During the first week we established a base camp at the “Horse’s Shoe”, a peculiar-shaped bend in the Kwando River, where we were given lectures on the wide variety of fauna and flora, their uses in a survival situation, and what to avoid and what to exploit. Tracking formed an integral part of the course. After the initial lessons on spoor recognition, determining the age of a track, counting the number of tracks and, eventually, how to follow a spoor, we would always move out in two groups, the first laying a track and the second following. Soon it became second nature – to be aware of signs indicating human presence.
In the heat of the day and during the evenings we received further detailed lectures on the plant and animal life of the region. We would learn how to locate water in tree trunks or in the bends of dry riverbeds, and how to collect water using a “desert still”, or a simple method called a “tree still”, where we would wrap a plastic bag over the wet leaves of a branch and leave it overnight for the water to condensate.
Food was systematically reduced from one tin per day to nothing, as we learned to set snares and traps for birds and small game. The Kwando River also yielded freshwater mussels, while the small nuts from the dried-out fruit of the marula tree provided some relief from the persistent hunger. Also in abundance at that time of year was the raisin bush, which provided edible berries as a supplement to our meagre diet.
At the end of the first week we were taken by vehicle and dropped off individually in a remote area along the Botswana border. It was time for Exercise Egg – Ray Godbeer’s unique way of exposing his charges to Mother Nature. Each of us was given two eggs, one match, a small piece of flint and two rounds of ammunition (meant only for protection against lions, which were abundant in the area). The idea was that we had to get a fire going, cook the eggs and sleep out alone under the stars.
I have spent countless nights in the bush on my own, so for me the experience was a positive one and merely a test of my ability to be completely at ease alone in nature. But for someone from the city who had not been exposed to the thrills of night life in the African bush, this could turn out to be a somewhat scary experience, and in subsequent years I have heard hilarious stories about would-be operators’ hair-raising encounters during Exercise Egg.
After I had been dropped off, I went on a recce down a nearby omuramba and soon found water holes with some muddy water left from the rainy season. I was hoping to use some green leaves to make a crude wrapping for my two eggs, and then drench it with water, bury it under a few inches of sand and cook it up by covering it with coals from my fire. But at the water hole I found two rusted tins that I put to good use. I carried water in the tins to my “camp”, made a fire with my match and flint, and simply boiled my eggs.
As a child, while hunting with my father on farms in the Kalahari, I had been taught the art of making a “Kalahari bed” to survive the bitterly cold winter nights – a trick I applied again. I gathered enough wood before last light and stoked the fire, then dug a shallow trench long enough to lie in. Once I had a good supply of coals from the fire, I scraped them into the trench so that the entire bottom was covered. Taking care to cover all the coals, I then worked a layer of sand across the bottom.
Then I made a second fire on the other side of the “bed”, hoping that any hungry lion with the intention of having half-cooked human flesh as a midnight snack would be discouraged by the flames. I also piled up a sizeable heap of sand and a supply of firewood, knowing that I would need to restock my “blanket” before the early-morning chill set in. Finally I collected dried grass, which I used to cover myself once inside my cosy cradle.
By the time the instructors arrived in the morning, I was refreshed from a good night’s rest and presented them with my boiled egg (having eaten the other the previous night). A number of the other students had been unable to get a fire going and endured a cold and scary night out in the bush, while most of them lost their eggs trying to cook them in the fire. One colleague had discharged both his rounds at what he thought was a lion, and then climbed a tree where he spent the rest of the night trying to maintain his balance and get some sleep.
Back at base camp our routine involved tracking, checking our snares in the evening and receiving lectures on a range of subjects. But unfortunately I fell violently ill with diarrhoea, possibly caused by drinking contaminated water out of the rusted tins. Already weakened by a lack of proper nourishment, my body packed up. I was evacuated to Fort Doppies where I was put on a drip and nursed back to health over a couple of days.
We were halfway through the Survival course and my biggest fear was that I would not be allowed to continue with Minor Tactics, which meant that I would have to wait another year to complete the training cycle and qualify as Special Forces operator. Fortunately, Ray Godbeer stood up for me, and convinced the bosses that I had done all the theory and only needed to pass my exams to complete the course. While recovering from the diarrhoea at Fort Doppies, I asked for my notes to be sent from the survival camp and used the time to study.
After about five days in bed, I rejoined the course for the assessment phase. I passed the theory and recognition exams easily, and then went on to do the practical tracking evaluation. I was completely whacked from the diarrhoea, but managed to follow the track with relative ease and convince the instructors that I was actually a born tracker. Ray let me pass the course, albeit with a little bit of TLC, for which I am eternally indebted to him, and I was allowed to continue with Minor Tactics.
I consider the Survival course as a learning experience on a par with the training I had received from Frannie du Toit at 31 Battalion. Even after my three years with the Bushmen, I had to admit that I had never learned so much about the bush in such a short time.
Minor Tactics
This was one long route march from beginning to end. For the students it turned out to be a second selection. When not slogging through the Caprivi bush with a 35-kg pack, we were doing fire-and-movement, so the course became a long drawn-out battle with an “enemy” that was persistently following us through the bush, with the eleven of us trekking and fighting consecutive battles day after day. Since I had done the course previously under the capable Frannie, and in fact had developed my own approach to tactics and a specific style of patrolling in the bush, the course was particularly challenging, since I dared not oppose the conventional wisdom at that late stage of our training.
During the long fire-and-movement “battles”, which were all conducted with live ammunition and loads of mortar, RPG and machine gun support, all sorts of strange methods were applied to stoke the students’ aggression. One specially favoured technique was to walk behind the student and hit him with a stick, presumably to make him move faster, shoot straighter and take better cover. This was not only counterproductive but also bred resentment against those instructors who indulged in the practice. Unfortunately it remained a favourite method to induce aggression, one that I encountered repeatedly in subsequent years at Special Forces training.
There were other peculiar features of the course, such as the extended ambushes, where we had to lie in wait for hours on end in the bitter cold of night, or during the heat of day in the sun, for the “enemy” to appear. Having done this in real life more times than I could remember, I battled with the concept, since I believed it was a waste of time. To my mind the ability to wait out a real-life enemy could not be taught superficially; it demanded a certain mindset that every soldier who had passed the selection should naturally possess.