It had been three days since the ambush. We heard that Valk 1 had had a rough contact with some SWAPO cadres they had surprised at a waterhole. It had been close fighting, almost hand to hand and had been quite a battle. Swanepoel, a tall quiet chap from a farming area near Cape Town, had been shot through the groin but had still managed to kill a terr who apparently was just about to pull another troop who had been slightly wounded. Their lieutenant had been scheduled to go back to South Africa but had pleaded to stay on in the bush for a few days. He had been shot through the hand for his trouble and had also picked up a scalp wound. Both Swanepoel and the lieutenant had to be evacuated by chopper, but they had killed six or seven terrs. We learned all the details later back at base camp.
The sun blazed as it reached its zenith. We sat relaxed, the platoon spread out among some long dry grass under some crooked thorn trees that gave us just enough shade. We were pretty far into Angola, probably about 60 clicks, and for some reason our platoon was too far ahead of the others. We were told to sit tight for a day or two till the other platoons caught up.
We were all feeling confident after the textbook ambush two days ago. I had let bygones be bygones with Stan. He had been quiet for the last two days. I felt bad for him, knowing that he had wanted to come with us on the ambush; he seemed quiet and disappointed not to have taken part. But today he bounced back and chatted on about how 12 months of hard training had turned us into machines and how we would be able to handle a SWAPO force three times our size because of the quality of soldier that we were.
“Well, I wouldn’t be too sure. Look what happened to Valk 3… they were hit good, mortars landing in their TB… if SWAPO had a stopper group waiting for them when they ran, we would all be singing a different tune now. Even Valk 1 had a fight that could have turned out different.”
John Delaney, who was in one of his morose moods, lay against his kit chewing a long piece of dry grass. He wasn’t his usual cocky self. He and Stan were still at it.
“You think these guys haven’t been trained? Some of these guys have been trained in Russia and China! We’re just lucky we got them in an ambush. Wait till we hit a base that they can defend! Plus, they think they’re winning this war!” John Delaney said, referring to the propaganda leaflets we had found that told of countless South African soldiers walking the steeets of Pretoria, Johannesburg and Cape Town legless and armless as a result of encounters with SWAPO mines. They also said that the morale of our troops was so low that we just smoked dagga, marijuana, all day to escape the hopelessness of the situation and the harsh treatment we received from our rank.
We lazed in the shade, chatting and joking, feeling totally at home in the bush. John the Fox was going on about life on his dad’s huge tea plantation in the beautifully lush area of Tzaneen and how they would ride dirt-bikes around the plantation, when I noticed an old black man casually walking along the small footpath that ran about 20 metres past us.
“Hey, look here!”
I pointed to the old man who appeared to have seen us but walked on, seemingly unconcerned. John Delaney and I jumped up and waved to him to come to us and he casually complied, approaching us with a little smile on his aged face, toying with a long blade of grass in his fingers. He was a short, grey-haired, pleasant-looking fellow who appeared to be a local. But I quickly noticed that he was wearing the same pale olive green zip-up sweatshirt that I was wearing, the one I had got from the ambush. This did not strike me as too odd, because I figured it was probably easy for locals to buy and trade from troops around the area.
We asked the old man if he knew where SWAPO was. He did not understand what we were saying but obviously understood the word ‘SWAPO’. After eyeballing us for a minute he casually signalled with the bit of grass in his hand that SWAPO was not far away, in fact just ahead of us. We thought he had misunderstood us and asked him again.
This time he smiled, pointed more emphatically ahead and repeated as he pointed. “SWAPO… SWAPO!”
John and I excitedly led him to Lieutenant Doep, who was now in charge again since both the university lieutenants had been flown back to South Africa (one with half his hand). Doep was resting on the other side of our TB. He stood up under his tree, eyed the old man suspiciously and then called the 101 Battalion tracker to interpret. We stood by as they spoke; it quickly emerged that there was a SWAPO group or base just ahead of us but the old boy didn’t know how many there were. He didn’t think too many.
“Ask him if they have trenches dug into the ground,” Lieutenant Doep instructed the interpreter, making a digging motion with his hands.
“He says no, he has not seen these.”
“Does he know if they have many weapons with them?” Doep indicated his R4 rifle as he spoke. The old man just smiled sincerely and did not answer but when questioned again the interpreter replied: “He says he thinks they do.”
The interpreter and the old man jabbered back and forth while John and I stood around, not wanting to be left out, feeling protective towards our captive. The receiver crackled as the lieutenant sat on his haunches and tried to get comms with Commandant Lindsay back in base camp, but he had been having trouble with the radio the last couple of days and was unable to get through.
“Tango Lima, do you read me, over? Tango Lima, do you read, over?”
The radio crackled and squelched for 15 minutes with no response. Finally, a decision had to be made. We could not let this old man go, because he would almost certainly compromise our position to the SWAPO whom he said were so close by. We had no comms and did not know what we’d be walking into by just taking this smiling old man’s word. It did not feel right and I was not for it. It did not make sense; even if there weren’t many of them, if one of us got hit we could not get casevaced{casualty evacuation, in this case by helicopter} out because there were no communications. Who knew what this old fucker meant by “did not think there were too many”?
I voiced my opinion. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to go into something where we don’t know how many there are, without gunship support or comms. It’s not good planning.”
There was muttered agreement from some of the other troops who had joined the small conference under the tree. Stan, however, seeing a chance to make up for missing the ambush, egged Lieutenant Doep on, saying that we wouldn’t need gunships if we caught them by surprise like at the ambush. This was not a game of cowboys and fucking Indians, I countered. Some of us might get killed because of a wrong decision. Even our two-line corporal didn’t want to go without at least comms with the operations room for backup.
Finally Lieutenant Doep, like a schoolteacher in a class debate, listening to both sides, said we should have a vote. There were more ayes than nays, so the decision was made to immediately follow the old man. We kitted up and checked our weapons. I had used almost two 35-round magazines in the ambush three days before but had five more that were full. I filled up the two mags that I had taped together with medical tape for a quick change. This time I put my knife back on my belt, took the SWAPO cap off my head and changed back into my dirty, torn brown skin. If I died, I didn’t want to go in a SWAPO uniform with their cap and badge on my head.