He tapped the layout with his pointer, indicating the bushy area across the border north of Ombalantu. “We want to take control of this area. You will have gunship support on standby and Mirage fighter jets if it becomes necessary.”
Lindsay beamed as he told us that there had been a build-up of FAPLA activity closer to the border and that we might even run into FAPLA patrols the deeper we went. (He failed to mention that FAPLA would be a lot more heavily armed, with tanks and troop-carriers armed with 14.5-millimetre anti-aircraft guns.) We would also be carrying RPG-7s and claymores; in addition each man would carry four 60-millimetre mortar bombs as well as full kit with five-days’ rations.
His explanation of the operation was short and sweet and simple. We were part of a larger operation with 32 Battalion, hitting smaller SWAPO bases throughout southern Angola. Our plan was to cross the border into Angola in a long-range sweep lasting four weeks, or longer if necessary, to look for and make contact with SWAPO. Sounded easy enough!
“The name of this operation is Ceiling,” he added as an afterthought and then dismissed us to immediately pack and draw supplies to leave the next day.
Full of surprises, I thought. Just as I was getting set for a relaxing bush trip, we get a six-week cross-border patrol hundreds of kilometres into Indian country!
That night there was a merry, excited buzz over the camp. The tent lights burned late into the night as we readied our weapons and packed our kit for a long stay in the bush. I nipped off to the kitchen on a search-and-seize recce for any cans of decent chow and came away loaded with canned peaches and vienna sausages, or wambo piele.{Owambo penises (Afrikaans)} I also gave instructions to the cooks to leave scraps out for the two kittens and they said they would happily do so.
A feeling of excited vulnerability was evident in the platoon, which suddenly seemed very small and under-armed as we stepped over the old collapsed barbed-wire fence into Angola. We crossed the lush cut-line. We patrolled slowly in a V formation, heavily laden with kit, mortar bombs, full line ammo and water. I scanned the bush continuously. I had been cured of my inability to visualize SWAPO; now that I had shot one I had a clear picture in my mind of what a terrorist lurking in the bush looked like. I almost expected to suddenly come across a group of SWAPO sitting relaxed under a tree, at ease in their backyard, planning their next insurgency raid across the border. I was almost disappointed when we stopped uneventfully in a small thicket for a late lunch-break.
I sat with John Fox, who was my partner for the operation. I had chosen John as my partner for a couple of reasons. He and I had become pretty good buddies on this bush trip, bullshitting about girls all the time. He would tell me about his girlfriends’ figures, going into great detail about their anatomy, and I would describe a few of my own conquests. I admired his outlook. He was always as neat as a pin and kept a low-key but upbeat and positive attitude which was the opposite of mine, as I occasionally suffered from spells of depression and was quite probably the most untidy troop in the platoon.
“They’re here, I can feel it,” he said in a hushed tone as he brewed a fire bucket of tea on a heating tablet.
I looked around at the bush as he spoke. I, too, had the feeling that we were not alone. I brewed up some tea and sat quietly scanning the bush and sipping the refreshing sweet brew.
We carried on and walked hard, covering about 15 clicks, hard-humping with our heavy kit. Late that afternoon we dug into a small TB for our first night in Angola.
We stood a watch of two at a time, while the others slept uneasily. Even the night sounds seemed different in Angola and no one got a good night’s sleep—me especially, as from first-hand experience I didn’t trust our platoon to be conscientious on night watch. One of my fears, besides landmines, was to be shot in my foxhole at night while I slept. It had happened to a patrol of South African reservists a couple of years back, when some of them had had their throats cut as they lay snoring, sound asleep. Or so the story went.
The next morning our security patrol rose at daybreak to scout the area before the whole platoon rose from its foxholes and—sure enough—found some chevron-pattern SWAPO boot spoor not far from our TB. It spooked everyone and we moved out very cautiously at a right angle to the way we were heading in order to avoid an ambush, before gradually wheeling north again.
Lieutenant Doep was second in command for this operation. A first lieutenant we didn’t know, who was on leave from a military college, was in charge. He was a small, good-looking guy with collar-length blond hair, who was friendly and smiled easily. He explained that we could not follow up on every SWAPO spoor we found but had to keep heading north and stay alongside the other platoons moving parallel to us and see what we ran into.
The following night we dug in early once again and had chow, but after darkness fell we quietly moved out and made another TB about 100 metres away in a small, odd-looking thicket of tall trees. No one could really sleep and at around midnight we were all jolted out of our half-sleep by the unholy shouting and chanting of a man not more than 50 metres from our TB. We lay quietly in our holes, our rifles ready as the babbling and chanting rose steadily like an evangelical preacher building up to a fiery crescendo. But it did not stop; it carried on to a fever-pitch. Now, like a man possessed, he screeched and shrilled into the night like an animal, then went into warlike chants, repeating the same chant dozens of times over. We all lay as still as death, listening for more than half an hour to the maniacal voice whose intensity never faltered as it shrilled its crazy message—and then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped, so that all that was left was the night stillness that seemed to ring in our ears.
No one moved a muscle. I lay with my finger on the trigger, hardly breathing, straining my ears to an almost painful point, willing them to pick up any sound approaching us in the dark. I lay like this for at least an hour as I peered into the darkness, ready to shoot, but hearing only the night sounds that had now started up again.
“What the yellow rubbery fuck was that?’ I hissed to myself. It sounded like some lunatic preacher, or possibly some nut-job giving some sort of crazy suicidal orders to some equally crazy suicidal troops.
In the morning the security patrol rose cautiously and returned with a report that about a dozen, what looked like non-military spoor, were visible not 40 metres from our TB.
What was going on? Was it SWAPO playing games with us and trying to scare us, or was it a bunch of civilians who just happened to have a very special inspirational speaker at their midnight mass, considerately held just 40 metres from our TB?
We moved out ever so cautiously, deeper into Angola, our eyes scanning the bush constantly. The terrain had suddenly changed again, becoming even more dense. It was now impossible to move silently as we had to crash through brittle dry brush packed under the larger trees and which snapped with a loud crack if you pushed it aside too far or got hooked up on your webbing. The new lieutenant changed course; we turned and circled in a wide horseshoe to try and get out of the ‘petrified woods’ which seemed endless. Finally, after a few hours the terrain dissolved back into the more familiar solid bush and clearings.
We turned north again, walking alongside a long chana that gave us protection from one side. We stopped for lunch with a clear view over the chana.
“The kaffirs are all around us,” Stan sneered. “I can smell a kaffir and I tell you they’re watching us right now.”
I could not argue with this, lying propped up against a tree smoking after a cold lunch of bully and potatoes and a can of the peaches. I was deep in thought about the events. We had found spoor around our TB every morning and that crazy babbling had got us all a bit spooked. I thought of the movie Apocalypse Now and of the crazy scenario of us running into some strange, lost SWAPO outfit in Angola who were possessed with the wills of African madmen. I snapped back to reality.