“Stan, cover me. I’ve got the receiver.”
“What?”
“I’ve got the fucking spare radio receiver.”
“Well, you’d better go!”
“I know! Cover me!”
I shouted as loud as I could that I had it and that I was on my way. Stan seemed reluctant to lift his head too high but he nodded and pulled his R4 up to his shoulder. I readied my legs under me, took a deep breath, jumped up and ran across the 30 or 40 metres in one mad dash, jumping feet first into a two-metre-deep hole that seemed like an old bomb crater or a broken-down bunker. I heard Stan’s covering shots behind me.
I was a few yards from Sakkie and a couple of troops who were huddled behind some trees. I tossed the headset over to them.
“Good man!” Sakkie shouted. He seemed to be enjoying himself. I slid back into the crater.
There was also a medic lying in the hole; we smiled at each other. “Can you believe it?” he said, shaking his head.
“Fucking hell,” was all I could say and I also shook my head. Safe in the two-metre crater I lay on my back, pulled a crumpled box of Marlboro from my top pocket and offered him one. He took it and I lit it for him with my red lighter. We puffed in silence.
Sakkie’s famous parade-ground bellow came again, like a bullhorn on the front line of battle. “Waar is die LMG?… bring daardie donnerse LMG vorentoe,” he roared across to Valk 4 who were spread out over 70 metres of pretty-much flat ground. Each para lay flat in the tiny bit of cover he had managed to find.
“Here! The fucking LMG’s here, sergeant-major,” Doogy’s faint voice drifted through the din.
With the medic next to me I had to keep up the paratrooper image, so I moved up the hole and lay on my shoulder with my head just sticking over the edge, still smoking my Marlboro and monitoring the scene while the medic lay at the bottom of the hole. I clutched my rifle, ready. The FAPLA machine gun fire was sporadic, but constant with its long 20- and 30-round bursts.
I watched Doogy, with his MAG, doing the same gauntlet run that I had just done but further, as he had to come from the far right of the line. He ran doubled over, carrying the heavy LMG, with his number two behind him.
Sakkie was now standing up as though he was on a fucking parade ground with another troop crouching next to him behind the tree. He seemed to have pinpointed where the FAPLA machine-gun fire was coming from. Doogy came sliding up to him. Sakkie put one arm on Doogy’s shoulder, and with the other pointed towards a high sand wall 100 metres ahead, beyond the trench 30 metres in front of us and shook his hand vigorously.
Doogy wrapped the LMG’s strap over his shoulder, took a wide stance and opened up with long bursts. The sand wall exploded in a cloud of dust and leaves flew. He kept on shooting, his number two feeding in the belt. He changed belts and fired again, almost disappearing in his own gunsmoke. The FAPLA machine gun fell silent.
We kept our positions for a while as no one really knew what to do. I saw a round brown helmet bobbing up ahead to my right, at the sand wall of the trench ahead. It was some of our guys. Valk 3 had entered the trench from the right flank and were now in it, moving down towards us, going from bunker to bunker. Shots rang out but no return fire. A few shouts went up.
“C’mon, lets go!” I jumped out of my safe, two-metre-deep crater, leaving the medic still sitting in the bottom. For the first time we were able to get up without the crack of bullets flying past our heads. I ran crouched the remaining 30 metres to the trench ahead, and jumped in. It was a model trench with a level floor, straight walls and wooden steps with little nooks cut into the walls. It was well maintained and clean, except for the piles of spent AK-47 cartridges that lay everywhere and clothing and equipment that had been hastily abandoned. A grenade thumped and a cloud of dust erupted from a bunker at the end of the trench.
Lieutenant Doep was now back on the scene, shouting the odds. He waved one arm excitedly as he leaned against the wall of the trench and fiddled with the radio receiver on his shoulder. It was the first time we had been together as a platoon since we’d disembarked the Buffels almost an hour and a half ago. A few guys lit up cigarettes. In the mad scramble of taking heavy fire as we disembarked the Buffel, with almost no cover and what with the Canberra jet coming in low and dropping a bomb close in front of us and the fucking anti-aircraft fire, it had been pretty well every man for himself, with no real leadership except for Sergeant-Major Sakkie calling for the LMG. But now Doep was back in charge.
“Don’t pick anything up, don’t touch anything! Be careful of booby traps and don’t go into the bunkers!” Doep shouted.
He bent his head and started talking into the receiver in rapid Afrikaans. “Tango Lima… Tango Lima, Victor Four. We’re in the third row of trenches. Under control and clear at this time.”
I saw Kurt and I lifted my eyebrows at him but could not smile. His shirt was black with sweat and he looked at me blankly, his usually pink face flushed bright red as he stood quietly catching his breath and gripping his rifle tightly with both hands. He did not look as though he was enjoying himself, probably thinking that it would be a lot nicer to be back in a kitchen right now, standing over a pot and stirring potatoes as they boiled.
Stan was next to me and looked grim with his helmet pulled low over his eyes. He resembled a German stormtrooper, his desired look, as he took long, quick pulls on a cigarette. His face was also red with exertion. Mortars still boomed a few clicks to the east in the civilian town of Ongiva as black smoke curled in a thick column 300 or 400 metres into the sky. It looked like we weren’t the only ones having fun. The infantry had thought that taking the town would be easy. I peered into a neat-looking bunker that had a wooden door hanging on a hinge, now flung open, and saw what looked to be crates of ammo and supplies stacked inside.
There were dozens of shiny new AK-47 rounds lying on the dusty floor that must have been dropped in a hasty ammunition hand-out. There was no sign of FAPLA or of any bodies. I took a deep slug from my water bottle. The water was hot but slid down my throat like chilled Champagne.
“Okay, form up. We’re going over here and forward. Boy’s moved to the next trench line. Keep your eyes open and watch for bunkers. Okay, form up… let’s go!” Doep shouted, too loudly.
He seemed more under control now; he was still loud but not shouting orders at the very top of his voice as he had done in the Buffel.
We were now in the thicket of trees which until now had been pretty much all we could see. Now, as I peered over the top of the trench for the first time, I could see the vast FAPLA base spread out in front of us. It was a huge expanse of sand mounds and scattered, single-storey brick buildings built on acres of ground that was a combination of open chanas and trees. The small buildings seemed to be mostly under trees; some had camouflage-netting spread over them. There were telephone poles and well-used sand roads running between the trees and buildings that lay up ahead and close by a few dark-green Soviet GAZ-66 trucks were dug into ramps in the ground, just visible. The ramps were hidden from the air by a roof topped with branches and netting.
The terrain was a spiderweb of small, well-trodden footpaths leading in every direction. Immediately in front of us was an open chana about 100 metres wide, with a few lonely clumps of trees scattered in the middle. Around these trees were small mounds of sand that seemed to be bunkers. I noticed that I was stuck in a sort of tunnel vision, unable to take in much with my peripheral vision. Like an animal, I could only focus on a small area almost dead ahead with unnatural clarity, but had to move my head like a crow to take in what was around me.