Everything went smoothly. I found the target easily and planted the first flare 100 m out, and the second one at the perimeter fence. I decided to stay put to see how it functioned. Not realising how powerful the explosion would be, I fell asleep right next to the flare, and was rudely awakened by the blast. The “enemy” must have gotten an equal fright, as the huge flame leaped about two storeys into the air. Afterwards they claimed they had located and almost caught me, which was nonsense, as I quickly disappeared into the thick shrubs surrounding the base. The fighter planes came thundering directly over the target in a simulated attack, “bombing” the red base into the proverbial smithereens.
The next morning I exfiltrated and was picked up by the choppers at the prearranged LZ. Mission accomplished.
It was only then that I heard Sakkie didn’t have such a smooth ride to his LZ the day before. The flight engineer told me how, after dropping me, they suddenly got the smell of freshly baked pies. Looking forward past the co-pilot, he tried to locate the bakery.
“You know, Lieutenant,” he said, “I’d never realised you could actually smell a bakery in a chopper. I looked down to see if we could land somewhere to buy a fresh loaf of bread. But the next thing I see are these pieces of what I thought was bird flesh and stuff on the perspex. It was the first time I had seen a bird strike from inside the chopper. So I reached past the co-pilot to see what it was. Then I felt the back of my helmet and it was all wet and sticky – and smelling of fresh pie.”
It turned out that Sakkie had been sitting in the open door of the helicopter until he couldn’t keep his lunch in any longer. But then, as he puked into the rushing wind, everything whirled back inside and into the cockpit. The crew’s helmets were plastered with fresh pie, as was the cabin interior. Since the Air Force crew were not too impressed with the Recces’ performance, we had to buy the drinks during the “debriefing” in the bar that night.
2
Operation Cerberus
September 1985
BY 1985 – my first year as a Small Team operator – the Border War had escalated and SWAPO was aggressively pushing its political agenda while its detachments infiltrated deep into South West Africa. Some of the worst fighting of the war took place in central Ovamboland, while across the border the civil war between the MPLA and UNITA had reached a peak.
Operation Cerberus
The Joint Monitoring Commission (JMC), established in February 1984 under the terms of the Lusaka Accord, consisted of personnel from both the SADF and FAPLA. Its mandate was to monitor the systematic disengagement of the opposing forces in the conflict. After Operation Askari in December 1983, South Africa had indeed withdrawn its forces from Angola. However, SWAPO immediately deployed its fighters into the areas the SADF had evacuated, violating the terms of the disengagement agreement. Since the JMC could not fulfil its mandate, it soon became dysfunctional.
Then Wynand du Toit from 4 Recce was captured and two of his teammates, Louis van Breda and Rowland Liebenberg, were killed during a Special Forces raid on a Gulf Oil installation in the Cabinda enclave of Angola. Politically this was a disaster for South Africa, as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Pik Botha, had just proclaimed that all SADF troops had been withdrawn from Angola. The MPLA of course exploited the situation and accused the South African government of being liars who could not be trusted in any peace negotiations. Following the failure of the JMC, the SADF moved its forces back across the border into Angola, launching attacks on bases SWAPO had established.
It was against this backdrop of political turmoil and strategic manoeuvring that I was sent on my first mission with 5 Recce’s Small Teams. One evening in July, after we had gathered at the block for a night training session, Diedies called three teams into the intelligence briefing room. Dave Drew, by then the unit’s intelligence officer, was also there, along with Eric McNelly, a counterintelligence officer from Special Forces HQ in Pretoria. We knew immediately something was up.
First we got the usual counterintelligence brief from McNelly: that the enemy was out there listening and that we should keep our traps shut. We had heard this message often without fully comprehending the reality of the threat. The need for secrecy was only brought home a year later when Major André Pienaar from Special Forces HQ was caught spying for “an African country”. He was arrested at Jan Smuts airport (today OR Tambo International) when he tried to travel to Zimbabwe with seven top-secret files from Military Intelligence. Pienaar had been working in none other than the counterintelligence section, which had to keep us in check, and as such was privy to all the information regarding Special Forces deployments. (Pienaar remained in custody and was only released in the early 1990s.)
Dave Drew first gave us an overview of air traffic between Lubango and Cuito Cuanavale in southern Angola. Since the railway line running east from Lubango to Menongue had been rendered useless by UNITA, the MPLA was now relying heavily on air transport to get their logistics to the front. Daily flights of Soviet Antonov cargo planes transported huge amounts of logistics and troops to Menongue in support of the MPLA war effort. SWAPO’s Eastern Front also benefited substantially from this, as their logistics were ferried by truck from Menongue to their base southwest of the town – an area I would get to know intimately during later deployments.
By June 1985 the MPLA had initiated two large-scale offensives against UNITA, one in the Cazombo salient in the east and the second against Mavinga in the southeast, forcing Jonas Savimbi’s forces to fight on two fronts. Soviet and Cuban advisors guided the MPLA operations, and large numbers of SWAPO’s semi-conventional troops and ANC cadres, who were being trained in Angola, took part in the operations. The SADF viewed these offensives as part of the total onslaught and a direct threat to stability in South Africa.
After Dave’s overview, Diedies gave a brief outline of the mission, though not covering any details of timings and positions. We would deploy with UNITA to shoot down MPLA transport aircraft, utilising captured Russian SA-9 missile systems attached to the BRDM-2 armoured vehicle. Should we shoot down an aircraft, UNITA would claim the success. Although this was not a classic Small Team mission, I was grateful for the opportunity to learn. I had heard much about deployments with UNITA and was eager for first-hand experience.
Diedies and I drove to Pretoria for briefings and to marry up with the Air Force’s anti-aircraft specialists handling the missile systems. Back at Phalaborwa the operational teams started preparing their equipment under the guidance of Dave Scales. Dave maintained a modular Tac HQ that could be reduced or augmented depending on the requirement – whether on foot, in a vehicle or in established headquarters. He took care to pack equipment that could be transported by air and deployed at Rundu. The operators prepared their equipment, rations, water and a reserve for possible resupply. Then, under the pretext that they were going on a training exercise, the operational team went to Sawong,[12] a secluded training area on the banks of the Olifants River outside Phalaborwa, for a two-week rehearsal.
While I was in Pretoria I met up with a friend who told me he wanted to introduce me to a girl he thought I would get along with. “She’s a teacher, she’s fun and she’s also a fitness fanatic… runs road races and stuff,” he explained.
“Thanks,” I said, “but you know I’m a bit tied up and will be going away for a few months.”
At the back of my mind I was also thinking of our unspoken policy that, once a guy got involved in a serious relationship, or wanted to marry, he would quit Small Teams of his own accord. I didn’t want to get bogged down in a relationship when I had just started what I had so long aspired to do.
12
Sawong was an acronym for “Suid-Afrikaanse Weermag Operasionele Navorsingsgebied”, or South African Defence Force Operational Research Area.