As anyone who has gone on a seek-and-destroy mission into a foreign country on foot in only platoon strength would know, it has a distinctive, unusual and very dangerous feel to it. It felt clearly as though we should not be there. Like ‘trespassers will be shot’. It felt that if we were caught, ‘they’ had every right to kill us. Now I knew how a SWAPO patrol felt when they crossed the border into South West Africa. In the last few days my R4 rifle had started to feel very small and inconsequential in my hands.
Our first five-day resupply was scheduled for today. I still had some water and chow, but was out of smokes and had been bumming Camels off my partner, Johnny the Fox. While making our way through a dry, lightly bushed area next to a chana on our way to rendezvous with the resupply chopper, we crossed paths with a herd of goats. Before you could say “Tickle my balls with a feather”, the black trackers had grabbed a goat… then another… and another. One minute the goats were walking past us, eyeing us with suspicion; the next they’d had their throats cut, head in the fork of a tree and were gutted, partially skinned and missing all four legs up to the hip and shoulder joints. The deceased goats were later to be shared between those who had helped capture the unfortunate beasts. John and I were among them. Lieutenant Doep, who had been walking near the head of the formation, did not even know it had happened—and the only way he bust us was when he smelled the appetizing aroma of meat cooking as we sat down next to a small chana and waited for the resupply chopper. Our punishment was to give him a fair portion of goats’ meat.
“This is going to taste better than the steakhouse back home,” I said, eyeing the strips of goat meat that I held over the miniature fire. I licked my fingers, wet with fat, as I slowly turned the sizzling strips directly in the flame. I held the meat between two green sticks, like chopsticks. I had extra-green sticks to take over when the first ones got too burned. I had to pick the two shrinking pieces of meat out of the fire a couple of times, having a hard time flicking off the ash that had stuck to the meat. I finally figured out just to leave the ash and brush it off when the meat was cooked.
“See how fast they gutted that goat?” remarked Stan, who was also one of the chosen few and was cooking next to us. “That’s how fast one of these terrs can gut you if you give them the chance.”
He was frying his meat in his dixie can, sitting seriously as he watched it cook and stick to the bottom of the pan.
I sat equally seriously, watching my chopsticks burn and weighed his comment. Stan and I had recently been getting on each other’s nerves and I took his comment without much humour.
“Stan, do you really think I would allow myself to be cut up by SWAPO like a fucking goat? I’ve got a rifle with 35 rounds in the magazine and another 35 strapped to that one—no one’s going to cut me up like a fucking goat. If they do, I’ll be long dead and so will all of us because you guys will be there to help me, right?”
He was a bit taken aback by my uncalled-for response and so was I, but I was getting tired of his constant cynical remarks and bullshit comments. He smiled a big shit-eating grin but didn’t answer, sensing that we were getting near the end of our tethers with each other. And he knew that although he could out-mouth me any day, he would be no match if we came to blows.
“Hey, calm down, both of you,” said Kurt the ex-cook. I knew he didn’t really mean it, because he too was getting tired of Stan’s bullshit and I’m sure he was secretly hoping for a confrontation.
I finally took my blackened goat meat off the fire and ate it slowly with salt from my rat pack but had lost some of the joy of the meal. Then all at once the tension and silence of the Angolan bush was broken by the distant hammer of the resupply chopper’s rotor blades. Lieutenant Doep shouted for someone to get ready with an orange-smoke grenade. Someone popped one and tossed it into the chana. The orange smoke seemed to hug the chana floor, not wanting to rise above treetop level, but finally a breeze took it and it wafted high above the trees. The chopper landed close to the tree line, blowing up a storm of dust, as some of us ran to help unload a mountain of rat packs and jerry cans of water, taking it in turns by section to fill our seven water bottles and pull five days’ dry rations.
As we reached the chopper I had noticed a ragged, skinny African in SADF browns miles to big for him, jump out of the chopper. He was led over to Lieutenant Doep by our own Company Staff Sergeant Greyling who had flown along to personally deliver the resupply and was full of cheer and bullshit. Thinking that the black man was just another tracker joining us, I thought nothing further of him.
There was about three hours of daylight left as we formed up, heavily laden with our new supplies and headed in a northeasterly direction for about three clicks before we sat down to eat and make a false TB in some trees.
DAWN AMBUSH
‘Take no prisoners; kill them all’
Before we could break out some new cans of rations and a can of warm Coke that had been brought with the supplies, Lieutenant Doep called us all together. He had the skinny black man standing next to him. Doep’s forehead was knotted in a deep frown and he had a serious look in his brown eyes as he stood waiting for us to form in a group around him.
“Listen up, this here is a SWAPO turncoat,” he said in Afrikaans and indicated the shrivelled-looking figure next to him. All eyes fell on the thin black man at Doep’s side who seemed to shrink further into his new, oversized SADF uniform.
“Tonight he is going to lead us tonight to a platoon of his friends who have a small base camp not far from here. Apparently it’s some kind of SWAPO Navy HQ, believe it or not. There are 15 of them. They’re not dug in and have no bunkers or heavy weapons—just AKs, RPG-7s and a few Tokarev pistols. This character was with them until a few days ago, so the information is fresh and confirmed. It looks like we might get some luck here. They’re believed to have a pile of documentation, maps and information that’s important to retrieve as they act as some sort of roving administration HQ. Not all of us are going to go—it will be too noisy. So I’m going to choose a group of 16 of you. We’ll leave at about 21:00.”
He continued, looking around at us all as he spoke in the deep monotone that seemed so out of place with his rosy cheeks, smooth baby face and blond curls.
“He is going to draw us a sketch of how they are laid out, where they sleep and who has what weapons.” Lieutenant Doep stopped talking, his eyes darting around. The night-attack plan was simple.
“When we reach the target, we will form a spread-out formation and go through their TB.”
He paused momentarily, looking around at us, making eye contact, and coldly emphasizing his next order. “The orders are to take no prisoners. Kill them all.”
The words echoed in my ears: ‘Take no prisoners… kill them all’.
I always wondered later why it had been so important that we kill them all, why we were to take no prisoners. Doep stood up and immediately started walking along the group of eager faces, pointing out individuals as he went.
“Kleingeld… Greef… Green… ”
I stood energized, as though a bolt of energy was shooting up from my toes and through my spine as I stared directly into Doep’s eyes, daring him to leave me behind.
Without hesitation he pointed: “Korff…” and then also to John the Fox standing next to me. I was relieved that I would not be left behind on this one! The others, who were not picked, moved away, either disappointed or relieved, and quietly went back to preparing their dinner.