ killed more than 400 Fapla soldiers defending the town. 32 Battalion then handed Savate to UNITA, who used it as a rear base for its guerrilla thrusts far north into Angola through the subsequent years.
Ferreira, the son of a farmer in the desolate Great Karoo of the Cape Province, was one of a succession of commanders who transformed 32 Battalion from a confused, bungling, ill-disciplined bunch of Angolan brigands into one of Africa’s most formidable fighting forces. Ferreira was also one of a number of reformers who integrated 32 Battalion fully into the SADF, raised pay levels to those of other regular battalions, extended the number of its specialist units, and opened the way for its black recruits to become full commissioned officers and send their sons and daughters to universities in the Republic.
On Friday, 4 September 1987, Ferreira, known as ‘The Falcon’, was ordered by General Jannie Geldenhuys to be in Rundu that same night. He was to form, organise and take command of an understrength SADF brigade, to be known as 20 SA Brigade. It would act in Angola and make sure that the Fapla/Cuban advance was stopped. The Ferreira-led operation was codenamed ‘Moduler’.
Ferreira managed to get from Hoedspruit to Windhoek on 4 September, and took charge at 20 SA Brigade’s Rundu headquarters on 5 September. His arrival was greeted with enthusiasm by the men in the field. Those who had served under his command knew that the SADF would soon begin to take the initiative. Ferreira was renowned as a daring battle planner who, during his years with 32 Battalion, had first taken action in the field and only afterwards sought permission from higher authority to carry it out. He was the sort of man who constantly outraged stuffier souls among senior officers at SADF Headquarters in Pretoria.
Before one major operation, codenamed Protea, in 1981, the then Commandant Deon Ferreira, sent a letter to Major Afonse Maria, commander of the Fapla brigade based at Ongiva, in southern Angola, suggesting that the Angolan troops lie very low because 32 Battalion was about to make a major attack on their ally SWAPO. Ferreira signed the letter and titled himself ‘Commander of SADF forces in Angola’. The attack was a major success, and no Fapla troops came to SWAPO’s defence.
His career continued to progress because, for the most part, his daring freelance skill achieved success. However, his occasional failures were also remembered, particularly ‘Operation Perfect Lemon’, which he planned with his air force friend Colonel Dick Lord against a SWAPO base north of Mupa inside Angola in 1982. After weeks of meticulous planning by commanders and staff, who plotted every SWAPO position inside the Mupa camp, 16 Mirages swept in on a dawn attack and landed every bomb on target. It proved to be an expensive operation both in time and bombs wasted. In the final days before the attack, every SWAPO guerrilla moved out and not one was killed. To this day Ferreira is teased by his brother officers as the ‘Managing Director’ of Perfect Lemon while Lord is remembered as his ‘Export Manager’.
Within hours of his arrival at Rundu, Ferreira flew in at night by Puma to establish his tactical headquarters about ten kilometres south of the Lomba so that he would not be too isolated physically from the fighting. He soon received bad news. Pierre Franken, scouting with Reconnaissance Commando Special Forces north of the Lomba, radioed in on 6 September that one South African had been killed and several others wounded in a clash with reconnaissance troops of Fapla’s 59 Brigade. The good news was that one of the enemy had been captured: he was brought in for questioning and gave more precise details on the composition of 59 Brigade’s units and their positions between the Cuzizi and the Cunzumbia than had yet been obtained.
Ferreira, as a precaution, quickly withdrew his tactical HQ to the position of the G-5 battery, seconded from Fourth South African Infantry (4 SAI) Battalion, some 25 km south of the Lomba. He reorganised the disparate forces in his command into two artillery-supported combat groups. Combat Group Bravo, composed mainly of companies from 32 Battalion and the Ovamboland-based 101 Battalion, with support from UNITA’s 3rd semi-regular Battalion, was placed under Commandant Hartslief ’s control. Hartslief ’s area of responsibility was the southern bank of the Lomba eastwards from its confluence with the Cunzumbia. His task was to prevent 21 and 59 Brigades, and possibly 16 Brigade, from crossing the Lomba and bringing Mavinga under direct threat. Combat Group Alpha was to consist mainly of 61 Mechanised Battalion, by then on its way into Angola from its training base at Oshivelo in northern Namibia, with support from units of 32 Battalion and UNITA’s semi-regular 5th Battalion: Alpha was charged with stopping Fapla’s 47 Brigade, heading eastwards along the south bank of the Lomba, from forming bridgeheads and linking up with 59 and 21 Brigades.
Ferreira was adamant that Fapla’s 21 Brigade, the nearest enemy force to Mavinga, must not be allowed to cross the Lomba. Like 47 Brigade, it was a very strong and experienced brigade and it was accompanied by a tactical armoured group with tanks. But, most disturbingly, South African intelligence had established that 21 Brigade had chemical weapons in its armoury. This was not a total surprise, since General Konstantin Shaganovitch was a known chemical warfare specialist.
The SADF had technical experts working on the problems of chemical warfare, but the fighting men had received only very rudimentary training in anti-gas tactics and with the kind of equipment that involved.
‘Our guys got their training there and then, on the ground and in the bush at the Lomba,’ said Jan Hougaard. ‘Chemical detection teams were sent in from the Republic. The SADF purchased several thousand gas masks pretty quickly from somewhere or other, and we were all issued with them.’
The Chief of the Army, General Liebenberg, spent many days at Ferreira’s tactical HQ trying to assess the extent of the threat. He was deeply worried because of the minimal means his forces had of countering gas and because of their total lack of experience with it.
The intelligence Liebenberg received came mainly from radio intercepts. Herman Mulder discovered that the D-30 artillery and BM-21 ‘Stalin Organs’ with 21 Brigade had already tried unsuccessfully to fire gas shells against UNITA and the South Africans. From a series of intercepts he concluded that a round of chemical shells had been fired towards an area from where, 21 Brigade’s artillery commander calculated, the gases slowly released from the shells would drift with the prevailing wind into the South African and UNITA lines.
‘But the wind changed about 45 degrees, and the gas missed our positions and wafted back across the Lomba and over 21 Brigade’s own trenches,’ said Mulder. ‘The commander of 21 Brigade told his infantry that UNITA was using chemical weapons, and Luanda in one of its war communiques made the same allegation.
‘Later, a Fapla POW from 21 Brigade told me that for two days their infantry was not able to get out of their trenches because they were totally paralysed. When they recovered their commanders asked them to describe the experience in detailed debriefings. Other POWs I interrogated described yellow liquid in the chemical shells which smelt like onions or garlic.’
Mulder picked up radio intercepts in which Fapla commanders said the chemical weapons should only be committed if a withdrawal became necessary.
Hougaard also recalled radio intercepts from 47 Brigade, making painful progress of about one kilometre a day under constant night bombardment from the SADF’s G-5s and MRLs and early morning bombing attacks by the Mirage F-lAZs. ‘We got radio intercepts of the commander at Fapla’s 6th military region headquarters at Cuito Cuanavale giving orders to 47 Brigade: “Bury your toxic bombs”.’ said Hougaard.
‘From this we realised that Cuito Cuanavale was already anticipating 47 Brigade running into major problems.’ said Hougaard. ‘Later on, Cuito Cuanavale HQ was still hammering away at 47: “Did you bury those bombs, or did you destroy them?”’