War is confusion. You often don’t know what happened until you’ve read the book.
General Jannie Geldenhuys.1
The battle between the SADF’s 61 Mechanised Battalion and Fapla’s 47 Brigade of 3 October 1987 was a swirling, fast-moving, bloody and prodigiously noisy affair over rough, undeveloped terrain in one of the remotest areas on earth.
To help the reader peer through the clutter and jumble of that day’s warfare, Captain Herman Mulder, the 32 Battalion intelligence officer attached to 61 Mechanised Battalion, Major Laurence Maree, second-in-command of 61 Mech, and Artillery Regiment Major Pierre Franken, who watched the whole battle from his OP on Mucobolo Hill, tell how the battle looked from each of their vantage points on Saturday 3 October 1987.
At the assembly area it had been like organised bedlam trying to make sure that everything was fully prepared for the attack. It was only at 3 am [on 3 October] that all the ammunition was ready and loaded; that the logistics had been fully planned and prepared; and that we felt we had gathered all the intelligence possible about the enemy.
‘I was drained before we even set out. My assistant, an Air Force intelligence lieutenant, and I had not slept for two nights. For 48 hours nonstop we had been collecting and processing every available bit of information to try and think through all the possibilities that lay ahead that day.
‘I reconstructed in map form, as best I could with the information available, the base area of 47 Brigade for Commandant Bok Smit. I also drew a sketch for him of how I thought the enemy would take up battle positions.
‘The movement of our attack force was to be first from south to north towards the Lomba. Then we were to begin swinging westwards so that we would attack directly from the east along the line of the anhara and the trees until we were right in among 47 Brigade’s positions. I expected Fapla’s armoured tactical group to place its tanks in defensive positions well inside the treeline, so we put a platoon of four Ratels carrying ZT3 anti-tank missiles on our western flank.
‘Then I got into a Ratel for the first time in my life. My Ratel-90 was to move in a beeline behind Bok Smit’s command Ratel, which itself was to move 80 m behind our leading Ratels moving in extended line abreast. My radio team was in an EW Ratel directly behind me.
‘We moved off at 5.20 am in darkness, with more than 50 Ratels (which included the full range from Ratel-20 infantry carriers, whose main gun is a 20 mm cannon, to the Ratel-90, whose main roles are anti-tank and “bunker-busting” with its turret-mounted 90 mm gun) in three lines abreast, interspersed with other vehicles like armoured ambulances and recovery trucks, and the Ratel-ZTBs to the side.
‘All that movement kicked up so much dust that we had to have our headlights full on. We taped them so that there was just a minimum beam, in the hope that that would reduce the warning to 47 Brigade that we were on our way.
‘As chief intelligence officer, I was also responsible for navigation. So it was a hell of a relief to me when we succeeded in hitting our first RP (rendezvous point) just after first light to the east of 47 Brigade’s positions. Lieutenant-Colonel Setti of UNITA’s 3rd Regular Battalion met us there. Two hundred of his men were to move 800 m ahead of our front rank to pick up the enemy positions and lead us on to them, draw the opening fire, and then break away to the flanks to leave the way clear for 61 Mech’s attack. [UNITA’s 5th Regular Battalion and its 275th Special Force Commandos, SAS-style fighters trained by the SADF, were positioned to the southwest of 47 Brigade in case the Fapla forces staged a retreat in that direction.]
‘We continued to push forward, but they obviously began to hear our engine noise because suddenly we were bombarded by ZIS-3s [Soviet 76 mm field guns with a range of 13 km] and D-30s [Soviet 122 mm Howitzers with a range of up to 21 km]. Bok Smit ordered everyone to cut their engines and maintain radio silence, and they stopped firing after a while because they were no longer able to work out where we were. But that was only a temporary reprieve. When we entered the battle those guns, fired by 59 and 21 Brigades and to some extent also by 47 Brigade, opened up again and never let up all day until it was all over at 6.20 pm. We were also bombarded by teams of Mig-21s.
‘UNITA intelligence officers met up and liaised with us and gave their latest assessment of 47 Brigade’s locations. They said the vehicle force was strung out in the edge of the treeline for several hundred metres westwards and eastwards of the southern end of the wooden road.
‘Bok Smit ordered a probing attack, and from then on I hardly remember the precise order of events. All I know is that after we spotted their positions we called in an artillery bombardment. We attacked and after two hours we withdrew to load up with fresh ammunition and to make minor repairs.
‘Five times we attacked that day to try to break them, and each time we had to withdraw for repairs and new supplies, to reform and to give our men short respites from the non-stop bombardments of the guns of three enemy brigades and Fapla’s Migs.
‘Every time we withdrew they thought we were retreating, so they gathered tanks and infantry for a counter-attack, and it was only after they had concentrated their forces for that purpose that Bok Smit would order us to attack again.
‘All the time my Ratel was with Bok Smit’s within 100 m of the front line. I have never experienced anything like it. I said goodbye to my life at least six times that day. All the time there was bombing and bombing and bombing. The noise was beyond belief. It was driving me mad. All the time I was thinking: “I just want to get out of this fucking vehicle.” Even when 61 Mech was ordered to stay static, my vehicle and Bok Smit’s continued to draw enemy artillery because we couldn’t go radio silent like the other Ratels.
‘I was afraid in the biggest sense you can think of it. You know all the time that the next shell might be for you.
‘When we engaged 47 Brigade in the first morning attack we couldn’t see through the bush anywhere for more than 15 m. At the end of the day we could see for 800 m, which gives an idea of the intensity of the fire. Shells and shrapnel slashed down the trees and shrubs and constant explosions started raging fires. In a few hours a great area of tropical forest was reduced to a waste resembling a World War I no-man’s land.
‘In the first few hours of the fighting our Ratels, with 90 mm guns, were taking on T-54 and T-55 tanks, with much more powerful 100 mm guns and thicker armour, at ranges sometimes of only 10 to 15 m. We were outgunned, and so we had to rely on the Ratel’s greater manoeuvrability and our men’s better training and greater skills.
‘In those conditions the only moment you saw an enemy tank was when it fired. It was the same for them with the Ratels. So gunners were firing at each other’s flashes. We used four Ratels at a time to eliminate one tank. We would manoeuvre the Ratels into a half moon around the tank and then rake its estimated position with searching fire. It then had to veer around looking for the different sources of the gunfire: it was like a rhino trying to butt off and stamp on a molesting pride of young lions. We would dodge back into cover and then pop out again for another bite. It usually took at least four to five rounds of 90 mm fire from each Ratel before a shell found the vulnerable area of the tank at the front just below the turret. Shells which hit other parts of the tank just clanged off the armour.
‘Each time I was overcome by fear I felt like it was my turn to die. It was a physical feeling spreading up from your feet as though someone has grabbed you and squeezed you. Then you realise: “I’m not gone.” In the end you just learn to accept this hairy feeling. You recover, and then it comes again. For the first time, I realised the devastating feelings that must grip a Ratel gunner sitting behind his 90 mm gun.
‘But during that spasm of terror you completely lose five or six pieces of information coming in. I had to receive, process and analyse four different types of new intelligence every minute. My radio team in the EW vehicle was listening to and transcoding all the enemy frequencies and passing on the information to me. All the time I was having to evaluate rapidly these little fragments of enemy chatter.
‘Heat of battle conversations are muddled and ambiguous. You couldn’t be sure whether it was a tank or a piece of heavy artillery that a commander was ordering to switch its fire towards a target on its right. As I analysed all this stuff I had to pass on vital information quickly over our radio nets to Bok Smit and to my Ratel commander, driver and gunner. At the same time I had to monitor conversations going on between scores of Ratels. Then there was Pierre Franken sitting on his hill and giving a constant supply of information on his radio net.
‘You sit in the vehicle concentrating on all the information, with all the enemy tactics and doctrine in mind learnt from the past, processing new information in seconds to decide whether it’s true and evaluate what it means. All the time I was playing with my pre-battle sketches, amending them, drawing in a new position and building up new pictures.
‘At one time I had such vital but complex information for Bok Smit that I had to leap out of my Ratel and run through our infantry, with metal flying around all over the place, to his vehicle. Looking back, I don’t know how I did it. I’m not so courageous that I could make a cool, detached decision to do something like that.
‘Every time we withdrew I went to Bok Smit to give him a more considered, in-depth briefing. I was his battlefield brain. I had to think like the enemy commander and play his role, telling the Commandant what I would be considering doing next if I was his opposite number. On my analysis, he made his new battle decisions. If I gave him nonsense, it could kill a lot of our men.
‘Later I couldn’t believe how much work I’d done. I had scribbled 20 folio pages of tight-packed notes during the whole battle. Even though we’d had no sleep for all those hours, my adrenalin was still pumping long after we’d withdrawn from the battle area. However, my Air Force assistant was so shattered from lack of sleep that he nodded off at the height of the fighting with an inferno raging all round. I had to hit him hard across his chest to wake him up; I couldn’t rouse him any other way.
‘The critical moment in the day came at about 2 pm. 47 Brigade’s tactical group had tried, not too confidently, to envelop us from the flank with a tank attack. But as they made their effort the brigade’s northern-most battalion [47 Brigade comprised three battalions] suddenly broke across the anhara towards the river in a totally undisciplined way after our Mirage F-1AZs had bombarded 59 Brigade, to reduce its artillery pressure on us, and UNITA’s 3rd Regular Battalion had made a flanking attack on 47 Brigade from the southwest. Pierre Franken brought down MRL fire on the enemy infantry now exposed on the open grassland and wiped out nearly all of them. Soon afterwards another battalion broke and ran. Some of our Ratels moved among them, and I reckon that by the end of the day about 600 soldiers from 47 Brigade had been killed out on that grassland.
‘At one stage there were more than 100 enemy vehicles strung out across the anhara on the wooden road trying to get to the river. Pierre Franken was picking them off one by one with the G-5s. I was liaising with him. I’d process raw material picked up by my EW men, and after a while I was able to work out which type of vehicles were out on the anhara and in what sort of order. So we could select priority targets. By the end of the day Pierre was able to hit a single tank which was on the move with only two or three G-5 bombs. If the gunners fired to the left of the target, he would report back to them and they would make a correction to the right. If that fell slightly too far to the right, the next correction ensured that the third one did not miss. It fell right on top of the tank.
‘The third enemy battalion stayed with Commander Silva at his HQ inside the southern bushline together with the tactical group. They fought with much more grit and tenacity than we had expected. They had more tanks and BMP-1s with them than we had picked up from our intelligence work. [The Soviet BMP-1 is an armoured infantry combat vehicle mounted with a 73 mm gun and Sagger wire-guided anti-tank missiles.] We hadn’t expected the three T-55s of 59 Brigade either which came to the north side of the Lomba to join the battle.
‘Just after 4 pm the tanks from 47 Brigade’s tactical group moved out on to the anhara to try to recover some of the vehicles abandoned by the 47 infantrymen who had tried to flee. They got hit heavily then. Commander Silva went off the air and we tried to drive the remnants of the third battalion onto the grassland where the MRLs could take them out.
‘By just after 5 pm all of the tanks on the south side had been shot out, except for one last one which managed to carry on firing till 6 pm when we finally destroyed it. There were 127 enemy vehicles left between the treeline and the river – either bombed or abandoned. Their artillery stopped and it was quiet for the first time that day. They brought up another platoon of three T-55 tanks from 59 Brigade which started firing again from the north bank. But by then we had withdrawn out of range. At 6.20 pm they too fell silent, and it was all over for that day.
‘I felt very proud. The sheer volume of the sophisticated Soviet weaponry committed to the push from Cuito Cuanavale had shocked us South Africans as it dawned on us what we would have to confront. It was by far the biggest offensive by any side in 12 years of Angolan warfare. But we had taken them on, and we had won ... and I had come out of it alive!’
‘We moved up that morning and by first light we were in the position from which we planned to launch the attack. Commandant Smit ordered the Ratel commanders to take up the pre-arranged combat formation. The advance fighting force was a squadron of 12 Ratel-90s, and in support just behind was a mixed squadron of Ratel-90s and Ratel-20s carrying a company [120 men] of infantrymen. Just to the north of our main force was a platoon of three Ratel-20s carrying infantrymen and the Ratel-ZT3 anti-tank platoon. A Ratel-81 mortar platoon was deployed inside the formation to keep leap-frogging forward to provide close artillery support. In reserve were another 20 or so Ratels [of Combat Group Charlie] under Major Dawid Lotter.
Lomba battle 3 October 1987.
‘We moved forward in combat formation behind UNITA’s 3rd Battalion, which made contact with the enemy at about 10 am. They broke off and Pierre Franken brought down the full range of our artillery – G-5s, 120 mm mortars and MRLs – on their positions.
‘We were pushing cautiously through what seemed like virgin bush that had never known the intrusion of man when, suddenly and with total surprise, the fight just erupted with great violence. Within minutes of engaging 47 Brigade we got the first report of one of the enemy tanks being knocked out.
‘That and what followed was the most awesome and exhausting ordeal I’ve ever experienced. Indirect fire was raining in all around from the enemy artillery. Bushes were burning, trees were falling, and there was a constant pinging and resonating ringing as bullets and bits of shrapnel ricocheted from the Ratels.
‘The luck was with us that day. I remember one Ratel had its tyres shot out, and a Withings recovery truck [an armoured vehicle with winching equipment] came up from the rear to tow it back to be refitted. The guys in the Withings drew up near the Ratel and jumped out to adjust the towing chains. They’d just got back into the Withings when an enemy mortar bomb exploded between the two vehicles. If they’d still been on the outside they’d all have been killed.
‘I don’t know how many times the enemy Migs attacked us that day, but the number of raids seemed to be enormous and went on right through the day. Colonel Ferreira told us later that there had been between 40 and 60 enemy aircraft sorties.
‘They were coming in at 60 m, so low that you could see the pilot in the cockpit. We couldn’t fire at them because we were so busy with the firefight on the ground. We had hoped they wouldn’t try airstrikes against us since we were in close contact with their troops and they could just as easily hit their own forces as us. But even though they were dropping bombs and firing cannon from such low heights they didn’t do any serious damage. Our lives were extraordinarily charmed. I personally think it was the Hand of the Lord that was over us there. It can’t have been anything else because I can’t think that the Fapla and Cuban pilots were so bad that they couldn’t hit us accurately.
‘We first broke combat after about two hours. We needed to put more gas in the recoil systems of the guns of the Ratel-90s and to replenish ready-to-use ammunition. Pierre Franken brought G-5 fire on the enemy and the Faplas didn’t disturb us while we were catching our breath. We withdrew no more than 300 m, but I was able to get out of my Ratel and squat down and make a cup of coffee right next to it. Soldiers were walking around between the Ratels; guys were standing on top of them hauling up freshly unpacked ammunition and repacking it in the bomb carriers.
‘By 1.15 pm everybody had reported “combat ready” to Commandant Smit, and back we went. We made contact again with the enemy after only 150 m.
‘By the time of our midday withdrawal we had already knocked out four to six tanks. They were confirmed hits. We could see them burning. There were others which were hit and burning out which continued moving until they were out of sight in the bush.
‘Now we made contact with the tanks again. They manoeuvred on to the Ratels and again there was direct and indirect fire bursting all over the place all the time. I don’t think they often knew where we were even though the field of vision had been opened up by the destruction of the morning’s fighting. The Ratels would stand and fire and then scuttle off into some clump of bush before reappearing elsewhere for another shot. They changed positions all the time, emerging again and again to fire another round.
‘Right through the day the guys in the EW vehicle gave us a stream of very good tactical information from what they were picking up from the enemy radios. It enabled us to move in on them and neutralise them before they began a new manoeuvre. It was incredible how cool, calm and collected the EW guys were. No matter how heavy the bombing and shelling or how many shards of metal clattered against the Ratels, they monitored every situation and summed it up for us.
‘At one very critical stage, when the enemy were starting to manoeuvre very aggressively, Commandant Smit asked the EW engineers to use our latest electronic equipment to jam the radio systems of the tanks. It was amazingly effective. They were driving around on the battleground, up and down, backwards and forwards. They didn’t really know where they were.
‘I remember hearing their tank commander – his call sign was “Cobra” and he was trying to call “Cobra Two”, “Lion”, “Python” and so on – failing to get anyone because of our jamming. His temper was exploding like a rocket because no one was answering him on the radio nets.
‘We took advantage of that to press home our attack very belligerently. The fighting ground had been cleared of so much vegetation that we were now firing at each other from ranges of 40 to 75 m. The Ratel-90 gunners really did a tremendous job. With luck they could KO a tank with one 90 mm round, but usually it took more like seven rounds before a tank started to burn.
‘I can’t tell you how much courage it takes in a Ratel driver and gunner when a tank is charging towards them to summon up the will to stop still for long enough to stabilise their firing platform and get their round off. [Unlike a T-54/55 tank, which has in-built stabilisers and can fire on the move, a Ratel, like other armoured cars, can only fire from a static position.] Of course, as soon as they’d fired, off they sprinted like turbo-charged hares.
‘One of our guys died that afternoon facing down a T-55 in his Ratel. A 100 mm shell from the tank skipped up from the sandy ground and went right through the turret. The Ratel commander, Lieutenant Hind, was terribly wounded and he died later. We had two others very seriously wounded that day, and another three with light wounds. The medics just pulled the shrapnel out of those who were slightly hurt, cleaned up the wounds, and they went straight back into combat.
‘All day 47 Brigade had been reporting on its radios to Cuito Cuanavale that their situation was bad. After our second attack they said the situation was critical and that the Boers had come in enormous strength. In fact, they outnumbered us in manpower by four to one.
‘We intercepted replies from Cuito Cuanavale of the Fapla HQ telling them that no matter what happened they must stay in their positions and confront the Boers. Intercepting messages like that gave us a lot of positive feelings and fighting ability to keep on going forward again and again.
‘We broke contact again at about 2.45 pm. The firing had been so intense that the Ratel-90s were at rock bottom on ammunition. The main attack force was beginning to develop a few mechanical problems also, especially with the recoil systems of the guns. Bok Smit wanted to reorganise, put the Ratel-ZT3s and some mechanised infantry into the front line and bring Dawid Lotter’s reserve force into combat.
‘No sooner had we moved back than we got a radio message from Pierre Franken that something strange was happening. As soon as we broke combat small groups of Fapla infantry began to cut and run from their positions in the treeline and sprint across the anhara in unorganised retreat to try to get to the river. Bok Smit ordered all Ratels which were combat fit and ready straight back into action.
‘When we reached the anhara they were really running wildly for the river. Many were without their equipment. Bok Smit ordered the Ratel-81 mortars into immediate action. The Ratel-81s sat in the southern treeline, giving the fire group commanders a clear view across the grassland and marsh of the enemy running. In those circumstances it wasn’t difficult to bring down highly effective high explosive and white phosphorus mortar bombs on them.
‘The high explosive shells scattered an arc of shrapnel on impact. Those soldiers who weren’t scythed down that way were burned by the phosphorus. They were fleeing full pelt in large numbers and all the time the mortars were slaying them.
‘Then more enemy vehicles and tanks moved out on to the anhara to try to get away. Our Ratels went in amongst them and there were fights all over the place. There were tanks scattered across the grassland burning. There were all kinds of vehicles. Some of them were abandoned. We were ordered not to get gun happy and shoot everything out because some of them would be wanted back in the Republic for our own research and development. Only if a vehicle was a threat did we neutralise it.
‘Dawid Lotter was rescuing Lieutenant Hind’s crippled Ratel inside the treeline when a tank sprang on him. It was shot out by Lieutenant Kooij [the same Kooij who had distinguished himself in the 13 September battle by destroying two tanks.] And, while we were mopping up in the last hour and a half before sunset, Kooij also shot out 47 Brigade’s last active vehicle.
‘It was sad. A ZSU-23 self-propelled anti-aircraft gun was rampaging around everywhere, taking many hits and fighting like a tiger until Kooij finally got it.
‘It was only when we examined it later that we realised the driver had been abandoned by the rest of the crew; he hadn’t been able to get out because the gun turret had been left swung round in such a position that it had jammed over his escape hatch. In all that frenzied driving he’d been trying to find a route to safety. He died under Kooij’s fire.
‘All across the anhara there were tanks and other vehicles burning. Some of the tanks got to the Lomba and tried to cross it. But as they approached the river they got stuck in the mud and deeper water. We could see the crews abandoning them before swimming and wading across. Then they wedged one tank on an armoured car in the river, and another tried to use it as a bridge to get across but fell off to the side when it was on top. We couldn’t approach too near the bridgehead because we were drawing fire from 59 Brigade’s T-55 tanks on the northern bank. Our Ratels’ 90 mm guns had an effective range of only 1,200 m, whereas we were confronted with guns on the T-55s with ranges of 2,000 to 2,500 m.
‘When there was no longer any effective enemy left to fight, we followed through for a quick inspection of the battlefield. There were tanks abandoned undamaged: their crews had just jumped out and run. There were mobile anti-aircraft missile systems standing there, BTR-60 armoured personnel carriers, BRDM-2 amphibious armoured cars, all kinds of Soviet trucks, including Gaz, Zil and Ural models, and Brazilian-manufactured Engesa trucks. Some in the treeline were just parked there undamaged under camouflage. Their crews, too, had just abandoned them and run.
‘We didn’t get a long look, because 61 Mech was ordered to move right out of the area that evening back to rear HQ in case big retaliatory air raids were launched the next day.’
★ ★ ★
‘On 3 October I was woken at about 6 am. 47 Brigade’s vehicles were just standing there in the anhara after their efforts of the previous day to get across the Lomba. At 7 am their motors started up and they moved back southwards to take up positions inside the treeline. I could see them clearly, and so I was in an excellent position to pinpoint enemy concentrations and guide 61 Mech towards them with good directions.
‘61 Mech made its first contact with the enemy, and the artillery observers moving at the front of the battalion asked me to take over direction of the fight. The observers were basically in line with the combat group itself so they could see little detail of where the enemy forces were. From our position on Mucobolo Hill I could see the whole battlefield spread out like a panorama; the action unfolded before me as though I was watching theatre-in-the-round from a seat at the top of the stalls.
‘I told 61 Mech’s observers that it was no problem. I would bring down the artillery fire but keep a path safe for 61 Mech if it marked the positions of its advancing lines with white or yellow smoke.
‘There was some confusion to begin with. Because Colonel Ferreira had brought forward the time of the attack by 48 hours, short cuts were taken as preparations were accelerated. Critically, for me, I hadn’t received details of 61 Mech’s fireplan, the targets they intended engaging. I needed to know so that I could plot the targets accurately for our artillery boys and help them adjust their fire, as well as bring bombardments down on the bridgehead to prevent an enemy escape across the Lomba.
‘As 61 Mech came in we had some misunderstandings. I was bringing down G-5 and MRL fire on the Fapla concentrations. But there were a few “in-flight prematures” as our MRL shells flew high over the heads of 61 Mech. Commandant Bok Smit told me in very colourful language that I was bringing down South African artillery fire on the SADF itself, not the enemy, and that he didn’t appreciate it.’ [An ‘in-flight premature’ is when a rocket explodes too early before it impacts on or near the target; with the MRLs about one in every 30 shells bursts prematurely, making a heavy noise and causing a lot of confusion.]
‘We eventually settled that problem, and then at last one of my assistants manning the radio got 61 Mech’s fireplan,’ said Franken. ‘He plotted it on my map, a huge thing which we’d prepared well. It was covered with fluorescent colour pen markings indicating all manner of positions and paths. It was the size of a double bed sheet, which made it a bit difficult to work with when you were perched at the top of a tree.
‘Fifteen of 61 Mech’s infantrymen, walking across the anhara as an advance contact group, came in on their radio net and told me it looked as though the enemy was preparing to move again out of the trees to the river. On that evidence, I suggested to Bok Smit that he should adjust his line of advance because 47 Brigade seemed to be preparing to abandon its positions. Then I saw one enemy truck move out of the treeline towards the river. As the fight went on, enemy soldiers in ones and twos started running out across the anhara towards the Lomba crossing. More and more of them began running until at one stage we counted some 350 Fapla infantrymen spread out across the open grassland in little knots trying to get to safety. Then a group of vehicles started coming out from their defensive positions among the trees. I began bringing artillery fire down on them, and the next moment they broke in all directions like confused ants.
‘A strange thing happened next. A big part of the Fapla force started moving towards our position, which was really puzzling because we hadn’t located any bridges west of the Lomba-Cuzizi confluence. The first two T-54 tanks leaving the chaos came right up to the river bank in front of us. The first tank drove into the river, which was narrow but deep and steep-sided, and jammed itself in it. The second tank then drove across the first. But the same thing happened as at the main bridgehead: the tank slipped off its brother and fell on its side to the left. The next vehicle was a PT-76 [light amphibious tank], and that also slipped off to the right side. After that they didn’t attempt more crossings there with vehicles.
‘At that stage the whole anhara was full of Fapla troops. I felt sorry for them. The MRL ripples were inflicting devastating casualties among them. While the MRLs hit the infantry, I was bringing down the G-5s on the vehicles.
‘Trucks began to reach the river. Some got to the “tank crossing” in front of us and the crews just left their vehicles and ran across the tank top or swam across the river. When they began crossing we sent out about ten UNITA people under Mac da Trinidada to mount early warning patrols for us. We were scared with so many of them coming towards us. We seemed to be directly in the line of their escape route, and we had no idea how many were fleeing to the west of the Lomba-Cuzizi confluence and how many to the east of it.
‘Mac and the UNITA guys brought back 15 Fapla prisoners. They were easy to capture, and Mac had to let others go because he couldn’t handle any more. Mac said they were exhausted. Some had no weapons with them or just one magazine of ammunition. As they came close, Mac and his men just stood up from the undergrowth and ordered them to surrender. None fought back. We gave them food and water. They begged for water: they said they had been too scared to stop long enough at the Lomba to drink.
‘Many of them were barefooted and some were very young. One sergeant was 16 years old! We gave him a tough interrogation; we asked him whether he wanted to go back to 47 Brigade or whether he would prefer that we shot him. He said the situation in 47 Brigade was very bad. He told us the Russians in the brigade had been getting on badly with Fapla and he complained that the Russians got special food. UNITA took eight of the prisoners away and I don’t know what happened to them. We tied up the other seven; Mac and his recces took them back across the river to our HQ the following day.
‘By now there were two main fire centres protecting 47 Brigade’s withdrawal. Three tanks from 59 Brigade established a kind of direct fire support base to help their people get across the Lomba. A few tanks and armoured cars from 47 Brigade hung back towards the southern treeline to cover the retreat of their buddies; 61 Mech concentrated its attacks towards the end of the day on destroying those vehicles, but Fapla fought with more tenacity and courage than anyone in the SADF had expected.
‘When there were very few Fapla troops left alive on the southern side of the river, three Angolan Mig-23s passed low over our position and bombed the abandoned vehicles to prevent them falling into SADF hands. Fortunately, we later found they had missed some of the juicier targets, including tanks abandoned near the river towards the end of the battle.
‘As the sun began to sink, there was only mopping up going on. So we concentrated on counting the different types of vehicles dispersed across the anhara. There were some big, strange machines out there which we couldn’t identify because by this time visibility was not so good in the setting sun...’
1 In an interview with the author, Pretoria, 30 July 1989.