Gunship Over Angola

With a sternness that was almost comical, Colonel Groenewald then read out his contrived judgments and followed these with the applicable maximum sentences under each count. As he read out the severe punishments, he never once displayed a hint of understanding, nor even a single acknowledgement, of the mitigating factors that I had so passionately and eloquently presented.

I was lashed mercilessly by Colonel Groenewald, who brought down a whole slew of fines, extra duties, delayed promotion and even two years’ denial of Christmas bonus on my miserable head.

But, try as I might, I still couldn’t hide the grin that wrapped around my face from ear to ear, nor fully mute the odd chuckle as a particularly harsh censure was handed down. I could see the legal officer struggling to comprehend. I suspect he began to cotton on right at the end, as I was leaving the trial venue, when Colonel Groenewald told him to leave the processing of the paperwork up to him.

‘After all,’ Groenewald said, ‘I’ve not got much else to do.’

Years later, I had occasion to draw my personal file and peruse it closely.

There was not a single reference to the ‘Amsterdam incident’.

But then, you already knew that, didn’t you?

9 Losing faith

In December 1980, I got married. I had known Desiree for only nine months, at least six of which I had spent on tours in the bush. In the year after we tied the knot, I was home for only four months in total.

It should surprise no one that this was not the basis for a happy-ever-after fairy tale. Although we both tried our best to make it work, the marriage ended after ten years. However, it did produce a gift of incalculable value to the two of us, our daughter Tamarin.

The ‘Amsterdam incident’, or rather its aftermath, fundamentally changed something in me, although I was not consciously aware of the seismic shift at the time or for many years afterwards. When I look back now, I see that it blew away any ideals I still harboured that all my colleagues had my back in times of strife. At the same time, it led me to attach far greater value to the friendships built with the chaps upon whom I knew I could depend.

As is the case with most operational squadrons, 17 Squadron had a pool of pilots who formed the ‘inner sanctum’, with the rest on the periphery. I was undoubtedly part of the latter grouping, who were still useful but less likely to be given the peach assignments or unwavering support. This ‘placing’ even extended to one’s family.

For instance, once while I was away on a tour, my brand-new wife was invited to a tea party for the wives of the squadron’s pilots. She arrived and was greeted warmly by the hostess, but soon noticed that many wives were not present. She also picked up that the missing wives were exclusively those whose home language, like ours, was English. When Desiree asked the hostess where the missing wives might be, she was told by the giggling lady that she had ‘forgotten to invite the English wives’.

It seemed that the tea-party planner had erroneously deduced that Joubert was an Afrikaans surname and added Desiree’s name to the guest list.

*

During one of my tours to the Border, again based in Ondangwa, I was one of the gunship pilots in a two-ship formation that was tasked to provide close air support to an army reconnaissance operation taking place 25 kilometres into Angola just north of the Namacunde–Chiede road.

The other pilot was Neil McCall. We were to stand by at the old army base at Etale. As we climbed out of our aircraft after landing, we could hear the distant sound of mortars and rifle fire. We immediately got airborne and headed for the fight.

When we got to the scene, it was carnage.

It seems that an army patrol, based at Etale and mounted on horseback, had been ambushed by a large group of PLAN soldiers. This was unusual as, up to then, PLAN had been inclined to avoid contact with SADF forces, particularly when operating on Namibian soil.

There were some fatalities and a handful of our soldiers had been badly injured in the ambush, which ended as soon as the sounds of the approaching choppers could be heard by those on the ground. As was their usual practice, the PLAN soldiers bombshelled as soon as the attack was over.

Unfortunately for the PLAN guys that day, the site they’d chosen for the ambush lay in a large patch of dense bush, surrounded to the east, south and west by open salt pans. Only those who scarpered to the north, as most of them did, were assured of having overhead tree cover as they made good their escape.

Those who went south were easily tracked and dealt with in an operation that lasted most of the day. Neil McCall or me, or both of us, provided air support to the ground troops who swept through the area. As one of our pair of gunships would run low on fuel, the pilot would depart the scene and go to Etale to refuel, rearm and eat/drink before returning to relieve the other crew.