We moved out of the kraal and headed south again in a V formation. A deep, dark mood had settled on me. I felt terrible about leaving the old man lying in the hut. I thought back and knew too that I had pulled off a volley of shots at him when I saw him in his white shirt running to the kraal. Why the fuck couldn’t Lieutenant Doep just call in and at least request a chopper? Who knows, they might have even said: “Sure we’ll come and pick him up.” It would be no skin off anybody’s nose to get a bird out here and pick the old boy up and when he’d healed, just drop him at the border and tell him to make his own way back. I knew that when he came round he would half die from the pain and would probably be dead in a few days from infection.
I pushed the thought out of my mind and scanned the bush, my rifle ready at my side. We crashed south uneventfully but the next day at about 10:00, as we were about to cross a big open chana, the black tracker walking point stopped and pointed across the chana to the other side.
“SWAPO! SWAPO!”
The formation came to a sudden stop and we stared out across the chana, shielding our eyes from the bright morning sun. Sure enough, on the other side 300 metres away was a group of figures hanging around and sitting under a large tree which looked to have bicycles leaning against it.
“SWAPO!” he said again, pointing and wagging his black finger.
“Are you sure?” Doep stared across the chana.
“Ja, is SWAPO!” he wagged his finger furiously, his bloodshot eyes widening and his tongue darting across his thick lips.
I shielded my eyes from the bright glare coming off the white chana and stared across. I could see that they all seemed to be wearing the same colour khaki uniform and that there seemed to be at least a dozen of them. We were a weary bunch of bush soldiers and had little interest in breaking off and sneaking all the way around the big chana to try and surprise them in a flanking attack. In any case it looked as if we had been spotted, so we quickly spread out on the side of the chana, as if at the shooting range, and Valk 4 opened fire from 400 metres. It was deafening. I pretty soon lost sight of the target because of the smoke and then had to stop shooting as a troop in front of me had moved into my line of fire. I did not want to change my position suddenly because there were also troops behind me who were shooting just over my shoulder, so I lowered my rifle and kept still. The lack of one rifle was not going to make a difference from this range.
Fifteen seconds after the shooting started a mortar exploded in a cloud of white smoke 50 metres in front of us… and then another one a little closer.
“Kleingeld has got off fast with his mortars this time but he’s fucking up again… he’s way too short. Fuck him!” I thought.
Boom!… another mortar exploded 40 metres in front of us as we all involuntarily got down onto our knees.
“Stupid shithead!” I cursed Kleingeld, but did not look around for him as rifles were once again blasting over my shoulder, deafening me. After a minute the shooting staggered to a stop, as did the mortars.
“Spread out wide… move across!” Doep shouted.
I made a point of looking at Kleingeld who was loading up his mortar pipe and his kit. “You were pretty fucking fast to get those mortars flying off, Change!” I acknowledged. (Kleingeld in English means ‘small change’.) “But you were too fucking short again, man… you landed right in front of us,” I challenged. I still hadn’t forgiven him for almost dropping two of his mortars on me yesterday when we had chased the PBs.
“I didn’t get one mortar off. What are you talking about? I was shooting with my rifle. That was their bombs! They were fucking quick to respond,” he said in Afrikaans.
I was surprised. Shit! They had been pretty close. Their mortar man must have a damn good eye to have put his first bomb so close at over 400 metres while under fire. I never did ask Kleingeld why he hadn’t used the mortar, which would have made perfect sense over that distance.
We walked fast, spread out in an extended line across the huge chana. A few bullets buzzed high overhead like bees but soon stopped, as the group of SWAPO made a beeline into the bush, having traded a few shots. With the reckless abandon of having a few successful fire fights under our belts and weeks in the bush, we came to where we had seen them under the trees. They had cleared out but it looked as though they had spent a couple of days in a TB under the trees, because once again we found some bedding, cans of fish and bits of clothing.
We found more propaganda leaflets saying that the Boere were white monsters who had no mercy and would not be satisfied until they shot all your cattle and slaughtered your goats and only wanted to terrorize the peaceful people of Angola.
“You see, they found out about the goat. I told you!” Kurt said slowly. “They’re not lying!”
Kruger found a big crimson belt buckle with a hammer and sickle on it and happily held up his booty as we all gathered around to marvel. It was a beauty. What a find! Also clear evidence of the Soviet presence in Angola. We scouted around for about half an hour, looking in the trees for more equipment, but found none.
Lieutenant Doep was on the radio, reporting that we had made contact but said that we had not seen exactly which way they had run. Their chevron-shaped spoor was clearly imprinted in the sand all over and I examined it closely. They seemed to have bombshelled almost immediately, splintering in different directions.
“Clever little fuckers,” I thought. Their bombshelling technique was a good one, because which spoor should you follow? Would you put a whole platoon on the chase of one or two spoor?
Ho Chi Minh, or whoever, was the father of guerrilla tactics and it was he who had come up with this one and saved many a terrorist’s, or freedom fighter’s, life, whichever way you wanted to look at it.
Doep was debating following a spoor but we had all sat down for a smoke and had even taken the opportunity to open a quick can of chow. We had no stomach for a chase. He looked at us and read quite clearly how we felt about it.
“Okay, finish up… let’s move out.”
That dusk we came to the rendezvous spot in a bushy area. Waiting for us was a platoon of 3 SAI (South African Infantry) who had a few armoured Buffels and had been dug in, waiting for us since the previous day. We were the first D Company platoon to arrive. We flopped down under the trees, laughing and relieved that our four-week patrol in Angola had come to an end. We drank warm Cokes that the infantry had kindly brought and opened long-awaited mail that we scrutinized closely and quickly in the dwindling light.
“The bitch has left me… she says she’s found somebody who loves her! She actually did it. I don’t fucking believe it!” Stan read through the short letter again. He stood up, looking in disbelief at the piece of paper in his hand and walked around and around in a little circle, rubbing the back of his head with a deep scowl on his face. “The stupid cow… I don’t believe this. She Couldn’t wait till she saw me face to face!”
We laughed and hooted at his misfortune.
“What did you do to her, Stan? She must have heard that you were screwing these Owambo women,” I laughed heartily, as under the circumstances I found it very funny, because for a year and a half I had been hearing about Stan’s up-and-down problems with his girlfriend and I knew all the details. (By pure chance it turned out that it was Taina’s neighbour Jimmy who Stan’s girlfriend had met. Funny thing was that Stan and his girlfriend lived in Cape Town and Taina and I lived in Jo’burg, 1,400 kilometres apart.)