Gunship Over Angola

Steve Joubert GUNSHIP OVER ANGOLA THE STORY OF A MAVERICK PILOT

To Diane,

my anchor, my greatest critic and my best friend

I now know why men who have been to war yearn to reunite. Not to tell stories or look at old pictures. Not to laugh or weep. Comrades gather because they long to be with the men who once acted their best, men who suffered and sacrificed, who were stripped raw… right down to their humanity.

– Ray Haakonsen

Author’s note

It is often said that ‘writing about it’ is one of the most cathartic things that human beings who have undergone extreme trauma can do. I firmly believe this, and can personally testify to the truthfulness of that statement. Often, while writing this book, I sat down at my laptop to continue writing but nothing of any substance was forthcoming. I’d try in vain for ten minutes, 20 and sometimes even longer until suddenly, like a veil being drawn back to reveal the scene, I was back in the cockpit and the sights, sounds and smells were as they’d been more than 35 years ago.

As I’ve aged, I have felt compelled to tell some of the story of my life and, by doing so, to end my family’s practice of stoically avoiding telling its own history and forcing those who might be interested in the subject, like me, to delve into obscure inscriptions in centuries-old family bibles and piles of sepia-tinted photographs to decipher our origins.

I have five children, a son-in-law, a daughter-in-law and three granddaughters who, I must admit, haven’t yet become avid fans of my writing, but who I hope, in years to come, might spend some time reading my story.

‘How long have you wanted to be a pilot?’

The plastic chair stood in the centre of a sprung wooden floor in a large room in a nondescript building at the South African Air Force Gymnasium in Valhalla, Pretoria. Spread around it in a semicircle were 13 office chairs, in which sat an intimidating collection of 12 senior officers of the South African Air Force (SAAF) and a single brigadier representing the South African Medical Services (SAMS). In front of each officer was a desk.

Outside this room, waiting for the command to enter, was me, 74257684BC Private Stephen Pierre Joubert, national serviceman (NSM) and aspirant military aviator.

The door opened and a voice, with a clear tinge of sadism, said, ‘It’s your turn. Go!’

My heart, which was already thumping like a V-twin Harley-Davidson at full throttle, immediately tried to burst free from my pounding chest. I stepped gingerly onto the threshold, aiming, as I’d practised over and over again in the days leading up to this moment, first to pause for a second or two, calmly gather my thoughts, and allow my eyes to adjust to the comparative gloom before I entered to face the inquisition within.

But, in my blind panic, all I saw was the empty chair, and like a condemned convict fixated on the noose that will shortly change the direction of his life, I headed straight for it without hesitating. Six inches from the chair I realised with morbid certainty that I had miscalculated the distance and impact was unavoidable and inevitable. When my right knee, while crashing to a military-grade halt, thumped into the back of the chair, the concomitant transfer of kinetic energy caused the fragile piece of furniture to launch dangerously towards the general sitting directly in front of me.

In a moment of surprising eye-hand coordination, my right hand shot out in a partially successful attempt to prevent the chair hitting one of the innocent observers, but in doing so I upended the wretched thing. It crashed thunderously onto the wooden floor.

The noise echoed around the sparsely furnished room.

Flustered, I bent over to set the errant object right side up, but in so doing my cap fell to the floor. I frantically jammed it back on my head while still bent over and only then stood up.

In a moment that I will remember forever, I came face to face with General Bob Rogers, decorated veteran of the Second World War and the Korean War, legendary aviator, then Chief of the SAAF and the chairman of the SAAF Pilot Selection Board.

I lifted my right hand to salute him, just like I’d been trained to do.