“Our nerves were shot. I didn’t realize it then, only later, after weeks in the bush. The whole time you knew anything could happen in that darkness, later land mines as well, and you slept badly during the day and you ate badly, and sometimes the water holes were dry and it was only tension all day, all night, even if Bushy and Speckle pretended they liked it. They never stopped saying they wanted to shoot more Swapos, they were looking for more contact, but the tension got to them as well in the end. It was tension that caused the whole mess with the Parabats.”
“The Parabats?”
“We were two weeks away from fourteen days’ leave when we came back from a drop in Angola at night, on foot, and Bushy indicated that we should fall flat. We saw them coming through a dry riverbed – only the shadows and the rifle barrels, you couldn’t see much more than that – twelve of them, spread out, the way Swapos did, and Bushy told us to form an ambush. We took up our positions – we had practiced it over and over again, each one knew what to do, where to lie. We knew we had to wait for Bushy to shoot first. They came up, not even knowing about us. Then Bushy shot and we all fired and they fell and screamed and I knew this was what Bushy had been waiting for, a dozen kaffirs. You must forgive me, but that’s all they spoke about – they were the biggest racists I’ve ever known, Bushy and Speckle. We all were, at that time. They taught us…”
“Carry on,” said Leon Petersen.
“We mowed them down, they didn’t stand a chance, and when everything was quiet we heard one of them calling, in Afrikaans, ‘Help me, Ma, help me,’ and then I heard Clinton Manley saying, ‘Oh, my God,’ and we knew something was wrong. Bushy got up and signed to us and we crept closer, and when we came to the first one we saw the dog tags, and he was a Parabat from Bloemfontein. No one had told us they would be there. Ten were dead, fucked-up dead, shot to pieces. One was dying – he was the one who shouted – and one was still alive, shot through both legs, but he would’ve made it.”
“Would’ve made it?”
“Speckle shot him. But it wasn’t that simple. You can imagine. We stood next to the Parabat and he knew we were Recces and he asked, over and over again, ‘Why did you shoot us?’ And then he moaned with pain and we were shit-scared because it was a major fuckup, jeez, we had killed our own people – do you know what it feels like? We were all panicky. I think it was Red who asked what we were going to do now, but no one answered him, we were in such deep trouble, and the guy on the ground was hystericaclass="underline" ‘Why did you shoot us?’ And he moaned, and on and on. Jeez, all I wanted to do was run, I wanted to get away, and Bushy simply stood there, as white as a sheet, he didn’t know what to do, either, and then Speckle came up and he shot the guy in the head and Gerry de Beer said, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ and Speckle said, ‘What the fuck do you want us to do?’ He wasn’t calm, Speckle, he was just as scared as the rest of us, you could hear it, you could see it, Christ, it was bad, but then it was quiet, dead quiet, and Red threw up and so did Clinton Manley, and the rest of us stood there among ten dead Parabats and we all knew no one would ever talk about it. We all knew before I said it – I mean, it was an accident, it was genuinely a helluva accident, what could we do? – and then I said we’d never talk about it.”
Silence.
“Mr. Vergottini?”
“I’m okay.”
“Take your time, Mr. Vergottini.”
“I’d rather you called me Peter. It’s the name I’m used to.”
“Take your time.”
“I’m okay. We buried them. The ground was hard and we didn’t want to bury them in the riverbed because in the rainy season…We worked until two o’clock the following afternoon, covering their heads first. I don’t think we could handle the eyes and the faces. They were our guys. Our people. We picked up every cartridge case, covered every spot of blood, buried everyone. And then we went on. Without speaking. Speckle in the lead. I’ll never forget it: suddenly Speckle was in the lead, Bushy behind him. Speckle was the new leader without a word being said. For two days we walked, night and day, without a word being said, everyone’s head busy with only one thing, and when we reached the camp, Lieutenant Brits was waiting and he wanted to see us…”
“Bester Brits?”
“Yes.”
“Go on.”
“He wanted to see us and we thought someone knew something because we knew he was Intelligence, and we were scared and Speckle said that he would talk, that we must just keep our traps shut, but then it was another story altogether, a completely new story.
“Every day for the past twenty-three years I’ve thought about it. Coincidence. If Brits had asked for another squad. If the Parabats had followed another route. If we could’ve distinguished an R1 from an AK in the dark…Coincidence. The Parabats. And then Orion.”
“Orion?”
“Operation Orion, Brits’s operation. He said he knew we were tired but it was just one night’s work and then we would get fourteen days, immediately, get onto a Hercules and go home, but we were the only experienced squad that was available and the operation was the following night. All we had to do was to ride shotgun on a Dak…that’s a Dakota, a DC 10, an aircraft…all we had to do was see that two parcels were exchanged, and he was going along. He wanted us for peace of mind – that was his phrase, ‘peace of mind.’ And then he organized a helluva meal for us from the officers’ mess and said we weren’t sleeping in tents, he had organized a prefab for us, and we could sleep as late as we liked – he would make sure no one bothered us. We had to be fresh the following afternoon, one night’s work and then we’d be going home.
“We ate and showered and went to the bungalow, but no one could sleep. Red Verster said we would have to tell someone, suddenly, as if he’d decided. Speckle said no. Clinton said we must talk to someone, Rupert de Jager said what good would it do, they were dead, it wouldn’t bring them back, and Koos van Rensburg said no, we wouldn’t be able to live with it, and the guys began yelling at one another, Rupert and me at Clinton and Gerry and Red and Koos, until Speckle beat on a tin trunk and we all looked at him and he said we were tired, we were all tired and shocked, and it would only cause trouble if we fought about it now. We must wait. Until we came back from Orion. Then we would vote. And then we would do what the majority wanted.
“Bushy Schlebusch just lay there staring at the ceiling. And Speckle Venter was in control. And then we all lay down and I think we slept a little toward morning and then Bester arrived at eleven o’clock and said there was breakfast and were we okay, and he was all over us, trying to be one of the boys and we all ignored him because of the Parabats and because all intelligence officers were like that, shit-scared men who sat at the base and then tried to sound like old hands who had seen contact. But he was too much, kept saying, ‘Orion is big, guys, Orion is really big. You must be on your toes. One day you can tell your children you did a great thing.’
“And that evening he handed out live ammunition and hand grenades and we drove in a Bedford to the airfield and there the Dak stood and we got in, and before takeoff Brits said he wanted to brief us. He said it was top secret but we would see what was going on in any case, we weren’t idiots, and he knew he could trust us. We were going to a mine in Cuango to fetch stones, diamonds, and then we were crossing a border or two, flying over without permission, and we would exchange the diamonds for something Unita wanted very badly because they were struggling against the rest of Angola and the Cubans, but as far as we were concerned we had seen nothing. And then we would leave on our fourteen-day pass with a little extra in the pay packet, a little extra to make the fourteen days rich and enjoyable, and he tried to make his voice sound like some fancy radio announcer selling coffee creamer. He was a real joker, he so badly wanted to be one of the boys.