This period saw a number of people coming and going again. Mike Mushayi, along with two other ex-Rhodesian soldiers, also joined Small Teams then. Not all operators were cut out for Small Teams, as they not only had to cope with the demands of a rigorous routine while on the base but also had to manage the stresses that came with deployment in small groups. The base routine was taxing, and the months away from home, either on rehearsals or actual deployments, would place great strain on the family life of a married operator.
Our first exposure to the joys of Small Team ops was a training exercise in the Mariepskop area, at the northernmost tip of the Drakensberg range. Diedies, Dave Scales and Corné Vermaak, the intelligence officer dedicated to Small Teams, were to run the Tac HQ, while two teams deployed in the most rugged and thickly vegetated terrain imaginable – the steep mountains and deep valleys of the Blyde River Canyon.
The exercise was cleverly worked out around a scenario whereby ANC insurgents had infiltrated the area from Mozambique and established weapons caches in the secluded valleys, utilising donkey trains to transport their goods. The intelligence picture was indeed based on fact, although the teams never knew exactly how much was fact and how much fiction. We expected to encounter enemy at any time during the deployment.
At first I did not realise the significance of this first deployment, but it dawned on me much later that Diedies was already preparing us for deployments in the mountainous terrain around the town of Lubango in southwestern Angola – an area that would become the focus of Small Team deployments in years to come.
For some reason I didn’t fare well on that exercise, and felt like a complete failure afterwards. Vic was a strong man, and I had to work hard to keep up. Down in the valleys the vegetation was subtropical, virtually impenetrable. The first night we spent eight hours in the pitch darkness to cover 700 m, trying desperately to crawl through the undergrowth with our huge, heavy packs. It was literally a matter of one step forward, three steps back – as the frames of the packs got tangled in the vines and roots.
I struggled to master the new challenges of comms procedure, one-time letter pads and Morse code. Our comms with Dave were mostly poor – partly due to the deep ravines we were deployed in, but also because we were inexperienced and not well prepared. At some point Vic and I had a difference of opinion about the position of our observation post (OP), which we would use to watch a cave supposed to be one of the targets. Then we argued about the best route to take. Having studied the map, I insisted that we go up a dry waterfall during our exfiltration. But when I took a nasty fall while attempting to scale the almost vertical cliff, I realised my mistake. Luckily I fell directly backwards onto my pack. Mildly concussed, I tried to stand up. Vic quietly walked up to me, lifted my pack and pulled me to my feet. Then we followed the route he had suggested from the beginning.
As could be expected, the debrief at the Tac HQ on Mariepskop was not a positive or rewarding experience. Diedies pointed out our navigational errors, poor choices of OP sites and a number of tactical mistakes. Dave was not at all happy with the standard of our comms, particularly the fact that we were repeatedly late with scheduled or “scheds”, as well as the poor quality of our Morse.
Driving back with Diedies from Mariepskop to the unit at Phalaborwa I fell quiet. Eventually Diedies broke the silence:
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I think I messed up.”
He was wise enough not to take the matter any further and simply said, “Sleep on it tonight and we’ll talk tomorrow.”
By the next morning I felt significantly better. I realised that, while the other guys had been with Small Teams much longer than I had, they hadn’t fared substantially better on the exercise. What I needed to do was to cover a few basics and master the technical challenges that were new to me.
So Vic and I got stuck into a serious learning routine. We spent hours sending and receiving Morse, as well as improving our radio work, incorporating field repairs, the use of various types of antennae and ECM/ECCM procedures. Knowledge of enemy weapons, aircraft and vehicles turned into a bit of a status symbol among the teams and we had daily slideshow competitions to test each other’s knowledge.
We also meticulously prepared our equipment and were fortunate to have at our disposal the services of Sergeant Major “Whalla-whalla” van Rensburg, the unit’s tailor. With his heavy-duty sewing machines, Whalla-whalla could redesign any piece of webbing and turn it into a masterpiece. The result was chest-webbing and kidney pouches designed to our own taste, with a special pouch for each item of survival kit, strobe light, cutting pliers, torch or whatever else the operator considered vital enough to keep on his chest. Whalla-whalla also made canvas and cloth bags for just about everything, from toilet paper to peanuts. The much-treasured “Whalla-whalla bag” soon became a hallmark of Small Teams.
In addition to the rigorous training, we used the time at base to brush up on our first-aid skills. We’d set aside a week for the unit doctor to guide us through the ABCs of resuscitation, the contents and application of the priority 1 and 2 medical packs, improvised techniques for applying slings and how to stop bleeding. A casualty scenario was built into each exercise, with the result that we ended up punching each other (and ourselves!) full of needle holes in an attempt to get a drip flowing. I became quite adept at administering a drip to myself, even with the sweat running and the adrenaline pumping.
Not all training exercises were as challenging as the one in the Mariepskop area. Once, Small Teams was commandeered to take part in a countrywide exercise run by the Air Force to sharpen their command and control systems and fine-tune the integration of different resources.
Operation Golden Eagle was a typical blue-on-red exercise, with red (“enemy”) bases spread along the eastern border with Mozambique and blue forces based in the interior. A request arrived from Pietersburg Air Force Base for the Recces to do a close-in reconnaissance of red bases at Punda Maria, on the edge of the Kruger National Park. The mission entailed the placement of command-detonated flares to guide bombers to their targets. One flare would be positioned 20 km away to guide the aircraft on their initial run-in, the second 100 m away and the third on the perimeter of the actual target. The jets would detonate the first flare while in the holding area, and the second and third on the approach to the target.
The flare had a separate radio receiver, which was to be connected to the detonator and then armed for action. Little did I know that I was actually testing a new system that would later be used in our reconnaissance missions.
A day before the deployment, Sakkie Sibanda, one of the intelligence NCOs, and I were picked up in a Puma helicopter and taken to Pietersburg. A team of technicians were waiting for us at the base. We went through a quick training session on the flares and tested the systems with the fighter pilots. Just before we departed, Sakkie and I each had a freshly baked pie and a Coke from the Air Force canteen.
The helicopters first took us to a point 20 km east of the target where the first flare would be set up to serve as the initiation point once the air strike came in. I was dropped on a rocky outcrop and had no difficulty in preparing the flare and connecting the receiver while the choppers circled. With the initiation point prepared, Sakkie and I were taken to our respective landing zones (LZs) for the final infiltration to the “enemy” bases, where the target markers would be planted. I was dropped first, just before last light, and started navigating my way through some scattered villages and fields towards the target.