I was limping and having a hard time keeping up but finally we got to the last Puma at the end of the chana that should have been ours, but Valk 2 was boarding it and the flight engineer pointed with a gloved finger to the next chopper. We all turned and rushed off through the dust storm to the next Puma but it too was full, and we were told to move on again. Heaving for breath we carried on running to the next chopper in line. Before we got there we could see it was full and bypassed it to the next.
We had been double-timing for about 500 metres from the deserted base all the way up the chana. My lungs felt like they were going to burst and my eyes were blinded by the dust. My legs felt like lead and my shoulders burned from the weight of the MAG and 500 rounds of ammo. I cursed as we ran. Lieutenant Doep turned to wave us on, his shirt filled like a balloon by the prop wash. He looked like a fat little man running on the spot and waving. I gritted my teeth and thought back to running the 3.4 kilometres with full kit on the PT course. It did not make it any easier.
We eventually ran the entire length of the chana, past seven Pumas and arrived at the last one that was empty. It turned out to be our Puma, which had moved to the top of the chana because there had been no space for him at the bottom where he had first dropped us.
“Idiot! Stupid idiot!”
I could hardly lift the MAG onto the chopper but somehow managed to heave it up with two hands. Stan grabbed my shirt collar and heaved me up into the chopper and then fell flat on his back, heaving for breath. I was still cursing and swore I would never again let the sound of a chopper or a frantic idiot flight engineer force me into unwarranted urgency. My lungs burned and my chest felt like bursting. I leaned my head on the LMG I was cradling in my lap as the Puma lifted off. I had thick phlegm in my throat; I felt like retching and had the same kind of breathlessness I had experienced when I did the first selection run for the Bats at the Engineers’, when I couldn’t carry on. I made a mental note to cut down on the cigarettes because I felt I was going to die. I would find out later that this was in fact an athletically-induced form of asthma that would, indeed, almost kill me.
BASE NIGHTS
I sat at the wobbly fold-out table in middle of the tent. It was midday and I was concentrating without success on getting the beads of sweat dropping from my forehead not to fall on the Red Cross writing paper. Even my writing hand left wet smudges on the small pad. I was telling my brother about the ops, but in a rough slang code to fool the army censors. I told him how we had flown into Angola to hit the base and that it had turned out to be a lemon with the terrs gone before we got there. But still, I told him, we had flown a cross-border operation which not everybody in the army got to do. I stopped and wondered just how they had known we would be coming, or whether it was pure luck that made them move on before we arrived.
Dan Pienaar, our section leader, sat in the tent doorway, leaning back on a plastic chair. He had the usual dreamy, half-asleep look on his face that was his claim to fame and the reason for his nickname Vaak Seun, literally ‘Dim Boy’. He was a rather philosophical South-Wester. I had grown to like him over the months; we had spent a couple of hours chatting about various things. He was a native South West African from a farm near Windhoek; all his family were in the military, so he too had earned his one stripe and was trying his best to be a good leader and work his way up.
I gave up writing, closed the pad and leaned back to adjust the small electric fan that we had scored from an air force ‘tiffy’, a mechanic. “Hey, Dan—how do you think those terrs knew that we were going to come, ’cause it sure looked like they cleaned up and cleared out just before we got there.”
“They probably picked it up on the bush telegraph… they’ve got their spies all around these parts. Some of them have probably even got family living around here and heard about the op before we did.”
“Nawww, c’mon… what spies?’’
Danny spoke in his slow South West African way. As he stared out of the tent with his droopy eyes he reminded me of a Red Indian in a Western movie who had insight and wisdom as he spoke a slow warning to the white man. “Half the SWAPO’ve probably got family in this area; you’d be surprised how fast word can spread here in the bush. They could even have someone in this base who saw us training.”
I paused and listened, even though I doubted there was a spy in Ondangwa. Ondangwa was a big 20-square-kilometre air force base. There were hardly any troops here except for the Airborne and 5 Recce sections down at the far end of the base that was shrouded in secrecy and barbed wire—the story was that they had live anti-personnel mines around their enclosure, even though it was inside Ondangwa air force base. Although there was also a black South West African infantry company, 101 Battalion, which had moved in two weeks ago and were staying in some tents behind the air force admin block.
Who knows; Dan might be right—one of these troops could spill the beans if they saw unusual activity. Local black Owambos were also employed at the base. Maybe Dan wasn’t full of shit after all and had a point. At 20 years of age, I didn’t know very much of the history of South West Africa. All I knew was that communist-trained forces were trying to take over South West Africa, and they were the vanguard for other communist countries such as the Soviet Union, Cuba and East Germany to move into the area and grab South West Africa’s vast mineral wealth, which included uranium, and then move on to South Africa. Or so I had always been led to believe, and never having heard an alternative point of view, I did believe it.
Dan spoke slowly and gave me a half-hour lesson on the history of South West Africa. He reckoned that 80 percent of the SWAPO troops were probably from Owamboland. I listened with interest when he told me that the fight for South West African independence had actually started in Cape Town in 1956 by one Herman Toivo, who was a World War II veteran and railway policeman. Dan even hinted that perhaps it was their land anyway. I found myself agreeing with him that it probably was the people’s land. It had been a German colony and was now run by South Africa. They wanted to break free from the chains just as South Africa had broken free from Britain and most African colonies from their respective European masters.
“The trouble is that they are backed by fucking communists who will want more than independence. They want the whole shooting match.”
“That’s a crock. Do you think that the Yanks and the West will sit back and allow Russia or China to just move in and take over South Africa if South West Africa got independence? No way; it’s not that simple. They’re feeding us bullshit again.”
“Bullshit? You think having 40,000 Cubans and a communist country as our new neighbours is bullshit!” I was getting a bit upset at Dan’s weird point of view.
“Zimbabwe’s so-called freedom fighters were communist-backed and they’ve just won their independence. They are just north of us. I don’t see them trying to take over South Africa or building freeways to Moscow.”
Our conversation was interrupted by a bellow from RSM Louw who had recently arrived on the border from 1 Parachute Battalion and thought that he was still in Bloemfontein. He was known as a first-class prick who seemed to have a genuine chip on his shoulder and a fierce hatred for us troops. Rumour had it that a troop had run off with his wife a couple of years ago, but of course we had no proof. We could hardly believe it when, for the second day in a row, he had us fetch rakes and shovels and walk around the tent square doing a chicken parade for butts and looking for weeds.