Commandant Robbie Hartslief, having taken over from Jan Hougaard, directed 32 Battalion’s marauders from late January 1988 onwards in regular attacks on Fapla supply convoys inching uncertainly along the 200-km road from Menongue to Cuito Cuanavale.
‘We had established that we could get our MRL teams within range of convoy concentration and rest bases at Cuatir, Luassinga and Longa,’ said Hartslief. ‘Between 1 and 28 February we hit convoys on 16 separate occasions with the MRLs and mortars. Each convoy contained between 150 and 250 vehicles, but sometimes there were more than 300. Three convoys were purely Cuban, each guarded by a battalion of infantry. We would attack just about every second day, firing about 10 MRL ripples – some 250 rockets in all. We scooted out from our bases at Gimbe and Bambi, hit them hard and then scampered back fast to safety. We co-ordinated with the SAAF who would hit the convoy just before or after us with four, six or sometimes eight Mirages. On one occasion the planes left sixty Fapla trucks burnt out along the road.’
Captain Herman Mulder, 32 Battalion’s intelligence chief, working with UNITA liaison officers at Hartslief ’s Gimbe HQ, 50 km south of the road, plotted the minute-by-minute movements of every Fapla convoy. His information sources were recces from 32 Battalion; 1 and 5 Reconnaissance Commando; UNITA Special Forces staked out along nearly the whole length of the road; artillery forward observers; and the mass of radio intercepts picked up by his EW warfare team in their specially equipped Ratels.
‘Within minutes, sometimes seconds, of a convoy setting off, I knew,’ said Mulder. ‘After another hour I knew its entire composition.’
Hartslief recalled the tedium of waiting through the hot, fly-infested days for night to fall and the action to begin. ‘We sat around in the Gimbe area in foxholes, under trees, under camouflage. We just slept or planned operations, watching Migs fly overhead on their way to Cuito Cuanavale. We couldn’t bombard the convoys every night. The big rockets and charge packs for the MRLs together weighed 60 kg each and we needed several trucks to push through the forest just carrying ammunition to the attack area. Each time it was a big effort, so we had to wait until we knew the enemy had concentrated.’
Satisfaction came when recces reported that for many kilometres along the road wrecked and burnt-out Fapla vehicles had been pushed off to the side. A correspondent for The Independent of London, who was taken by the MPLA to Cuito Cuanavale, reported seeing ‘more than 400 tanks, troop carriers and supply lorries pushed down the road from Menongue, weaving in and out of the charred remains of vehicles which bear testimony to relentless strafing runs by South African jets and UNITA attacks.’1
Among Hartslief ’s problems was his men’s inability to manoeuvre the MRLs within firing range – 21 km – of Cambambe, the first halt for the convoys some 30 km out of Menongue. It was also difficult for the SAAF to put in regular attacks at a point so close to the big Menongue airbase. The big dust clouds kicked up by the MRLs provided another headache for Hartslief. The powdery billows could be seen by the Migs constantly moving out of Menongue a short distance away. This ruled out their use by day, so Hartslief sent one troop of four MRLs back to Rundu to be replaced with a troop of smaller and more manoeuvrable 120 mm heavy mortars which when fired left only small, temporary dustclouds, making possible daylight forays.
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To coincide with the big attack by 4 SAI and 61 Mech against 59 Brigade on Sunday 14 Febuary 1988, Deon Ferreira urged that his old battalion, 32, be let off the leash to strike at the Menongue airbase. The idea, he told Colonel Pat McLoughlin, would be to prevent the Cuban and Angolan Mig-23 and Mig-21 squadrons from taking off and interfering with the SADF’s fight with 59 Brigade. McLoughlin agreed, and on 6 February Hartslief was instructed to prepare his men for perhaps the most daredevil mission of the entire War for Africa.
As soon as Hartslief received the order to attack he sent two 32 Battalion companies with UNITA recce teams ahead on foot, with only two navigation Buffels, to reconnoitre the area of the Cuma, a small stream about 20 km southeast of Menongue. It was from Cuma that he planned to launch the South African bombardment. (See map, chapter 27.) Hartslief followed the advance party with 65 vehicles, including 16 ten-tonne trucks carrying MRL and mortar ammunition, two-tonne ‘Jakkal’ trucks carrying the 120 mm mortars, the whole Ratel-90 anti-tank squadron, plus the command Ratel and other logistics and recovery vehicles.
‘We moved towards Cuma only at night without lights,’ said Hartslief. ‘It was wild country and it was raining, so there was no natural illumination whatsoever. We had a lead Ratel fitted with navigation equipment for night movement. The rest followed. It was all part of our training. We were blind, relying entirely on instruments. Every kilometre I stopped the procession to check that no one was missing. We managed to keep everyone together even though we were the size of a small brigade.
‘There were no bridges, so every time we crossed a river we had first to build fords with tree trunks and rocks. We often got stuck, but we had a very good small team of engineers with us who got us through. It took four days to infiltrate without detection into our attack positions, which I regarded as a major success in itself, especially as there were a number of small farms between the Cuma River and Menongue whose peasant owners were all MPLA supporters as far as we could tell.
‘The attack we had been asked to do was extremely risky because of the big size of our force. Quite apart from the farmers, enemy reconnaissance patrols were constantly in the area. Just ten kilometres across the Cuma River from our deployment area there were enemy tanks. Just to the west there were heavy enemy movements along the road south of Menongue to Caiundo.’
By the evening of Monday 13 February Hartslief ’s force was in position for the attack. Major Pierre Franken, of Lomba River repute, took command of the artillery barrage. ‘I had to rely on the MRLs,’ said Franken. ‘We couldn’t get near enough to bring the 120 mm mortars into play. We had the four MRLs ready by 10.30 pm and fired a ripple of 96 rockets into Menongue airbase. I was given the bearings by recces dug in just beyond the base perimeter.
‘We waited a short time to see whether anyone had located us. When there was no reaction, Commandant Hartslief ordered us to fire another ripple. It took time to reload. It is physically demanding to load MRLs with 60 kg shells and then the charge packs for firing. There were no stars or moon that night, so we were groping around almost sightless.
‘We fired the second 96-rocket ripple at 1.30 am and then moved away as fast as possible towards Gimbe. We didn’t halt until 6.30 am when the first light glimmered in the east. By 6.45 am the whole convoy was camouflaged, and just after 7 am the first two Mig-23s flew over us. We assumed they were from Lubango because we were confident we must have inflicted a fair amount of damage on Menongue.’
The 32 Battalion force, protected by heavy rain clouds from air attack, made it back in only two days to Gimbe, where Mulder, Hartslief and Franken began collating intelligence reports to assess the effectiveness of their assault on Menongue. Given the scale and sheer daring of the effort, their conclusions were dispiriting. Seven Cubans and 37 Angolan Air Force personnel were killed when their sleeping quarters at the side of the runway were hit and one Mig-21 was put out of action, but by midday of 14 February the base was functioning again and aircraft were taking off to attack 4 SAI and 61 Mech east of Cuito Cuanavale.
‘We fell far short of what we had hoped to achieve’, said Hartslief. ‘Our objective was to inflict so much damage to the airstrip that no aircraft would be able to take off on 14 February for the Chambinga High Ground battlefront. We just might have fulfilled our aims if we had got near enough to use the 120 mm mortars which fire shells which can penetrate a tarred airstrip. It was impossible with the MRLs and their high explosive and airburst shells: no penetration shells had been designed for that weapon at that time. What we really needed were the G-5s and their heavy 155 mm penetration shells.’
Throughout the rest of February Angolan Migs bombarded the Gimbe and Bambi areas three or four times a day. ‘They knew we were there somewhere, but they didn’t know exactly where.’ said Hartslief.
Captain Herman Mulder recalled one day when eight Migs came to hunt and destroy the men of 32 Battalion. ‘Two Mig-23s flew top cover while six Mig-21s in pairs flew lines from the southeast, south and southwest towards where they estimated our Gimbe base to be. They poured out streams of 30 mm cannon fire on each pass. Three successive times they came in, each pair from a different direction; it’s a very difficult manoeuvre, and no one does it unless they’re sure of the target. We were all deep in our foxholes. I was scared shitless. I thought we were going to be cut to pieces.’
In fact, no one was hurt. The 30 mm slugs only tore up and shredded bush between 32 Battalion’s camp and the UNITA camp, about a kilometre away. By the end of the month none of the well camouflaged South African vehicles had been hit and only one soldier had been wounded, a black mortarman who was burnt on the back from a white phosphorus bomb.
However, the relative failure of the Menongue attack meant the SAAF had to step up its bombing raids on the Angolan convoys. It was during one of these raids, on Friday 19 February, that disaster struck for the South African Air Force.
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On the morning of 19 February four Mirage-F1AZs prepared to take off from Grootfontein to hit a Fapla road convoy where it had concentrated at Cuatir, 40 km east of Menongue. Major Ed Every was flying the rear aircraft, and as usual a young operations clerk, who had adopted Every as his hero, was on the hard pan beyond the hangars watching the Major taxi towards the end of the runway. Ed Every was known as Never Ready because almost invariably he forgot something – his map, flight authorisation documents, or gloves – and the ops clerk would rush to fetch it like a Labrador puppy. On this day, Every forgot nothing and soon the formation was flashing across Angola at treetop level to wreak destruction on the Angolan convoy.
At Cuatir the first three Mirages ‘tossed’ their bombs into the midst of the convoy. They had soared up, twisted down and were on their way back home as Every flashed in to toss his bombs. An SADF recce team on the ground saw the bombs lob from under the Mirage’s bomb racks and then saw black smoke pour from the plane as it reached the top of its pitch-up to begin its twist down. The plane had clearly been hit by one of Fapla’s arsenal of anti-aircraft weapons. The recces, having watched the plane lose height and then disappear, radioed the information to Hartslief at Gimbe.
From Gimbe, Hartslief and his men saw a huge black pall of smoke fill the air where Every’s plane hit the ground some 15 to 20 km south of the road and just to the west of the Cuatir River.
‘In Every’s Mirage we knew there were a lot of maps, including details of 32 Battalion’s deployment,’ said Hartslief. ‘If the enemy got those maps it would be a turning point in our Menongue operation. By about 6 pm our recces had located the precise crash site and had detected a column of enemy vehicles, including tanks, going towards it. So they seemed certain to get the maps if they had not been burned.
‘We had been planning that night to follow up the Mirage attack on Cuatir with an MRL and mortar bombardment. But we cancelled that and decided to wait until the enemy were grouped around the aircraft and then bring the MRLs down on them.’
UNITA recces reported that they had seen a parachute stream from the stricken Mirage and that later a white man in a green pilot’s uniform had been spotted running through the forest. SADF recces had seen nothing similar and were pretty sure Ed Every was dead. They suspected the UNITA men were suffering from excessive use of their imaginations. Hartslief, also certain that Every was dead, was nevertheless ordered to patrol intensively in case the pilot was staggering around hurt and confused trying to survive and not knowing the difference between the combat uniforms of the Cubans, Fapla, UNITA or 32 Battalion.
After night fell the SADF recces reported that a whole battalion of Cubans were at the crash site. Their tanks and vehicles were parked and they were walking around with lamps and torches searching the wreckage and the surrounding bush. Pierre Franken manoeuvred his four MRLs into position and just when the recces reported that the Cuban concentration was particularly intense he let loose a ripple of 96 rockets right on top of Every’s destroyed Mirage.
‘Our recces reported that the enemy took away two truckloads of bodies.’ said Hartslief. ‘Military intelligence later reckoned 143 Cubans and Fapla had died. So we got our own back for Every.’
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Back at Grootfontein Captain Reg van Eeden sat, as he did every time a mission was flown, with other Air Force men waiting for the four Mirages to return. ‘We saw the formation come back,’ he said. ‘They flew straight in. We saw one, two, three, but there was no fourth. We shrugged and said it must have diverted. But then as they were taxiing back to the hard pan the radio reports began to filter in that one of the aircraft had been hit.
‘I’ll never forget the expression on the face of Ed’s little ops clerk. There were tears in his eyes. He had read the registration number on each of the three returned aircraft and knew the missing plane was Ed’s. For days after he went about saying: “Who am I going to run around after now?” That night we all got drunk in the pub and I was full of regret that I had never apologised to Ed for telling him to shut his mouth.’1
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Fapla pushed a whole infantry brigade with tanks and M-46 guns into the forest south of the Menongue-Cuito Cuanavale road after the Mirage incident in an attempt to flush out and destroy 32 Battalion. ‘We were sure they had located us,’ said Hartslief,’ and on 3 March Brigade HQ at Rundu said it was getting too hot for us to hang around there. So we started moving out in a series of fast night hops. On the way south we said a special farewell to Baixo Longa (on the Longa River), the MPLA’s most southerly outpost in the war area, where a battalion of Fapla infantry was based. We infiltrated 45 of the vehicles to within eight kilometres of the town and put in one 96-rocket ripple from the MRLs and 350 120 mm mortar bombs.’
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Although both Hougaard and Hartslief had enjoyed the sheer adventure and derring-do of the Menongue enterprise, they were bitterly disappointed that its possibilities had been exploited to only a limited extent because of considerations and intrigues at high command and political levels which they were unable to understand.
‘We were begging for orders to launch an attack on Cuito Cuanavale itself with a bigger force,’ said Hougaard. ‘With the limited force we had we couldn’t have kept hitting that Menongue-Cuito Cuanavale road indefinitely. We had lots of options available to us which we spelt out to higher commanders. We could have used bigger ground forces to hit their concentration areas along the road. We could have gone west of Menongue and hit convoys before they even reached that town, but the rules of engagement strictly forbade us to move men to the north or west of the town. We wanted to take the G-6s in, which would really have buggered the convoys. Their great mobility would have made it difficult for the enemy to capture one, but at that time the top brass was really afraid of that type of equipment being seized.’
Hartslief said there was deep frustration among battlefield officers that the great SADF war effort was not put into the Menongue area to attack Cuito Cuanavale from the west. He said: ‘All the combat group commandants wanted to launch an attack from the west as early as November 1987. Even in December we could have attacked the Menongue-Cuito Cuanavale road in strength and cut all their logistics. The war would have been over. The enemy couldn’t have stayed there [in Cuito Cuanavale].’
Herman Mulder said that even the limited force sent in west of Cuito Cuanavale was held back in the early stages of the operation by top generals. ‘We didn’t get the authority to do what we wanted.’ he said. ‘We were unable to use our element of surprise.’ One instruction, totally ignored by the recces, was that no SADF man was to approach the Menongue-Cuito Cuanavale road any closer than 1,000 m.
Hartslief said that by hesitating the generals lost the opportunity to inflict catastrophic damage on Fapla. ‘When we got into the area in December the enemy deployments were very weak at Longa, Luassinga and Cuatir. It was only after our bombardments in January that they started to strengthen those positions with ten tanks at Longa, ten in Luassinga and four at Cuatir. Our limited force couldn’t attack them so effectively any more.
‘I think we succeeded in slowing the logistics operation down. But that’s all. We could have destroyed it, but we weren’t given the means or the latitude to do so.’
1 Karl Meier, reporting from Cuito Cuanavale for The Independent (1 March 1988).
2 Despite MPLA claims to have shot down more than 40 warplanes during the War for Africa, in all my interviews with soldiers downward from commandant level to troopie I only gathered evidence of one Mirage, Every’s, being destroyed, plus one Bosbok and three unpiloted RPVs.