Gunship Over Angola

‘Then just taste it, please, Steve. Do that one thing for me?’ she pleaded sweetly, and I knew that I had to comply.

As I lifted the concoction to my mouth, Atie stepped in front of me and, using both her hands for leverage, slammed the uncooked and gooey mess into my face as hard as she could. I was blinded by the sticky mixture of raw beef and egg yolk covering my face, ears included. I stood rooted to the spot in shock and surprise at the violence and suddenness of the assault.

I tried to clear my eyes but the next moment Atie stepped forward and shoved her compact mirror directly into my field of vision and screamed, ‘What do you see?’

‘What do you mean?’ I hissed back ‘You’ve just ruined my only clean shirt!’

Thrusting the mirror even closer to my face made me squint and draw back but also revealed the reflection of a face that looked like it’d been through the blades of a rotary lawnmower running at full speed.

She shouted, ‘That’s what your guns do to people, you… you murdering bastard!’

It took some time for the words to sink in. As I stood there trying vainly to clean myself up, Atie continued to rant and rave. After a while she just stopped shouting and stood there, glaring fiercely at me while I picked little flecks of meat from my eyebrows and forelock. The sandwich vendor, who’d been observing the proceedings closely, and deducing that it was safe to approach, came over with a damp cloth to help me wipe away the remaining muck.

Looking at Atie, as her anger and indignation slowly leached away and the tension between us waned, and still astounded by the vehemence of her outburst, I felt a range of emotions well up inside me. My newfound doubts about the morality of my SADF involvement, my regret at the anguish I was causing to those close to me, and my trepidation at what the future held for me, brought tears to my eyes. But, summoning all the strength I had, I managed to choke them down and slam the lids on those cans of worms.

Then, in a rare encounter with clarity, consideration and vision, I said softly, ‘Atie, if I don’t go back, the consequences for my family and others will be bad. There’s a right way to get out and it isn’t… like this.’

Atie’s grudging acceptance of my rationale, and the release of the immense pressure that had built up between us, made the declaration of a truce possible.

Although Atie tried, many times, to visit me in South Africa, she was always denied a visa for some reason. Later, the intervals between when we spoke on the telephone, or wrote to each other, gradually grew further and further apart, until the relationship finally petered out completely.

7 The day my world changed

Back in South Africa, I barely had time to repack my battered old kitbag before I found myself on a Flossie headed for Ondangwa for a one-month tour.

Within days of my arrival I participated in a fresh operation with helicopter aircrews based at New Etale, just a kilometre or two from the infamous Oshikango Gate border post. The role of the four gunships stationed there was to be on stand-by to provide close air support to a company of troops who were going to be dropped about 30 kilometres inside Angola, tasked with finding and destroying a PLAN base that had recently been established in the area.

My wingman and I had spent the previous night at Nkongo, 120 kilometres east of New Etale, and we only arrived well after the commencement of the operation and as the second or third wave of troop-carrying Puma helicopters headed across the cutline and towards the landing zone inside enemy territory.

Two gunships flown, respectively, by Chris Stroebel and his wingman Billy Fourie, were already circling the drop zone to prevent any surprise attack from the enemy as the vulnerable Pumas came into land and disgorged the troops they were carrying. I had just made myself comfortable against some sandbags in the ops room when the VHF radio on the table next to me crackled into life and the faint voice of another Puma co-pilot, Steve Erasmus, said, ‘We have contact! There are lots of them. We are being looied (lashed)!’

Dead silence followed and immediately all ears tuned to the radio.

The radio crackled again and the same co-pilot came on: ‘My commander has been hit. We are turning back and going to Oshakati.’

His words were barely out and we were running for our gunships.

Fifteen minutes later we reached the point of contact, where Chris and Billy were already engaged with a sizeable force on the ground and were taking heavy fire.

The arrival of two more gunships must have tipped the balance and the enemy soldiers quickly melted into the thick bush and disappeared, probably into a network of tunnels. As we circled the area we noticed tendrils of white smoke regularly spiralling up into the sky around us, but didn’t think much more about them other than to report their appearance in the post-ops debriefing when we got back to Ondangwa later that evening.