Captain Piet van Zyl arrived from his mountain farm in northern Natal to join Battle Group Bravo on 13 September. A former national serviceman who was now an officer with a Natal Commando of the part-time Citizen Force, the tall, blond Afrikaner adventurer had volunteered for regular spells of duty with 32 Battalion in times of need. Ferreira cabled him to say this was one of those times. So, leaving his cattle and sheep herds in the care of his chief Zulu stockman and having instructed his brother on procedures during the coming potato harvest, Van Zyl reached the Lomba on 13 September, the day Captain ‘Mac’ Macallum was killed on the river’s floodplain.
He was ordered to take command of Macallum’s Foxtrot company, now consisting of one platoon of 30 black Angolan infantrymen with four Ratels and another platoon of infantrymen protecting Bravo’s MRL battery. On 14 September he joined Foxtrot at their position to the south of the Lomba, opposite 21 Brigade’s main position on the north bank of the river, 12 km to the east of the Lomba-Cunzumbia confluence. Enemy tanks shot out in the battle of 10 September were still out on the anhara.
When Van Zyl arrived he was asked by Major Nortmann – in temporary command of Bravo while Hartslief visited Mavinga to receive new orders – to take charge also of 32 Battalion’s 81 mm mortar platoon. Nearby were the MRLs, another 32 Battalion company, a 101 Battalion company and the 32 Battalion recces’ rest and recuperation camp.
As Van Zyl settled in, he felt almost as if the war was unreal. Barely three kilometres away across the river he could see the Fapla trenches. Every day enemy soldiers strolled down casually from the treeline to fetch water. ‘When Mac da Trinidada arrived for a period of R and R, he couldn’t believe how near the Fapla were and how much noise they made at night,’ said Van Zyl. ‘There were lights blazing, little generators humming, doors slamming, fires being lit for coffee.’
Combat Group Bravo was ordered not to cross the Lomba. It was to block 21 Brigade’s path southwards while SADF artillery and the South African Air Force, guided in by the recce teams and forward observers, pounded 21 and 59 Brigades relentlessly, taking out more and more of their anti-aircraft capabilities and wearing down their will to persist.
On the night of 15–16 September Van Zyl was unable to sleep as Pierre Franken, having infiltrated right inside 59 Brigade’s lines with recces of 5 Reconnaissance Commando the previous night, brought down some hundred or so 43.5 kg shells from the G-5s on key targets. The giant artillery pieces were so overstrained that tragedy struck.
One gun suffered a ‘cook-off’, an explosion of a shell in the breech. One of the six-man crew was killed instantly and the rest badly wounded. There was nothing left of the nine metre-long gun except a blackened steel stump. The wounded were in such bad condition that the Puma helicopters broke their normal rule of night operations only and came in by day to take the stricken gunners back to Rundu.
An inquiry into the accident concluded that the ‘cook-off’ occurred in the gun barrel when it became extremely hot after firing many rounds of ammunition. At this stage of the war each G-5 was firing up to 80 shells per day. The inquiry team concluded that a shell, lying in the overheated barrel, had exploded after a forward observer had ordered: ‘Stop firing.’ The barrel heat had transferred to the stationary projectile and an explosion had followed. This led to an adjustment of fire order procedures. ‘Stop firing’ was replaced by a ‘cease loading’ order from the forward observers – that is, the loaded round would be fired, but no more shells would be put into the breech until fresh orders were given to resume firing.
Though the SADF recces were regularly pinpointing key 59 and 21 Brigade positions and bringing in heavy bombardments, Combat Group Bravo had to dig in deep against very intense Fapla bombardments. Every day the B-10, D-30 and BM-21 shells would come down while from far overhead the Migs were dropping bombs, albeit inaccurately.
Piet van Zyl remembers sitting on the pit latrine when a shell from a D-30,122 mm gun broke the sound barrier as it hurtled over his head. A second came. Van Zyl ran and jumped down a three metre-deep foxhole. Shells were raining in, joined by 82 mm mortar bombs. ‘The noise was appalling,’ said Van Zyl, ‘and there was sand and earth pouring down on us in barrow-loads. When the firing stopped three of my men were completely buried and we had to dig them out.’ There were constant bombardments like these which took out a number of the SADF’s softer skinned vehicles.
The deep foxholes saved many lives, but they could also be traps for the unwary.
Admiral Dries Putter, the CSI chief, was among the many VIPs who visited the front from time to time. On one occasion, General Jannie Geldenhuys, Chief of the SADF, and Lieutenant-General Kat Liebenberg, Chief of the Army, were there at the same time as the Admiral. As usual, the generals wore the same combat drabs as the troopies and shared their bully beef and boiled rice from tiffin tins. The Navy, however, has a reputation for sartorial elegance and doing everything in style, and Geldenhuys and Liebenberg entered Admiral Putter’s tent to find him in immaculate white uniform sitting down at a neatly laid table and being served by his batman with a succulent steak and good red wine.
Geldenhuys and Liebenberg, their mouths watering, politely refused the wine they were offered and went their more prosaic ways. Towards midnight, taking a walk outside before retiring to bed, they were taken aback to see the SADF’s intelligence supremo approaching soaked in sweat and his once trim white uniform crumpled and covered in red dirt. Admiral Putter saluted ceremoniously, wished the generals good night, and re-entered his tent, offering no explanation for his appearance.
Only after the war did he admit to Geldenhuys and Liebenberg that, strolling after his meal, he had fallen into one of the foxholes. Reluctant to suffer the chaffing that would inevitably come from the generals if he called for rescue from his ignominious position, he spent more than two hours digging away the sides of the foxhole with his hands to form a loose sand ramp which he used to scramble up unaided back to ground level.
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21 Brigade persevered in massing supplies on the north side of the Lomba with the intention of crossing the river, but was hammered unsparingly by the South African artillery.
‘From my position it was almost unreal, like watching a movie,’ said Piet van Zyl. ‘A G-5 would pick off an ammunition dump well back from the river, and up would go a plume of smoke and fire.
‘When their water gatherers came out of the treeline each day my company would hit them with 81 mm mortars as they started filling their bowsers and cans. One of my Angolan mortarmen, Sergeant Bambi, was a particularly accurate shot. He first pinned them down with high explosive bombs, and when they flattened themselves on the ground to avoid the blast of follow-up bombs he changed to devices with white phosphorus which spread on impact and burned. Sometimes Commandant Les Rudman, a CSI liaison officer with UNITA, turned up to supplement Bambi’s barrages with fire from World War II-vintage Vickers machine-guns mounted on top of his two Blesboks [mine-protected trucks].
‘One time we located one of their nearer D-30s and I got Bambi to fire his white phosphorus mortar bombs. Afterwards we could see Fapla gunners running around trying to put out the flames.
‘Sometimes the MRLs would fire on 21 Brigade’s positions in the treeline. Afterwards you could see them carrying bodies away and beginning to dig their trenches even deeper.
‘As well as the recce patrols behind their lines, we had to send out patrols to the east and west to check whether they were preparing crossings. As the patrols moved on, they left trip-wire flares to act as warnings.
‘I sometimes went out on patrol myself. Once, when one of the 5 Reconnaissance commando majors was ill, I went with Piet Fourie behind 21 Brigade’s lines to locate their B-10 cannons and Stalin Organs. It was easy to pick them up from the green glow of their infra-red night sights.
‘On another occasion I went with Commandant Hougaard to General Ben-Ben’s UNITA base just south of the Lomba-Cunzumbia confluence. There was a 32 Battalion OP post there watching 59 Brigade. I climbed up into a high tree to see what I could and got the shock of my life when two Mig-23s came in low on a recce run. I could see the pilots’ faces. I nearly fell out of the branches.
‘Sergeant Mac [da Trinidada] reported back one day that 21 Brigade seemed to be making a particularly big build-up for an attempted crossing some five kilometres to the east of my company’s position. Mac said there was a line of tanks deep inside the treeline.
‘I moved east with my Ratels, infantrymen and a 101 company with Casspirs, while the G-5s and the MRLs prepared for the signal to open fire. We slowed down before we approached the position and listened in to their communications in our EW vehicle. They were saying that the area was clear and that they were ready to start. Then the tanks and vehicles and infantry came right out on to the anhara on their side of the river. That’s when we told the MRLs and the G-5s to open up. The G-5s caused terrible devastation.’
[The computer-controlled G-5s deliver fragmentation shells, which detonate some ten to 20 m above the enemy and blast downwards nearly 5,000 steel shards and slivers which kill or maim any man in their path and penetrate soft-skinned vehicles. Military analysts have assessed the South African shells as being twice as effective as any similar projectile in use by the world’s armies. A system known as base-bleed, adapted from technology supplied from Sweden, gives the G-5 shells ten per cent extra range, meaning that away from sea level the range is up to 42 km. When a normal shell is fired it creates a vacuum in its wake which causes drag, acting like a brake. A base-bleed shell has a special chemical pellet in its tail which burns and injects gases into the vacuum, thus reducing drag.]
As the campaign progressed the G-5 gunners became more and more impressed with the accuracy of the weapon. With the guidance of forward observers, the gunners could make corrections of 25 m per shot until they hit an individual target vehicle.
Piet Fourie recalled sitting in the shade of a tree on the east bank of the Gombe River bringing in G-5 fire on 21 Brigade’s artillery positions beyond the opposite bank: ‘We were going for their Sam-8s. I gave the G-5 commander all the coordinates, and after one or two corrections he landed a shell right on top of a Sam-8 launcher. Some of the Sam missiles just zoomed off in haphazard directions. Then we hit another Sam-8. We really hit them hard.’