Luckily we had been on the spot and ready to go. Another ten minutes and we might have been on our way back to Ionde. I felt a tinge of apprehension flutter through me. I tried to dredge up the feeling of cold, numb, uncaring resignation that I had come to rely on, but it had become increasingly difficult to conjure up this strange, dead, necessary feeling on this last bush trip.
As had become my habit, I clenched the silver crucifix that hung round my neck in my teeth and bit down on it. It was silver and soft, already well-dented with the tooth marks of many such moments. I said a quick prayer, asking the Lord for safety. Why should He listen to me? I bet that the terrs were praying right now too, as they heard the choppers coming in on them. Who would the good Lord favour? Us or them?
We flew for what seemed no more than two minutes when the Pumas came down on a grassy patch of veld. We jumped from the chopper and ran crouched over through some tall grass flattened by the prop-wash and went down in a defensive circle. The first thing I heard was the loud noise of 20-millimetre cannons from what sounded like two Alouette gunships not more than 100 metres away, but I couldn’t see them. After the Pumas had lifted off and their hammering blades had faded into the distance, the loud silence of the bush took me by surprise again. Just the 20-millimetre fire boomed away. It sounded as though it was pretty earnest and not just speculative fire, which they sometimes used to flush terrs out of the bush. After a minute in the grass we stood up.
“Form up, spread out… let’s move,” Doep pointed in a direction that flanked the sounds of the fire fight.
After two years of training and living together and now as veterans of numerous actions, we formed automatically into our familiar sweep line and slowly picked our way through the scattered bush. First in and last out of the Puma, I was the last man on the right flank of the sweep line, again. To our left was a steep hill with large rocks, probably about three storeys high. The fire fight seemed to be on top of this hill, not much more than 100 metres in front of us.
My helmet kept slipping down over my eyes. I pushed it up. I hated the fucking thing. Why couldn’t we just wear our bush caps? I scanned the bush in front of me. It seemed peaceful except for the Alouette gunships and the hammering of their cannons. I searched through the bush around me. The line moved slowly and straight, wth the last man on the far left of the line walking on the slope of the unusual rocky hillside as we walked parallel to the hill.
Kevin McKee, the small ex-pro boxer with the thick scar that ran from eyebrow to chin (he had run slap-bang into an ambulance during PT course, cutting his face terribly, crying in pain and wailing that now he was going to be even uglier), was to my left, glaring into the bush with his small, beady brown eyes and holding his rifle high to his chest. Kevin Green moved cautiously next to him. Suddenly, up ahead of me, as plain as day, coming out from behind some bush and going into a small clearing, I saw a camouflageclad figure walking casually and carrying a rifle over his shoulder like a hobo carrying a stick. For a second I felt no concern because he was walking so nonchalantly. I thought for sure he must be one of our guys who was in camo for some reason. Either that, or he was Koevoet (the South African Police’s Koevoet also wore camo on the border).
“What the fuck is Koevoet doing here?” I thought.
All these thoughts were in slow motion but in split second I realized this was a terr, calmly walking not 20 metres in front of me. I was the only one who had seen him. I stopped and lifted my rifle to my shoulder. I aimed at his midriff, then for some strange reason I called out to him, maybe thinking of trying to take him prisoner because he looked so lost and ill at ease.
“Hey!” It came out too softly.
He did not hear me. Kevin McKee had also seen him now and he shouted loudly. The terr spun around, his eyes large and white as he looked at us.
Kevin waved his arm. “Hey Illa!”
The terr took a second to register who we were and that he was dead. He and I locked eyes for a split second before I shot him and he began falling to the ground. I fired two shots and knew I had hit him. I ran forward ahead of the sweep line. Branches whipped into my face as I ran forward with my rifle still tucked into my shoulder. Together Kevin and I came onto the terr lying behind the bush. He was rolled up into a ball with his AK lying in the sand next to him. Kevin took aim and blew the top of his head off with two well-placed shots. The rest of the sweep line caught up and although all heads craned to see what was going on, they kept their positions. Lieutenant Doep was close by and came over quickly. He inspected the dead terr and looked at Kevin and me.
“Korff saw him, lieutenant.”
Doep glanced at me, nodded and said in Afrikaans “Mooi, Korff, well done.”
“I almost thought he was a Koevoet, lieutenant.”
Doep grunted.
We quickly searched the dead terr but found nothing. I reached into my pants-leg pocket, pulled out a small camera and took a picture. The early afternoon light was just right. It was a perfect Kodak moment. I was to take a photograph that haunted me for years until I burned it many years later.
“Left wheel, left wheel!” Doep shouted.
We turned the sweep line around and unavoidably grouped together as we scaled the steep koppie to get to the top, where the gunships had the terrs pinned down. As we topped the rocky hill we could, for the first time, see the two gunships that were flying in tight circles 30 metres in front of us and hammering down into the thick trees.
It was a nightmare scene. We could see figures running and crouching behind trees in the haze of dust and smoke as the gunships circled above them at an angle that looked as though the gunners would fall out but did not. Their long 20-millimetre cannons flashed and the explosive heads blew up waves of white sand. The smoke and dust was as thick as fog.
“Straight ahead! There, straight ahead!”
I dropped to one knee and aimed into the fog at the ghostly figures. I shot as fast as I could. My barrel moved from one spectre to the next, unable to stay on one target for long. I whipped over my quick-change magazine and kept on firing. I had fired 60 rounds. Our own gunsmoke enveloped us, burning my throat and eyes. Now I could see no targets. I pulled another magazine from my chest webbing and dropped my two empty mags into the sand. I fired the third magazine out into the haze.
“Cease fire… cease fire… cease fire!”
Slowly the mad shooting stopped. The gunships had ceased fire and hovered in tight circles over the dust and smoke-filled killing zone, their rotor blades chopping loudly, whap, whap, whap, as they turned.
“Forward… spread out… spread out! Forward!” Lieutenant Doep turned and looked down the line, shouting at the top of his voice.
I sprang up and began to walk forward with my rifle socked tight in my shoulder. I stared intently into the smoke and dust haze now 25 metres in front of us. I saw no movement. I stepped over a log and almot stumbled to my knees as my boot hooked something. My eyes did not even waiver as I stumbled, viciously pulling my foot free. I walked fast, as usual, believing in the blitzkrieg policy that says moving fast into a situation gives you an edge. It was a tactic I always used in street brawls. To cut through the bullshit and get in before the other guy could get his mind working.
John Delaney was off to my right as we walked into the fog. I looked around at the carnage and in a second I realized there was not much danger here. The ground around me had been torn up and was burned white from the sustained cannon fire. Leaves and broken branches covered the ground which looked as if it had been ploughed by the grim reaper. It took a second or two to realize that there were bodies lying everywhere.