But still our woes were not at an end. On the morning of the second day the Mercedes truck, my taxi, suddenly came to a halt with a flat rear tyre. We were stuck in the deep soft sand of the vehicle track. Then it transpired that there was no jack. With the vehicle fully loaded with bags of maize and all our equipment, and without proper tools to change the tyre, I assumed we were stuck for good.
Yet again I was proven wrong. Twenty young men jumped on the vehicle and offloaded every item, including all the bags of food. In the meantime, two of the axe-men started chopping down a Y-shaped tree with a trunk about a metre in diameter. Once the tree was down they cut off the two main branches, leaving a distinct and solid-looking Y-shaped part of the tree to serve as a base. While they took time cleaning away the smaller branches from one of the remaining poles, a few of the men dug a hole about two metres from the truck. In this they inserted the long end of the Y, burying it halfway so that the forked part was next to the vehicle.
Next came the tree trunk that had been stripped of branches. This was laid into the V-shaped base with the short end under the truck body. Bingo, we had a crude crowbar that proved to be amazingly effective. A group of UNITA soldiers got onto their comrades’ shoulders and, slowly and tentatively, started to hang on to the long end of the “crowbar”. Suddenly the Mercedes lifted, and with a loud shout everyone still standing around grabbed a piece of the tree trunk and held on as a few good men swiftly changed the wheel – in a matter of five minutes.
The whole tree-felling, jack-rigging and wheel-changing operation took no less than three hours. When we finally arrived at the UNITA main base, a team of Special Forces technicians had already been flown in by helicopter with a new gearbox for the BRDM. It took the tiffies a day and a night to lift the old gearbox out and fit the new one. Once they were done, the vehicle was as good as new.
Two days later we reached our target area, high ground overlooking the flood plain of the Gimbe River. That night Diedies deployed the two missile systems right in the open, about 40 m from the tree line. We cut branches from trees way into the bush line and camouflaged the two vehicles until they appeared to be clusters of loose-standing thickets. The Small Team guys and the missile operators dug in just inside the tree line, while Captain Mickey established his headquarters higher up on a dune sloping down to the river, close to our mini-HQ where the intelligence officer, the tiffies and the doctor were deployed. The UNITA company served as protection element and were deployed in a rough half-circle to our rear.
We hadn’t even properly set up our little camp when two “swing-wing” MiG-23s suddenly appeared from nowhere, flying almost at treetop level and generally just making a nuisance of themselves. I was frightened, lying dead still in my trench, expecting the pilots to see me at any moment. They kept on fooling around, one moment coming over slowly with the wings extended, then screaming down with wings pulled in and breaking the sound barrier. Later I heard that the UNITA soldiers wanted to open fire with their small arms, which would have given away our vulnerable position and ruined the operation. We were not armed for defence against fighter attack, and our mission was to shoot down a transport, not a fighter plane.
The very next day we heard the Antonovs flying over, sometimes directly over our positions. There were many flights, often as many as five or six a day. Over the next six weeks we recorded more than 140 flights. Unbelievably, over that whole period the missile operators were unable to get a single lock-on. The rainy season was approaching fast and the days were cloudy, making it impossible for the heat-seeking infrared systems to lock on to the engines of the aircraft.
I learned much from Neves Matias and CC Victorino during this operation. Right from the beginning they settled into a routine they diligently stuck to throughout the deployment. They took it upon themselves to organise the daily tasks of placing security details, collecting information from UNITA, camouflaging positions and sending patrols to fetch water from the Gimbe River. Every second day Victorino ensured that the missile systems were covered with fresh foliage and that the dry branches were removed and hidden under the tree canopy. He painstakingly effaced all the tracks that led to and from the missiles. I soon realised that these guys had been moulded by years of experience, and that the base routine was borne of a simple understanding of its importance.
After six weeks, we were ordered to withdraw. We had many scares that FAPLA had located our position and were on their way to intercept us with a large force or that they had identified our camp and were about to launch an air attack. However, aside from occasional random bombing by the MiGs in the area, we were never targeted. Diedies requested an extension, stating that we had not been discovered and needed two more weeks.
And so it happened that one morning, during the extension period, Christie Smit, the medical doctor, was leading the morning dedication. He read from Ephesians 3:20: “Now to Him that, through His grace working in us is able to do so much more than we can think of, or even pray for, to Him be the glory.”
Then someone shouted, “Antonov!”, the usual warning for the missile operators to get into action. Most of the guys were gathered at Diedies’ trench. We looked up. The sky was clear, with not a cloud in sight. An AN-12 was heading straight towards us.
“This is it, manne!” Diedies shouted and ran to place himself between the two missile vehicles.
I fixed my binoculars on the approaching aircraft. The wings had to fit into 18 mm on the instrument’s reticule to be within striking range of the SAM-9s. As I started shouting, someone else also called out: “It’s within range!”
“Get it!” Diedies ordered the gunner.
The missile left the launcher in a cloud of smoke and dust, blasting most of the camouflage off the vehicle. Our eyes were fixed on the smoke trail of the missile, which seemed to bear way off track and then appeared to explode far behind the aircraft.
“It’s a hit!” the gunner shouted as he climbed out of his vehicle. “It’s a hit!”
“Okay,” Diedies ordered, “Get this vehicle camo’d up again and move to your positions. We’ll wait and see if there’s any reaction.”
All the while I tracked the aircraft through my binoculars. Suddenly it started to veer off course and a thin trail of smoke appeared.
“It’s hit!” the rest of us shouted simultaneously. “It’s going down!”
After ten or fifteen minutes the plane disappeared behind the tree line, having circled in a wide loop to the north. It was obviously in trouble. Then, as we watched in silence, a massive cloud of smoke appeared above the trees. The aircraft had crashed.
We kept a low profile for the rest of that very long day, waiting and watching as the MiG-23s did their meticulous searches. As soon as it was dark we packed and got the vehicles ready. We could not afford to stay in the same position any longer. That night we drove 20 km south and found a suitable spot, on the edge of a flood plain, where we redeployed the missiles. By first light the SAM-9s were ready and camouflaged and everyone was dug in.
Over the following days, while waiting for another target to present itself, I contemplated our success. I felt sorry for whoever had died in the crash. Killing an enemy in a fair fight was one thing. But this was different. The crew and passengers of the aircraft had no chance. In fact, we did not even know who’d been on board. I discussed these thoughts with Diedies and found some consolation in his reaction.