Charmaine took us to the airport; at that time in the morning Lanseria is dead quiet. We looked around and saw a couple of other chaps standing around looking confused. You can’t really waltz up to someone and ask where is the flight for the ‘gonnabe’ mercenaries, can you? Besides, although we had a good idea it was to Angola, we weren’t suppose to know where we where going anyway. We all stood around until some reasonably well-dressed guy came and asked us what we were looking for. That’s how we met the pilots from Capricorn Systems, a civilian courier service that flew us in and out. We gave in our passports and Trevor and I made acquaintance with our first real live Selous Scout, Bruce. He was in his late forties early fifties and rather outspoken. We eventually climbed aboard a Kingair, along with a Bullterrier that let off the most terrible farts for the next six hours. Apparently he belonged to RMS Reima at the training camp called Longa. Slept on and off and by the time we landed didn’t know if I wanted to piss or smoke more. Did both simultaneously.
First Impressions – Caba Ledo
After attending to the basics the first thing one noticed is the heat. We had flown along a coastline for the last hour or so, and knew that we were close to the sea. Obviously there was the runway, but saw not another plane in sight. We flew in at 32000ft which I believe is out of range for SAM7’s, and dived to ground level at an alarming rate of descent for that reason. The second thing I saw was that the bush was not as thick as I would have thought. A white soldier in cammos climbed on the wing to refuel the Kingair, which took off as soon as possible, again for obvious reasons. A 4x4 of unknown make and origin picked us up; a white soldier was driving. We drove the short distance to the airport buildings, mainly low single story affairs with just the fundamental windows and doors. All this was fenced in with diamond wire mesh. The buildings formed a square in the center of which was a bar, naturally. We reported to a room that served as an office and there the mandatory paperwork was done. Our passports were put in a safe, some of the chaps were highly unhappy about this. Then we went through the normal, for some people, shit with storemen to get kit. Don’t really like rear- echelon soldiers, with good reason. In the SADF we called them jam- stealers, this lot proved no different. What was really surprising was the lack of kit issued:
Boots 1 pair. Shirts 2 pairs. Trousers 2 pairs. Sheets 1 pair. Blanket 1 Mossie net 1 Underwear 3 pairs. Socks 2 pairs.
That’s not the bad part; this is what was worrying, no:
Mess equipment. Water bottle. Webbing Groundsheet. Spade. Worse - no assault rifle!! A White boy in an African country that is at war, in a soldier’s uniform with no weapon. Not good at all, safe camp or not. We spent most of the first day packing Kas’s (Army steel cupboards) and tents onto vehicles. It was a strange feeling wearing commie cammos in a strange land with a bunch of generally unfriendly guys. I learned later these ‘ou-manne’ had only been there a week or two longer than us. Assholes! My pay number was a hundred and fifty eight and more than half on the payroll were in Pretoria; this was early days for E.O. We had instructions not to drink the water out of the taps, anyway after my stint in the SADF I could not believe how dirty the showers and toilets were, and would not want to drink from those taps. Having been a civilian for the past 10 years had made me squeamish, which would soon be cured! We found a storeroom ourselves, with 5lt. Bottles of water with labels from Portugal, as I have mentioned, no one went out of their way to be helpful. The military being what it is everyone had to have an image, perhaps this is to fool yourself of how dangerous the situation really is. We got a decent chow at about 3 o’clock and a few beers. Up till then it was warm bottled water. We were lent plates and pikstels but the kak sleg storeman wanted them back. After chow we got on the vehicles on top of all the kit, the driver and his mate were armed with AK’s. We went sight seeing, and found a sign that said “Restaurante” and decided to go get something to drink. The restaurant was closed, it consisted of a small building that had quite a few bullet holes in the walls and some of the windows were bordered over. Glass windows were rare in Angola. There vegetation was sparse and that thick leafed type of plant you find along wind swept coasts. Just past the building was a huge sand stone cliff with the ocean crashing down below. It was like a scene from a movie. We had no time to get down to the beach. On the way back we saw small informal markets, at that time there were none of these at home, they look precisely the same as the ones you find in the New South Africa, terrible. Sticks held together with string or strips of plastic and roofs made of rusty pieces of tin. Raw chunks of meat hang from wire attached to the roof, alongside dried salted fish. I had never seen dried fish before, but the smell and the flies made the idea of eating it somewhat repulsive. The fish had been cleaned next to the stall and a few months worth of innards just lay there rotting in the sun. This was our first glimpse of how unhygienic this country was. Our delicate city noses could not take much of this and we did not linger very long. We had been told a vehicle would take us to the training camp late that afternoon, so headed back to the airbase. It turned out that is was the same vehicle we were on and the kit underneath us was actually for us.
Onto Longa.
The beginning of the drive was amazing, the feeling of riding to war, not knowing where or what to expect and the strange scenery all added to the feeling of surrealism. The road north is a single semi-tarred affair with trucks cannibalized where they have broken down. Out side of Caba Ledo is a huge base of special ops soldiers that have red berets with a baltjie of a leopard’s face. They looked exceptionally tough and mean; a mixture of blacks and coloreds but not a white face to be seen. Then there was another African market with plenty of dried fish and meat hanging in the hot sun; the smell of a fishing village’s market is unique in this world, thank goodness. Past the village the semi- desert vegetation is as strange as it is beautiful. The tallest cacti I have ever seen before or since grow along this coastal belt, interspersed with huge baobab trees. An almost alien landscape. The grass is sparse and in between is the sand I remembered well from my Border trips. So on we drove, at the time we did not know it, but we were to travel about 200km north towards Luanda, the capital. At one point we came to a bridge that had been blown up and the road was rebuilt into the then dry gully. That road would not survive the first rains. The first white people we saw were the road builders that seemed to be Portuguese descendents, right then my plan for escape and evasion, if necessary. A deaf-mute porra road workman should do nicely! It got dark very quickly and we didn’t see any other traffic, again for obvious reasons.
The first Angolan roadblock we saw was a joke, a couple of policemen with machine guns, but they were all sleeping! Later we learned that the police and army were mortal enemies and I mean that literally. The police, not the army, guard all the bridges for reasons unknown. The next roadblock was our new home. Those guys were at least awake. As mentioned it was now pitch black and as we went over the skitwal , it was like a flashback to Okankolo camp on the Boarder in the eighties. The same hum of a generator, the dully-lighted tents that looked the same as SADF tents in the dark. That was the first meeting with RSM Reinders. A typical S’major, I think they have a stamp\mould with moustache and all, and just mass-produce these guys. He was extremely happy to see his dog; unfortunately his dog was a racist and kept biting the Black soldiers. A couple of months later some FAA troops got sick of it and shot the dog with an AK. The Recce’s subsequently kicked the shit in to the FAA, weather they were involved or not.
We were shown to a tent without lights and given a mattress; we collected a kas and a bed frame that we had been sitting on top of in the truck. All this was done in the dark; one could only make out vague shapes of bush and tents at this stage. One guy was already in the tent. Tall and skinny, he was the friendliest person we had met so far. Considering we were told not to bring anything with us, we had no torch, not even a candle. Skinny told us to set up our mossie nets before anything else. He was quite right; the mossies at Longer are the worst I have ever seen. Clouds of them, early in the morning and all night. If one slapped ones leg your hand came away black, they drank Mylon for starters and our blood as a chaser! Before a month was out most of us at camp had Malaria and other strange symptoms, which I’m sure the mossies carried with as spare ammunition to try kill us off. We dubbed them “the Angolan Air force”; eventually I had two mossie nets although they were suffocating in the extreme heat. The first night was spent tossing and turning because of a combination of nerves, heat and withdrawal symptoms, as I had not got enough to drink by far. In one of my crazy moments I decided that night to go ‘cold turkey’. Always seem to do things the hard way; a forward training camp is not the ideal place to go dry, most people get into a Rehab center where they get the proper care and nutrition. What the hell, made about a month clean time. So much for the first night in-country. The next morning I awoke and looked around, the tent was similar to any army tent but all the sides had been lifted, this was because of the extreme heat. You will notice that I mention the heat often; in South Africa if it gets below 19 degrees I complain but very seldom do I feel it is too hot. The floor was, sand. Outside the tent was partially cleared bush and footpaths. Near the tent we were in was a huge Baobab, I was to see plenty more during my stay, and one of the Rhodesian guys was kind enough to share his knowledge of all the different things a baobab can be used for. The seed pod makes a decent cup, the seeds if ground up make a coffee-like drink in hot water, the bark can be cut into strips and use for various applications even a pair of make shift sandals. Also, more often than not the fork in the tree is hollow and one can find drinkable water there. Not visible from my first tent was the Rio Longa, noticing the reeds I took a walk and was surprised at the sheer size of this river. On the map it is marked as a smallish river, in real life it is wider than the Vaal in full flood, by far. It is a muddy brown colour and seems to be moving at a sluggish pace. This is a deception as a few months later we saw a whole island the size of two Mack trucks rush past us at about 20-30 km an hour! More about Rio Longa later.
Re-Education.
The day started off with a few more shocks, the first been roll call. First though we needed to get coffee and rusks, in true ‘in the bush’ army style, only two meals were scheduled, one at 11 o’clock and then a supper. The mess consisted of a few tables and chairs under beautiful palm trees; the kitchen was a series of Cookers [gas] and fridge’s under a tarpaulin with wire and sail ‘walls’. The floor was plain sod and the pantry was a small container that had very little in it, but at this stage there were only about 30 of us at Longa, so little supplies was not so worrying. The other startling thing was in front of the tables and chairs were a top of the range TV and video setup. In time to come we would all watch those ridiculous Vietnam movies and almost die laughing, trying to find ‘look-alikes’ amongst ourselves. It had a roof of sorts made of canvas, rope and wire, to protect it against the rain. Again we were met with unfriendly stares from the other men in the camp, with little or no conversation going on. We actually got issued with a mug! No spoon. The sugar was in a big plate and had hundreds of bees swarming around it. In the deep shade the mossies were still active, but this early in the morning the flies were still sleeping, we would meet them at Brunch. Later a chap arrived that showed us that if we took dead, dried out cacti and made a smoldering fire with it, it would drive both the mosquitoes and the bees away. The flies didn’t give a shit! After the coffee we moved to the ‘parade ground’ for roll call.
We stood around in what could be called a ‘loose formation squad’. Some guys had shorts, some longs, some shirts; some T-shirts all the boots were different. The only thing the clothes had in common was that they were either cammo or green colored. The camp by day was very different to an SADF one. Nothing but nothing was ‘squared away’. The tents were in no real layout and not put up straight or particularly well. The beds were unmade or semi-made and all sorts of civvies shit was just lying around. The parade ground was the road we drove through the skitwal on. Reinders strode forward and shouted ‘Andag’ but only he and the four new chaps came to attention. With the rest, all they did was stand up if they had been sitting or lying on the ground and face vaguely forward. If they had been smoking some put the cigarettes out, some didn’t. Then another chap came ambling up looking bored; Reima saluted him and yelled something unintelligible. They said a few words and Reima about turned and screamed ‘At ease’; the four rookies went to At Ease. The rest couldn’t get more at ease unless they lay down again. A roll call of sorts was taken and when it was my turn I earned my first nickname. My earring was still in! After been called a girl and a queer all at the same time, Reima calmed down and never called me anything but ‘oarbel’ after that. Later on you will realize how pathetic all this posturing of the S’majors really was. Then the CO welcomed us new chaps and explained that this was definitely not the SADF and how we were not to act as if it was. That’s about all he had to say. These amazing roll calls happened in a similar fashion the whole time I was with E.O. the only real purpose these parades served was to make sure no one have disappeared in the night, which I found out was feasible in this crazy place.
In another sloppy tent I could see what was our magazine. Two tiffie types were half-heartedly cleaning a well-used machine gun, in the tent was precious little, certainly not the 50 assault rifles one would expect.
We were divided up into our specialties, to get to Longa one had to have a special training or have told some convincing lies at The House. So I met my fellow Mortarists, and in the typical army fashion they were all pretty mellow guys. One was a divorced, unsuccessful lawyer and he got his 15 minutes of glory a couple of years later, on Special Assignment, even though he was one of the first to resign when we went operational. The Mortar crew had also only being there for a couple of weeks. The time had come to meet the troops we were hired to train. As we walked up to the training area I got a better idea of my surroundings. Our base was spread about 500m or more, along a huge river that looked deceptively slow moving. This was Rio Longa; it still had 6 km to run into the sea. Along the bank were lush green reeds and huge Mango trees. On one memorable occasion a couple of hippo came through those reeds to inspect our camp. It was in the middle of the night and they crashed through a few tents before returning to the river, never to be seen again. Not that I blame them, the EO chaps, on a whole were quite ugly and screamed awfully loud! We would have amazing Mango fights with the heart faced black monkeys in days to come.
Spiders, Scorpions and Things.
On a whole we saw very little wild life of the larger variety, mainly insects of the extremely large variety. A few guys had to be casavaced because of spider bites and scorpion stings. Strangely enough my scorpion sting while painful did not upset my nervous system as it did to the other guys. One morning, very badly hung over, I was too lazy to put my boots on and stumbled along the path to the Mess for coffee. On the way I felt an excruciating pain in my little toe, as if someone was putting a cigarette out on it. My first thought was I had stepped on someone’s cigarette butt, then saw a whitish small scorpion scuttling off. As I say, everyone that had been stung by these little chaps got seriously ill, I waited for the inevitable. Apart from minor swelling, my little toe became my big toe, and nothing really happened. It must be all the vodka acting like a serum! On a scale of pain it was high up, much worse than a bee sting, about three times worse than a wasp, but Mickey Mouse when compared to an Adder bite. So far that is the only references I have managed to collect, but I am still working on it. The grossest insect related thing I saw, thank God it didn’t happen to me, involved little white worms. There we were, minding our own business on the shooting range, some of the guys were complaining about these painful pimples they had developed. One artilleryman had a lovely beer barrel and was digging at a pimple on his stomach with his non-too clean fingernails. Much to everyone’s disgust an ugly little worm-thing wriggled out. It was amusing to watch all these rough and tough soldiers that had similar pimples run screaming like a bunch of frightened women, to find the medic. I suppose it was only funny because my skin was a lovely brown colour and free of blemishes! Brian, the medic, spent the afternoon digging out these horrible little worms.
As we moved away from the river the first Baobab trees grew, also huge ancient beings that give off a special ‘vibration ‘ different to any other trees that I have met. Once out of the gully we could see more of what the landscape had to offer. There was a plane leading up to a few small hills 3 km away. The bush was sparse with very little grass, just dusty sand, interspersed with the stately Baobabs. The beginnings of roads were taking form and evidence of human traffic was visible. We passed an old Russian tank, a T58 or something and a couple of artillery pieces. Some of the tiffie looking guys stopped here. Tiffie types are unique looking even in a well-disciplined army they manage to look untidy and a little dirty, here they stuck out even more because of the lacks rules, and they were some of the only fat guys in the whole place. The rest of Longa had either fit guys, ours, or half-staved children, FAA’s. Around the next corner was the rough parade ground. Now here was a shock…. It was full of half dressed little Black men! Normally in any army I’m one of the smallest guys, here were an entire Brigade all smaller and skinnier than me. Not only that, what clothes they had on were rags, if they had any footwear it was decrepit, falling apart takkies or slops. As we got closer you could see how young they were. The average age must have been about sixteen. Spread among this sorry lot was a few better-dressed but no less dirty adults. One or two had AK’s in each group and quite a few had a weird looking rifle, which I learned was an ancient model called a G3. G3 in army medical lingo means unfit for duty, a small piece of irony that was not noticed by many. On the side of the parade ground was a large tent with all the paraphernalia of an Ops room. In the tent were a few fatter, but not much, well dressed {in uniform} black soldiers. They were listening intently to what two whites E.O. chaps were telling them. Well, I just stared in surprise.
Training Days
FAA
First the Mortar Training crew, this consisted of the lawyer, two other men, our interpretator or ‘talks’ as they were known. He being ex 5 Recce, a Black man that could blend well with the environment so was always MIA (Missing in Action), normally to the Kooker (local shop) or whorehouse. Later these ‘talks’ would prove to be a huge security risk for this reason. This mixed bag moved further up from the main parade ground passing other groups that were trying to sort out their own troops, who did not look like troops at all. If one goes to a half way house for Street Children in Hillbrow they would find healthier better-dressed children. In a clearing we found our own trainees. From the FAA {Force de Arma Angola, or something.} side we were blessed with a little combat veteran all of 20 years old, srg. Ze. With the ‘talk’ MIA and Ze not speaking a word of English we managed with sign language and drawings in the sand. Ze was extremely quick to catch on what was needed and carried out orders with great enthusiasm. A bonus was his troops might have been even more scared of him than us!
Our instructions were to start with basic infantry training. We set up a schedule the same as we had done ourselves in the SADF except now we were shouting the odds. Each morning to start with roll call, some PT, drill, brunch, oh, and a new one, in Angola everyone has siesta after brunch until 2o’clock. We thought this weird but by 12’oclock that first day we understood extremely well. South Africa doesn’t get hot, not even in the Northern Province; comparative to Longa it is just warm! An example, one day during siesta I was laying half cooked on my bed when I noticed a screw on my AK was working loose. As this is quite a serious thing I begrudgingly moved to fix it. The total energy expenditure was not too great, I picked up a screwdriver, reached for the rifle and turned the screw all of two rotations, max. This caused sweat to drip off my chin onto the rifle. It is very seldom that my face ever perspires, now and then in Northern Natal’s midsummer and when I work with dangerous snakes, one may see a drop or two. After that devastating experience I left any work until the sun was way down on the horizon. After siesta weapons training and formation\maneuvers. So much for the theory, these are a few things that happened along the way.
As in most armies the very important thing is to get the soldiers to be familiar with the assault rifle they are using, in this case the AK47. We did just that, for hours on end, every day for weeks. Strip, assemble, strip, assemble ad nausium. At first we set up competitions amongst the troops and when they got better we challenged them ourselves. Never being my strongest point eventually my troops were giving me a run for my money, on more than one occasion some of them beat me, much to everyone’s delight, Srg. Ze always beat me. We moved onto the Light Machine Gun of Russian manufacture, called a PKM. Really loved that weapon, belt fed with a spare barrel, we had 4 brand new out the box to play with.
Interspersed with this we did my personal favorite from early army days, Fire and Movement, with a little bit of Leopard Crawl added in just for fun. Because I have some stupid ideas, like don’t ask someone to do something you cannot do yourself, and having read some shit about ‘ Leadership by example’ I went back to camp filthy dirty and most times with bloody elbows and knees. Fire and movement involves running forward, toward the enemy, throwing oneself flat on the ground and returning fire while you buddy follows and gains a few feet. Then as he returns fire, you pull yourself up and repeat the process, gaining a few feet past him. As your buddy is actually firing right passed you it is recommended to stay in a straight line! This means that one cannot casually look around for the best, softest spot to fall down, or run around that scratchy little thorn bush. It is Murphy’s Law that one will encounter at least half the know thorn bushes found in Africa in ones path, and a few interesting rocks for good measure. If I ever catch this Murphy chap, I will torture him to death, the bastard! This continues until the enemy either withdraws or is dead, maybe you could also stop when you are dead, hadn’t really thought about that one until now! To practice this is no fun, if one is been fired upon the inspiration to abuse ones body in this fashion comes naturally, as it is the choice of two lesser evils.
The other fun thing to do is the Leopard crawl. This is when you have drawn fire and are in a lot of kak. Because it is not a good idea to stroll forward to meet your enemy in a civilized fashion, it is wise to follow the next procedure. On taking heavy fire one throws oneself on the ground in a timely manner. If the fire is too concentrated it is also unwise to go into fire and movement drills, at ones discretion the alternative is to crawl toward the enemy giving him as little target as humanly possible. This involves moving a long, at a rapid pace, as you want to get rid of the bugger as soon as possible, on your elbows and knees. The trick is not to have your bum stuck up in the air, that is why it is called Leopard crawl and not Baby crawl. Believe me Baby crawl is a lot easier, but you will get your ass shot off if you go for this option. Again one cannot always find the easier softer route, and a fair amount of pain is involved. I know of a few people in a very different group of people that understand this rule well! Hah! If one is really in an adventurous mood one can make a combination of these and spill even more blood.
A long time ago when I was taught how to do these exciting things by my fellow countrymen had a lovely little obstacle course that had barbed wire strung low all over the place to poke my bum or elbows if I did not get it right, then when they decided we almost had it right they added a Vickers machine gun, from World War Two, firing hot lead just above the wire for effect. Needless to say I am very proficient in these two fine arts but rarely have the opportunity to show off my skill at the office. The civilians already regard me as somewhat strange.
We did 82mm mortar drills and generally this was a fun time for most of us, learning and firing new weapons from different countries and then putting our knowledge to the test by teaching others. We were learning from all the different branches of the army. If I taught someone to fire mortars they would teach me the ins and outs of a 12.7mm. and so on. We were getting fit by running to and from the training ground twice a day, and the hot sun was burning us White boys as brown as our troops.
One morning after we had not practiced strip and assemble with the AK’s for quite some time we decided to give it a refresher course. Shit, we may as well have never done it at all for most of the troops had forgotten the first move, how to get the hoofdeksel off! No fun for anyone the next few weeks, they had to get this right or they would literally die the first week in combat. We hadn’t even begun practicing with live ammo yet, that promised to be fun.
Bush Psychology.
It is difficult to describe the social and moral rules of a camp like this. As in Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, the situation was a unique and potentially dangerous one, from with in, never mind the war going on around us. An anthropologist’s wet dream! Some of the problems would have been common with any army camp, here we had no real rank structure amongst ourselves, and to FAA we were all Commandantes. The mix was mainly, from two different army’s; the still functioning SADF and the old Rhodesian Specs forces, with two Vietnam vets thrown in for good measure.
The Vets were our MO (Medical Officer), a Yank who kept pretty much too himself and a large Australian Blue Kelly, an artilleryman. Apparently Blue had being in one war or another since he left ‘Nam. He had flaming red hair as his Irish name would imply and swore worse than any man I’ve ever met. All said I think he was a fair man and for some reason I was the only one allowed to drive his truck, not even Dup, the camp enforcer, could do that.
The Rhodie’s consisted of Bruce, who I already mentioned, that became Trevor’s friend. Apart from Trevor he spoke to his fellow countrymen and few others. Although never missed a chance to brag at large. Number two Rhodie was a real character, Hoerst; his claim to fame was that he was originally a British SAS and a founding member of the unit in Rhodesia. Also was involved in the first combat HELO {High altitude low opening.} drop in the world, which was into Mozambique and is well recorded. A rumor has it that his wife and pregnant daughter were killed by terrs in the Rhodesian Bush war, but I never asked if this was true. I do know that he had a passion for killing Black chaps more intense than most. The other one was an extremely quiet and neat man Keith. They were all in their mid-fifties but super fit and mean. Then there was Graham C. who will need a chapter to himself. All the politics and social changes took months to develop and constantly changed. People came and left, and this is what I observed.
Let us start off with Graham, as he was one of the most fascinating men in the camp. Graham arrived one night much as I did, always in the dark. I had been there for a month or more and had a fair idea of how to operate. Our sparkies had set up a reasonable lighting system so we saw this chap struggle awkwardly down our path. He had a lot of kit and was not doing too well. Remembering how shit my first night felt I helped him find a bed. Then as Skinny had, told him about the Angolan Air force. By then I had learned a trick to keep the mossie net as far away from your face as possible, if you took 4 straight tent poles and tied them to the posts of the bed, then stretching the net tightly over that, you could at least get an illusion of some cool space. After that Graham treated me like I was his long lost brother. He had blonde hair and a pair of dead pale blue eyes. Unfailingly polite and very respectful, but one could tell even then Graham was not a person to mess with, not because of size or strength but because he was not quite there. One reasonably harmless example is; on leave he hacked out chunks of his hair and used it to pick up women by telling them he was on chemo- therapy. Add that to a few other things and, well I’m a little scared of Graham C.. Having said that, he was the only guy that bothered to check that Charmaine was okay, every time he was on pass and I was not. She had strict instructions not to let him have our address though, so they usually met at Froggo’s. He use to tell her “I love you to death.” And scare her shitless along with all the other male patrons of the bar. Charmaine was quite safe to go to Froggo’s while we were out of the country.
Our training program was slowly taking shape, people were arriving on a daily bases from S.A. those stupid Kingairs took only six or eight men at a time. Slowly, slowly our numbers grew and with more people a more complex ‘society’ took shape. On the far side of the mess the Spec forces guys made there own version of a forward base. Southern flags of different designs were popular, as were any unusual cammo’s. Brett would be voted best-dressed Merc in any magazine. He claimed to be a sniper, had been a stuntman in the movies, and a couple of other amazing things. Tall, bronze tan, very fit and charismatic he was a leader amongst the Non- specs. The first to cut his hair Mohawk style and wear authentic Rice cammo’s from Commie Vietnam. One day riding back from the beach Brett was doing his normal Camel Man posing and tried to shoot a bunch of guinea fowl from the back of a moving vehicle. Well, with a full mag on an AK I thought he should have hit at least one! After voicing this opinion and laughing at him, I don’t think he ever treated me in a friendly manner again. The other thing that pissed him off was the fact that Charmaine made me a cammo Tanga and I refused to sell it to him. Depending on his mood he and I had some kind of ‘friendship’ that followed us into civilian life. He became a Nightclub manager and the fact that the company I worked for that imported sound and lighting goods caused us to see each other on a professional basis, albeit a different profession! The other guys that it paid to be friendly to were the three that ran our canteen. They were older guys that had been employed for this job only, I never saw any of them venture into the training grounds or even join us a the beach. Their work was to travel to Caba Ledo and collect food for the kitchen and most importantly beer and hard-tack for the canteen. There was also a very small supply of chips, chocolates and sweets. The alcohol was on strict rations as only so much could be imported at a time. If one was part of their inner circle, one could buy a bottle of whiskey or brandy. All this was at first run on an account basis but that went for a ball of shit and cash was king. The sweets and stuff I could live with out but my alcohol needs by far surpassed the rations available. Going into the FAA camp, which had numerous shebeens, solved this problem.
In order to keep us all fine moral upstanding men a priest was hired as well! He got paid more than us and didn’t really have to work too hard. The irony of some of the chaps going to ‘Nagmal’ before leaving on an ops is incredible. Here are a bunch of guys praying to their Calvinistic God to look after them and make their mission a success. They were, if one is blunt, nothing but a bunch of hired killers, and last time I looked in the Bible it still said “Thy shalt not kill.” Sort of black and white that one. Also been Calvinistic they are suppose to follow in Jesus footsteps and he clearly stated by word and example that one should love thy neighbor, not go out and shoot them. The song of Bob Dylan, “God on their side” comes to mind. These thoughts were not new to me as growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness then getting kicked out of home when conscripted, I use to amuse myself picking on the SADF’s dominees often. They were bad enough, but actually believed they were doing the right thing. This preacher could not warrant his title in anyway, his only excuse was that even the wicked needed guidance and that is why he was there. The lying bum, it was all about the money, and according to his own doctrine as laid out in his bible ‘the love of money is the root of all evil.’ Hah! I shall see that preacher and most likely a few more in hell!
The FAA Camp.
As mentioned our camp was stung along the riverfront, as per usual this is in the lowest lying ground in an area. Above us was the valley Longa. Surounded by small foothills. A short steep climb took one up to this level. Typical African bushveld. Here and there the majestic baobabs towered above the sparse bush. Even though so close to the sea it was very dry, with lots of patches of sand in-between clumps of bush. The further from the river the more grass and sand. Roads of sorts ran at random angles through all this. In the distance we could see the firing ranges that had been bulldozed out haphazardly along the hills. Dry riverbeds attested to the chance of flash floods, although in the heat it was hard to imagine. Ten years before I had also arrived in Angola during the dry season. I well remember cursing the dust and sand only to be cursing the thick sticky mud a few months later. It is a nightmare to move a motorized or mechanized army across this terrain under either condition. Hence the wars have been mainly infantry based, the humble foot soldier. Just after a huge man-made clearing was some thick bush, and this is where an entire battalion of soldiers lived.
Savimbi wrote nearly 30 years ago that his biggest problem was not the normal problems of war but the unhygienic habits of his people. We witnessed this firsthand, and smelled it too. I swear I could smell a camp an hour before it came into sight. The very first thing my colleges and I do when setting a new base camp, is not build the bar! That comes second, before even setting up a sleeping area, toilets are dug. This is self-survival as sickness kills as quickly as bullets. Not so with FAA. There are no toilets what so ever. They literally walk a few steps from where they sleep, do there business and wipe themselves with either a shoe, or if they have no shoe, their hand. This is gross but there you are, our new troops, I didn’t touch the buggers with my bare hands even to hit them, a rifle butt was much safer. Eventually suffering from horrible hangovers in the mornings I could take no more. One day I took bars of soap and marched the entire mortarist crew down to the river. As the ‘talk’ was missing as usual I used sign language and drawings in the sand to get Srg. Ze to understand my intentions. When he explained them to the troops they were horrified. After a few minutes of listening to, “Non, Non, Comandante! Crocodilo!” or some such shit. I told them “F@#* the crocodiles worry about me!” never was at my best when hung over. Considering they don’t understand English they got the point, again literally as I unhinged my bayonet that is a permanent fixture on the Chinese AK, and stabbed those nearest to me in the butt hard enough to draw blood. Some just dove in rags and all, others wept pitifully as they undressed. Shit, you would swear I was torturing the little bastards, not cleaning them up! This became a weekly ritual with all the snot and drama every time. My ex - lawyer buddy and I kept an eye out for crocodiles for God’s sake, besides I reason the croc’s would not want to eat stinky, skinny FAA troops, the river is full of huge barbel!
The other problem was the condition of the troops. They got a gruel maybe twice a day that even Oliver Twist could not eat, dished up out of 44 gallon drums that were never washed into tin cans that were not washed either! There poor little bodies made me look muscular. They were so weak it took two of them to lift a crate of rifle ammunition; they couldn’t even lift a crate of 82mm mortar ammo between 4 of them. We were supposed to train these guys into super fit fighting men. Our pen pushers explained this to their pen pushers based in Luanda. The pen pushes were living the life of Riley and it took a few weeks to get them to understand if they wanted to protect this lovely life style they would have to give us more food for the trainees or Savimbi’s hardened soldiers would soon be up their arses. That rather got things moving, still gruel but with chunks of solid ‘stuff’ in it. Our medic, Brian got vitamins and medication from SA in an attempt to get them well enough to train. He had the same shit I had getting them to bath, they didn’t take to been stabbed with a needle by an ugly White man. Little did they know how bad it was going to get for them. Srg. Ze told me proudly that us ‘Afrique do Sol’ soldiers were meaner than the Russian and Cuban instructors that had trained him.
Apart from Srg. Ze a few other little Angolan’s have stuck in my mind. There names I can’t remember except one. One day we were sitting around in the shade, for whatever reason, talking shit. Mostly we spoke in Afrikaans, which is why when they showed on SA television an Angolan man that was supposedly a witness to SA mercenaries bombing and killing people in a peaceful market, I know he is lying. He claimed he could hear them speaking on the radio, but says it was all in English, a language he understands. Of the hundreds of guys there only 1 or 2 spoke English on an Ops. If someone gives an army order in English it will take me a few moments to translate what the hell he wants done. I digress; we were all shocked speechless when one of the troops interrupted us, in Afrikaans! His name was Piet, for heaven’s sake. He had this amazing tale to tell. Firstly he was not even an Angolan, he came from Namibia. His mother lived just over the border of Angola, I’m sure those borders move around a bit. One day like a good son he was visiting his mother and the Angolan’s kidnapped him and shanghaied him into the army! And I thought conscription was bad! So here he was in Longa many, many miles from home with a bunch of foreigners. They had taken his shoes and jacket so he was left with a torn shirt and raggedy pants. Well, we thought about this for a while and decided this was just not on. That night we gathered some kit, a good pair of boots, a few SA army Ratpac’s (Dry rations for 48 hours, the best in any army.) a jacket and socks, the next morning we gave these to Piet and pointed him in the direction of home. Need a map to see exactly how far away that was but more or less the distance between JHB and East London. Far! We never saw or heard from him again, although we spoke often, with all of us hoping that he made it.
The other chap that sticks out was an extremely intelligent young man. Before he had the dubious pleasure of meeting us he could not speak English. Within 2 weeks he was communicating at a passable level. This youngster, must have been about 15 years old, should have been in a University somewhere, not in an army where his chances of survival were practically nil! He made a piss poor soldier so with our ‘talk’ AWOL (Absent With out Leave) most of the time he became an interpreter by default. One of the saddest things I saw was a troop that also should never have been anywhere near an army, never mind this crazy mixed up mess. He was always last to complete the most simple of tasks, always late for roll call, and to add to his misery was very sickly and weak as well. The worst was when we were on the firing range, he had no choice he had to do the same training as everyone else, and the military is not a very compassionate machine. When it was his turn he would be shaking like a leaf, he closed his eyes and the tears used to roll down his face. He obviously shot terribly and dangerously, which lead to him been singled out for punishment. With all his mistakes he would cause his platoon to be in trouble more often than not. The system in place let him sit in the shade while we really worked the rest of his platoon over. That night they would beat him terrible, so the next day he was even slower and more of a burden to his mates. Like many of our trainees he just disappeared one day. Six years later I still think about that nameless troop often.
On a much lighter note, one of our guys came up with a good one. He taught his entire Company “Die Stem.” It had us in hysterics watching them run past with their Communist AK’s at high port singing the hated apartheit regimes National Anthem on top of their voices………..Angola!
In order to get some credibility with ones troops one has to do something even the best of them cannot. The fact that they were all about my size and smaller gave me an idea. The Russian Light Machine Gun (LMG) weighs around 13 kilograms unloaded, it is a belt feed weapon and the long belt takes 200 rounds of 7.62 mm ammo at a rate of at least 750 rounds a minute. Not a Mickey Mouse caliber, it has a bi-pod that is used in normal firing position. My large South African friend could fire this weapon out of his shoulder! If I tucked most of the butt under my arm and used the barrel changers handle I could fire this weapon standing up. Accurately! It would push me back a good few meters when firing a full belt, as I kept having to take a step backwards in order not to fall on my bum! To this my troops would jump up and down shouting “Muntu boi, Comandante Americano!” Some of them had seen South Americans in Cuba, I look like a Latino and no matter how hard I tried to convince them I was not a bloody American they would not listen to me. The other thing my ‘American’ status got me was they thought a had a supply of ‘Cocaina.’ And kept asking me for a supply. Cocaine, so they definitely had met Colombians in Cuba. So while in that country the Angolans called me Comandante Americano and my mates from EO called me ‘The Mexican Horse Thief.’ Because of some movie a few of them had seen had a character that resembled me, who was a Mexican. See in Angola everything is upside down and visa versa!
The reality of a lawless place is illustrated in the following incident. On my way up to the firing range one day I saw a troop in the middle of the cross roads, more like cross paths. Everyone that walked past him either kicked or hit him with their rifle. Considering that his thumbs and elbows were tied behind his back with wire, there was not much he could do to protect himself. Bimbi was with me so he asked what was going on. Apparently this unfortunate troop had been caught stealing food out of the Brigadier’s tent, who was visiting.. The story goes that after been beaten by everyone, they are under orders to do so, with God alone knows what punishment if they do not comply, but I think the would do it anyway; then that night the troop is given a spade and put next to a baobab tree. If he can dig it out he gets free, if not he is shot. Being in country for a while we thought this sounded like a plausible story, but he would never be able to accomplish that mission tied up. None of our business, so we took our troops of to shooting practice. Sure enough, next day, one dead troop. Which caused my friend Mark, to break out in his favorite song. Of which he only knew one verse that goes like this. “Woke up this morning and my dog was dead, someone shot it though the head!” Quite appropriate, I wonder if Reima knew it?
Time Out.
On another occasion a few of us went up to a beach to do a reconn. We were considering moving to the coast to get away from the mozzies and intense heat of Longa valley. Two snipers Brett and Wayne were with us that day. It was the first time I met Wayne. He had a T-shirt that had a picture of a soldiers silhouette incased in a telescopic sights cross. The words printed below were ‘Reach out and touch someone, long distance’. We had an interesting day. First we tried to kill each other and ourselves by racing the trucks up and down impossible angled cliff paths to the beach and back. Then sitting around on the beach, drinking, got into a discussion about how one of my Afrikaans mates was inbred and stupid. He took exception to this and cocked his AK and stuck it against my head, telling me to take it back. I replied that he could shoot me dead but he would remain an inbred Dutchman. Well, he didn’t shoot and we carried on drinking. A little later there was a huge commotion and a few of the guys had found a small buck. Lucky we were not hungry so they just caught it and later let it go. At a later stage we killed and ate anything vaguely edible. We packed up to go but on the way back from fairly far inland we saw strange shaped vehicles on the beach. Decided to go look-see. Turned out the vehicles were the new Landrover Discovery, which only came to SA a full year later. The civilians were from the Oil Company; many years later I read that the same Oil Company, Government Controlled, ‘lost’ a few Billion Dollars in the space of two years. One of the oil company’s men had a daughter of about 16 and she was swimming topless in the sea. Now we had not seen a white woman for a long time. The oil guys were pleased to see us and had ice-cold beer, which was freely distributed. The wives were friendly as well and fortunately there were no unpleasant incidences. We could not really communicate as the all spoke Portuguese or French. Just before dark we headed back to camp. On another occasion we went to visit a different fishing village quite a distance from our camp. It had a small market and on the beach were people that had come for the day, properly from Luanda, as the were all Blacks I don’t think they were suntanning, but were lying around in swimming costumes anyway! What upset me was there was this Arab that had two chimpanzees in chains, the poor creatures looked miserable. The chains that were around there waists had rubbed all the hair off and caused sores, that the Arab had not even attempted to treat. Now I have not got much time for my fellow human beings, but I do like animals, so I put forward the suggestion to the guys I was with that we take the chimps away from the Arab, by force if necessary. There were five or six of us and two of us had AK’s making the idea plausible. Next we could smuggle the chimps out when the next Kingair returned to SA after dropping off supplies. This was rejected unanimously, if it had happened later when I had met Mark, Graham and Brett, we could have done it. The guys I was with were the ones I was always calling inbred Dutchmen, I rest my case.
Any time we had free was spent drinking, because our canteen could not meet the supply and demand we had to find shops in the FAA areas. This is such a mixed up country that it is difficult to explain, mainly because even been there I didn’t know what the hell was going on most of the time! The ‘Kooker’ shops are a good example of the chaos that reigned. The ‘talks’ told us that they could get beer but charged us ridiculous prices. Because it was very dangerous to wonder around at night, there been not only our trainee troops but all sorts of other soldiers, civilians and God knows what else in the FAA camp. We were not particularly well liked, our troops because we mistreated them all the time, the Special Commando Angolan soldiers regarded us as soft, well fed intruders in their war and in general because most of us were White and this was in the days of apartheid. Even in the backwoods, uneducated people who had never see a TV or read a Newspaper knew how horrible us White South Africans were to their brothers in the south!
Also there was supposed to be a $10 000 reward on our heads that Savimbi had put out. True or not a lot of people would have killed us anyway. Eventually Bimbi said he would take me to one of the Kookers, I had my AK and a few full magazines, so off we went. With Bimbi along it went rather well, him negotiation a fair price. You could choose any SA beer you liked; they had cases and cases of the stuff, only in cans and lukewarm. The problem was that they accepted Escudos and Dollars only, at first we swapped our Rands with the policemen on the bridge, this was problematic as my theory that policemen are the biggest criminals held true, they ripped us off all the time. Next was the sheer volume of Escudos we had to carry. My history teacher once told me of a story where in Germany someone said that, ”before the war I use to go to the shop with my money in my pocket and bring the groceries home in a basket, now I take the money in a basket and return home with the groceries in my pocket.” We would have to fill every pocket available, and military clothes have lots of them, and stuff some down our battle jackets front, just to buy one case of beer! An Escudos flack jacket! Eventually this problem was sorted out when one of the Kooker owners went into Luanda with some Rands and saw how much they were worth compared to his country's money. There were still other kinds of trouble though, one night two new guys arrived and wanted beer. Since my cash flow was low I agreed to take them up to the Kooker in exchange for a case of beer. This was there very first night in Longa, but they were young and brave and in their heads I am certain they thought I was full of shit when I explained how dangerous this could be. As fate would have it, this particular night there were many strange faces at the Kooker, as I had come to know most of the regulars and even with the language problem we were pretty friendly. Of the 40 odd people there, one group of ten or so guys looked like they had just come back from fighting Unita. They were older and even without speaking their language I could see they were hostile toward us. Next the price of beer was suddenly twice the price it had been a few nights before. In a mixture of English, Portuguese, sign language and plenty of swearing in Afrikaans I tried to get the price down. The atmosphere was getting very tense, this was all taking place in a clearing in the thick bush, the only light came from a lamp and a few fires scattered around the shop. The new guys were standing to one side and by the look on their faces you could tell they didn’t think I was so full of shit any more. I was the only one of us armed, but even the shop owner and his small kid had AK’s. The war vet group had gotten very loud and was gesticulating in our direction, then a unique sound cut through the noise. It was the clacking of an automatic weapon been cocked! This caused everyone to start cocking their weapons, mine was in its customary position, slung upside down over my right shoulder, I had modified the strap to be able to carry it this way a while back, it was already cocked and not locked. This was all very gung-ho but one AK against at least twenty was pathetic. By some miracle one of our Black ‘talks’ arrived just then, the sweat running down my face had nothing to do with the heat that I go on about! There was more shouting, and a few shots fire in the air, between our ‘talk’ and one individual that really, really wanted to shoot us. For what seemed like an age this continued until our ‘talk’ somehow managed to calm things down. The two new guys were whiter than usual! We collected our beer, at the normal rates and made a quick move back to our own lines. I never found out exactly what the problem was, but from then on whenever those new chaps or any of their mates wanted beer they would ask me to go for them. This cost them a case of Black Label everytime, so my cash flow problem was solved nicely. Shit, what a man has to do for a beer, it is just not right. Fortunately I had no further troubles worth mentioning after that incident.
Non-Political Unrest.
On the other side of the mess, also along the river was the rest of the camp. Here people seemed to ‘move house’ fairly often. As and when friendships developed or deteriorated. My first tent was out in the full sun in the middle of that section of the camp. I shared it with Skinny, Trevor and Bruce. Soon Bruce moved out to his fellow countryman’s tent and with him Trevor. Graham moved in with me, that is one of the weirdest things that could happen to anyone! Meanwhile we still had no weapon’s at this stage so Skinny and I procured one; a beautiful Chinese AK with a folding bayonet attached, the butt was made of a beautiful butternut yellow hardwood. Skinny resigned and left me the weapon, which I held onto until I left E.O., even when a consignment of brand new Russian AK’s arrived and anyone that was not satisfied with their present weapon could swap it.
For a while I was the only permanent Longa resident with a personal weapon. Things were so disorganized at this stage, that we were lucky to get one half-decent meal a day. As Voltaire said “Revolution is bred in the stomachs of hungry men.” Well we had a meeting of what must have been a hundred + men, and decided ‘ No weapon, no food….. No training.’ The Angolans were paying E.O. a hell of a lot of money so Evan flew in personally to hear us out. The results were almost an immediate increase of food supplies, and AK’s were issued a few days later. Some other material had arrived and was stashed in our ammo tent. One of the really scary things was the pineapple grenade. They looked exactly like popular movie type, with one major difference; the rust had eaten nearly through the metal casing! Some Chinese grenades that did not look too dangerous were along side. They looked like green Ping-Pong balls with pencils stuck in them. They came with Chinese instructions, which we had no Chinese ‘talk’ to translate. Wayne and a few other chaps took them up to the firing range to check them out. The mortar crew was lying around watching the troops do dry drills, boring, boring, boring, when Blue came screaming past us in a cloud of dust and vile swearing. What had happened is Wayne had pulled the pin on one of the Ping-Pong balls and it blew him away, injured four other guys and tore Blue’s arm to pieces. The Chinese instructions probably were saying – Caution, Caution Use only for booby traps-, with a less than one second time delay on the fuse! Wayne had the dubious honor of being our first fatal casualty.
The other stock that arrived was some 82mm mortar ammo, we were sick of dry runs so we should have been happy. The problem was that the crates fell apart when one touched them. The actual bombs were also covered in rust. I have a piece of paper at home with Russian writing on it from those boxes, the date is 1952 and the last time they were inspected was in the early 70’s. {We opened that lot in the 1990’s!} Well, we cleaned that lot up and practiced for quite some time with them. Very few miss-fires till one day one of my mates, Bimbi and myself were letting srg, Ze get on with it while we chattered on the back line. We all heard this half fart, half-spitting sound come out the one tube. From there everything seemed to be in slow motion. The bomb had left the tube and was already coming down, it landed as we all were on the way to the ground, bounced exactly three times and lay still, 20 odd meters from us. Obviously it never went off or I could not be writing this. The killing range of a bomb that size on open ground is huge, the weight of the HE bomb is 3.05 kilograms and He stands for high explosive. When we had recovered from the shock we called in a couple of sappers to blow the bitch. Every time we had live practice after that was a nerve-racking experience.
Another funny incident was at the battalion’s ammo dump. They kept a 40-ft. container filled with all sorts of toys; grenades, mines, RPG rockets etc. etc. The soldiers that guarded the container had a lean-to attached to the thing, inside was a shabeen come harem. Most of the time the soldiers were smoked and drugged up. One fine morning we went to collect ammo for the days training. The ammo dump was off to one side of the training ground and about two kilometers from our camp. As we approached the dump we saw black smoke but did not think much about it as there were always fires burning round the FAA camp. As we turned around the last bush and could see the container we saw the smoke was coming from underneath the thing! A soldier was running round pushing burning bits of tire tube under it on purpose. Black smoke and oily flames everywhere. Now this is not good, even with First World ammo that is pretty stable, one can’t superheat it and not expect problems. The stuff in the container was far from stable at the best of times. We very nervously tried to find out what the hell was going on; as usual our ‘talk’ had disappeared. Apparently a snake, ‘cobra’ in Portuguese, had been in their tent and they had chased it under the container. Now they were trying to kill it with fire. We canceled the days training and went back to our camp that was considerably lower than the surrounding area, so should be safe from the explosion that we were sure would follow. By some miracle it did not, but we had an excuse to sit around and drink anyway.
Real Estate Development.
At this stage we had made some improvement for ourselves. To wash in the river was messy, by the time you climbed out of the river you were so full of mud that it was a pointless exercise. Not only that, there were crocodiles and hippos in there as well! And huge catfish! Once we found a 30-meter pipe and tried to touch the bottom of the river right next to the bank. We lost the pipe with out getting near the bottom. Next some of the guys from 4 Recce tried to dive to the riverbed, because they wear this T-shirt that says, ‘ No river too deep, no mountain too high we dive at 4!’, also without success. The only jetty, homemade, was in the Recce section of the camp and one was not always welcome to use it. There was an old petrol tanker in the bush not far from our camp. One of those short mini types. We got it dragged by a huge Russian truck into the middle of our area. With only two spades we constructed a sand dune while the tiffies cut holes and attached normal taps to the tanker. We then put the tanker on top of our pile of sand. This was easier said than done, but we got it there. Next we ran a pipe down to the river, attached a pump and filled the tanker once a day. Now at siesta one could take a dustbin, Omo and dirty clothes and shower while stamping on the washing. This kept you cool and clean all at once. We had some problems with mud but soon build a rock floor with a drainage system.
The other improvement was the kitchen. We first had Angolan troops, chefs, doing the cooking. Even when we had decent food they messed it up. One of the chaps that must have told a few lies to get in to E.O. happily volunteered to be our chief C. We were happy too, not only the food improved but because on the first day on the range he did a few very stupid {and dangerous} things. He started by only clearing his weapon once the rest of the guys had moved forward to check targets, and then he went through the safety drills with out taking off the magazine! The result was an A.D. {accidental discharge.} the only thing he did right was keep the weapon pointing down range, unfortunately most of the guys were down range checking targets! No one was hit. Better to keep him in the kitchen. His other main duty was to protect our company dog. We had rescued the dog from the FAA troops who were about to eat him! A pretty sorrowful looking dog, but although the Angolans had tried to eat him, he was not racist like Reima’s late dog! We called the dog “Venja cie”, which means come here in Portuguese. Consequently whenever someone was looking for our dog the little Angolan troops would rush up only to get a smack and told to push off! A bit confusing…Angola. The other improvement we made for ourselves was to fly flour up from SA, as bread is too bulky. We dug a long deep hole next to the kitchen and lined it with Zinc plating we had found. We made a fire in the pit, placed a piece of zinc over it, put the dough on that then covered that with another plate and build a fire on top of that. Hey presto, fresh bread. The other thing we missed were eggs, so we got hold of a few chickens but they never lasted long enough to lay any eggs! They always got stolen and eaten. Everyone blamed the FAA troops but I’m not so sure, I think some EO chaps were eating chicken rolls!
During this time our food supply ran short again. We now had about 250 men in the camp. Some had gone on an exercise for a few days. They were to be picked up by choppers on the third day and had enough dry rations and water for that time. The water in Angola is almost pure in regards to chemical pollutants but full of bacterial diseases, typhoid and the like. While they were out some of the guys decided to take the choppers and go hunting. They flew around a bit and eventually shot two eland with the 50mm out of the chopper door. This caused an uproar amongst all the animal lovers and fists flew. The animal lobby said they would refuse to eat any of the eland that was duly skinned. Hunger won over even the most
hard assed once the braai fires got going. We ate like pigs. The small consequence was that we had used all the chopper fuel and were suppose to be collecting the other chaps. Eventually found fuel a few days later and collected a few dehydrated half-dead guys. Three had to be cassavaced immediately back to SA, and the rest were bed ridden and full of drips for a couple of days. Fortunately they were too sick to fight, but they stayed pissed off for weeks. It was a hell of a thing and we were sorry about it! Sure.
The other development was the Ops tent, if one could call it development. Mainly some new men arrived and their background was Army Intelligence, using Army and intelligence in the same sentence, I have always thought is questionable. They took up valuable space on the plane to bring up whiteboards, colored felt pens and easels, which could have been used for beer. A new item was introduced into our routine, once a week we would get an Intelligence Report from these monkeys. A large-scale map would be set up and all sorts of tiny flags of various colors would be stuck in seemingly at random. In retrospect I’m sure it was at random, I suppose these guys had to warrant their pay, which like ours was astronomical. The map of Angola by itself was scary enough, huge areas, nearly half the country, is marked, ”Uncharted Area.” At first they would give lengthy sit-reps of where such and such unit was, what Unita was supposedly up to and so forth. After a while we all grew wary of the charade and more often than not the Ops officer would say that the situation remained unchanged. The guys teased him so much that eventually he also joked back saying things like, “The situation remains Stat. We still don’t know what the is going on!” considering the man who’s army we were fighting, had been at it for twenty odd years it is, not surprising that a few new comers could not get close to him. Savimbi was a charismatic and very popular leader, in his younger days he was a friend of one of the most famous guerrilla leaders in the world, Che Guevara, he also had a doctorate from Switzerland. He had fought with the South Africans against the very same Government that now hired us, and knew all our tactics and training methods. It was only in 2002 that I was sad to read that he had eventually been killed, at the age of 65 and he still did not make it easy for his enemies. He reportedly crossed several rivers and was shot 15 times before they killed him, not bad for an old man! As usual he was betrayed from within his own ranks. Warfare no matter what the politicians say is always, always, just about the money, hence our presence in that country.
Our food supplier got even worse and when we were told by one of the returning cassavacs that the troops at Caba Ledo were living like kings, eating meat and drinking hard-tack every day some recce’s decided to go look see. What they found out was; the food and drink was arriving on time and in the right quantities, but the 40 odd ‘jam-stealers’ were living up to their name. The bastards were keeping 70% of the supplies for themselves. They were selling what they could not eat to the Angolans! Well, wish I had seen what happened, and what those Recce boys did to the jam-stealers, but those little shits never pulled that stunt again!
Uptill now we were still drinking bottled water, which also ran low at times. One day in a lean-to in the bush some guys found a water purification system. It was too complicated for the Cuban, Angolan or Russians to set up, a state of the art Swiss system that could even purify nuclear contaminated water! Our tiffies set to work and in about a week had repaired the damaged tanks that resembled those above ground round swimming pools. The thick plastic had perished in the extreme climate but those clever Swiss had a comprehensive repair kit included. It consisted of 4 pools and lots of pipes and filters. The river water was pumped into the first pool and chemicals added, then to the remaining pools through filters filled with more chemicals. Finally from the last pool via a tap one obtained drinkable water. It tasted terrible and the taste remained in ones mouth no matter how much one gargled with whiskey or vodka later! Once it was tested and no one died within the next few days we invited the Angolan Brigadier to sample the results. A contingent of soldiers arrived, but refused to drink the water when they saw the source was Rio Longa. After much debating, all in Portuguese, it was clear one poor soul was ordered to drink a cup of the water he was sure would kill him. The army is the army and the Angolan army even more so, he drank. After an hour or so the Brigadier saw his troop was not sick or dying he ordered the whole battalion to assemble and made a great show of drinking a glass of water. There was a lot of talking all through this whole show but all in Portuguese. Now, because of the taste I don’t know if finding the purification system was a good thing or not.
At this stage I managed to get a tent all to myself, at the far end of the now large camp. With the new people a whole family of guys had arrived, the Dobsons. They had a more or less cordoned off area that was full of people of similar background. The best example was the youngest Dobson, he was in a special unit for his National Service; but not Special like advanced training, he was mentally incompetent! His family some how smuggled him through the system. The rest didn’t look much better. We called their part of the camp Dobsonville. After Dobsonville were a section of tents laced together and that is where Blue and his cronies lived. One claimed to have been in the French Foreign Legion, he slept with a knife in his hand and practiced Tai Chi on occasion. Next-door was the Kavoet team, consisting of two White guys and two Black. One Black guy who I remember well, name was Israel, racism can work both ways, don’t tell Mbeki, he may be shocked, and Israel was a fine example of this. He must have loved the New South Africa when and if he ever got back. Too mean to even think about. One day while we were out training our washing was stolen; Israel went ballistic but could not find out whom to kill. The whole camp hid away! After that was a section of uncleared bush with baobab trees and a dry ravine, a little up the slope, under some banana trees was my tent. In the tent was my Welsh flag, I liked the dragon, my lock up kas and an old tortoise shell used as a mozzie coil holder. Rio Longa was flowing a few meters from my ‘stoop’. A nice quiet place. If there is one thing I hate about bush camps it must be the ‘long-drops!’ while living here I noticed the riverbank had a deep cut-away. I dug a meter or so and hit open air and then fast moving water. On top of this hole I placed an ammo crate with some planks to form a rough toilet seat. Not your latest flush design but it worked admirably. No flies and no smell, this was in amongst thick reeds and was my best kept secret. Unfortunately a few months later the river rose and it was an underwater secret!
My one friend, Mark of the ‘Dead Dog’ song had brought his Mountain Bike with him to war! Some nights he used to get totally wasted and then decide to come visit, on his bike. This is not so strange, except he was an ex Recce so lived on the opposite side of the camp. After the generator was switched off at 10 ‘o clock it is pitch black, with a few lamps here and there. The paths running through our camp were very narrow, and because we were right on the river the thorn bushes were thick. I used to hear him coming a minute after he left his tent. He would ride a few meters, wonder off the path and hit a thorn bush. This cause a lot of noise, added to which was a lot of swearing. By the time he got to my tent he was all torn up and bleeding, his drug of choice was acid, so this apparition, full of blood and wild eyed and staring, would arrive to say hello. Sometimes Graham would accompany him and I got no sleep that night, but Mark would always bring a bottle of something with him, as I didn’t like acid. If we were lucky one of us would have received a parcel from the women back home full of chow, and we could have a real party. One problem was that if I looked like I was falling asleep, Mark would threaten to do all sorts of unmentionable things to me while I was sleeping. He would too, so no matter how drunk I got I dared not go to sleep. If you consider all the automatic weapons, grenades and the like lying around, in retrospect it is just too scary to think about! One night my other friend was visiting when those two arrived, Andre was also an ex-Recce but a quiet, happier married man who needed the money. He didn’t even drink much, but on this night Mark convinced him to take a bit of acid. It came on tiny pieces of rice paper and Mark told Andre he would give him only a ‘half a cap.’ Against his better judgment Andre said he would try it. Shit, was that a bad idea! He was okay for a while and then decided he was been chocked to death. He thrashed about and fell off the bed, grabbing his throat. This caused Mark to jump up and dance around the tent singing on top of his voice our ‘theme’ song. Which was,’we all gonna die, we all gonna die!’ which got Andre in a worse state. Eventually, Graham and I convinced Andre he wasn’t going to die, at least not today, maybe later, but not right now. This kind of behavior was relatively normal for us; I believe it is what we call ‘Bos-bevok.’ Some of this weird behavior has a bad habit of following us back to civilization and from personal experience I can tell you it gets you in to all sorts of trouble with the civilians, they just don’t seem to understand! Another form of entertainment was rat hunts. With the filthy conditions of the FAA camp we had these huge black rats coming into our tents. The obvious solution was to shoot them the only problem is a rifle bullet is a little bit of an over-kill for such a small animal, it would go through the rat, the tent and a few bushes, even small trees and properly kill one of our mates down the path. Our solution to this problem was; you take out the metal bullet head, Mark had strong teeth, pour out 98% of the gunpowder and replug the bullet with Sunlight soap. We tested the penetration capabilities of these babies on a peach tin. Sure enough, it made a fair side hole going in, but all the energy was expanded and it did not pass out the far side. These ballistic tests done, we were ready to hunt rats. We got an old AK for this purpose. You could only fire one shot at a time because the reduced load was not strong enough to re-cock the weapon automatically, the way it should. We turned off the lamps and one of us had the rifle, while the number two held a Maglite. Sitting in the dark we soon heard scuffling. On with the torch and bang! Shit, did it make a mess of that rat? Our neighbors soon complained about the noise, so we shot only
in the early part of the night, just after the generator was turned off. I’m sure if I try the same stunt here in suburbia my neighbors will phone the cops! Civilians!
Monkey Business.
We received a few barrels of red wine and some Portuguese Aquavit and it was decided to have a party at the Recce part of the camp. This part of the camp was not open to just anyone. I had a few friends there so was tolerated and therefore knew the layout well. The tents lay in a ragged line, two or three deep along the river. This was the most shaded part of the camp; providing the shade was a mixture of huge mango, palm and banana trees. We learned that to get into a mango fight with monkeys is a bad plan, we always lost. The monkeys were slightly larger than our vervets and mainly black. The face was the interesting thing; it had a heart-shaped white outline. As mentioned before there was a driftwood jetty the guys had constructed, a beautiful place to watch the sun go down. Rio Longa, at this point, about 6kms from the sea is a kilometer or more wide. Apart from their tents they had build lapas from driftwood and river reeds. All in the entire Recce camp looked like it was straight out of a Vietnam movie set. Southern flags of various designs flourished, exotic weapons abounded and cammo from around the world was everywhere. Sandbags formed defense walls and high above was the tarred road bridge with police guards. Although it was the most beautiful part of the camp, it was also the most vulnerable to attack. Obviously this added to the Recce’s tough image and they were pleased with the idea.
The night of the party started off well, lots of meat, fresh bread and the booze flowing freely. The wine was syrupy sweet stuff that was chased down with Angolan Aquavit, which in turn was similar to rocket fuel. A lethal combination to say the least.
Farther into the night a few minor disputes arouse with Dup smashing one drunken guy’s face open. That was Gavin, who came and stayed over at my house on one of our passes. Then as everyone got drunker, friendly ribbing became swiftly violent. The Pathfinder Para bats calling the Recce’s moffies and One Recce bragging they were better than Four Recce and so on. Decresion being the greater part of valor, I took a bottle of Aquavit and made a move to my tent on the far side of the camp. Had a small book exchange club set up with a few of the other literate guys so took a book and settled in to get very drunk. A very ill soldier struggled to make parade the next morning. Only about five of us made it to roll call; Reinders said we would try again in an hour. Not too many made that parade either, so we laughed off roll call for the day. Feeling very ill decided to go get a regmaker from my mate in the Recce camp. Total destruction, not one lapa left standing, tents either completely or semi collapsed and passed out guys everywhere. The only thing that had survived unscathed was the jetty. Some had managed to get under a mozzie net but the ones that didn’t were full of lumps that had nothing to do with the fight. The Angolan Air Force had eaten well! By brunch a few more men were standing but no one could eat, I was bringing up until much later that afternoon. That night we didn’t drink our normal alcohol intake. The next morning at roll call Reima made a little speech of how he knew we were living under a lot of stress and it was good to let off some steam, but although it was acceptable to beat the shit out of each other, we should please leave our weapons out of it. Obviously something had gone down that was a little hairy.
Friendly Fire.
At this stage of the training our troops had managed to get hold of a little ammo for themselves. This was not good for us. The reason been in this land with no rules, our training methods adopted the same lawlessness. While basics in the SADF was harsh there were some boundaries. An example would be what we called ‘Kampala’. Based on the same principle of letting the perpetrators of an infringement of the rules sit in the shade drinking cool drink while their mates get severe PT. In the SADF that night the perpetrators usually get in to trouble from the very tired mates. Occasionally some one ended up in the sickbay. We changed this slightly. The principle of the offenders sitting nicely while their mates suffered stayed the same. Only we made sure ‘Kampala’ was served. A very thick-stemmed reed like plant grew in the training area that was too tough to snap and could only be cut with out the aid of a very sharp blade. We would form a double square of the troops we had punished extremely hard because of their lax mates, and arm them with these shjambok reeds. The well-rested offenders would be pushed in the gap of the lines that formed the square. All the anger and suppressed hatred could be taken out on the men running in the double square. Some times our medics had to stitch these guys up afterward. In retrospect this is an example of one of the most violent things I have seen, a naked, primal type of violence that is scarier than modern violence by far. Many the guys use to hit the troops as well, so no love was lost between them and us. The results mentioned before, of them having ammo, was at night they use to take potshots at our tents. We had bare bulbs strung up in the tents and would be lying around on our beds when little zipping sounds followed by rifle fire would startle us. The first couple of times we got a fright, after that all would happen was one of us would just throw an army boot at the globe so we would be plunged into darkness. The only thing that was it was a nuisance and we had to keep spare globes. The occasion I remember most was when the canteen guys invited me for a drink in their tent. There I was happy as a pig in shit, with my first iced drink in a long, long time, and the little buggers shot holes through the tent. At the first buzzing sound I hit the deck, spilling my lovely ice in the sand. The bang that follows the bullet drowned out the zipping of the next couple of rounds that passed trough the tent. I was cursing the fact that the precious ice was wasted while the occupants of the tent were bemoaning the fact that, the next time it rained their tent would leak. On one occasion one of the guys was drunk and returned fire, extremely accurately hitting a FAA Captain in the knee. Bit of trouble about that! Not allowed to shoot at the army you are supposed to be fighting for. Apart from that, I was told years later, on meeting James an old comrade, that the captain had ordered a Stalin’s Organ and crew to move the weapon into place, in order to rocket our camp! Fortunately it has a minimum distance it can fire, and some of James’s buddies talk the captain out of it while the crew was still driving it down the road. In this case ignorance was bliss, but it makes one wonder, in retrospect, how many times one almost got killed with out been any the wiser?
Of Soldiers and Policemen.
Once the army and the police guards on the bridge had a small firefight right over our heads. We never found out why but it was scary at the time, as we had no idea that was shooting at who. My AK was at the other side of the camp when this all broke out. The first firing seemed to come from the bridge, heavy machine gun with tracers and all. This was answered by assault rifle fire, lots of it, from the FAA camp on the high ground above the river. We did not know if UNITA SPECS troops had infiltrated or what. It stopped as quickly as it started, and no one could tell us anything…… Angola.
Another incident involving soldiers and policemen was rather amusing at the time. We had completed basic training. Some of our newly trained FAA troops were given a few days off and traveled to Luanda. When the got back they were all excited and shouting, “ Buddy buddy advansa munteu booi, Comandante!” We knew that “Buddy buddy advancer!” was their name for Fire and Movement; “munteu booi” means very good. Well, after finding one of our “talks” we learned these chaps had tried the tactic out on five policemen with great success! Their confidence in us was established. Pity about the dead policemen…..Angola.
On our side we had some men in our ranks that were socially unacceptable even to us. One of these was a chap we called ‘Varkie’, which means little pig in Afrikaans. He had the habits and hygiene a pig would be ashamed of. As long as he did not live in your tent this did not present a big problem, until one day he went too far. The facts that I saw for myself were; one night there was a lot of movement from the FAA camp. One of the ‘talks’ went to see what the commotion was about. There were tanks being moved along the tar road above us and a lot of movement on the opposite side of our camp, men and equipment moving in the bush. The ‘talk’ came back very excited, with good reason. The FAA Brigadier, that was visiting again, had mobilized the entire Brigade against us. We were surrounded on three sides and had the river to our backs. Emergency meetings were held. Considering there were about 200 of us and a few thousand of them, with armored vehicles as well, we did not stand a chance of fighting our way out. This was near the end of our training and the Brigade was ready to join the war. Besides we had no idea why the Brigadier was so pissed off! A cease-fire was declared and an emisionary was sent to find out what was happening. The following story came back; sometime that day, week, what ever, one of our guys had raped a girl on the beach. The huge problem was that was one of the Brig’s girlfriends. More meetings were called and we said this is impossible it could not be one of us. Only if a girl was raped by a White man it had to be one of the EO guys as we were the only White people in a couple of hundred square kilometers. Things were very tense, as the tanks were ready to fire on our camp. Finally it came out that it was Varkie that was responsible for the deed! The emmisionary was sent with the news that we had found the culprit and to ask, what now? The upshot of this was Varkie was handed over to FAA, with no reservation. The Brigade withdrew and we never saw or heard from Varkie again. The policemen on the bridge were nowhere to be seen that night, and only appeared the next morning.
Our chaps did their fair share to add to the chaos. One night two idiots decided to play a trick on our Angolan friends. The perimeter guards were stationed on the slight hill above our camp, these two very drunk E.O. guys decided it would be a great idea to throw a grenade at them. They crept half way up the hill and did just this. Only, because they were so drunk they did not throw the dammed thing far enough. The grenade proceeded to roll back down the hill towards them. When the grenade went off almost to a man we threw army boots at our lights. The camp was plunged into darkness. All except one tent where these two jokers were pretending to play cards. They were scratched to shit by their mad scramble to avoid been blown to bits by their own grenade. One chap had not quite got away clean and had a huge gash in his leg from flying shrapnel but was too drunk to notice or even feel the pain! It was hard to get fired but they managed. The next morning two sheepish looking fellows waved us goodbye from the back of a truck destined for Caba Ledo.
The other incident I remember very well involved a character we named Audy Murphy 1. He was one of the young Recces that never got to be operational in the SADF. What happened was: we wanted to get our newly trained troops used to fire. We decided to take a whole Battalion into a dry riverbed and fire every weapon we could lay our hands on over their heads. Now some of us had to be with them to make sure they did not panic and try standing up and running. That would be bad! I lost the draw and had to climb down into the riverbed with them. All being professionals I was not worried at all. I sure as hell was not going to stand up! This organized we went ahead. Audey Murphy was the RPG man. Now every one knows that the rocket self-destructs at about 960 m if it does not hit anything, so the plan was to fire the thing over the riverbed and let it exploded well behind us. Excellent plan. We were ready so the guys let rip, one hell of a commotion with AK´s, RPD´s, PKM´s, AGS, s and RPG’s, letting rip over our heads. Then Audie Murphy, the self proclaimed RPG expert fired a rocket into the cactus just above us. Kak stof en hare! Sandstorm as shrapnel hit all around us. God only knows how but only the poor little Angolan next to me got hit. Right in the calf mussel. He must have been 16 years old at the most but not a whimper. We patched him up best as possible and Audie didn’t live that down until the day he died. Which wasn’t that long as he had the honor of being one of the first combat casualties a few months later.
One more silly incident with tragic consequences occurred. A few of the Recce chaps were playing Frisbee with a “varkpan”. This is a stainless steel food plate issued in armies and hostels alike. As they were tossing it to each other, one chap didn’t want to play and turned his back on the game. The other guy tossed it at him anyway and it some how managed to hit him in the heel severing his Achilles tendon. This is hard to fix under ideal circumstance but out in the bush impossible. The result was that he was crippled for life. He could never be a working combat soldier or play sport again. Ironic that in such a dangerous place that a man's life could be changed so radically by something so stupid as an iron food plate.
S´major Reima some time while this all was happening went on his own mission. Here is the story I heard. At the coast closest to our camp, 6 or 8 kilometers away was a small fishing village, straight out of the movies. They had tiny little boats that they would cast nets from. They dried all the fish on the beach with sunlight and some times smoked the fish to preserve it. Some of the young boys seem to have a full time job of killing birds, all they do is throw rocks at all and any kind of birds that fly past, I think they eat them, as all the carcasses are collected and taken to the huts. Nando’s Angolan style! There is no electricity so obviously no fridge’s or lights. We use to sometimes spend Sundays on this beautiful beach. We would pack up all the alcohol and marijuana we could lay our hands on, along with any tinned food we had. Then for a few cigarettes we would buy crayfish, prawns and some of the catch of the day. The weather was magnificent and the sea lukewarm. We would build a fire and have a beach party. Our first braai was nearly a disaster. On the beach were lovely rounded sandstone rocks, perfect for a hearth, or so we thought. We made a fire surrounded by these rocks and proceeded to get plasted. Next minute we had these huge explosions going off. Now we were living on our nerves all the time and were trying to chill out. The rocks when heated burst like bloody bombs. The natives could have warned us! Even stranger was the inside of the rocks. They were composed of a matrix of sandstone with strange shells imbedded in the matrix, mixed with harder small black stones. We recovered and continued our party, alternately swimming and sunbathing. One of the most exciting things I have ever seen was at one of these parties. We were swimming pretty far out when a school of hundreds of baby Hammerhead sharks came swimming past. They were only about 30cm long but hundreds of them! One other incident involving sharks comes to mind. The Angolan fishermen were in a boat not more than 50m from where we were swimming. Next thing they pull out a shark that could not fit on their boat long ways! You have never seen a bunch of guy’s swim for land so fast! We watched as the fishermen hacked this brute to death in awe. No way I’m going to get into a fight with a shark in a piddelly little boat like that. Our swimming came to an abrupt end …for about an hour. It was HOT, so after drinking a reasonable amount we ventured back into the sea, long enough to get sober enough to get scared, then out again, to get drunk and too hot. The process repeated itself every time we went to the beach.
Of Diamonds and S’majors.
But I digress back to Reima; he apparently pulled the following stunt off. Everyone in that damned country has shinny little stone they try to sell to you, “Diamante, Comandante”. Now I don’t know the difference between a piece of broken glass and a diamond but I believe a lot of that shit is the real thing. Rumor has it Reima stole a small generator and a Zodiac craft, to swap for a handful of these stones. In another country I would not believe this but Angola? It is feasible. Those fishermen can’t fish with those stones, they can’t eat them, they cannot C. with them and they can’t make light with them. So for all intent and purpose they are useless. The fact is they did have our Zodiac and a generator. The rest of the story goes that Reima was arrested in South Africa with 1.6 million Rands worth of uncut stones! The other fact is we got a new RSM and was he a weird character.
Let me introduce you to Curly. The name is a cruel joke but I never knew his real name. Firstly he was a very large man and very pink in colour. The peculiar thing is he had absolutely NO hair. No, not just bald, no hair, no eyelashes, no eyebrows, nothing. Apparently he had gotten bitten by a pig when he was small and a resulting infection made his hair disappear, no shit, since then I have heard of someone else this has happened to. When one has NO hair they look ….. different. Hard to explain but I met someone else with total hair lose and they look strange. This other chap lost his hair due to shock, when he was 14 years old he and his family were in a car accident and his brother was decapitated. The head landed in his lap! No hair. But back to Curly he had the shittest disposition you could imagine, even for a S´major. He spent his time harassing the dope smokers, yelling that if he caught them they were “gefire… terug States toe”. Roughly translated means they would get fired and sent back to SA. We all knew this was not true, but it kept him busy and us amused. Since I’ve never being a big dope smoker I was always posted as look out, and he was convinced I was the biggest dope-smoking fiend in the camp. He made it his mission in life to catch me, which was impossible, as I didn’t smoke! One day when I was bored I decided to play a joke on him. I had some origanium to flavour the otherwise bland food we were getting, so I put some in a twist of paper to make it look like a stash, acted guilty as hell when he walked into my tent and let him do the rest. What a performance. He ranted and raved that at last he had me and I was out on the next plane to SA….gefired. When all the guys managed to stop laughing and try to explain it was real herbs not dope; he was having none of it. The stupid moron did not even know what dope looked like. Eventually he decided to take it to the Medic to check it out. Brian did not smile often but even he found this funny. Curly wanted to send the “sample” to a lab in SA to be doubly sure. Monty Python stuff this, he fitted right in, in that upside down country. After that Curly avoided me like the plague. He was actually in charge of the Canteen and kitchen and had no authority elsewhere, and never ventured out of the confines of the camp proper, but we let him live in his own illusion. Shit, he was well paid to dream!
The Insurance Guy.
Things were changing in Longa. As in any army rumors were rife. One was that Savimbi had hired his own Mercenaries to ‘come and get’ us. This lead to long discussion of what we would to if we came up against fellow South African, which we may even know personally. Some of the chaps were already going ‘Ops’, which wasn’t in our contract. We were hired as Military Advisors. Any one with half a brain knew that was bullshit, even back at the house I knew that they were not going to pay me that much money just to chase troops up and down. This lead to more discussions about what if we were killed. Couldn’t believe these guys hadn’t put that into the equation when they were deciding to sign up. They all had dreams of a year in and then easy street. None of them believed me when I told them I wasn’t in it for the money. The money was a bonus, right then really didn’t need it as I had inherited enough to operate for quite a while. I was looking for adventure. Still seem to have this character defect! Anyway this lead to discussions life insurance. In the SADF if we were killed our family got a payout of ten thousand Rand. My school friend Philippe got that amount when his brother was killed on the Border, so I knew it was a fact. EO had no such agreement in our contract. More meetings and goings on lead to “The House” organizing an insurance broker to come out to see us. I can just imagine this twit been told there are a few hundred men that need insurance, but they are not in the country right now, would you mind meeting us at Lanseria and speak with them. He should have been worried when he took a flight out in the wee hours with out the normal rigmarole of Passport control and the like.
There we were all in our Mess, in cammos and heavily armed and kippie arrives in his collar and tie! Been a disciplined bunch we listened to what he had to say about benefits and all that crap and then asked a few pertinent questions of our own. Like what happens if there is no body or death certificate? No payment, which is fair. Then benefits if killed in combat? No benefits. What happens if we blow ourselves up like Wayne Ross-Smith? No benefits. By now, discipline is one thing but this asshole was pushing his luck, and a few guys were getting a bit aggressive. The insurance guy, straight out of a posh suburb in Sandton was shitting himself. Not the quick deal of a lifetime he imagined. He very nervously told us what he could do for us. Basically he could cover us for a car accident! Did that piss the guys off? We didn’t even have a car!
The Ops guys helped the poor bugger beat a hasty retreat all the way to Caba Ledo, and from there presumable back to Sandton. We never heard anything from him or his reputable company again.
Bimbi’s Letters.
In any military situation the Brass knows that letters from home are important for the moral, so EO set up a similar system to what most of us had in the SADF. Obviously with out all the bullshit, like having to do pushups if your letter smelt of perfume. Every plane that came in had some mail for us. We could get stamps at the canteen and our letters would be posted from ‘The House’ in Pretoria. Mainly mine were from Charmaine; she even sent some drawings based on what I wrote about camp life. We had been in Angola for a few moths and I noticed Bimbi never received any mail. So I watched to see if he ever sent any out, he did not. I knew he had a wife and kids living in Phalaborwa, although he was Congolese. One day I asked him why he did not write, would his wife not be worrying about him. At this stage the South African news was full of stories, some actually true, of a bunch of South African mercenaries in Angola. A few guys had been killed already and the newspapers were having a field day. Charmaine kept a photo of three bodies; dead and half naked that Savimbi had sent to the SA news services as a warning to keep South African soldiers out of his country. I’m sure all the wives and girlfriends were eagerly waiting for mail. Now Bimbi is a proper Black man, not some brown shade, black! If he could he would have blushed. The story is, he and his wife have no common written language. Although he could speak 5 or 6 languages he could only write in French. His wife been from Venda, properly had never even heard French before she met Bimbi. I offered to write on his behalf and after much cajoling Bimbi arrived in my tent late one night. It was touching to see how embarrassed this hard assed ex 5 Recce soldier was so shy about his personal life. He told me to write that he was well and how are the kids? That was it! When I asked if I should write that he missed his wife he nearly crawled under the bed. We eventually sent a letter off. His next embarrassment came when Goodness, his wife, replied. The poor bugger couldn’t read English either! So he snuck into my tent late one night again and very shamefacedly asked me if I would mind reading his letter. The cost to him to do that must have been enormous. Bimbi was a truly brave man, in every respect and I liked him all the more for it.
The EO Airforce.
Apart from our forward camp in Longa, the company was busy elsewhere. One of the things that later would affect us was the establishment of an Air wing. Hah. It consisted of one plane; don’t know much about aeroplanes but this one looked like a small civilian one. The pilot was rumored to be an authentic hero from the old war. He had shot down some Mig’s during the Bush war way back when. The first we knew about him is when he buzzed our camp one-day. We had not seen or heard any air traffic around Longa since our arrival, so were shocked to first hear and then see this little plane in the sky. As usual we were not informed of anything and did not know if this was an enemy plane or not. Then even more to our surprise it dive-bombed us! The pilot is very lucky he did not get fired on, but fortunately everyone waited to see if it was hostile. After diving at us it did a victory role and flew off. We continued with our duties and speculated who it could be. The next day it was back and pulled the same trick, flying low enough for us to see that it was a White boy flying the thing. This became a regular habit over the next couple of weeks and rumors flew faster than the little plane. One day we saw that it had been modified, both wings were now sporting rocket pods, nothing like any of us had seen before. I have seen a disco light that looks just like those pods. Anyway one day the pilot landed and we meet Pine, our one man Airforce. He was living down at Caba Ledo and brought us news of how they were living it up in that camp, hot water showers a flush toilets, bloody jam stealers and one Glory Boy. That’s the name foot soldiers give pilots, as they live in luxury, fly a mission in a comftable aircraft, back for tea and get all the publicity like in the Gulf War Part one.
One weapon that I had never seen before turned up at our stores. We unpacked it and as usual one of us had some experience with it. We assembled the weapon that is called an AGS. A brief description; it is a 30mm grenade launcher, what got us so interested was, until now few of us had seen anything like it. We all knew the 40mm ‘snotnues’ which is similar to a rifle but has a huge bore. It looks more like a badly designed child’s toy than the devastating weapon it is. Now this AGS was a machine gun equivalent, belt fed it fires 400 rounds a minute! It can be used to fire directly or as an indirect weapon like a mortar. Direct fire is when one can see the target and aim directly at it with whatever sights are provided on the weapon. For instance; a rifle can have open or V sights, peep sights with either one or both sights being a small round hole, telescopic sights to magnify the target and now days laser sights. With all of these one needs a visual of the intended target. Indirect weapons have the ability to fire at unseen targets, like from behind a hill. They also have various sights. Here one gets a bearing reference and has a ‘spotter’ stashed somewhere that can see the target in ideal situations, the ‘spotter’ calls in corrections and the crew manning the weapon adjusts the sights accordingly. In the old days the sights had a vertical and horizontal spirit level as guides. Recently at a weapon show I saw that this is horrible outdated and GPS’s are the in thing, just looking at these new toys gave me a spitty mouth.
What this has to do with our airforce per se is the tiffie chaps cut the rear doors off of our one chopper and mounted one of these babies in the doorway. Some how a photo and an article found its way into Soldier of Fortune magazine, talking about a bunch of crazy South Africans trying to kill themselves in the middle of Angola. Must admit that weapon pushed the chopper around a bit, but one has to be tough to live in Africa. That’s about all I can say about our magnificent air force.
Going on Leave.
Apart from the wonderful pay structure we were receiving, the leave was bloody marvelous as well. In the contract it was stated that one would work for six weeks and then have two weeks leave! The flights in and out were free! Especially in the beginning we had to do some serious shuffling about; there being so few of us if we all took leave exactly when it was due, there would be hardly anyone left in our camp. This did cause some heated arguments. Our Ops tent was barely functional at this stage, actually I wonder if it ever was. The soldiers that work in the office type jobs, even in an operational area are not much better than the ‘jam-stealers’ in the main base camps. Because of their work the have access to all the best equipment and food, human nature makes them take advantage of this, often at our expense. This Ops tent was in the Recce side of the camp so most of the guys did not venture near it unless summoned. The Ops guys are not stupid so they share just enough of their privilege with the Recce’s in order not to get hurt! In turn the Recce’s make sure the rest of the soldiers leave them well alone. This I believe is known as a symbiotic relationship in nature. These Ops guys are the ones that control your leave, so one has to be polite to them anyway, but you don’t have to like them. At Longa it was quite a process to go on leave, as one had to get to Caba Ledo first in order to catch a plane out. This involved arranging transport 200 km south in a country where everyone tends to shoot at everyone else. One can’t, or it would not be advisable to just hop in a vehicle a casually drive down the coast! The canteen guys had to collect supplies on a regular basis and in order to go with them you had to time it right that the pilots from Capricorn Systems were flying up with in a couple of days, as they flew in and straight back out, usually the same day. Now if you were not in the good books with, first the Ops guy, to radio his counter part at Caba Ledo and let him know he can expect a ‘package.’ Then the Canteen guy, to beg a lift when it would be convenient for him. It is highly possible that you may never get this thing right. On occasion guys that had an argument, however minor with either just did not go on leave for months. Before you could leave your kit had to be checked for things that it would not be wise to take back to SA with you, as it could cause trouble between the authorities and EO. Things like grenades, human bones, communist cammo’s and the like. One guy had completely stripped a spare AK and fashioned a false panel in the bag he was taking home, was he in shit?
Once you got this section right you still had to go through a whole rigmarole with the ‘jam-stealers’ at Cabeledo. There at that Ops room you had to convince the asshole that you really were due for leave in order for him to give you your Passport. Then after much performance and posturing, he would begrudgingly hand over the Passport. He normally told you things like, the plane isn’t coming this week, the plane is full, there is a problem in South Africa and we will be arrested as we get off the plane and a hundred other things that are all crap. You see the ‘jam- stealers don’t like us anymore than we like them. Been little office type guys they are usually scared of us physically, we will kick their butts, so they mess us around the only way they can. That done your next obstacle is the store man, to convince him that he actually has enough room in his store to keep your tiny bundle of kit for a few days. It is up to you to try and lock the kit up so stuff doesn’t get stolen while you are away, all through these negotiations I’m sure the prick is checking how strong your lock on the bag is! That done you have to now hand in your rifle, as the civilians at the airport might take exception if you stroll through carrying an AK, the cops would properly also take exception to this. Begging for some oil, of which he has a thousand liters, your rub down said weapon and the weapons store man gives you just little less shit than the others. That all done a man needs a beer. Now the ‘jam-stealers’ remember that the Recce’s beat them and their little business of stealing our food up a few weeks back, so they hate all the guys from Longa. That and the fact that they have a complex about been office soldiers makes even the barman, the shits have a barman, very unfriendly. If one is lucky the plane arrives the first day you are there, if not you have to find a place to sleep. While stashing your kit, you have seen plenty of, mattresses and blankets, which is all you need, never mind that you saw sheets and pillowcase as well, for God’s sake. The store man will eventually, begrudgingly part with the dirtiest set that he can find, with thinly veiled threats of how bad life will be for you if something happens to his precious kit. That organized you realize that you are pretty hungry as all you have eaten the whole day is a rusk in the morning. The chef are generally not bad guys and will feed you gladly, the only problem is your mess kit is back at Longa! So, back to the store man. He will then ask where is the kit you were issued with originally? After explaining that it is safely back at Longa, he will inevitably tell you “Well you should have brought it with, shouldn’t you?” this gets really tricky, as you know that if you did it would now be in your kit bag which is locked as tight as one could possibly make it. If you left it out it would get stolen, as once the store man has put your kit away you don’t want to ask for it back even for a minute, it is best to leave it till you get back from pass. I don’t even want to think about it! He then may, or may not lend you a mess kit for the night. If he decides not to, you have to accept or else you will never see your kit that he has in his clutches again! Borrowing someone else’s kit after they have eaten is the next option, but in a camp where nobody likes you it costs, one way or another, sometimes a beer or more likely a souvenir from the field so the person that lends you his kit has “proof” of some wild story he plans to tell his girlfriend on his next pass. There goes your own wild story for a ball of shit! This done it is back to the very well stocked bar, bloody ‘jam-stealer’ steal our rations of booze as well! and try very hard to be civil and not get into a fight, out numbered and they still have the final key to you getting on that plane, a scrap of paper with your number and one of the Ops guys signatures. With a bit of luck the next day the plane picks you up and you are out of there.
This does not always happen and I have sat in the boiling sun with very little water on the runway for up to three days. Finally one is in the air and about six hours later the plane lands at Lanseria, this is another experience in its self. The first time the airport bar was closed, after that when whoever it is that runs that bar knew some of us where due, no matter what time the bar was open and you could run a tab. This time and most times after that there were no customs officials to say hello. My Passport stamps are a little weird, as the stamps show I flew out of the country, never landed anywhere and now and then flew out again, all with not even coming back! The first thing I did when arriving was run into both the Men’s and the Ladies toilets and flush all the toilets. I hate long drops, so flush toilets were great! Next I tried to make a call to arrange a lift home, but couldn’t work out the phone. While we were gone they had installed these new card phones and we had no idea how they worked. Someone found a normal phone and we all made reverse charge calls. Some of the chaps had to catch planes to other areas in the country from Jan Smuts’s airport, and seeing as though I lived close by that airport I told them they were welcome to stay at my place. Poor Charmaine. Once home and with all that money in our pockets we went a little crazy. I drank morning noon and night, to such an extent that my alcoholic blackouts lasted days. Some of what happened I have absolutely no recall to this day but if a few different people tell me the same tale I suppose it must be true. Charmaine and her brother Mike had been telling me about this amazing band they had discovered, Count Ash and that Mike had become friendly with the members. They happened to be playing at Froggo’s my favorite haunt, so we went to see them at the first opportunity. Much to everyone’s surprise, mine included, I knew the lead singer and guitarist since I was about five years old! His older brother that was the drummer was a friend of my sister. Joe and I had met in grade one; he was in a home for boys close to where I use to live. We had gone through first primary school and then high school together and had last seen each other in 1983. This brought a whole new dimension to Mike and my reputations in the pubs. Before I left I had built up a reputation as a bad man in the place, I carried two guns and a knife. I was fortunate enough to have done well in a couple of bar fights and could out drink almost everyone in the place. My seemingly endless money supply, from my modest inheritance and house money, caused much speculation, as I was never seen to be working. I built on speculations like these to enhance my reputation shamelessly. A lot of the time I was with women much younger than myself, including Charmain’s very pretty daughter. Combined with the fact that all the regulars knew I had ‘gone north’ a couple of months back and the fact that we were getting cover in the news and You magazine, my link to a popular band didn’t hurt. Some of the guys I worked with would join us and having Graham, as a drinking partner was the cherry on top. While on leave I reveled in all the attention, and my behavior looking back is embarrassing. But shit, was it fun at the time.
One pass I arrived home to sleep for a few hours and then wake up Charmaine and her Mother to tell them we were going to Cape Town. When they asked when I said, “Now!” Mike and Samantha were visiting Charmaine’s sister, Lily, in Cape Town at the time. I drove until I was too drunk to continue and slept over in Colesburg. There apparently I booked two rooms at a hotel, and barricaded myself in one of them with Charmaine. Using all the movable furniture to block windows and doors I then made a bed for myself in the corner on the floor. The next day we arrived at Lily’s house where all the family had congregated. I knew Lily’s husband Derrick from a while back when he had visited JHB. Derrick and I had similar personalities and drinking habits, he even looked a little like me, small and dark. He and Lilly were semi-separated. This was no business of mine but Charmaine and her sister pulled me into it. What happened was the two of the said they wanted to go to Gordon’s Bay would I like to drive them. Upon hearing they were going to a pub there I said no problem, what I did not know is that Lily was meeting a man there. We went and I proceeded to get drunker and on returning decided to have a sleep in the caravan in the garden. The rest of the people, it was a complete cluster (mess), were going out to eat. There I was sleeping nicely when the caravan door was burst open to reveal one very angry and drunk Derrick, with a gun in his hand! My one gun was under the pillow and I had my fingers touching it, as calmly as possible I asked Derrick what was the matter. The upshot, pardon the pun, was that he wanted to kill me as I had taken his wife to visit another man. I do not recall exactly what I told him that saved my butt, but it properly went along the lines that my ex had also cheated on me and all women were whores, so why kill each other over them, lets have a drink instead. We went into the kitchen and things were going along as well as could be expected when he threw another wobbly and put his hand through the glass door. The blood gushed out of him like you would not believe, and my patch up skills were tested to the limit. Once we had stopped the bleeding and I had cleaned up the floor he decided he was going to wait for his wife, and then kill her! Again I can’t remember exactly what I said but he was convinced this was not a good idea right now and to go back to his mates house and sleep it off. By the time those two women got back I had worked myself into lather, and shouted at them for dropping me in that situation. As it was my nerves could not take much more, two more instances that occurred while in Cape Town show how tightly wound up I was getting. The one I remember is that very late one night I started to feel all cooped up and decided to go jogging. This doesn’t sound too bad but I did so in jeans, army boots and with a .357 Magnum in my hand. Charmaine's nephew decided to come with me, when we had run a few blocks a police car pull next to us and asked what we were doing. I replied, “What does it look like, we are jogging.” To this they politely asked if I could put the gun away, to which I replied, “Who is going to make me?” Fortunately the nephew interceded and got me to tuck the weapon in my pants and the two most reasonable cops in the world left it at that. The second incident I do not remember at all but enough people saw it to make me know it is true. We were all sitting around a fire and one guy was playing a guitar, Mike reckons I got a weird look in my eye and pulled out my gun, cocked it and stuck it to his head. He then calmly asked what I was doing and reminded me that he was “ Mike your buddy.” I then looked at him for a while, removed the gun from his forehead, put it back in my pants and continued drinking. This type of behavior was not new to me, as I had been doing crazy violent things from when I was a teenager, but the combination of my work and the progress of my alcoholism was making me worse and worse. It was only after I had left EO that I really started getting into serious trouble. While in Cape Town we visited my family, some of which I had not seen for many years, of this I remember very little. At this stage all I wanted to do is go back to my tent in Longa.
Charmaine dropped me off at Lanseria airport and I waited at the bar, there were a few other chaps I recognized but was not particularly friendly with, as well as one huge Angolan of mixed blood. He was getting very drunk and eating greasy hamburgers like there was no tomorrow. He was also very loud and bulling, which pushed my buttons immediately. Unfortunately if I do not like someone it shows on my face, and I tend to verbalize this dislike with sarcastic comments. Once we were airborne the Angolan got very ill, and I laughed in his face when he had to use a Take-away packet to throw up in. This was a tactical error of note as he was the commanding officer of that Special force unit just outside Cabe Ledo. That night around the bar he got me off to one side and told me that now we were in his country, he was going to kill me at the first opportunity he could, with out causing trouble with EO. Oh, oh. In that country people mean it when they threaten to kill you, I stayed as close to as many of our guys as I could. The next day we left for Longa I was greatly relieved and thought that was the end of it. This was not so. He would be waiting for me every time I passed through Cabe Ledo, on one occasion he got tired of waiting for the right moment and while very drunk decided he was going to kill me then and there, with this huge knife he pulled out. Shit, he didn’t need the knife, I almost died of fright, this was one big mother, and he had blood in his eye. Some of my Recce friends intercepted and while they held him off I made my escape, after that he never spoke to me again but always stared at me when our paths crossed.
New Rules.
At Longa things had changed, there were more people in the camp and rules were now been enforced. My tent was taken over by a bunch of new chaps and I had to move in with the chef. He was a noisy bugger and always had a supply of batteries for his ‘Ghetto Blaster.’ My Kas had been broken into and my spare tinned food so carefully hoarded, stolen. At this stage I became friendly with the canteen guys, my underlying reason was that they always had a good supply of booze, and ice! Another development was that two of them had to go on leave, and that meant the evening shift at the canteen needed someone to fill in. this was perfect, I could play with guns and explosives all day and then sit in the canteen for two hours or so with all the free booze and ice! The two weeks they were away were almost bliss, except that I was getting more and more cantankerous as time went by. Eventually I lost fair amount of fistfights as I was now permanently drunk. So were a lot of other guys and as long as I continued showing up to train the troops I was left alone, but this too was about to change.
A general meeting was called at the Ops room, and we were informed that we were going to go operational. If one was not happy about that, a few flights had been arranged to ferry those who wished to resign back to South Africa. About one third of the chaps took that option. Training was stopped and we just sat around for weeks, some of the guys insisted that if we were to go operational that we should get more pay. A big argument via the Ops tent and The House ensued, I didn’t care, as I was been paid to sit in the bush and drink myself silly. Before this was resolved I caught Malaria and or some other funny virus. It was bad enough to fly me out to Olivedale clinic in SA. I had to wait a few days to get a lift to Cabe Ledo, on the first day I thought I was going to die; by the second day I was seriously contemplating shooting myself to end my misery. I landed at Lanseria and can’t really remember but think I phoned Charmaine to pick me up. I do remember going to the clinic looking terrible and smelling worse, had not bathed in days. The clinic is rather posh and my appearance caused a stir. Once I mentioned whom I worked for it was Mr. Bisset this, Mr. Bisset that and I was pushed to the front of the queue, much to the disgust of all the posh people that had been waiting. I saw a woman doctor and blood was taken, I swear not a half-hour later she came back with pages of computer read-outs of the analysis. She wanted to book me in immediately as they had found something they had not seen before, some Angolan virus not on record. In no uncertain terms I pointed out that this was not an option. I must say they were very polite under the circumstance and allowed me to leave after I had received the biggest injection I have ever seen. The needle was nice and thin, this is a hospital for the rich remember, but the vial was huge. She informed me that the liquid should kill any virus, and gave me a prescription for follow up medicine. Because of the Malaria, which had taken second seat to the other thing, she also told me no alcohol, yeah right. There must be a hundred pubs between the clinic and home. Don’t think I managed to visit all of them but gave it a jolly good try, ending up at….Froggo’s.
Now another complication set in, as if I did not have enough trouble. The barman had moved to Cape Town, everybody is always moving to bloody Cape Town, I hate the place, full of Fynbos that you can’t even smoke and not a decent piece of bush anywhere. The barman had left behind his very cute little girlfriend; she was 19 years old and dressed like a hippie. Under those loose fitting clothes she had a body to die for, and although from Greek parents, had long blond hair and green eyes. While sitting drinking my neat vodka this young lady came to chat to me. After that a fairy tale sort of thing happened, if I did not have the letters that she later wrote to me I would have put it down to drunken hallucinations. Her dress had a gold type thread running through it and I ran my finger along her leg telling her that it was very pretty. At this see looked at me with soppy eyes and told me that, in all the time she had known me it was the first time I had ever touched her. See even drunk I am a gentleman; I had had some very wicked thoughts about this young lady before! Then she said something about I was the sexist man she had ever seen and and and. My goodness gracious me, the youth of today, it must be the stuff they are smoking, not Fynbos that is for sure. At this time I was about 32 years old, and although this was excellent for the ego it got me into a lot of trouble because I stupidly kept those delightfully incriminating letters, that only a teenage girl could pen. All of a sudden I was not so keen to return to Longa as before and although I was much better regarding the viral illness, my body was wrecked from my extravagant lifestyle. The doctor was not stupid and must of known this but booked me off for another week anyway. This time was spent dropping Charmaine off at work in the morning, messing around with Samantha until 10 o’ clock, making sure she did not come with me, and meeting Irene at Froggo’s. spending the day with the cute little Greek, dropping her off at Froggo’s at about half past four and rushing off to pick up Charmaine. Home for a quick shower and catnap then back to Froggo’s. Some nights it would become rather hectic, what with Charmaine on the one side, some very suspect slow dancing with Samantha and Irene on the other. Oh, what a web we weave, as we learn the art to deceive.
Ultimately I had to return for two good reasons alone, and I am not certain which was the greater. One was that playing a triple game was getting chaotic and the other was I would not get paid if I sat in JHB much longer. A surprise awaited me, after going through the normal rigmarole, and finding out my combat boots had been stolen, and dodging the psychotic Angolan, I arrived at Longa to find most of the camp broken down. The canteen guys were still around and I asked them where the hell my guys were, after the change I was now part of a Rapid Deployment Team. They said that the guys had left to go fight but did not know where. I got a ride back to Cabe Ledo to ask the Ops guys where everyone was. They were so vague so as to be of no help what so ever, it was back to Longa as I dared not hang around Cabe Ledo with no protection from the Angolan. Finally an Ops type that was passing through told me I had to go to Luanda. Off I went with the first truck I could find, some mechanics were going into town and I hitched a ride with them. This was the first time I had seen the capital, and to describe it to someone who has never seen an African country at war it is unbelievable. A few years later I tried to explain it to some Belgium people I was working for and they would not believe me until they saw for themselves. As one nears the city there is a huge market spread for kilometers on either side of the road. One can, for a price purchase almost anything there. It is more expensive than the village markets, an example is an African Grey parrot cost a couple of hundred Dollars, we had bought one for 5 cigarettes near Longa…….Angola. Coke is twice the price of any other soft drink, and chimpanzees in chains are sold openly. Once in the city itself the amount of rubbish piled in the streets is incredible, it is as much as two or three stories high, Luanda does not smell so good. All of the buildings have bullet holes in them, most have no window panes, shops with very little for sale have a wooden board across the doorway and business is conducted over this counter. The variety of vehicles is stupendous; from cars that must date back to the 50’s to vehicles that are so new they are not even in JHB yet. Everyone just drives as they see fit, the traffic cops stand on meter high concrete blocks, presumable because they would just be run over otherwise, and blow whistles while waving there hand all over the place. As I was on the back of a huge Russian 6 wheeled truck, I had a grandstand view of all of this. The civilian population has more than half that are missing limbs, a city of war-injured people. The first hour in that city is too much for the senses to handle all at once. I believe, but have never seen, that a battalion of soldiers cordons off a section of Luanda and that is where all foreign visitors are allowed. We drove through this mess and came to the airport, the military and civilian airports share the same runway, while I was stuck waiting for a lift to join my mates I saw even more incredible things at the airbase. Hundreds of broken down helicopters, a helicopter graveyard like the legendary elephants’ one surrounded the base. I did not go into the building itself but slept under one of these helicopters for a few days. One occasion a Mig was attempting to deploy, there was a small semi tarred road between the base and the runway, as the Mig was taxing toward the runway, a truck entered from the opposite side. They met up somewhere near the middle, the truck driver did not want to give way and began blowing his hooter, the Mig, I don’t think, can reverse so a stalemate ensued. This went on for quite some time, finally they both conceded to put one wheel over the grass and squeezed past each other. The Mig roared off presumable to fight in a war somewhere. While all this was going on there on the main runway, which is for a recognized international airport, was a chap on a bicycle a couple of donkeys and the inevitable cows and goats. Normal airports have trouble with birds, for God’s sake!
By some strange coincidence Charmaine had caught a flight with Air Portugal to London and was sitting on that same tarmac at the same time as me. They had asked for all South African Passports and would not allow them to leave the plane. She got a small glimpse of that country before the window shutters were ordered to be drawn. We both only found out that we had been mere meters from each other months later.
While all this was happening another chap that had been on leave found me, at least now I had company. So far we had only found out that the Rapid Deployment team was in Durban, now Durban is a big coastal holiday city in South Africa and we found this highly unlikely, although in Angola anything was possible. We speculated that they had all been given leave together and maybe that it was true. Our other piece of information was that a bunch of Russian pilots were going to be going to “Durban” soon, we started searching for some Russians, any White people we saw were greeted with “ Africa do Sol, Durban?” all we got was stares and a whole lot of jabbering in Portuguese. Then we bumped in to one of the ‘talks’ that was based in Luanda, he had some food for us for which by now we were exceedingly grateful. As he had transport he asked if we would like to go up to the Old Portuguese Fort with him, we jumped at the chance, it gets boring sitting next to a runway. The drive up to the Fort is exceptionally beautiful, typical of this country where everything jumps from one extreme to another. The lagoon at Luanda it the second biggest in the world, in the lagoon are small islands where the Portuguese had build mansions. Because of there inaccessibility they had remained intact despite the war. In the sea itself one could see the oilrigs that were a big cause of all the strife in this beautiful country. The Fort itself is very old, dating back to the 17th century with the some of the original cannons still in place, but been Angola, some had tumbled off and the soldiers found them to be convenient toilet seats, they were full of shit, the cannons, I mean! Part of the courtyard served as a Military Museum and I was surprised to see a captured Ratel there, the SA government had never admitted to losing on of these armored vehicles to my knowledge. There were also a few of the troop carriers known as Buffels, all the armored glass was cracked from rifle fire but as far as I could tell none had penetrated the interior. Talk about ‘Proudly South African.!’ The view from the walls of the Old Fort was unbelievably beautiful, and from a distance the city of Luanda looks wonderful.
We had to return to the airport and try to find these mythological Russians, the ‘talk’ gave us a lift and bade us good luck and goodbye. There we were sticking out like a sore thumb in so called friendly territory, with no idea what would happen next. We were sitting around contemplating life when we heard a big noise above all the normal comings and goings of the planes. A huge, and I mean huge silver plane had landed and was taxing toward us. This was the first time we had seen an Illusion, a Russian cargo plane, we had no idea of its origin so didn’t get excited about it been Russian, only when the doors opened and White guys stepped out did we pick up interest. We approached them with the now standard greeting for all the people we thought could help us. “ Africa do Sol, Durban?” Much to our delight in a mixture of all the languages including now Russian, I think, they confirmed that they were off to ‘Durban.’ The plane was there to pick up troops and some armored vehicles to ferry to ‘Durban.’ Now we saw it was highly unlikely that it was the same Durban that we were thinking about, it would cause endless shit, on an international scale, if we landed all this in our Durban. While the troops and vehicles were being loaded we had time to look at this amazing craft. Firstly, and I repeat myself it is huge, then in front it has a bulletproof glass bubble just under the cockpit, I learnt that this is where the navigator sits. The rear opens up as all cargo planes do, with a ramp that the vehicles could drive up. Because the armored vehicles were so heavy the Russian crew attached cables and used a winch to pull them on board. The other door was right up in the air, about two meters high, I had chance to verify that height later. Once all the kit was loaded a large group of Angolan soldiers boarded, and we climbed up the ramp with our kit and rifles after them. The Russian crew got busy up front and the planes engines started to whine. We were very excited to be going somewhere, we did not know where but it felt good just to be going. Then we sat around and sat around, I needed a smoke and found out what ‘no smoking on the plane’ sounds like in Russian! No problem the ramp was still down and I strolled down it to have a smoke. There I was, minding my own business, having a smoke when the ramp went up! Now I panicked, my meager little bit of kit and my AK were on that bloody plane, alone in Luanda was bad enough but with no weapon was too scary to contemplate. I ran round the front and shouted at the pilot and navigator, the flyboys did not even look at me, I heard my mate shouting above the now terrible din of the engines, he was standing in the doorway up in the air, I ran up to him and tried to jump and catch hold of the bottom of the doorframe. It was just too high and I missed a few times, my mate used his brain and somehow hooked his feet so he could hang halfway out the plane, which was now moving! In one last desperate attempt I jumped, spurred on by adrenaline it was a good one, and he managed to grab me by the wrists and haul me aboard. As I have mentioned I am pretty small, a whopping 58 kilograms boots and all on a good day, this is sometimes a problem in a military situation, where everyone tends to be twice my size, but in this instance was I thankful! The Russian crew found this all very amusing and I swore at the in all the languages I could thing of, to which the just laughed some more. I eventually forgave them when they produced some breakfast for us. It was powdered eggs and some strange tasting sausage but after not eating much in the last few days we were grateful. It seemed we had just taken off, in the usual Angolan style, almost straight up to +- 32 000 feet when we started going straight down again. It was useless to ask what was happening so I went to the navigators bubble to look. The Russian gestured that I should sit in the spare chair, it is amazing, and you sit surrounded by glass, even under your feet. I saw a small runway in the bush beneath us and I don’t know how that pilot aims for such a tiny thing. As we came close to the ground my feet involuntary lifted up and the ground rushed past in a blur. Looking around I knew exactly where we had landed, at Cabe Ledo! Now what? Talk about from the sublime to the ridiculous. We had made no progress in our mission to find our team at all, worse we seemed to be going backwards, and I really didn’t want to be near that psycho Angolan. Again the frustration of been in a country where you can understand anyone was present. It didn’t turn out too bad as we learned we had just stopped to pick up a few more vehicles. That plane could carry an amazing amount, then we were off to ‘Durban.’ After the Angolan lift off I climbed under on of the tanks and using my kit as a pillow pulled my bush hat over my face and fell asleep.
The Rapid Deployment Team at Saurimo
Saurimo
I woke up at the sharp drop in altitude. The window of these planes is too high up to see out of in the cargo section, so I went to visit the navigator. We were already approaching the runway and it looked similar to any bush runway I had seen before, but this looked as though it was an airbase as well. Or what would have been an airbase. The huge hangers were all in a state of collapse and the few concrete buildings were burned out, no longer gray but blackened shells. We got off the plane and I was delighted to see Graham and Gavin. They filled me in on the news of what had been happening since I was away. It seems that living conditions had gotten even worse; most of the guys were sleeping in the damaged hangers, amongst the rubble. I went to the only building that was in tacked to report that I had arrived, no one was particularly interested, I could have stayed for another few weeks with no one the wiser. I left my kit in the HQ building that once must have served as an on base house for a high-ranking officer and went to see the rest of the guys. The hanger came as a bit of a shock, the guys had build bivvies out of all sorts of rubbish, pieces of burnt zinc, old tents and God knows what else. The atmosphere was one of dejection and apathy, with guys lying around either cooking on small fires or home made stoves, the sweet smell of grass hung on the air. What was left of the mortar crew was piled up in one tiny corner and I was told that I would have to squeeze in with them. The only place was what formed a drainage ditch in the middle, the only reason it was open is that if one slept there one would be permanently wet! I had seen some bombed out rooms on the way down and decided to investigate that option first, but was told that those were for the Special Forces guys only, we were not welcome. I left the hanger to go see for myself.
On arrival at the strange building, never worked out what they were used for originally, I found the ex-Rhodesian guys there. After catching up with the news they said one of the rooms was empty and I could move in. I went to inspect my new home. The door was missing and the doorway had a cement wall a few feet in, blocking the view, in or out. Once around the wall it was hard to see anything clearly as it was pretty dark in there, with only some small window-like openings in the rear wall. Thick metal slates covered these. The interior was burned black, which added to the dinginess of the place. This was not perfect but beat the hell out of sleeping in the hanger, I hate communal living, apart from been wet. This decided I went to get my kit. There were no shower facilities, a water truck filled up open tanks that were scattered around the camp and to bathe one had to use a cup or firebucket. This water was not drinkable and we were back to imported bottles. The food was Ratpacks from various countries. Ratpacks from Portugal had a large fish content and the tinned fish was not very well cleaned, I think if sold in a South African shop, someone would get sued! The Russian Ratpacks had a tin of – salami, onions and beans mix, on pass I would lay a bet of R1000.00 in the pub that no one could eat a whole tin with out either puking or getting the runs within 30 minutes. Never lost but never got paid either!
One day I heard a lot of noise outside, on investigation saw a whole bunch of FAA troops had arrived. As usual they had girlfriends and civilians with them. Some of the civilians started setting up a sound stage, and others had musical instruments. There was going to be a concert! The sound system was atrocious, loud and distorted the songs unrecognizable and the booze in great supply. It was a “team building” exercise for the troops, and in true Angolan style, a witch arrived. She had a brightly painted face and grass hair. She danced around and apparently ‘blessed’ the troops, who did not seem to be afraid of her. I watched this for a while collected as much booze as I could carry and retired to my bunker. Most of my time in Saurimo was spent in alcoholic blackouts, what I do remember is that I seemed to be cold all of the time. Here I penned a letter, which already showed my first step to getting better. I wrote, “ When has a man seen enough?” I was tired in body, mind and soul. For in darkness I was walking and destruction lay all around me from a fight I could not win. I resigned from the Company and went home, only to continue the battle there.
