Gunship Over Angola

The mission briefing took place at a brand-new army base called New Etale. The old Etale base, located nearby, was due to be closed and all troops stationed there moved to the New Etale base, which was better positioned and resourced. During the briefing, I didn’t really know what to expect. I was the nominated wingman to Captain Chris Stroebel, an experienced chopper formation leader.

‘Stay at 600–800 feet AGL and take up a position 180 degrees opposite me in the orbit around the target,’ advised Chris. ‘Look for anything threatening or out of the ordinary and make certain that it’s the enemy you’re looking at before you open fire. If you’re unsure, rather don’t shoot because there’s no way to undo a 20 mm’s mistake,’ he added.

I remembered this sound counsel, and offered it to other newbies throughout my gunship career.

The raid was launched at around 11h00 with the Buffel-mounted infantrymen rushing across the cutline from two crossing points situated about 1 500 metres apart. Once in the vicinity of the PLAN gathering, their brief was to debus rapidly, spread out and encircle the PLAN fighters and cut off the escape route of the enemy soldiers caught in the pincer movement.

The role of the Noddy cars was to drive right into the middle of the conflict and cause havoc.

As gunships, our job was to provide air support to the troops on the ground and to give an overall view of the unfolding fight to the battle commander sitting on the ammunition box in Chris’s chopper.

As the Noddy cars approached the border, I remembered that one of the instructions issued to vehicle commanders at the earlier briefing was for all combat vehicles to avoid driving on the road crossing the border at any cost. So, when I noticed a Noddy car driving up the tarred road through the no-man’s land between the two opposing border posts, being a rookie and without a shred of battlefield experience, I contemplated calling out a warning on the radio to the vehicle crew, but didn’t, for fear that I might make a fool of myself.

Seconds later, the Noddy car reached the boom across the road at the Angolan border post and detonated the multiple landmines buried beneath it. The Noddy car flew straight up into the air, borne aloft by a boiling, roiling cloud of black and orange smoke and flame, slowly twisting around like it wanted to look at the gaping hole that had suddenly appeared on the spot where it had just been. It seemed to hesitate for a few seconds at the apex before it crashed down onto its roof in a shower of sparks, instantly killing two of its three occupants.

In a countryside as flat as Ovamboland, the tell-tale signature of a landmine detonation, a dark-grey spearhead rising vertically above the incident site, is visible from up to 70 kilometres away and can be seen within seconds of the detonation occurring. It is my most unfortunate reality to have observed a number of these abominations and to have arrived on the scene within minutes of the blast. In my opinion, the burying of landmines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on public roads is one of the most depraved and immoral features of warfare.

My second encounter with the landmine scourge happened just a few weeks into my first operational tour and occurred on Oom Willie se pad between Eenhana and Oshikango. A vehicle laden with local Ovambo residents – men, women and children returning from a shopping trip to a nearby market – had detonated a landmine. There were no survivors, and no amount of effort by the medical rescue teams could determine the number of casualties, their genders or their ages. It was not even possible to identify the make of vehicle, although we were later informed it was a Toyota light delivery vehicle. Wreckage from the vehicle, body parts and the tattered remains of the occupants’ purchases were strewn over a radius of 300 metres from the blast site.

The impression still retained in my memory bank today, nearly 40 years later, is of a distorted and indescribably violent nightmare scene where everything – trees, bushes, metal and flesh – had been shredded, as if a giant food processor had brought its spinning blades to bear on this small patch of African soil.

The scale of destruction that I witnessed that day shattered forever any illusions I may have had about the morality of conflict between people, no matter how complicated the issues involved might be. Surely we humans are better than this?

But the switch in my brain was thrown and I carried on with my work.

*

Just a week or two later, flying at treetop level towards Ruacana from Ondangwa over the open grasslands between Ovamboland and the starkly beautiful Kaokoland, I saw the tell-tale signature of the landmine beast again, about 20 kilometres away and just to the left of the Alo’s nose. I reported the explosion to the nearest base by radio and then headed straight for the scene, arriving at the blast site just minutes later.