“Trenches?”
“Yeah. Trenches and bunkers. We’ve been practising taking them out every day. And we’re crossing the border tonight, my man. You just made it. Did you know that we were leaving?”
“Naw… I fucking AWOLed Ondangwa and hitched up here, broer.”
I had made it just hours before the op. What luck!
“Hey, you better go tell Sergeant-Major Sakkie you’re here.”
I looked at the pile of M27 grenades lying on a tarpaulin under a tree.
“Sakkie is here?”
“Yeah, they sent him up for the op.”
It must be something special if they had sent Sakkie up. Sergeant-Major Sakkie was the RSM back in Bloemfontein. He was the symbol of 1 Parachute Battalion. It took me a year to realize he was only a fraction taller than me as he projected a physical aura so overwhelming that, to me and everyone else, without exception, he looked like a monster. He was a model soldier… with muscles on his jawbone. When he spoke casually it was almost as loud as a normal man’s shout; he could easily hold a conversation with someone 100 metres away. When he shouted, which he loved doing, it was something to behold and you came away thinking you had experienced some kind of awesome natural phenomenon. He was the pride of the battalion at inter-unit parades too, when he brought the whole Parachute Battalion to attention four times louder that any other unit’s sergeant-major in flawless and perfect time. I always thought he would be killer as a rock and roll singer and had missed his calling.
I looked around quickly over my shoulder.
“He’s over there at the tents. You better go.”
I walked over to the tents and came up to Sakkie who was roaring at some services troops to pull down a group of tents. He looked to be having a good time cheerfully yelling at the sweating soldiers. I figured he was happy to be up in the bush, away from 1 Parachute Battalion. He barely looked at me as I came to a relaxed bush attention.
“Sergeant-Major, I’ve just come in from Ondangwa. I’ve missed all the training. I just got here now.”
I respected him. Even though he could rearrange your hairstyle with his enormous voice, he wasn’t like a lot of the rest of the rank who seemed to have a personal prejudice against the troops. Although he could be a mean bastard (the story went that he once killed a troop doing CD—corrective drill), he was naturally good-natured.
He seemed in a good mood. “Korff… you the one that fucked up the infantry sergeant-major? What happened to you, shit-for-brains?” he asked matter-of-factly. Word had spread far and wide.
“I got a suspended sentence, sergeant-major.”
“You’re lucky. They should have locked you up,” he said with dry humour.
“Yes, sir…”
“You can’t go around re-orientating infantry sergeant-majors. What do you think they’ll think of paratroopers now? They’ll think we’re a bunch of hooligans!”
He turned to Valk 4, some 50 metres away, and shouted at them. “You men, show this man where he can pull new ammunition, grenades, field dressings and rat packs. Show him what we’ve been training for here. Go through trench deployment and bunker clearing and how to work with the panzers.”
I paused and caught him as he started walking away.
“Sergeant-Major, there might be a bit of trouble… er, the captain at Ondangwa didn’t want to let me join my company… but I came anyway.”
He stopped for a second, eyebrows knitted, trying to figure out what it was exactly that I was trying to say. Then he realized that I was telling him I had effectively gone AWOL to join my company for this operation. The penny dropped. I thought I saw the hint of a twinkle in his eye as he raised his chin defiantly, seeming to take the matter as a personal challenge.
“Didn’t you just get court martialed…?” he asked loudly and clearly.
I said nothing, and looked at him earnestly.
“No, no, no,” he was shaking his head, his mind firmly made up. “There’ll be no trouble from Captain Swart. There are bigger things going on here. Go with them, now,” he pointed an arm towards Stan who was standing nearby.
“Yes, sergeant-major.”
Yes!
I was back home and had just got a reprieve from the man himself. I’d like to see that dickhead captain try and fuck with Sakkie.
OPERATION PROTEA
August 1981
The commander of South African forces in this disputed territory said today that their assaults into southern Angola this month had shattered the command structure of two of the three regional headquarters of the insurgent South West Africa People’s Organization and forced the insurgents to regroup 30 to 35 miles from the border. Maj. Gen. Charles Lloyd denied reports from the Angolan capital of Luanda that his troops had occupied seven small towns in the region.
Angola said today that two South African armored columns had crossed into southern Angola from South West Africa and were mounting attacks as much as 60 miles inside the country. The Angolan Government announced a general mobilization of its armed forces. The actions, reported by the Angolan press agency Angop, were neither confirmed nor denied by the South African Government, but a military analyst in Johannesburg said South African forces were involved in a major drive against black guerrillas.
Stan took the job of cramming three weeks of training into a half-hour crash course very seriously. I sat and cleared my magazines of all the old rounds and took a bush hat full of shiny new bullets from an open crate nearby. I went to collect M27 grenades. I took three.
“Take more,” Stan instructed. I finally took seven and stuffed them into a special grenade pouch I had never seen before, which I attached to my web belt. I picked up three or four thick field dressings, while Stan helped me carry a week’s supply of rat packs back to the tent.
I had picked up on the sombre mood that hung around the dirty collection of paratrooper tents. I had never seen D Company like this before. Everyone sat gloomily, frowning deeply as they arranged their kit and cleaned weapons that lay stripped on towels and sleeping bags. It certainly did not look as if they had been having a good time recently.
I felt my jubilant mood disappear as I gazed around the area for the first time and saw that it was, in fact, a huge hidden tent city in the bush. Tents were tucked away behind trees as far as I could see. The red sand lay everywhere, like well-trodden heaps of red flour. The tents and trees and vehicles were all covered with a layer of fine red dust that was kicked up with every step.
I could make out a long row of about 20 Ratels with 90-millimetre cannons, parked in the shade. On the other side I saw half a dozen field ambulances. I had the feeling that everyone knew something that I did not. A Mirage fighter came roaring low overhead with an ear-shattering noise and I ducked instinctively. I had never heard anything that loud before.
“Wait till they come really low. There’s about 20 of them we’ve been working with… you should see them coming straight down, firing rockets. Looks unreal.”
“What base are we going to hit?”
“Ongiva. It’s a town and a big FAPLA base about 40 clicks into Angola. It has ten square kilometres of trenches and bunkers. Some trenches are almost three metres deep, with cement World War Two-type pillboxes. They’ve got a battalion of tanks and a thousand troops in the base and we’re going to be up front!”
“Whaaaat?”
“Yeah… the Mirages are going to come in and bomb them with thousand-pound bombs—big fuckers—probably for half an hour, then we go in. We’re going to do fire and movement into their trenches. That’s what we’ve been doing here for the last three weeks. They also have anti-aircraft guns all over the base, dug into the ground, which they’ll probably put onto us when the Mirages have gone, like they did in Operation Smokeshell.”