The Omuthiya Special
Flying Hercules C-130 troop-transport ‘flossies’ into Grootfontein AFB in mid-December ’86 was as far from first class transport as is possible to get in an aircraft. There was ample leg-room for stretching out but this was only because we were sitting on the floor; there were no seats, carpets or complimentary canapés, and definitely no glamorous stewardesses.
The full length of the C130 fuselage was divided in half by a webbing contraption that wouldn’t have looked out of place in an S&M dungeon.
Young soldaate (soldiers) carrying just their balsakke (literally means ‘ball-bag’) rammed full with everything they owned, filed into the dark aluminium tube and were ordered to pack shoulder to shoulder on the cold hard aluminium floor by the Load Master until finally the gloomy stripped-bare cabin was rammed chokka with fresh-faced boys, each on their own scary journey into the unknown.
As the large pneumatic tailgate clunked shut, the four idling engines spooled up to a deafening crescendo. I almost imagined an attractive stewardess saying, ‘Your seatbelts are fastened as follows … ’ In reality, a Load Master like Robin Mumford instructed us to clip onto floor harnesses and maintain an upright position during takeoff and landing.
The flight was uneventful, maybe a little cold but, as soon as Hercules dropped his tailgate things got hot, very fast! The cold cabin air was quickly replaced by what seemed like a blast furnace at one of the gold mines we’d seen on our drive into Johannesburg that morning.
Disembarking from the gloomy interior into blindingly harsh, bright sunlight and arid desert barrenness was literally breath-taking. This was my first trip to a real ‘full-fat’ desert, a world coloured fifty shades of brown.
A house-sized air traffic control structure and adjoining ‘arrivals hall’ about the size of a 40-foot shipping container was about all Grootfontein had to offer us intrepid teenagers.
To shield the AFB from long-range sniper and RPG attacks and to protect planes from accurate mortar fire, engineers had created a six-metre-high earthen embankment or berm around the entire complex, even larger embankments formed the ‘dumbbell’ shape in which aircraft could be loaded in relative safety.
After disembarking we received instructions to wait. Waiting for things to happen in the army was inevitable, what got the guys crabby was when we were made to hurry, and then wait. “ … if we’d taken our time we wouldn’t have waited so bloody long!”
Sheltering from the blistering sun in warm shadows outside the ‘arrivals hall’ we encountered even more shades of brown in the guise of the army-issue clothing and darkly tanned skin worn by weather-beaten ou manne (old men), so named because they’d started their National Service a year before us.
Their skin tanned darker than the most avid beach-bum. Clothing, hair, both bleached the lightest shade of brown, these fortunate guys were nearing completion of their tour and National Service. Their stories … their stories were designed to make us kak (shit) ourselves, stories of guys even dying!
As luck would have it, L/Cpl Peter Ashton a Tank Commander Ou-man and friend from School of Armour, was flying out on the same plane we’d arrived in on. Peter was klaaring out (discharging) having just completed a three month tour at 61 Mech. He sagely advised me that the year ahead would be pretty rustig (easy).
He also ‘tuned’ (told) me that because 61 Mech was a border base, and so far from South Africa, rules were much more relaxed and, more importantly, that he was aware of no major conflict during his tour notwithstanding the ever-present threat of small-cell, insurgent-type action unlikely to involve conventional armour like ours.
Ashton’s Squadron of Olifant tanks had briefly crossed the border into Angola with 61 Mech, travelling only a short distance (obviously denied by authorities) as a show of force but, it seemed, no significant threat had emerged and had stood down without getting close to christening their barrels in battle.
They were very fortunate there’d been no repeat in ’86 of the large mechanised offensive launched against the South Eastern corner of Angola in mid-’85 by opposition forces.
Reassuringly, he added, his boys had subsequently been tasked with mothballing the entire 14-strong Olifant herd based at 61 Mech, before low-loading them back to South Africa. Peter believed the Russians could no longer afford to bankroll Fidel Castro’s proxy war and that this considerably reduced the threat of heavily mechanised engagements.
Peter’s information was music to my ears! He went on to explain that a massive FAPLA mechanised offensive involving six hardened Brigades (approx. 12,000 soldiers and a lot of heavy weapons) had been launched from Luanda in ’85 during a failed attempt to oust the charismatic rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi. By now I’d heard USSR had generously equipped her ideological ally with one of the largest, most high-tech arsenals of military hardware anywhere in Africa with which to achieve their objectives.
Photo 5 Owamboland terrain. (Barry Taylor)
In desperation, UNITA, the lightly armoured and pitifully under-resourced Angolan opposition turned to South Africa for help.
Although it’s fair to say it wasn’t always so.
A decade earlier UNITA had been closely allied with SWAPO. During this period, relations between UNITA and SA authorities were pretty sour, and if UNITA was sheltering PLAN enemy combatants, they too became target.
As usual, world powers at the UN were largely impotent in their limp-wristed attempts to disrupt the heightened communist build-up in Southern Africa while at the same time seriously disapproving of South Africa’s efforts to protect her borders, the argument conflated with, and totally drowned out by, the rising tide of international opposition to Apartheid injustices – a completely different conflict to the Cold War debacle that had come to dominate the complexion of the Angolan Civil War.
It seems many observers preferred tying the two struggles together, perhaps it was expedient? While a third conflict, disrupting SWAPO from gaining control of SWA/Namibia, only served to exacerbate an already muddy diplomatic cesspool.
So in ’85 there were targeted air-strikes by the South African Air force, and then later, long-range artillery was introduced which was about as much as South Africa’s government would, or needed to, commit to Operation Alpha Centuri.
The dos Santos regime operation to destroy their political opponents militarily at its unofficial capital Jamba in south-east Angola, made fairly unfettered progress cross country, slowed only by hit-n-run ambushes launched by small bands of UNITA rebels and a few targeted SAAF air strikes, but by then the communist-backed Angolan government had acquired a very decent air force, and high tech anti-aircraft equipment superior in almost every way from our sanction-suppressed SADF/SAAF inventory and, more importantly, of our flea-bitten friends in UNITA with the one exception. The Stinger missile. But, in truth, a few American shoulder launched SAM’s were not going to stop a sizeable ground force, and without heavy armour UNITA was never going to halt the avalanche advancing toward Jamba.
To counter this threat, two mechanised ground force units (61 Mech & 32 Bn) were ordered to join the fray. They moved to engage enemy forces and provide a defensive cordon at the Lomba River, but effective artillery halted the tankled offensive about 50km short of the rebel stronghold. Before ground troops got embroiled in direct action, torrential tropical rain, typical in November and December, turned bone-dry desert into muddy alluvial plain, almost overnight. Armoured vehicles and tanks got bogged down in the mud and were either abandoned or, if not recovered, destroyed.
The treacherous terrain signalled an end to immediate hostilities but not before significant casualties were taken on both sides. Some reports claim a casualty rate 15 times greater on the FAPLA side, so maybe that’s a victory in itself?
FAPLA returned to a garrison town called Cuito Cuanevale some 300 clicks shy of their ultimate objective at Jamba while SADF dragged itself out of the mud, hoping they’d suitably demonstrated their resolve, and capability, to support UNITA to help keep the Communist threat at bay.
My mate at Grootfontein AFB, Peter Ashton, said FAPLA hadn’t gone on to launch any major offensive in his time at 61 Mech (’86) and there was very little reason to expect them back in ’87. Obviously, this was an incorrect and illinformed assumption, but who knew?
Olifant crew enjoy reminding 90mm crew our weapon isn’t rated for MBT busting; it had neither the range nor destructive capacity of the Olifant 105mm gun.
During earlier combat operations, in the long-running conflict against PLAN insurgents and operational bases, typically against more lightly armoured targets, the Eland 90 had proven itself extremely effective, despite the archaic Panhard platform. However, a whole new level of commitment by Soviet backers in the late seventies to mid-eighties had seen an injection of an estimated 500 Russian main battle tanks into that other conflict, the one that wasn’t directly a South African problem but that had the potential to alter the entire geo-political balance in the region – the Angolan Civil War.
This had been a massive game-changer for forces on the ground.
If, or when, these MBTs were deployed against UNITA, the light Infantry resistance movement would crumble, unable to hold back the tide of tracked steel – even the mighty SADF would be hard-pressed to resist such a tsunami of Tanks – more than 500 tanks on one side, 75 on the other, those were very unfavourable statistics.
Despite this bad news, the commanders still assured us the 90mm cannon would never be deployed against Russian MBT’s without the impressive Olifant on our shoulder.
Some observers reasoned the 90mm cannon couldn’t confidently be committed against Russian MBTs because the 90mm weapon was incapable of penetrating the thick steel hull of a 40-ton T54/55, whereas the SADF Olifant MBT, they said, with its stabilised laser rangefinder, 105mm cannon, exotic array of munitions, like the HESH and SCARAB rounds, was a one-hit-wonder in battle. Any weapon system that uses the term ‘depleted uranium’ in its arsenal should be feared, and the Olifant was no exception!
Now, at 61 Mech, our 90mm turret no longer rode atop the Eland armoured car platform as it had done in training, here it had been dropped into a Ratel IFV, a 6-wheel medium-skinned vehicle favoured by border-strike units due to its mobility and lightning attack capabilities in the sandy, bush veldt entangled terrain.
Weighing-in just shy of 20 tons, the Ratel was significantly scrawnier and much less thickly plated than the 55-ton Elephant. On this basis alone, we were assured, 61 Mech’s Ratel wouldn’t be ordered toe-to-toe against Russian MBTs, and that was fine by me.
Reflecting on Ashton’s valuable insight about 61 Mech’s Olifant Squadron being mothballed and sent back to SA, I wrongly figured the hazards in Northern SWA/Namibia wouldn’t be as fearsome as some had warned, and this ‘punishment posting’, as I saw it, probably wasn’t going to be as bad as first thought, “ … so screw you Major, or whoever it was who decided to send me here, I can learn to handle a bit of subtropical desert heat, and if that’s the worst you can throw at me … ”
Many of my favourite childhood memories were of those holidays to Uncle John and Aunty Linda Hartzenberg’s sheep farm, surviving the semi-desert scrublands of the Klein Karoo (Small Karoo) where the mercury regularly pushed 45 Celsius. In the shade!
I could handle heat.
Farm life was idyllic, mostly outdoors all the time, working herds of sheep or goats, foaling new horses, tending to extremely nervous baby ostriches, learning to ride horses, tractors and motorbikes, swimming in irrigation dams dotted around his 4000 hectare birthright, or working the Lucerne fields alongside half a dozen farmhands, all of them black dudes, like the gentle giant I knew only as Hopley, and a 19-year-old boy called Akadis (Lizard – that genuinely was his given name), a guy who made a lasting impression on me because he’d only now managed to complete his second year of formal schooling. After so many failures the guy had finally decided to forgo formal schooling and become a full-time farm labourer.
Grand View, as the farm was known due to the spectacular mountain that marked her rear boundary line, was my first opportunity to spend quality time with black Africans. We’d never had a full-time maid or gardener growing up and had no other opportunity for interaction up close. The farm labourer families lived in very small houses by comparison to the farmhouse but to me they seemed happy with their simple way of life, husbands toiling on the farm, wives often employed in tasks associated with the farmstead and the kids seemingly so carefree. They went to school like I did, albeit their commute was a tad further, and they were all getting formal education, except for Akadis, but they say there’s nothing quite like experience, with those qualifications he might even be eligible to run for president of the country someday.
I disliked hunting Springbok but thankfully that only happened twice while I was there, and happily, on both occasions I missed the target. Never really comfortable with killing a living creature I got a rude awakening the first time they slaughtered a sheep on ‘the altar’ behind the main shed, I sobbed to my Ma that it wasn’t fair!
Despite that, my sisters and I relished the unique taste of “eat all you like” quantities of fynbos scrub-fed mutton. At home Mom always monitored meat consumption quite closely, for cost and health benefits. Such a heavy vleis (meat) meal would have been most unwelcomed on a day such as the one we landed at Grootfontein AFB that first time.
I tried to maintain a cool hard exterior, as if to proclaim ‘ … this is no big deal’ and ‘ … I do this kind of shit all the time’, all the while attempting not to look like a deer in headlights or expose even the slightest sign of weakness which invariably would be exploited by the new Troopers of Charlie Squadron.
Perhaps, I should’ve been less concerned with acting cool, and more appropriately scared shitless, but how could we know that when we lined up at Grootfontein for the final time, 12 months later, our Squad would be decimated, most survivors deeply scarred – some for life.
We were all destined to be casualties of war; we just didn’t know it yet.
61 Mechanised Battalion Group’s base at Omuthiya was a utilitarian and isolated border outpost, mostly comprising a small tent-town, a handful of semipermanent corrugated metal structures and a swimming pool, all of it built by troops and engineers in the years since Battle Group Juliet, established in the late ‘70’s, pulled a number of corps together under a single chain of command. This doctrine had proven extremely successful in countering the burgeoning heavy metal threat from the north (I don’t mean the music genre, I’m talking about proper heavy metal in the form of BTR’s, BDRM’s and T55’s).
Photo 6 Permanent border base like Eenhana and Rundu. (Barry Taylor)
In 1979, the Chief of Defence awarded permanency to Juliet, formally rebranding her as the 61st Battalion – a mechanised fast-attack unit.
The most remarkable features on base at Omuthiya were; firstly, a large swimming pool (which was quite a surprise – never saw that on the tourist brochure) dug into the sandy bush-clad Owamboland soil by those who’d come before (respect to them). Secondly, and equally astonishingly, the base boasted an officers and NCOs’ bar, a totally incongruous log-cabin style thing that would not have looked out of place nestled at the foot of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps or Aspen, Colorado. What a fucking luck! Things were looking up already, our own bar where we could feel a little bit important, even though it was right at the foot of the importance food-chain in that place.
Everything else was straight out of the Army handbook on requirements for a remote border outpost although this base wasn’t actually close enough to the Kaplyn (cut-line or border) to warrant watch towers on the perimeter or heavily sandbagged accommodations on offer like at Rundu.
We finally departed Grootfontein for the two hour drive to Omuthiya, the dust storm tracking Troop transports was still chasing us up the dirt road leading to base as Major Pine Pienaar, a cuddly softly spoken man, called us to attention on the parade ground and introduced himself as Charlie Squadron’s commanding officer. Major Pienaar seemed far too nice a guy for the task of overseeing and leading the eclectic bunch of miscreants we’d collected from Zeerust, he seemed more the cultured pacifist type rather than some kind of war-damaged tyrant sometimes encountered.
The base was abuzz with new arrivals from different corps, from Armour to Artillery, Infantry to Signals and the Tiffies (Mechanics) to Ops Medics.
Troop accommodation areas looked like something out of a Somalian refugee camp but with neater, smaller rows of tents sprouting from the dusty earth. Lines of planted trees offered precious islands of shade while neat paths of white aggregate outlined groups of tents assigned to each sub-section of the battle group.
Charlie Squadron was billeted in eight tents near the parade ground. Others, like Alpha and Bravo Company, Golf and Foxtrot Batteries, were similarly configured in larger tent-sections nearby. Five sturdy metal-framed beds were provided in each tent. We were then directed to the Quartermaster who dispensed a mountain of army-issue mattresses and strongboxes. This time only a tidal wave rather than the typical tsunami of paperwork that accompanied moments such as these.
After settling the troops into their allotment, the Lootys and NCO’s were shown to their accommodations which were said to be far better than those of the troops. Finally, it seemed, that the year of hard slog on JLs was beginning to pay dividends.
Cue disappointment.
Ours was a standard-size tent, identical to those provided to our troops, but on the upside, we’d only be three guys, and ours also included a complimentary steel cupboard for hanging stuff in.
Army protocol dictated NCO and CO be separated for fear of cross-contamination, so Cpl Roussouw and Cpl Venter became my new best friends, while 2nd Lt’s Hind, Bremer and O’Connor shacked-up some distance away, out of earshot.
Charlie Squad Looty’s undoubtedly got preferential treatment, star-on-shoulder-we’re-so-much-more-important-than-you-pielle were even invited to the Major’s house in Tsumeb for an occasional braai!
Somehow Bremer managed to wangle his private car up to Omuthiya, so instead of coming to Zeerust to collect new troops for the flight to Grootfontein, he got permission to skip all that and simply drive the 2,000 clicks to base so that he would have his own wheels, which at some point cost him a bit when he replaced his windscreen with a 300kg cow that just happened to be crossing the single lane highway from town to base on yet another late night jaunt!
Fuck, that AWOL shit was costing me!
After the grand tour of our 50-shades-of-brown, sand-swept base, the new JL’s were invited to a traditional ‘swearing-in ceremony’ at ‘The Omuthiya’ – the log- cabin style kroeg (bar) north side of camp, and thankfully, not too far from my tent.
Since our arrival at Grootfontein, we’d heard rumour about this unofficial nasty rite of passage involving the army’s lubricant of choice, alcohol.
Like most 18 year olds, I’d encountered some of the pro’s and con’s of alcohol and had some experience of getting ‘comfortably numb’ after three or four bottles of beer, or of overdoing it, like the time my Bunny Chow (half-loaf bread hollowed and filled with very hot ‘ring-sting’ enducing curry) got forcibly evacuated from my gut into the gutter. Fortunately on that occasion my mate Peter Baker stopped the car just in time to get the passenger door open, but any experience I’d had with alcohol up to this point was no preparation whatsoever for the ‘Omuthiya Special’, a concoction so toxic it had to be mixed in the steel army-issue ‘fire-bucket’, a mug used on-base for all drinks, hot or cold. The 600ml steel outer cladding fit snugly over the durable plastic water-bottle, and was most useful in the field when used for heating drinks over a fire or esbit (10 minute firelighter tabs supplied in ration packs), I’ll deal with that culinary delight later.
The Omuthiya barman, a two-pip Loot named Wallis, filled six fire-buckets to the brim with a sickly mix of spirits. Then, next to each he placed a 340ml can of warm beer, and ordered us to drink.
To complete the swearing-in ceremony, each initiate had ten seconds to empty his fire-bucket which was to be chased by the can of warm Castle Lager, also in ten seconds.
As we stepped up to the bar to begin our initiation, I observed a fetid cauldronlike bubbling occurring on the curdling, surface scum that topped the Omuthiya Special.
“ … Ready, and go!”
There was no time to think. I grabbed my bucket, put it to my mouth instantly gagging at the foulness washing down my throat which was simultaneously overwhelming all of my olfactory receptors.
Desperately keen not to be shown up in front of senior staff who’d gathered to welcome us aboard, I tried to over-ride my buds and receptors so as not to taste or smell the disgusting stew; ‘ … nine … ten’ and it was gone though I still had to work hard to suppress my internal protection system’s powerful urge to heave the gloopy muck right back up over the varnished bar counter.
The beer, despite being warm as cat’s piss, was like a sweet nectar after the toxic toilet cleaner alcoholic froth that preceded it.
I did it! I held it down and passed the ‘test’. Tradition require that we sign ‘the book’, and once the urge to puke subsided I felt OK but someone sensibly suggested we surreptitiously sneak off to evacuate the poison before it had time to fully absorb through the lining of our empty stomachs. We intended doing just that, just as soon as we could make good our escape, but as we were leaving our Squadron Sergeant pulled the three Corporals into a huddle and began delivering a drunken and rambling welcome speech about the need to, “ … work together as a team, be reliable, tough and … ”
“OH MY GOD!!” THUMP, THUMP, THUMP!
The most painful pounding was threatening to shatter my skull like an unpinned fragmentation grenade.
Totally disoriented, I forced my eyelids open into cataract inducing bright sunlight, and it was some time before I could establish my whereabouts in the unfamiliar setting, eventually realising this was Omuthiya, not some bad dream but a blinding painful reality.
It was almost 10:00, the desert sun had long since turned our tent into a sauna. My bedding and clothing were covered in spew, even my spare uniform, the one hanging INSIDE the metal cupboard, had not escaped the ‘big fountain’, it somehow also got covered in sick!
The last thing I remembered was Sergeant’s rambling pep talk, but knew nothing at all of the intervening twelve hours.
Rossouw and Venter appeared to be just as sick as me, it seemed far worse than the food poisoning I’d suffered on the Golden Gate route march a couple months earlier.
We needed assistance, of a medical kind.
Major Pienaar was vehemently anti-alcohol and took an extremely dim view of his new NCOs’ condition so, after delivering a stinging rebuke, he granted us permission to visit sick-bay where a greenhorn medic proceeded to continue his training by practising needlework skills on our forearms. IV needles are not for the faint of heart and this new medic still needed a lot of practice. It came as some relief that on his fourth attempt he finally found a vein without piercing both walls that I could lay back just two hours after discovering my illness and allow the saline and pain-relief drip do their thing.
The Lootys had somehow managed to get away and offload the poison early on consequently suffering few ill side-effects, the only obvious downside, they had to handle the Squadron without us.
Rossouw later filled me in on some of the missing hours although, he admitted, there were also sizeable chunks of missing time in his memory. From what he knew we apparently stumbled down to Charlie Trooper’s tents and proceeded to give them a bit of grief but, before this drunkard exchange went on too long he said, “ … Fok Mannall, you were bad man! We thought you were gonna drown in your own puke, we had to get you outta there!”
There never was any good explanation why I opened the steel cupboard and puked on my spare uniform, it served no purpose other than add to my steaming laundry pile.
We survived the Omuthiya Special, just!
Introductions over, we were in, now fully-fledged members of an elite band of officers and non-commissioned officers of 61 Mech, albeit lime-green, like a month-old slice of mouldy bread.
Our cherished Pantser Corps black berets were replaced with Infantry green required at 61 Mech. That didn’t go down well at all! Nor too the R4 machine guns (standard Infantry issue) which replaced our shorter-barrelled R5’s.
The 40-man Squadron soon settled in to something approaching routine. Gone were early morning inspections and endless marching but in came endless fitness or combat readiness training and, despite our remote location, we were still required to maintain a tidy environment in and around base.
Much to their chagrin, Charlie Squad Troopers were expected to contribute to unit security while on base. These guys had also endured their fair share of inspection and punishment at 2SSB during first year, so they weren’t too keen on being messed around by us junior leaders. As far as some of them were concerned, their days of opfok and rondfok (getting fucked around) were meant to be a thing of the past.
Neighbouring Bravo Company, on the other hand, was all about ‘being the best’ their dictatorial Company commander apparently didn’t get the memo about border life being chilled. A veteran of previous cross-border conflict, this guy expected the highest standards from his boys. Jeez, those boys were frequently punished, frequently inspected, first on parade, and regarded by most as the best Company on base. Their Ops-Medic Andrew Hahn, a pacifist, had some insane stories about their boys’ post opfok heat exhaustion.
Charlie Squadron was comic by comparison with its cuddly Major, perma-absent Squad Sa’Majoor, a relatively weak junior leader team and poorly disciplined Troopers. Our guys were regularly caught out for lateness or some other transgression.
If a big cheese, like Regimental Sergeant Major Kemp AKA RSM ‘Snor’ (moustache – he sported a fearsome handlebar ’tache), was anywhere in range, even boys with the worst ‘fuck-you’ attitudes gained an injection of pace and houding (discipline) about them because Snor had one of those booming voices and a reputation that caused a sudden loosening sensation in the bladder region. Aside from the fearsome sound and demeanour of the man, if anyone attracted his attention for the wrong reason, he’d be quite willing to mete out a punishment that lasted all day. Unfortunately, Charlie Squad Corporals experienced Kemp’s wrath at first hand. Apparently we’d been disrespectful or something so, to remind us of our proper non-commissioned status close to the bottom of the strict military hierarchy, he took us on a sightseeing tour of the picturesque brown countryside.
“ … Bring tenminste twee waterbottles saam, elkeen van julle” (Bring at least two water bottles each).
That was all he said, so we knew it was going to be thirsty work as the three of us sat forlornly on the back of his Samil 50.
He didn’t need to take us far into the desolate wilderness if he intended doing unspeakable things with us, but we were still kicking up dust about 20 clicks from base when RSM finally pulled the lorry to an abrupt stop.
“Spring af julle drie (you three, jump down), aandag!” He called us to attention in his trademark blood-curdling style then proceeded to unleash a volcanic verbal tirade at us for our minor misdeed which may’ve been something to do with disrespecting Major Pienaar.
When the lava-flow finally abated he reached into his cab, grabbed a satchel and threw it at our feet.
“Here’s a bag of 1000ft signal-flares, you’ve got water, now walk back.”
With that, he hopped into the cab, whipped the truck through 180 degrees and sped along his tracks, the dust plume visible for miles as he returned to Omuthiya with its deliciously cool swimming pool.
We were actually quite elated, it seemed like a free day off from dealing with harregat (hard-arse) troops and, for a change, the Lootys could get off their arses and manage bullshit Trooper intransigence.
Despite the searing heat that day, we were quite fit enough and had by now almost fully acclimatised to desert life so the task ahead appeared not at all daunting. We carried no heavy gear and, for entertainment, the RSM had given us a bag of goodies to play with.
Perhaps the 1000ft flares were to be used in the event we got lost or injured, but no matter because some bright spark came up with an idea to start shooting flares horizontally, at trees and stuff, and then we saw a few head of cattle (disclaimer: I’m sure no cattle were injured in the making of our entertainment during that long walk through the desert.)
So, in the early days, Charlie Squadron might’ve been accused of being a little lacklustre on the parade ground with poor in-base discipline, but the boys heartily threw themselves into training on our fantastic new fighting platforms, the Ratel AFV (Armoured Fighting Vehicle). This vehicle was a godsend!
The Ratel AFV was a huge improvement on the 1950’s Noddy Car (Eland) that we’d originally trained on. I’d fully expected us to have to continue enduring the clunky outdated armoured midget, but these new turbo-charged Ratel’s came equipped with power-steering, hydraulic-assisted brakes, semi-automatic gearbox and ground breaking in-vehicle surround-sound system as standard.
The six-wheel 18-tonne straight six, 12-litre turbocharged beast was designed to carry up to 12 soldiers with a number of turret/interior variants including the point-five-oh command-and-control vehicle, an 81mm ‘soft-top’ mortar launch platform and, for direct combat, the 90mm and 20mm variants. The 20mm was a belt-fed rapid-fire weapon, like a buzz-saw that easily punctured light armour.
Charlie Squadron’s 36 combat crewmen manned 12 of the 90mm variant. Additional crewmen were assigned to our two command-and-control Ratels, while others were assigned ‘echelon’ and these were the lads who handled logistics: vehicles, water and fuel bunkers, ammo and supplies trucks, et al.
Our upgraded fighting vehicles represented a staggering change of fortune for combat crewmen who, up until now, had been shoe-horned like sardines into the cramped can-like confines of the Eland, AKA ‘turret-on-wheels’.
It took a little time for crews to learn to handle the larger, heavier fighting vehicle, especially for driver and crew commander who together were responsible for navigating the behemoths through challenging training ground conditions.
During our first large-scale training exercise out on Blou Baan (Blue Range), Bremer’s vehicle (31) got trapped in a deep trench just as Commandant Smit cruised past in his Battalion command vehicle (call-sign zero, or nine if the boss was aboard). Smit stopped, hailed Bremer and dealt out a very tasty verbal roasting.
To his credit, Bremer, who was never as intimidated by senior rank as the rest of us due to his father’s high military rank, stood his ground and politely informed Commandant that the Ratel was new to us all and we were still learning the limits of her capabilities. In fact, the kit was nearly brand new too, probably about a year old, maybe one previous owner, no obvious signs of combat damage, lovingly maintained!
Although the 90mm turret, dropped in at the front third of Ratel’s roof, was identical in every way to the cramped model we’d trained on, the larger more modern vehicle offered a plethora of added extras, many of which would only become apparent later on.
Armour boys had a lot of spare room in the rear cabin, space which would otherwise be filled with a Platoon of Infantrymen (hence the other name ‘Infantry Fighting Vehicle’), which was a significant bonus because they’d become our ‘home away from home’ for about six months in ’87.
One of the more remarkable advantages of that extra space in the back was during winter operations because there was, at a pinch, sufficient space for a three-man crew to stretch out in relative comfort on the vacant hard rubber benches in back, safe from sniper action, the massive engine also retained enough heat to keep the cabin warm, for a few hours at least.
Photo 8 Tyre exchange. The rare use of our Echelon’s crane removed backache hauling massive spare tyre onto Ratel roof from ground level. (Len M. Robberts)
Training took precedence over all else, we spent weeks on manoeuvres in the harsh terrain around Omuthiya, working with and integrating alongside Infantry fire-and-move protocols and Artillery cover fire units, striving to harmonise command-and-control to deliver seamless contact, in concert, as a unified strike force. Anti-Aircraft and Intel operators did stuff in the background but we didn’t have to take much note of a pretend enemy air attack.
Charlie’s armour boys loved it, wherever we went, we travelled easily in the Ratel, whereas Alpha and Bravo infantry boys had to ‘step out’, meaning they had to leave the comfort of the AFV in order to attack ‘enemy installations’ on foot, integrating alongside our vehicles. They were never pleased if we fired a round off without warning them of imminent muzzle blast.
Venter snapped his vehicle’s front axle while attempting to cross a trench at pace. I didn’t see it myself but, those who did found the sight of Venter being ejector-seated like a jack-in-the-box from the turret – quite comical. His forearm led his ungainly return to terra firma and broke! I’m sure the other crewmen on 31 Alpha must’ve used the Ratel’s airbag-less internal armoured accoutrements to assist braking their forward momentum so abruptly halted by the trench.
Photo 9 Bloubaan (Blue Range) training area north of Omuthiya, Ratel 90mm integrated with 20mm Alpha Company during attack exercise. (Len M. Robberts)
