Gunship Over Angola

Finally, the action petered out and I returned to Etale. As I walked from my aircraft to the ops tent, I passed the main helipad, where the bodies of the dead PLAN soldiers had been placed. The bodies were being put into body bags for transportation by Puma to Oshakati, where I assumed they’d be identified, processed and afforded a dignified burial.

Just then, a youngish army major marched a group of around 30 young national servicemen or three-month campers (I never did find out which) up to the dead PLAN soldiers and began shouting insults at the bodies, his face contorted and angry, veins sticking prominently out of his sunburnt neck. My anger immediately rocketed off the charts, and when he made a move as if to kick one of them, something in me snapped.

During the months and years of lying, gin-depressed but still wide-awake into the small hours, in my mosquito-net-shielded cocoon, I had occasionally envisioned being shot down and killed inside enemy territory. This morbid image had evoked in me a hope, never voiced aloud to anyone, that if this ever happened, and I truly hoped it wouldn’t, that my body at least be treated with respect by those who gained custody of it.

I believed implicitly that such courtesy should work both ways, and in my sudden rage I saw this jumped-up tosser of a major, in attempting to impress his troops, violate the dignity of fallen military men. Before I could be stopped, or stop myself, I grabbed the major by the throat and pinned him up against a prefabricated concrete wall. I was so livid, so furious, that I was unable to speak, and just stared into his shocked eyes.

After a few seconds, some other chaps pinned my arms against my sides and I had to let him go and walk away. I think he ran after me and tried to take the issue further, but wiser heads intervened and prevented further confrontation.

I can’t remember any more of what subsequently happened, if anything, other than that I was extraordinarily tired afterwards.

A day or so later, the four-man reconnaissance group who had originally been standing by at Etale to help, were themselves attacked while hiding out in the heat of the day in a patch of bush situated in the middle of a shona 30 kilometres into Angola.

Neil and I scrambled to help them and we arrived over their position 20 minutes later.

Of the original four in the recce group, only two white officers remained. The other two, being Ovambo tribesmen and able to melt into the local landscape, had already managed to make good their escape by the time we arrived.

Both men had been wounded, and even though we were in gunships in the sky above them, they were still taking heavy fire from the FAPLA troops who’d found them. The FAPLA contingent had dug into secure cover immediately west of the two recces, and we were unable to see their positions in the heavy bush. Nevertheless, we laid down covering fire, hoping to keep them from advancing on our guys.

Neil suggested to me that I descend, land and pick up one of the guys on the ground while he gave me covering fire. When I had done so and was again airborne, I could provide cover for him to pick up the remaining recce and then we could get out of there. He also suggested that I jettison my 20 mm cannon if I found that my gunship was too heavy to take off with the additional weight of a passenger. I realised that this would leave him extremely vulnerable to enemy fire when he went in, but he told me that it was a chance he was willing to take.

After planning my approach to the LZ, and just as I was starting my descent, the radio crackled into life. A formation of two Pumas with medical personnel aboard reported that they were just a few minutes out, and that our two gunships were to remain on station and make certain that enemy fire was suppressed while they extracted the wounded recces.

The extraction proceeded without further incident.

Two days after that, our two gunships were called out to an army base called Elundu to provide air support to an imminent punch-up between a small stick (four to six men) of PLAN soldiers and some SADF infantry based at Elundu, who were following their tracks ever more closely.

We were soon to discover that the main body of the 120-strong group of PLAN fighters, which had ambushed the mounted army patrol near Etale just days earlier, had regrouped and were intent on creating havoc in Ovamboland by taking on the SADF directly. This level of aggression was unheard of and, as such, totally unexpected.

The main PLAN body, using local informants to establish the whereabouts of a 20-strong army patrol, were lying in wait in an ambush position on a small road about eight kilometres east of the Elundu base. They had earlier sent out a stick of four soldiers to walk ahead of the army patrol and lure them into the ambush.