“But in the meanwhile I look like I belong to the Scratching fucking Chickens!” He was really upset and stormed out the tent and disappeared towards the cooks’ tents. He was fuming; if he could have decked me, I think he would have.
I decided it was also time to disappear and went visiting some other tents just to get out of his sight. I came back much later when the lights of the tent were out and everyone seemed asleep. Nevertheless, the story of the tattooing got around and soon I had customers lining up in my tent at night for tattoos. Needless to say I stayed away from the more difficult swooping fish eagle and stuck to a basic parachute and wings which I could do quite well. I had no more dissatisfied customers.
The stars twinkled like a thick milky blanket high in the clear black winter sky. A cold chill had settled over Owamboland. We were lying wrapped up and sound asleep in our tents when Lieutenant Doep hurriedly woke us at about two in the morning and told us to kit up, pull fragmentation grenades and some extra rations as quickly as we could and meet at the chopper pad in ten minutes. Half asleep, we lined up in the dark at the small armoury shed and stuffed grenades into our kit as the turbines of the three Pumas cranked up on the dark pad 50 metres away, identifiable only by their winking green and red lights.
All we were told was that 32 Battalion was in deep shit in Angola. It was pitch dark inside the chopper, except for the soft green glow of the instrument panel that illuminated the troops closest to the front in a soft green haze. The Pumas were flying faster than we had ever flown before. The side door was closed this time, and the fuselage shuddered as we reached almost full speed, hurtling north into the blackness of Angola.
I peered out of the window and was taken aback by the vast blackness of the Angolan bush below, with not a light to be seen as far as the eye could see and probably not for hundreds of kilometres farther. We were all fully awake now. No one said a word, but we all knew that if 32 Battalion was in the shit then we were going to be in the shit too. 32 Battalion were all battlehardened veterans of the Angolan civil war. They were called the ‘Terrible Ones’, and their war cry ‘Advance!’ was legendary on the border, as were their countless victories that spanned more than ten years of bush-fighting. Readying myself for the worst, I fidgeted with my rifle and tightened my bootlaces, expecting to be to be dropped right into a night-time fire fight.
We flew at breakneck speed for about half an hour and finally slowed down, circled and landed in a small clearing in the bush where there were a few huge rubber bladders of Aftur and Avgas for the choppers surrounded by light vehicles with groups of black troops hanging around. We disembarked in the dark and were told to sit and wait near the choppers. We lit cigarettes and sat with our teeth chattering in the early morning cold and checked the scene. In the black stillness we could hear the faint thump of mortar fire far off to the west.
I nudged John Fox. “Listen… mortars.”
He said nothing and pulled deeply on his cigarette as Lieutenant Doep came over to tell us what was going on.
“Three Two is doing a night attack on a SWAPO base. Boy is dug in and Three Two are getting revved. We are going in as support from the north to flush Boy out. Put up your night sights and stand by!” That’s what I loved about the army—they didn’t bother us troops with boring details like what the enemy’s strength was or how they were dug in.
Usually we only wore our floppy bush hats on patrol, but this time we had our the new fibreglass jump helmets, with chinstraps, which we had used only once—on the operation that had turned out to be a lemon. After about 40 minutes the mortar fire seemed to quieten down; we sat in the stillness of the bush smoking and hugging our knees for warmth. We waited and waited and soon the soft, cold blue light of dawn started to line the horizon. Doep came and told us we were not going in, as 32 Battalion had broken through—most of the SWAPOs had fled into the bush and we would be joining a 32 stopper group to sweep for stragglers. We flew in at 06:00 and were dropped in the bush where we were met by a platoon of 32 boys.
It was the first time I had seen the ‘Terrible Ones’ face to face and they looked the part. They were all older black troops with hard, worn faces. They were heavily laden with kit and firepower, but they moved easily with an animal stealth that only came from spending many months at a time in the thick bush. Their leader was a young, tough-looking white sergeant with curly blond hair and angry blue eyes; he made no bones about showing his distaste for us being there. He snubbed Lieutenant Doep when Doep asked him what had happened the night before, only saying that SWAPO was dug in; he gave no further explanation.
“Well, we know that much—that’s why we were woken from a good night’s sleep to come and help you, you stupid cunt!” I muttered.
We walked silently the whole day, sweeping through the bush with no sign of SWAPO and spent a miserably cold night shivering in our light inner sleeping bags. We had been caught off guard by the cold weather and had not brought along our full sleeping bags. Early the next morning after a quick breakfast the 32 Battalion sergeant’s shit attitude boiled over; he snapped at Lieutenant Doep over something and there was a heated exchange of words. Doep came back, clearly mad as hell, and sat fidgeting with his chest webbing until he barked at us to kit up. The sergeant clearly had no respect for us and thought that we were not fit to even be walking with his fucking 32 Battalion. The ill-feeling quickly spread through both sets of troops and pretty soon there was a noticeable gap in the patrol formation as we walked slowly through the bush. Our attitude had become ‘Fuck 32 Battalion’. At midday we sat and had a cold lunch in a thicket of trees and swapped thoughts on the situation.
“Fuck them—let them fight their own battles. If they’re so good, why did they need any help? We could still be relaxing at Ondangs. They didn’t seem so sure of themselves the other night when they sent an SOS for help, did they?”
I sat chewing on a hard energy bar, keeping an eye on the 32 Battalion TB about 50 metres away. I had heard stories of these guys getting into shootouts among themselves over women and really petty arguments, so I was taking no chances. They spent their lives in the bush as a Lost Legion, refugees from the Angolan civil war who had been employed by the South African army, that didn’t want them either but had formed them into a battalion, keeping them on condition that they fought until they were too old or too wounded. They were a legion that lived and died by the sword and its rules.
Stan was getting into it as usual and was standing there glaring at them, saying that we should take them on and show them who was who. “If we make contact they might try to put a few bullets our way. I tell you… I’ll start shooting back if I even suspect it’s coming from them. I don’t give a shit!”
Lieutenant Doep told us to stop talking shit and concentrate on finding SWAPO, which we did for the whole day, finding a few cold, lone tracks that weren’t worth chasing.
My mind was drifting to the few short weeks that we still had on the border before we headed back to South Africa for a month back at home base in Bloemfontein. I had been missing Taina a lot lately and although I was enjoying it in the boonies I couldn’t wait to see her and to squeeze her as tight as I could and tell her about what we had been up to. She had been writing regularly and I had a pile of steamy ‘I miss you stacks’ letters describing what she was going to do with me when she saw me. Others were more mundane, telling me what she had been up to. There was even the occasional tear mark on the paper that was circled in pen, just in case I missed them.