What were we going to do? If we all jumped up shooting we would probably shoot each other in the pitch darkness. I knew that if anybody was going to do something, it would be have to be us on the end closest to the trench. The voices were quiet now but I could hear them shuffling in the trench, probably not six metres from me.
“Come here!” John Delaney shouted and broke the silence like a POMZ.
“Huh?” came a surprised grunt from the trench.
John’s grenade exploded metres from us but must have missed the trench, as seconds later bursts of green tracers flew over us almost at ground level, zipping a metre over my chest and off into the night. Silence. Another green burst. I lay on my back and watched the tracers flying in front of my eyes with dumb interest and thought, “Well, they’re definitely not our boys.”
I could hear scuffling as they ran down the trench into the darkness, making good their getaway. Damn! Good thing Doep had made us dig in because if we hadn’t, we could have been nailed. No one said a word or made a sound to jeopardize our position. I lay breathing, snatching shallow gasps, still holding my rifle on my chest. What a wonderful day I was having… and it looked like the party wasn’t over yet. I tried to doze again.
At about 03:00 our Fighting Group 20 and anybody within a couple of kilometres was brought to their feet by the thunderous sound of a thousand vehicles starting up at the same time. It sounded like the start of a huge midnight Grand Prix for trucks. It came from directly ahead of us. Acting on reflex, I was on my knees in a flash, peering into the darkness. John was also up from his hole next to mine.
“What the hell is that?” I hissed.
“I don’t know!”
“It’s fucking vehicles… lots of them!”
That’s it, I thought instantly. They’ve regrouped and they’re making a massive counter-attack. Clever motherfuckers to wait until the small fucking hours of the morning. Who would have thought there were so many of them so close to us… and to think I was lying here dozing with 1,000 fucking FAPLA sitting in BTRs half a click in front of us! My blood ran cold. Everyone was up, huddled together, on our knees, peering into the blackness and chatting nervously.
“It’s that battalion of tanks they said was here. Now we’re in the shit!”
“Where’s the fucking Ratels? Aren’t they supposed to be with us?” I looked around behind me and could just make out the shape of the small Eland armoured car that was parked 30 metres behind us. I had seen him park there when we’d dug in earlier and knew that he didn’t have a 90-millimetre cannon, only a 20-millimetre which was not much joy against a BTR or a tank.
The thunderous sound filled the night for long, never-ending minutes. It sounded as if every driver of the thousand vehicles (we discovered much later it was actually about 50 vehicles) had his foot flat on the gas. If they were trying to scare us, they were doing a good job.
“Okay… now the fight only starts. They’ve been holding back all this time, the fucking bastards,” I said quietly.
Greeff was next to me, shaking his head. “Fuck it, man, why do they do this to us? They knew there’s a battalion of tanks in this base but they send us in with a few lousy fucking Ratels and they’re not even here!” He grumbled like a petulant child.
“I dunno,” I answered quietly and shook my head too. I also wondered why the big armoured Ratels had retreated for the night, leaving us with scant protection. I was in a bit of a mind-spin myself. It sounded like hell itself was about to come crashing towards us.
“Kit up! Kit up!” Lieutenant Doep shouted, not bothering to be quiet.
I shot to my hole, rolled up my sleeping-bag inner in double-quick time and hauled my kit onto my back. I was just in the process of fastening my chest strap when I heard an engine come gunning towards us through the darkness. I stopped, just in time to see a big black form barrelling onto us out of the night. I barely had time to jump aside and run a few paces as the Soviet-built GAZ-66 supply truck came hurtling past me in mid-air with his engine screaming at a crazy pitch. He was airborne as he bounced at least a metre off the ground in the darkness. I was so close that in one brief second I could just make out a figure, his head hitting the roof of the cab and his arms stiffly braced on the wheel, trying to control the truck as he drove for dear life. We all scattered helter skelter.
“Shoot! Shoot!”
“Hold your fire, don’t shoot!”
No one shot.
The GAZ-66 truck had passed right in among us. We watched as the dark shape bounced like a huge shadowy rock, rolling down the hill past the Eland armoured car. Seconds later the Eland’s machine gun lit up the night in a reassuring 30-second burst of fire. The driver must have got away. I never did get to see the truck in daylight the next day.
“They’re moving… here they come! Get ready, manne!”
THE END OF OPERATION PROTEA
The big armada of vehicles had started to move and we knelt in the dark. I held my rifle tightly and pulled out three grenades from the pouch and stuffed them into my pants pockets.
“Spread out, spread out!” Doep yelled. Instinctively we had grouped together in the dark.
“Horn, get that RPG ready! Green, set up your LMG with your second!”
Doep’s radio crackled to life. “Tango Lima, Tango Lima, Victor Four… do you read me?”
“Yes, I read you, Victor Four…”
“We have a big movement of vehicles approaching; sounds like hundreds of them, over.”
“Yes, we hear them too, Victor Four. Sit tight for now.” The voice sounded cool and calm on the other end. It was alright for him; he was away at the back somewhere, surrounded by Ratels.
Sit tight for now!
The noise of the vehicles filled the night. I got down on one knee and pulled out the two magazines taped together and snapped in a fresh, full one. I was not sure how many rounds I had left in them and I had no desire to hear the click of a empty mag in the heat of combat again. I had learned that lesson. I pulled back the bolt and put a round in the chamber. I stayed down on one knee and cocked my head to listen. After a minute it sounded like the revving engines were getting fainter. I held my breath to hear better. They were definitely not coming forward!
“They’re going away!” No one said a word as we all listened quietly.
“Yeah, they’re moving away. They not attacking! They’re making a run for it in the dark!”
I felt neither relief nor joy. I had prepared myself for an almighty shootout— and death—and was numb, detached and empty inside. We listened as the thousand-sounding engines faded into the night, making good their escape. I stayed on one knee with my head cocked and listening, holding my rifle in a death grip. No, we would not die tonight.
Neither they nor we knew that they were on their way to a rendezvous with the ‘Terrible Ones’ of 32 Battalion who were lying in wait miles away as stopper group on the very road they were travelling. An air strike was also called on them when they put up a fight and some of the convoy tried to flank 32 Battalion. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Most would be killed, including several Soviet personnel as well as the wife of a Russian warrant officer, who, we later read in the newspapers, put up a fight lying next to her husband and firing with a pistol. Her three children were never found even though the SADF, at the surviving Russians’ request, sent out a large search party to look for them the following day. At least that’s what the newspaper that my mother kept for me said, when I read it weeks later.