We all looked at each other sheepishly and Kevin, who was the last to remember the party, let out a loud groan of pain and anger when he realized there would be no quick relief. Doep began grilling Kurt on the missing Sosagon. Kurt in his low innocent voice was acting dumb and saying he was sure the vials had been there when he did his full check on the medical supplies at the beginning of the patrol, but which had probably fallen out of his medic bag somewhere in the bush.
We moved the Buffels back to a more open chana and secured the area. If there had been any ambushers, they were long gone now after this shot-in-the-hand episode. The medevac helicopter that Doep had radioed for took about 30 minutes to arrive. In the stillness of the bush we heard his blades chopping the air for fully five minutes before he spotted our third orange smoke grenade and the little civilian-looking chopper zoomed over us at treetop level.
I could see the burly pilot clearly as he hovered and expertly brought his little craft down in the small LZ we had quickly cleared, his rotors clipping small branches on the way down with loud cracks that sounded like gunshots. I was impressed with how they could find us so quickly in this vast and featureless bush. It gave me a feeling of confidence knowing that in no time at all we could be located and medevaced. It had always been boasted to us in training that if you were seriously wounded out in the middle of the Angolan bush, and if need be, they could have you back in Pretoria, thousands of miles away, in a state-of-the-art military hospital inside six hours. That made us feel good, and this quick response time for Kevin seemed to back the claim.
We went back to the chase.
The medevac pilot had told Doep that we were only 20 clicks from the Angolan border so it seemed we had lost the race, especially after the unfortunate delay. We threw caution to the wind and everyone rode on the Buffels, driving fast on the now-thinning spoor, sometimes losing it in our haste. By late afternoon we came to a small village of about eight grass huts. The old black headman told us that about 30 SWAPO had been there about two hours before and had commandeered the village’s horses and bicycles. We followed the horse spoor for a while but they soon bombshelled again into different but largely northerly directions. These fucking terrs were good; they had given us the slip for close to 40 clicks and had bombshelled into nothing. We hung on for dear life as our Buffels bounced around, evading the scrubby trees, staying on the spoor of a small group of about ten boot tracks and a couple of bicycles that had stayed together. The boot prints were far apart with the front toe print deep and broken. The tracker said that they were running fast. The terrain had changed a lot too and we were now in tall dark trees that looked almost like a forest, unusual for the countryside.
“That’s the border, right there.”
I stared at the couple of strands of rusty wire hanging loosely from old crooked wooden posts that stretched through the trees. We came to a stop at the broken-down border line and all stared at the thick foliage on the other side. It seemed that almost right at the border there was a drastic change in the type of bush. This was a phenomenon that I would come to notice many more times; there seemed no real explanation for it because both sides of the border here were uninhabited and wild.
“So what’s the stop? Let’s carry on after them! I bet they’re going to slow down pretty soon after crossing; they think they’re home dry. We might even catch them sleeping!”
I was caught up in the chase. I agreed with the sentiment and was also pushing the issue. I sensed I was right and that if we stayed hard on them we would catch them regrouping or taking it easy just across the border.
Stan, for once, agreed with me. “Ja… we got to keep on. We’ve come this far and they’re probably only half an hour in front of us, if that.”
“That’s Angola across there; we could meet more than SWAPO in there, my man. What if we run into a company of FAPLA with a couple of BTR armoured cars, or a couple of T-55 tanks. Then what you going to do?”
“Aah, bullshit… what’s wrong, scared of a few Soviet tanks?”
Fox and Stander were at each other again. I sat quiet now, staring over the border into the trees. They might even be looking at us right now, wanting us to follow them over. There was an even bigger chance of an ambush when they were in their own backyard and felt safe.
Maybe it wouldn’t be such a good idea.
Lieutenant Doep was deep in thought, barely listening to Stan mouthing off about FAPLA who had shot the hell out of A Company a few months before. A troop tied a stone to the long antenna wire and tossed it high in a tree and the radio crackled and hissed to life as we lit up cigarettes. After 15 minutes of going back and forth, Doep put the receiver down, shook his head and said we had been denied permission to cross the border in hot pursuit. There was a chorus of disappointed jeers and cusses. Doep said that the infantry commandant in charge of this section had said no way were we to cross over. Once again the infantry had screwed us over. If it had been our Commandant Lindsay, he would surely have given the go-ahead. It was clear that infantry and paratroopers did not share the same philosophy. Thinking back, I never could figure out why we hadn’t had some sort of support to help make contact with this big group of SWAPO. It would surely have been a worthwhile effort as there were so many of them. At least get some choppers to leapfrog ahead to cut them off?
We moved back a few clicks and cooked up a lunch from our dwindling supply of rat packs, then started the slow trek back to Ondangwa. We had spent three weeks doing vehicle patrol, winding through the vast bush. We were tired.
We could have kept going for another year and still only have covered a very small portion of the endless terrain, but at least we had made contact three times and brought in 16 kills without any of us getting a scratch (except Kevin’s unfortunate shot-in-the-hand incident), so it was not too bad. It was time to head back to Ondangwa, which suddenly seemed like a welldeserved rest.
We were all getting a bit too used to sitting shoulder to shoulder bouncing through the Owambo bush. We looked and smelled like terrorists ourselves with our three weeks’ growth and dirty, torn-up bush browns.
32 BATTALION
In response to allegations of atrocities, South Africa has furnished information about a battalion made up mainly of foreigners that it has been using for raids into Angola against the guerrillas of the South West Africa People’s Organization. The battalion, made up of black refugees from Angola and a few Europeans who would normally be described as mercenaries, is a unit of the South African Army.
“You men are off to a good start—you made your mark on SWAPO and the news will spread that there’s a new bunch of paratroopers up here. You’re going to be just like old D Company!”
Commandant Lindsay stood near the fire that crackled in the long chipped concrete fire-pit. He stood in his usual confident stance—legs wide apart, which exaggerated his shortness—beaming like an extremely happy, hairy gnome. His teeth flashed red from the firelight. He was holding a plate and biting into a huge army pork chop, laughing as he listened to the different versions of the contacts from various troops who, after a couple of beers and some fresh meat, had plucked up the courage to take mild liberties with the commandant.
He smiled broadly, but even the dancing firelight could not hide his eyes, eyes as black as coal pits. He knotted his forehead when someone brought up the pursuit that had been stopped at the border and nodded his head but smiled again as he shook his pork chop in a defiant gesture.