Gunship Over Angola

So, after lunch, I asked my brother Mark, who just happened to be doing his national service at the army base and who’d met my aircraft when we’d landed, to arrange a two-way radio connection between my chopper and the rugby stadium so I could keep abreast of the parade’s progress and time my arrival to coincide precisely with its conclusion.

After doing a check of the communications link between my helicopter and his handheld radio transceiver, and making sure it worked, Mark left to go to the stadium. I waited, smiling quietly to myself, chuffed that through my personal ingenuity I might still rescue a sticky situation and get the general home to Pretoria without further delay, hopefully staving off any punitive reaction from him along the way.

The first sign of impending trouble occurred when I tried to call my brother over the radio at the stadium but failed to make contact with him. I tried numerous times, without any success, so, being a resourceful chap, I made another plan.

I called out to a group of pongo corporals who were standing close by, one of whom had spoorsnyer (tracker) flashes on his shoulders and asked them to indicate to me exactly where the rugby stadium was in relation to where we were parked. The tracker, puffing his chest out confidently, pointed in the direction of the stadium and said, ‘It are about three clicks (kilometres) that way, Lieutenant!’

‘Are you sure?’ I asked.

‘I grew big in Amsterdam, Lieutenant. Of course I am,’ he stated categorically and with great indignation.

Satisfied that I had got the best directions possible, from the person best qualified to give them, my revised plan to neatly pluck the general up from his current position now focused on my avoiding, at all costs, flying over the stadium during the general’s parade. When I gauged that the parade was well under way, I would take off, give the stadium a very, very wide berth and climb up to, and land on, one of the many hills that surround the town of Amsterdam, from where I could view proceedings down in the rugby stadium far below.

After taking off at what I estimated to be the appropriate time, I turned at right angles to the direction shown by the resident tracker corporal and proceeded, at slightly above treetop height (around 35 metres above ground level), towards a distant hill.

So, there we were, cruising along and enjoying the view when suddenly, looking down, I saw a vast sea of startled and wide-eyed faces, 10 000 of them I was told later, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the tiered seating of the main grandstand of the Amsterdam rugby stadium. They were all looking up at me, some with their hands over their ears to block the deafening screech of the 880-shaft-horsepower Alo III, passing just a few metres above their heads.

I’m no rocket scientist, but I generally know when I am in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the Border War, when someone shot at me with ill intent, the pace at which events unfolded always instantly slowed down to super slow motion.

The same thing happened at that moment.

Each detail of the scenery now passing so agonisingly slowly below was scorched into my mind. Blind panic took hold as my eyes moved from the sea of faces across to the athletics track running around the periphery of the rugby field and then on to the small VIP platform facing the massive crowd and upon which sat Amsterdam’s mayor, his wife, the base’s OC and the colonel.

AWOL, count 2.

Standing at the rostrum, a metre or two from the other VIPs, was the general. His face was contorted by a terrible rage. I could see flecks of foamy spittle and his jaws were open so wide that I could almost see the remains of his lunch.

‘Hier kom kak (Here comes shit),’ said Johnny.

Making my untimely intrusion a lot worse was the fact that the general had been about to conclude his speech. To rub salt into the festering wound caused by my ceremony-destroying fly-by, after the Alo had departed the scene the general had resumed his oration, but not a single person in the audience paid him any further heed. Instead, they fixed their eyes on my little bird while I sought a suitable hilltop perch. There is little that will piss off an entertainer more than losing his audience as he is about to deliver the closing pitch.

Insubordination, count 5, brought the total number of charges to ten.

I landed on the hilltop, but there was not much said between Johnny and me. I stopped the rotor blades from spinning but left the engine at flight idle and waited until the parade started its closing act, the general salute. Then I got things going again, took off and swept down the hillside towards the rugby stadium.

To add further complication to an already calamitous day, positioning the Alo for its final approach and landing into the wind, like any well-trained pilot would and must do, necessitated my flying directly over the heads of the troops marching off the parade ground.