19 With a Bullet (32 page)

“DayGlo ... DayGlo!” the shout came up and down the line. I quickly turned on my side and punched my bush hat inside-out to show the bright neon-orange sticker stuck to the inside of my cap, putting it back on my head back-to-front, for better vision. The DayGlo had saved many a troop in the bush from being blasted to hell by the gunships above mistaking him for a terr. I forced myself to my feet as we all rose and charged across the
chana
with a new feeling of courage and invincibility.

The gunships’ big 20-millimetre cannons opened up, like music to our ears. The second gunship was orbiting and shooting almost behind us to our left, where the other fire fight had taken place. We charged forward toward the fight in front of us, into bush and trees. I flipped over my magazine before it was empty, paranoid about the empty ‘click’ of two days before in the ambush. A terr dashed from cover 30 metres in front of us like a bat out of hell, tearing across our field of fire with long strides. He seemed to have forgotten about us while making a break from the gunship whose blades hammered and guns boomed all about him. He stumbled and fell as nine rifles opened up on him almost simultaneously.

I saw a huge white explosion that looked like one of Horn’s RPG-7s going off in some trees. It had become a running battle and we had to dive for cover a few more times as we took fire and moved away from the gunship, which seemed to be having its own party. We ran farther into the trees, alive with figures dashing about like rabbits, but still stopping to take occasional potshots. The running fire fight had been going on now for about five minutes. I reached a mound and a thicket and was breathing hard, with sweat stinging my eyes, making it almost impossible to see. I had become the end troop at the far right of the sweep line and had strayed a bit on my own. (It was a position I had grown accustomed to from the days when I’d carried the MAG. I usually sought it as it gave me opportunity to flank around the side if the shit hit the fan.) I searched the trees ahead of me as best I could but saw nothing.

For the last couple of minutes I had been fighting back a retching, tightening sensation in my chest. Now it was building into dry heaves. This time, too powerful to control, I bent over as my stomach and chest convulsed in a spasm. My chest had closed up completely and long globs of saliva drooled from my mouth as I retched and heaved and my eyes filled with water and sweat.

What the fuck’s going on?

I was bent over, paralyzed by convulsions. I had always had trouble with my lungs and on and off for years had been plagued with these dry convulsions that sometimes came on if I suddenly overexerted myself. I blamed it on too many cigarettes and smoking pot. I could not believe it was nailing me in the middle of a fucking fire fight. I stood bent, fighting for control for what must have been a minute but seemed like an age, trying to get my vision and breath.

In the middle of a heave I heard “Gungie! Gungie!”

Voices on my left were shouting my nickname in a tone that meant unmistakable and imminent danger! Blindly, with my mouth still open and holding my rifle at my hip, dripping with puke and saliva, I shot seven or eight rapid shots in a half circle in front of me. A dozen bullets cracked past me, so close I could feel them. When my eyes cleared I could just make out a terr rolling over, dead, not more than six metres away from my right, his head coming to rest on his outstretched arm and his old, worn AK-47 lying untidily next to him.

“
Jy moet wakker word, Gungie … hy het jou amper uitgevat
!”
¹⁶
Paul Greef shouted, pointing to the figure lying in camo on the ground in front of me. Paul’s eyes were wide. John Glover, a few yards past Paul, was also glaring at me, his eyes ablaze with reprimand. He shook his head at me, a small white cloud of smoke still hanging above him.

I could not explain to them what had happened. I stared foolishly at them, blinking my eyes which were now clearing of tears and sweat. We carried on into the trees but I hung back, still recovering from my attack and trying to calm the occasional spasm that racked my chest.

“These are FAPLA! Not SWAPO! Can’t you see?”

We had slowly returned to the open
chana
and were still sweating and catching our breath while we dragged seven or so dead bodies in camouflage uniform and laid them in a row close to the tree line, leaving the ones that the gunships had got deeper in the bush. SWAPO had a khaki or tiger stripe uniform—
not camo
! It was obvious now that no one had even noticed the different uniform in the fire fight.

The one gunship landed on the
chana
and the blades swung lazily in idle as the flight crew in their green coveralls came over to inspect the kills. They confirmed that these were indeed FAPLA soldiers.

We stood around looking at the seven camouflaged bodies lying in a row. It didn’t make much difference to us that they were FAPLA. No consequences really sank in because we were still high on adrenaline from the contact.

FAPLA, SWAPO … same thing, I thought, They’ve got uniforms and they’ve got AKs.

The pilot, an older, beefy man with thinning hair and a walrus moustache, took off his helmet off, indicating the bodies. “This is a fuck-up of note ... we knew as we flew over you, but it was too late. You guys were already into them. There’s a FAPLA base camp, complete with BTRs and tanks about ten clicks north of here. This is probably some sort of OP that you hit. I don’t know ... but I think you better get the hell out of here very quickly before they come running down here after you ... in battalion strength. What are you doing so far north, anyway?”

The lieutenant quickly told him about the old man we had shanghaied who had said that there were SWAPO close by and about the radio that was not working properly.

“Well, he led you right into a hornet’s nest, lieutenant. You had better get your troops out of here ... and quickly. This might start a fucking war. We don’t have a beef with FAPLA at this time and they sure aren’t going to appreciate us killing half a platoon of their finest.”

It still did not fully sink in. We stood around, had a smoke and took some photographs. I posed like a deer hunter with my rifle, kneeling in front of the nine dead FAPLA, my bush cap pushed high on my head.

Lieutenant Doep told the chopper crew to let Commandant Lindsay know what had happened, that we were having radio trouble and were heading south right away at
stink spoed
, at high speed. They agreed and turbines whined as they took off, blowing a small hurricane of dust down the
chana
that covered us and the dead FAPLA cadres.

“We have to move out of here and fast. We shot the wrong people. These are FAPLA … kit up and let’s go!” Doep spoke in an almost panicky voice that could not hide his concern.

We had all heard bits of the conversation and needed no second urging. We kitted up and took off in single file, heading immediately south into bush across the way that we had come, leaving the nine dead FAPLA lying on the far side of the
chana
.

“Put on a
draffie
, a trot,” Doep shouted. “Do anti-tracking!”

The black tracker ran last, trying to do a quick job of clearing out our spoor with a branch of leaves but he wasn’t having much success. We switched to a slow run that was too taxing to maintain with our full kit. We were still exhausted from the running battle we had just fought and soon slowed to a fast, purposeful walk, crashing through the bush in single file.

The sun was dipping into the trees, casting long welcome shadows when the reality of our position struck me as
Valk
4 crashed hastily south.

FAPLA was regular army, not some SWAPO terrorist outfit with only AKs and RPG-7s. These guys had big Soviet-built T-55 tanks and BTR armoured troop carriers with mounted 14.5-millimetre guns. There was probably a battalion of them heading our way right this fucking minute!

Each man held grimly to his own thoughts as we trudged on. I had taken up near the back of the line. I was still rushing from adrenaline. I had completely recovered from the weird asthma attack. Once again my mind had flipped into some primal one-track high gear and I felt like an animal running on immediate, basic instinct. My mind was clear and sharp with no thought, no clutter, no bullshit. I felt neither fear or courage. I felt an almost animal absence of emotion. I kept turning to look back, expecting to see runners on our trail, but the only thing to be seen was our African tracker (who had now abandoned his efforts at anti-tracking) and Doogy, whose face was contorted and focused as he concentrated on the business of carrying the heavy LMG at such a furious pace.

I noticed by the body language of the troops ahead that the bravado had left them. They hurried along and suddenly looked every bit as young as they were. We had walked south for about 20 minutes when the first 82-millimetre mortar boomed behind us and, after a long minute, another exploded a kilometre or so away to our right. More of them came quickly, exploding loudly in the still dusk, closer and haphazardly around us, but never closer than about 300 metres.

“They don’t know where we are! They’re throwing a circle of mortar bombs and hoping for the best!” I said to myself. The realization struck me with a gush of hope. We pushed on into the fading twilight that enveloped us like a mother’s arms.

And we crashed on.

“Put on some speed!” the word came down the line and we hitched our heavy kit higher on our backs and put our heads down, unconcerned about the thorn trees and dry branches that ripped at our forearms and faces as we plunged forward. The
crump
of mortars had stopped and started again a couple of times but now, after 30 minutes, they were still and all that could be heard was our boots crunching, heavy breathing and the occasional sick hushed joke that was tossed down the line and quickly followed by a chorus of
sssshhhh
!

We began to breathe a little more easily as it became clear that they didn’t know exactly where we were and may have even run out of mortar bombs. After about an hour of hard walking we stopped, bumping into each other in the dark.

“Make a TB and dig in,” Lieutenant Doep whispered loudly.

Doep, for some stupid reason, had decided to TB. The ‘herd instinct’ made us dig a tight circle far too close to one another and we sat down wearily. The radio crackled and hissed in the dark as Doep, calmly but desperately, tried again to reach South Africa.

“Tango Lima, Tango Lima, do you read me?” Nothing. Then again: “Tango Lima, Tango Lima, do you read?”

The radio had fucked us again. We quietly handed all our 60-millimetre mortar bombs, of which we were still well stocked, to Kleingeld, who set up his pipe and laid all the bombs neatly in a row next to his hole. I took my two M27 grenades out of my Fireforce vest, stuffed them into my pants pockets and lay on my stomach, staring into the dark and taking stock of the position we were in. I had blown out two magazines at the ambush three days ago and two and a half in this contact. I had one and a half magazines left. That was about 40 rounds and at least half the platoon was in the same boat. If we had any contact now, we would literally run out of ammunition.

Horn had blown away most of his RPG-7 rockets shooting at who-the-fuck-knows-what and now all of a sudden tells us that he has just the one rocket left! I felt the first flutter of real fear. This was a fuck-up of the first order, standing alone as a prince among complete and utter cock-ups! We lay in our holes and listened to Doep trying to make contact on the radio.

“He’s trying to get some choppers to pull us out,” John Glover said, staring quietly into the dark.

“We shouldn’t stop ... we should keep moving,” I whispered slowly.

“Yeah ... it’s a fuck-up.”

We lay quiet for a couple more hours in the still darkness. A light reckless mood had swept through the platoon and we were whispering and grinning to each other in the dark, making stupid comments and jokes.

The almost full moon broke dramatically above the trees as if gleeful to see us and shone with a luminous, malignant brilliance that exposed us at once, lighting up our dark hideaway in a silver bath.

“I love these full-moon nights,” some idiot piped up and was greeted by nervous, muffled sniggers. I looked around at the still night and started to relax a bit. It looked as if we might have got away ... once again victorious. The night birds shrilled in the trees and a chorus of bugs and insects kept up a constant hum.

We could not move our TB and dig in again, so we sat in the moonlight with our TB partially lit and waited as Lieutenant Doep whispered into the radio. “Tango Lima, do you read … over?”

At about midnight a sound broke through the still bush that made my blood run cold. It sounded like a huge beast roaring in the night but it was the roar of a huge diesel engine that suddenly seemed very close, gunning its engine as if it was stuck in something and trying to get out. Shock ran through the platoon; everyone was up and looking at each other.

“What the fuck? This is it ... they’ve been tracking us in the dark and are nearly on us. How the fuck did they get so close without us hearing?”

The small TB became a newly disturbed ants’ nest of troops standing bolt upright, looking at each other in shock, not knowing what to do next. I stood up too and hurriedly joined one of the small groups huddled together in urgent discussion.

“Maybe they’ve just sent a vehicle to come and pick up the bodies and it’s back at the
chana.
Sound travels far at night.”

“No way, man, we’ve walked pretty far. There’s no way that BTR or T-55, or whatever the fuck it is, is that far away, believe me!”

I agreed. “No way is it at the
chana
. They’re tracking us and they’re close.”

“This is it, boys—
nou gaan ons kak
,” Paul Greef said in a low voice.

I smiled a sick smile. We were indeed going to shit.

The engine bellowed again and then tapered off to a low rumble that was barely audible. We all stood quiet and looked at Lieutenant Doep who was on one knee, desperately and hoarsely calling on the radio but to no avail. He got up. “Horn, get ready with that RPG! Move your kit to that hole,” he said, pointing at the closest hole facing our retreat.