I sailed along, blissfully unaware of her anguish. After the festive season passed, I began to count down the days until my return to ‘the States’, as we called South Africa, and the European skiing holiday that I’d planned.
In the meantime, there was work to be done. At about 11h00 one Saturday morning early in January 1980 the gunships flown by my good friend Brian Bell and I scrambled from Ondangs with orders to get to Ohopoho, the capital of Kaokoland, where we would be given further instructions.
We reached Ohopoho (later called Opuwo) airfield about 80 minutes later, and our flight engineers refuelled while we were briefed on developments by an officer from the local army base. A small convoy comprising two Community Affairs (Burgersake) landmine-protected Hippo personnel transport vehicles, which had been tasked with relocating the inhabitants of a village near the border to a safer location further south, had not arrived at its destination as expected. There were also reports of explosions coming from the direction of the convoy.
While Ovamboland is as flat as a pancake, Kaokoland is a mountainous and arid desert landscape with jagged peaks and deep rock-strewn valleys. Water is scarce and few water points exist, all of which are marked on the maps of the area.
Our instructions were to find and secure the convoy and to determine the cause of the delay. We were also told that a senior SADF officer had accompanied the convoy on its journey and that we were to make contact with him if we could. We got airborne and found the convoy within 30 minutes of leaving Ohopoho.
From the air, we could see smoke spiralling upwards. As we approached the scene, we saw that both vehicles were burnt-out. The tyres were still smouldering, accounting for the smoke trails in the sky. The vehicles had obviously stopped for rest and water at one of the map-marked water points. Our attention was attracted by two men, one white and one black, on top of a hill a short distance away. They were waving their arms at us, indicating that we should land.
There were no other signs of life.
We checked the area around the water point thoroughly before landing near the burnt-out Hippos. By this time, the two men had descended from the hilltop and joined us. One was the village headman and the other the senior SADF officer. They told us that the vehicles, carrying all the men, women and children from the village, about 35 souls in total, had stopped for a rest and to replenish their stocks of water at the waterhole. The officer, who was armed only with a hunting rifle, and the headman had decided to climb the hill to get a better view of the starkly beautiful countryside, leaving the rest of the party by the vehicles.
At some point after they reached the hilltop, they noticed unusual activity below. From around 300 metres away they observed a contingent of 40–50 PLAN soldiers surround the vehicle occupants and start to herd them, like cattle, towards the Hippos. The two men, who were unobserved by the PLAN soldiers, immediately sought cover among the rocks.
Shortly afterwards there was the sound of gunfire and several loud explosions.
The PLAN contingent left soon afterwards and the two men remained hidden, knowing that sooner or later there would be an SADF response to the sounds of the attack and to their non-arrival at their planned destination.
‘Where are the other villagers now?’ we asked.
‘They have probably been taken by the PLAN guys. They are known to do this quite often,’ replied the officer.
Just then some SADF vehicles and military personnel arrived. The officer and the headman went off to speak to them.
I was curious to see the inside of the still-burning Hippos. As it was impossible to see through the fire-blackened, bullet-resistant glass windows that run the length of both sides of the Hippo, I looked for a place where I could climb onto one of the mudguards without being burnt. I found a foothold, hoisted myself up and peered over the top.
I so wish I had not done that.
The villagers had been crammed into the two Hippos. The doors had then been slammed shut, sealing them all inside. Then white phosphorous grenades had been tossed in. Some of the occupants had tried to escape the 1 000 °C-plus inferno by squeezing through the gap between the walls of the Hippo and its roof but had been shot by the animals waiting outside.
I stared at the contorted shapes of the charred bodies of the villagers filling the back of the vehicle. The scene was as horrific as any I’d ever seen in photos of Nazi concentration camps. Wide-eyed and uncomprehending, I found it impossible to move for at least a few seconds, possibly even a minute or two.
The final image, forever etched into my brain, was that of the faintly recognisable skeletons of a mother and her suckling child, with the child’s skull still fused to her mum’s sternum.
Then, thankfully, the switch in my brain activated again, immediately damping, then halting, and finally deflating the explosive deluge of primeval and raw rage that threatened to overwhelm me.
Somehow, I managed to step off the Hippo’s mudguard and walk away.
The sleep deprivation resulting from all my late-night confrontations with the day’s events in my bed under my mosquito net was somewhat blunted by my heavy consumption of quantities of pink gin and tonic. This was the drink of choice for chopper crews, simply because at ten cents an imperial tot of Beefeater gin with Indian tonic and a dash of Angostura bitters, it cost substantially less than a can of beer (25 cents).
Late one night around a fire in the aircrew living area at Ondangwa, midnight was beckoning. A handful of chopper pilots, some new, some not so new – all young – were sitting around the dying embers of the fire. The conversation gravitated, as it always did at that time of each G&T-fuelled night, to the possibility of dying. Not surprisingly, this undesirable scenario was considered by most of us to be a quite distinct probability, given where we found ourselves.
The quinine-laced Indian tonic in the G&Ts had, as usual, thoroughly depressed the drinkers, and the atmosphere at the fireside was morose and introspective. Soon, one by one, everyone would quietly leave the fire and make their way to their beds, crawl under their mosquito nets and try to get some sleep before the anaesthetic effect of the gin wore off and, in the pre-dawn light, their flight engineers would bring steaming mugs of moerkoffie (filter coffee) to the groggy flyers, heralding the start of another day.
‘We all know that when it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go! Get over it!’ one of the group said.
‘If the fucking bullet comes up at you with your name and address on the front, there’s bugger all you can do about it!’ growled an ouman. ‘So why worry about it?’
Heads nodded in agreement and silence prevailed for a few seconds.
Then, just as the first pilot rose to his feet to leave, or to vomit into a nearby flowerbed, a gravelly voice, speaking slower than BJ Vorster addressing a Republic Day rally, uttered these unforgettable words:
‘Gentlemen… I… completely agree… that there is… sweet… fuck all… that I can do… about the bullet… that has my name… and my address… on it. So… I lose no sleep… over it.’
Drawing a deep breath, he went on: ‘But the bullet… that makes me… kak myself… each minute… of each hour… of each day… that I fly in this fucking war… is the one addressed… “To whom it may concern”.’