Gunship Over Angola

For a second there was silence, with only the drone of the Dak’s engines at cruising speed burbling in the background. Then there erupted a scene of such violent gastric voiding, accompanied by such primal screeching, that any observer entering the cabin at that point would have been excused for thinking they had arrived in the dungeons of hell itself. Cheeks puffed up like footballs as the teachers fought desperately to contain the explosions erupting from their guts. Momentarily, time and motion seemed to slow right down, but then a thin stream of variously coloured soup-like liquid spewed from the corner of one man’s tightly pursed lips and arced clear across the cabin to splatter against the inside of one of the Dak’s square windows, narrowly missing the ear of the bespectacled gentleman sitting opposite him. Every available container that could be used as a receptacle – bush hats, canvas kit bags, padded camera boxes and even a very large sombrero – was grasped with gusto. One chap employed the hollowed-out cavity in a large upturned Ovambo drum belonging to the fellow sitting next to him.

To a man, the teachers threw what my dad later referred to as ‘multiple, insistent, hydraulic yodels’, until none of them had the strength to expel any more material. Blobs of muck merged with squirting perspiration and stained the collars of their ‘I was there!’ T-shirts.

I know not who cleaned the aircraft when we got to Windhoek an hour or so later. I do know, however, that Douw and I, fearing for our personal safety, slipped away in a great hurry as soon as the cargo door opened at Eros airport. I am aware that there is a strong likelihood that our actions did not endear us to the contingent of educators on that fateful flight, and I would like to take this opportunity to tender my sincere apologies to them.

*

I was back in Ondangs a month or so later.

During this time Richie Verschoor, in another gunship, and I had gone out to Nkongo to assist the army with a local sweep. It ended too late for us to return to Ondangs, so we decided to bed down at Nkongo for the night. It turned out to be a sleepless night, because the Nkongo base protection detail fellows blasted away at regular intervals with a battery of light and heavy machine guns at distant ‘attackers’ who, they told us, could be seen moving between the trees about 500 metres away.

Their quick response, they said, was preventing the execution of a PLAN mortar assault, no doubt aimed at the two Alo III gunships tucked away behind the base’s five-metre-high revetments. The prompt action of the army units based at Nkongo no doubt saved the day (or night), as the ‘substantial force of assailants’ was unable to fire even a single mortar or rifle round in our direction. However, when a well-equipped patrol was dispatched in the cold light of the following morning to sweep through the area where the PLAN fighters had apparently been seen, only the remains of a drove of 12 or so dead donkeys could be found.

Thanking our lucky stars that the donkeys had been unable to breach Nkongo’s formidable defences, Richie Verschoor and I headed 170 kilometres west to Ombalantu to join the main force of a new operation starting from there the following day.

When we arrived at Ombalantu to attend the pre-ops briefing, we were told that there was a shortage of accommodation at the base itself, but that accommodation had been arranged for us at a nearby base called Ogongo, located on the main Oshakati–Ruacana road. After the briefing, we took off into the fading light of the evening sky and landed in near darkness at Ogongo base a short while later.

A chap in civilian clothes met us as we landed. Once we’d settled the two aircraft down for the night, making sure they would be safe from being damaged by local livestock, he led the four of us (our engineers included) to a tent with four beds in it. We deposited our overnight bags in the tent and our guide offered to show us to the mess and pub, not necessarily in that order.

I remember finding it slightly odd that all the Ogongo base personnel were dressed in civilian clothes but thought nothing more about it.

Upon entering the pub, I sought out and introduced myself and Richie to the senior rank, whom everyone else referred to as ‘the Major’. Much later, when the pub eventually closed, the Major extended an invitation to the four aircrew to join him in his operations room, where a large stash of liquor resided and where the consumption of alcohol would continue. Obviously, unwilling to offend our host, we complied and soon found ourselves in a large tent containing a couple of fridges filled with soft and hard drinks.