At about 15:00, with the sun halfway down the western sky, we moved out in a V formation, with the old man leading the way up the small footpath. We walked for about 30 minutes and the bush thinned out. We came upon what seemed like the beginnings of a populated area, with our path leading into a bigger, well-used track that had smaller paths breaking off in a crisscross spiderweb leading to a few scattered kraals. A handful of locals in threadbare clothes came out and stared at us with curious and not-so-friendly faces.
I felt in my gut that this was not good, but the little excursion seemed to have taken a life of its own and could not be stopped now. I had a horrible feeling we were walking into something deadly. Pretty soon there were a few distinctive chevron-shaped SWAPO boot spoor clearly imprinted on the sandy path, which were soon joined by many more with different spoors. Suddenly, up ahead, we came to a group of small, well-kept white brick buildings with tin roofs. We were entering a small town. A few locals standing in the shade of the stoeps, the verandahs, looked at us in amazement as we strode through their little town with false bravado, still in our formation which was gradually becoming more and more ragged.
We rounded some tall old trees and to our surprise in front of us stood a huge old white Portuguese church, the size of a small cathedral. Its square steeple, extending 20 metres or more and its high-pitched roof covered in old, cracked orange tiles seemed bizarrely out of place. We stopped outside the church. The doors were open. We cautiously walked in. It seemed that it was still in use, with pews and an old metre-high carving of Christ on the cross next to the the pulpit. I thought how out of place it all looked, then it slowly dawned on me that, to us, Angola might be one big war zone, but to these people it was their home. There were some remarks of astonishment at our find; someone said the big carved figure of Christ would make fine war booty but there were bigger concerns and we quickly moved out. (I understand that later some South African troops did in fact take this fine piece as plunder but that it was later returned in a small ceremony at the end of the war.)
It seemed that the old man had, wisely, gapped it while we were in the church and we were now on our own. Just past the church were more small brick buildings and a low cement reservoir where a group of young women were scrubbing heaps of brightly coloured clothes. They stopped to stare at us in astonishment as we approached. None of us waited for the interpreter. “Where’s SWAPO? SWAPO! SWAPO!”
I confronted a pretty young African girl with her hair teased up into a small untidy afro, and shouted at her in English. “Where’s SWAPO?”
She stared at me, silent, her eyes burning with something that seemed to be both shock and anger. She had probably, her whole life, heard about the racist South African boere and how they would eat her—and now here she stood, face to face with the white devils. They all stood dumbly staring at us, not hiding their contempt.
“Don’t waste time… we’re already in it.” My mind was racing ahead.
We briskly moved on, leaving the little town behind us and I sensed that this was it, that we were now truly walking into the shit. The track quickly became a white sand road. There were now all sorts of boot tracks, with large vehicle tracks turning onto the road.
Our platoon was falling apart. Half the guys were languishing some 40 metres behind. I turned and frantically waved them on, mouthing a silent “Come on! Come on.” I looked at Doogy, walking long metres back, carrying the MAG.
He silently shook his head at me in a unmistakable message: “This is not good!”
I was shocked to turn again and see that some of the guys had stopped altogether and were mumbling among themselves. To my amazement our corporal, who had been with us since basic training and who had chased us unmercifully, saying that we had to be tough to be a paratrooper, was sitting on his haunches, muttering in Afrikaans, “This is kak. This is shit! I’m not going any further.”
I looked at him in disbelief and felt something rise in me. “We’re in it! It’s too late, we’re in it! Let’s go,” I mimed to no one in particular and turned again to wave on the rest of the platoon, still dragging far behind on the sand road. Once again I was filled with the numb feeling of ‘let’s get this over with’, knowing it was already too late to turn back and that our best bet was to go forward—hard! I was right, because seconds later the shit hit the fan.
Shots rang out from the tree line in front of us. Isolated at first, but then furiously, kicking up sand around us and whip-cracking overhead.
I bolted across ten metres of open ground, with spurts of AK bullets kicking at my heels, to a two-metre-high anthill and found cover with three others as sand and dust flew up around us. It was a pretty open area with only scattered bushes alongside the road. The platoon had scattered and taken cover where they could, but most lay flat… out in the open.
No one was returning fire! I could not see exactly where the firing was coming from and did not particularly want to put my head around the antheap, as rounds were cracking all around us. We sat huddled in cover for half a minute or so, before there came a lull in the firing. I took the chance to peep around, as did the other three. Puffs of drifting white smoke hung in the tree line 30 or 40 metres to our front left. A tall figure made a mad dash, with elbows pumping, across some open ground into bushy cover.
“There!” I shouted, and fired off six or seven quick shots at the bush where the figure had just disappeared.
Now we began to pour fire at the tree line. I heard Doogy’s MAG open up with a welcome sound, in one long salvo of about 30 rounds. We were all up now, moving forward and shouting encouragement to each other. Back in training I had not realized how important battletalk was… now we were all shouting to each other to “C’mon, let’s go, c’mon, c’mon!” as we ran spread out across the open chana towards what seemed to be a retreating enemy, firing at fleeting glimpses of running figures in the trees. Suddenly an RPD machine gun opened up from the other side, to the right of the chana. We all dived into the dirt in the open. He was shooting high but corrected himself as sand spurted yards in front of us, spraying us. By now we had the hang of it and all opened fire at the tree line and the tell-tale smoke. The RPD stopped.
Away to our left somewhere a heavy fire fight broke out at the far end of our broken sweep line, I could see four or five of our guys lying on their bellies in the chana, blasting away into the tree line. I recognized Lukie Nel who was calmly kneeling and slowly being enveloped in a cloud of white smoke as he laid down a barrage of fire. Still on the ground after the RPD fire, I turned to see if I should shoot across the sweep line to help, but decided against it because I couldn’t see the target and from my angle it was too close to our guys. I looked for Johnny Fox and my surrounding troops who all had their heads turned, momentarily caught up in the fire fight that was building to a fever-pitch, but they held their fire and it seemed that they too had decided that the angle was not good, with no visual targets.
Just then, literally out of the clear blue sky, and with the timing of a Hollywood movie and unbelievable navigation, two South African Air Force Alouette gunships came swooping over our heads like the fucking cavalry. With blades hammering, they turned in a tight orbit above the fleeing terrs 60 or so metres ahead of us. Doep must have got through on the radio, the very obvious thought struck me.
“DayGlo… DayGlo!” the shout came up and down the line. I quickly turned on my side and punched my bush hat inside-out to show the bright neon-orange sticker stuck to the inside of my cap, putting it back on my head back-to-front, for better vision. The DayGlo had saved many a troop in the bush from being blasted to hell by the gunships above mistaking him for a terr. I forced myself to my feet as we all rose and charged across the chana with a new feeling of courage and invincibility.