Soldiers throughout the ages have engaged enemy forces in mortal combat on the field of battle, sometime in small, insurgency type actions, sometimes in much larger, more ‘organised’ battles.
Historians readily record details pertaining to most major conflicts, while the public at large are relatively well acquainted with facts relating to world wars or those regional conflicts relevant to them.
Each war, battle or skirmish is doubtless peppered with amazing accounts of survival, commitment and bravery by participants from all tiers of the military food-chain. The overwhelming majority of these exploits remain forever untold and similarly I had no reason to think my experience of war in Angola would ever be told. In fact, the historical account of Charlie Squadron’s contribution, specifically to the destruction of 47th Brigade, is sorely inadequate, recorded by people who, at best, were near, but not on the front line that day.
Like most veterans, exposing battle scars doesn’t come easily. As a young man in my 20’s and 30’s, I struggled to communicate my experiences and, truthfully, to even find an audience who took my story at face value. So I came to realise how difficult it is for a listener to comprehend a story about something so far outside any normal sphere of experience despite being so vivid, real and painful for the storyteller. It was easier to adopt the well worn phrase, ‘don’t mention the war’.
By the time I hit my 40s I’d pretty much let the story go, and might mention to a new friend that I was once in combat in a country called Angola and worse, had lost comrades in battle. “Where is Angola?” was usually the only question asked before the conversation moved on to more current affairs.
And then a number of things happened in 2011 that led to this publishing deal with Helion which has finally brought these words to your attention. It was a tumultuous year for my family to say the least.
Since the global financial downturn in 2008/09 I was struggling to find regular employment as a Civil Servant in London and, to be completely candid, I’m not a very good ‘yes man’, preferring to take the most expedient course to achieve results rather than constraining myself too much with burdensome red tape and ineptocracy.
In February 2011, Mom and Dad called me from their home in Durban with very disturbing news. Mom was experiencing some form of paralysis in her right foot. I had been away from home for more than 20 years and the folks never once called to alert me of their ailments so I immediately knew this was serious. Mom had just turned 68 but had the energy of a woman half her age and had been considering running her fifth Comrades’ Marathon, a gruelling 90km ultradistance run but still some 70km shorter than her longest marathon accomplishment, the gruelling ‘Washie 100’ – that’s 100 miles!
Mom endured a battery of tests and scans, each in turn eliminating from a list of very nasty ailments but, at the same time leaving fewer, more dreadful potential prognosis.
Within a month the truth was revealed: Motor Neurone Disease (MND), a condition for which there is neither cure, nor known cause.
People often cite genius Oxford physicist Stephen Hawking (The Theory of Everything) as the most famous sufferer of MND: “he’s lasted decades”, they say, but the harsh reality is that Stephen survives by mechanically assisted respiration and most MND sufferers have 2-to-5 years from first onset of the disease. Mom never wanted to be kept alive by mechanical means and got much less time than the average, although we believe the disease had been blocking her motor neurone activity for at least a year before a formal diagnosis was made at the end of March. This was a devastating shock to Mom, as it must be for anyone afflicted with a terminal illness, my Dad’s world came crashing in around him.
In April, I started hurting the credit cards, booked a snap vacation for the family (a seldom recognised benefit of flexible unemployment) and made preparations, including a sincere attempt to relocate back to South Africa, to enjoy time with my folks and provide support in my mother’s final years. Mom always said, “I sent my son to the army; he never came back … ”
In many ways this was true and I really wanted to reconnect with her while we still had time.
Before leaving for South Africa, my wife Andrea began researching the heck out of MND, while I tapped into my Civil Service contacts and procured a suitcase full of equipment and adaptations to assist Mom maintain her independence for as long as possible while the debilitating disease conspired to shut down neural pathways to her muscle fibres.
Explaining to Air France the need to transport a wheelchair, without incurring cost, was going to be tricky so, for expediency, I pretended to be temporarily mildly disabled while in the airport. My wife and kids family had to keep their supporting role going longer than intended when our A380 failed to arrive from New York (due to a minor accident) which meant a 12 hour delay and more time in the wheelchair getting pushed about by kids.
While gathering this equipment and information ahead of our trip home my friend Michael Sprosson, who’d also lost his mother to MND, told me a great regret of his was that he’d never kept a record during his mother’s five-year battle to the death. “Make sure you get some video footage and hey, why don’t you write a blog?” he suggested.
Michael’s words struck a chord. I rushed out, bought a state-of-the-art 3D video camera and resolved to get writing a blog – something I’d never done before. The last time I kept a diary was when forced to do so during a six-week holiday to Europe as a fifteen-year-old kid in 1983.
Writing reports for local government had always been a drudge but in writing the blog, I relished the opportunity to offload some of the daily dread and disease milestones during the four-weeks with my mother. I named the blog ‘A month with Mom’ and received warm, positive feedback on my style of writing. This was something of a surprise but I didn’t take much notice because these were friends or acquaintances and they were probably moved by the sheer emotion of my mother’s dramatic and dreadful decline toward death.
I won’t belabour the story of my mother’s illness. She passed away peacefully less than seven months later on 1 November, but the journey, her passage from this world, was more gruelling a battle than any I’d experienced in war, her final few weeks a living hell of biblical proportion.
My family were all deeply affected by the journey, none more so than my father, but during that time we had little choice but to dig in the trenches to provide whatever cover and relief possible from an invisible merciless enemy.
One morning in early October of that year, my wife and I made a disturbing discovery during a phone call with my folks. On learning that critical equipment Mom needed to assist her failing lungs was being held up by incompetence and red tape I booked the next available budget flight to SA and within hours was en route Heathrow via Cairo. Unfortunately Egypt was having problems of its own and cancelled the onward flight, causing a tense 24-hour delay. By the time I walked into my parents’ home, Mom was gasping for breath like a fish out of water and totally immobile with the exception of a weakened left hand.
With my sister Carol’s assistance, I returned to combat for the first time in a quarter century; it really felt that intense. Mom needed round-the-clock care and as soon as we got the machine to support her lungs (not mechanical respiration) she began to drown in her own phlegm because she had become too weak to expectorate (cough). I was constantly on alert, suction machine at the ready.
The ensuing combat-level exhaustion combined with adrenaline in a way that reminded me of the crazy days at war. Unfortunately I was also in the middle of a precious, time-limited work assignment and only able to take 10 days off before returning to complete the writing and presentation of some irrelevant report.
The reality on the ground was that without my constant vigilance, Mom would not get a satisfactory level of care and furthermore, she had understandably grown fearful of drowning, so I asked my wife Andrea to fly out and relieve me. Admirably, after just a 24-hour handover, she stepped into the combat zone armed only with courage and a crash course in MND intensive care.
I said tot-siens (goodbye) to Mom, fairly confident I’d be back before the very end because the whole family was scheduled to be in Durban just three-weeks later, on 11/11/11, for my folks’ 45th wedding anniversary.
It didn’t work out like that.
Two weeks later, following an urgent call from Andrea on 31 October, I once again jumped on the first plane heading to SA (this time a direct flight). As the Virgin flight touched down in Johannesburg, I switched on my mobile phone. Within seconds it rang, it was Andrea. She asked where I was and then said, “Say goodbye to your mom, she’s dying now …”
Sitting among strangers who were rushing to gather bags from overhead lockers in that unique traveller ritual where we rush to stand up as soon as the seatbelt light is extinguished before waiting minutes for the narrow aisle ahead to clear, I whispered my goodbyes …
Telling her over and over how much I loved her but unsure if Mom was even cognisant. I wanted her to hear me before she slipped away. Then, about minute later, Andrea came back on the line: “She’s gone Dave, I’m so sorry … ”
Admittedly, I was a bit of a mess going through passport control and when making a booking for the onward flight to Durban.
Selfishly I’d imagined she’d be able to stay long enough to say totsiens one more time.
Seven months and it was over.
In a way, I was thankful the dreadful ordeal ended sooner rather than later because incarceration in that disease-ravaged, broken body was a living hell from which Mom always knew that her untimely death would be the only respite.
Witnessing Mom’s immense bravery, courage and faith throughout her illness inspired me to revisit my own ordeal at war in 1987 and so I joined a number of social media sites for South African Army veterans where I encountered a number of former comrades, notably Jaco Swanevelder. Jaco warmly welcomed me back into the brotherhood of 61 Mechanised Battalion, the unit I proudly served during my second year of National Service and with whom I joined battle, deep in Angola.
I took some comfort reading other accounts of army training, experiences and days at war, having never previously read anything on the Angolan conflict. And then, I came across a photo that turned my blood cold. The image was of a guy standing in a bomb crater just in front of one of our bombed and burned-out Ratel 90 Armoured Personnel Carriers (APCs). The person who posted the photograph wanted to know if anyone had any background info. The scene, captured by Len Robberts a former comrade-in-arms, was exactly as I remembered it on that fateful day on 8 October 1987 when most of Charlie Squadron narrowly escaped death during an accurate aerial bombardment. Unfortunately, we didn’t all survive the bombing physically uninjured so the event itself is forever seared in my memory. Consequently, I was able to ‘open up’ and recount in fairly vivid detail the events leading up to the macabre scene depicted by the photograph.
My account of that incident stimulated a surprising amount of interest; people asked if I had any other stories, I did.
Social media groups are understandably sceptical of crazy, or extreme, war stories because it seems there are some guys willing to create stories of derring-do despite never having been in combat, but I had been, so I pushed on, confident that my truth would be backed up by Squad mates when they found their way to the social media.
Then I took the next step and published a few chapters online receiving 5,000 ‘hits’ in three weeks!
The last time I’d had more than 5,000 of anything was the severance pay I accepted when a former employer erroneously sacked me for trying to discipline a sleg (lazy) staffer. Now people were suggesting I ‘turn these essays into a book’. Someone offered the name of a British publisher with an interest in the Angolan ‘Bush’ War who, on the second time of asking, agreed to publish this story.
It’s staggering and surreal to have been afforded this opportunity and I’m deeply honoured to be able to tell my story; a rare privilege which I intend to respect throughout my account of Battle on the Lomba 1987.
That battle, and my involvement in it, didn’t happen in isolation therefore I’ve taken the liberty of telling most of what I recall about the journey that delivered me, and my comrades, to that historic moment, and, as much as I can remember of the dark weeks that followed when we chased a retreating enemy; a time when youthful exuberance was replaced by something different altogether, somewhat at odds with the experience of mainstream society.
Unfortunately, I never recorded my thoughts, feelings and emotions during National Service so the book focuses mostly on major events, actions and experiences, augmented by anecdotes from a few fellow soldiers. I name individual contributors throughout but primarily tell this story as I remember it.
I’m sure there’s much forgotten during the intervening years, and quite certain there are many individual stories or acts of valour, horror and humour not accounted for here.
The nature of warfare is such that in the heat of battle an individual soldier can’t know the detail of what each combatant is doing to stay alive, let alone the actions of other units. Equally, there are doubtless many amusing moments I’ve forgotten, and recollections of many physically demanding or emotionally painful days have long since paled in significance as the major memories of the intensity of war starved them of cranial air-time.
I hope this book helps readers to better understand war from a soldier’s perspective and that if he, or she, has lost a loved one to conflict, that my account helps them in some small way to deal with the psychological fallout.
David Robert Mannall, MMM
Take a community of Dutchmen of the type of those who defended themselves for fifty years against all the power of Spain at a time when Spain was the greatest power in the world. Intermix with them a strain of those inflexible French Huguenots, who gave up their name and left their country forever at the time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The product must obviously be one of the most rugged, virile, unconquerable races ever seen upon the face of the earth. Take these formidable people and train them for seven generations in constant warfare against savage men and ferocious beasts, in circumstances in which no weakling could survive; place them so that they acquire skill with weapons and in horsemanship, give them a country which is eminently suited to the tactics of the huntsman, the marksman and the rider. Then, finally, put a fine temper upon their military qualities by a dour fatalistic Old Testament religion and an ardent and consuming patriotism. Combine all these qualities and all these impulses in one individual and you have the modern Boer- the most formidable antagonist who ever crossed the path of Imperial Britain. Our military history has largely consisted in our conflicts with France, but Napoleon and all his veterans have never treated us as roughly as these bard-bitten farmers with their ancient theology and their inconveniently modern rifles. Look at the map of South Africa, and there, in the very centre of the British possessions, like the stone in a peach, lies the great stretch of the two republics, a mighty domain for so small a people. How came they there? Who are these Teutonic folk who have burrowed so deeply into Africa? It is a twice-told tale, and yet it must be told once again if this story is to have even the most superficial of introductions. No one can know or appreciate the Boer who does not know his past, for he is what his past has made him.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (author of Sherlock Holmes)