19 With a Bullet (43 page)

Lieutenant Doep continued: “After we have taken Ongiva, the whole fighting group will move farther into Angola to another big FAPLA base at Xangongo, about 100 clicks to the west of Ongiva, and we’ll do it all over again.”

We listened in silence. When he’d finished, he added something that made us all fully aware of the scope of the attack. His blond hair was long now from seven weeks in the bush, as was everyone else’s—except mine. It hung in curls well over his collar. His brown eyes screwed up, his thin lips were a slit in his face under the shadows thrown by the naked light bulbs hanging in the trees.

“Men, this is a big operation and we’re expecting tough resistance. Some of us might not be coming back from this one.” He glanced around at the platoon and said meaningfully, “Those of you who believe in Almighty God better have a prayer tonight; those who don’t might want to think deeply about it. Get to sleep early and get your stuff on the Buffels; we’re leaving at 03:00 sharp.”

I knew then that I was going to die. The run of good fortune I thought I’d had was just a twist of fate to get me into the front lines, attacking a base manned by 1,000 men on the day of my 21st birthday. My bad-luck birthday spell had not been broken … I would probably be one of the ones not coming back and would die in a trench on my 21st birthday or be cut in half by a 23-millimetre anti-aircraft gun.

Stan and I slipped off on our old after-dark recce and returned with two cases of Castle lager. Captain Verwey walked right past us and bust us red-handed with our arms full of cans of beer but said nothing and walked on as if he’d seen nothing. We sat down around the fire that was full of old ash from three weeks’ nightly burning and began some serious beer-drinking. I had a genuine feeling of doom and spoke about it quietly around the fire.

“Think about it. On my last two birthdays I was busted, almost to the exact same hour, and spent the night in boop—and now this year, on my 21st, we’re attacking fucking Ongiva!”

“Well Gungie, could be that third time is lucky. Ever thought of that?”

“That’s what I thought when I got off going to DB and then managed to get back here to you guys hours before you left. But now I don’t know. It’s just too fucking weird. Think about it; what are the odds of all these things happening on the same date?” I was not a superstitious person in the least, but this all seemed too much.

“What do you think’s going to happen?”

^“
I think I might get killed, that’s what might happen!”

“Bullshit! Any of us might get killed.”

“Yeah, I know, but I feel jinxed ... seriously.” I sat on an empty grenade case and drained my first beer in three big pulls. It was warm but tasted wonderful. I crunched the can and reached for a second. There were six or seven small fires here and there under the trees. The gloom was slowly lifting with some help from the warm beer. There were bursts of laughter that seemed too loud and forced. After the third beer my feelings of doom had subsided and after the fifth I was mimicking the 3 SAI sergeant-major at the court martial, saying in a whiny voice: “He stomped on me and jumped on me and then dragged me out the tent.” Everyone laughed.

“Hey, John, if you catch it at Ongiva, can I have your watch?”

“Yes, you can. Seriously ... you can have it, but if you get nailed I want that bush knife.”

“Yes, you can have it, brother.” We all laughed too loudly.

“No, if you get killed, Johnny, I want Jennifer. You know and I know she fancies me. I want your word that I can move in on her and tell her it’s what you would have wanted. She’ll go for that.” I had John Delaney cracking up.

“Sure, but I want that babe of yours if your birthday curse comes true.” I had once shown John a sassy picture of Taina standing with her hands on her hips and her top off and he had been in love ever since.

“Sure, but I don’t think you’ll get it up because my ghost will be squeezing your nuts too hard.”

“Well, my man, if you get hit by a 23-millimetre AA shell, even your ghost will be in pieces, so I’m not too worried about that!”

We all cracked up.

I was doing two things: celebrating being back with the boys and trying to make like all the shit I had heard in the last couple hours wasn’t true. But right now we were warriors and like warriors of old we were getting well plastered before battle. Stan was well and truly drunk and walking around the fire doing his usual pantomime thing, wagging his finger at everyone like a teacher: “No, no, no. You must listen now; you don’t understand ...” and then breaking into a Pink Floyd song: “
Forward they cried, from the rear, and the front ranks diiiiieeed ...”

Even John Glover was standing and doing a jig in the firelight and joining Stan in song, which was very unusual for him. I sat smiling, just enjoying being back.

Pennefather came over from the other platoon’s campfire, holding a fire bucket. He sat down at our fire and swirled the bucket around, mixing its contents. “Take a swig of this, it’ll fuck you right up.”

“What is it?”

“Liquid Valium. From ampoules mixed with sugar water. Tastes like hell, but hey ...” He handed it around. I took the fire bucket and looked at the wet shadow at the bottom.

“Drink it fast. You can’t sip it or you’ll puke. Guaranteed.”

“Have you had some?”

“Yeah, man … it’s fucking awful. We got it from some of the medics. Riley knows them. We got some Sosagon too.”

What the hell; tomorrow we die. I tilted my head back and downed the evil-tasting concoction in one swallow. I had to fight to keep it down.

Later that night I sat and watched the low flames of our fire flicker around the pockets of glowing embers. They licked around the log and erupted in a small explosion of green as they found some sap and then leaped with new vigour to attack the still-green bark. The green bark fought back, determined not to burn like the rest of its body which glowed in broken embers, but each time it bled a drop of its blood the green explosions erupted again and brought on a new attack of flame. I thought the green bark was doomed and would not withstand the attack. I looked deep into the cherry-red embers and saw a thousand shapes spring to life. I turned and rolled onto my side and looked into the darkness. Before my eyes I saw a beautiful old ranchhouse in vivid yellow and red with long ploughed fields of chocolate-brown soil. A fence of blackwood stretched as long as a railway line, huge trees flickered in a hundred shades of green, red and yellow. It was an indescribably beautiful, peaceful scene and I didn’t want to leave it. The trees changed to purple but the fence stayed black. My eyes were wide open; I was seeing the scene as if I was hovering above it and could reach out and touch it. I realized what I was seeing in front of my eyes was my home, the farm ...

I tried weakly to get up but could not and laid my head down with my eyes still open. I was as high as a kite on a thousand-metre string and for the first time in my life was having a real hallucination. I became aware of Lieutenant Doep standing close to me and talking to me but I don’t know if I answered him. He might have been an hallucination too.

*****

“If you want to piss you’d better go now; there wont be time later!”

Half the company jumped down from the Buffels and steam rose in the air from several dozen piss spots in the chilly dawn. I was nervously forcing out the last drops against a thin tree (I remember that tree like I saw it yesterday) when an ear-shattering explosion like I had never heard in my life split the silence of the dawn half a click away.

“Hey, hey, hey!” I whooped as I shook my reluctant lizard.

“Come on, lets go … c’mon now!” Doep was beckoning. We ran back and jumped into the Buffels as another huge explosion crashed a click away from us, sending a plume of grey smoke 30 storeys into the air. Small flocks of birds flew over our heads like bats out of hell. It was on!

“Start moving across the
chana
! No, slowly ... slow down!”

Our long line of 20 Buffels slowly emerged from the trees where we had been waiting in the dark for the last couple of hours. We were directly across from the airport runway and half a kilometre from the trenches of Ongiva. A lonesome machine gun opened up in the dawn far away to our right and was answered by sporadic and distinctive AK-47 fire. The fist shots had been fired.

“Slow down, you moron! Stay abreast with the others … fuck it, man, listen to me! Wait for them!” Doep swore in Afrikaans at the driver of our Buffel who seemed determined to be first to reach the trenches and offload us so he could be first back.

We had been told to start the advance when the air force began bombing but, true to form, someone had fucked up again because in the half-hour that the air force strafed the base we could have crossed the
chana
four times. So we’d all stopped—20 Buffels spread out in the middle of the huge open
chana
, waiting, observing the show. It was like watching a movie.

Mirages came darting straight down from the heavens, only visible as tiny shiny specks, then becoming small silver arrows in a vertical dive, then pulling massive Gs as they let go their thousand-pound bombs and pulling horizontal, leaving a high column of smoke and a boom ten times louder than any thunder I had ever heard.

“Hey, they’re shooting back ... check it out!”

“Fucking hell … look at that!”

A new sound had taken over now. It was the loud
burp
of the FAPLA anti-aircraft guns that had begun to open up. The early morning blue-and-pink sky filled with small white puffs of smoke.

“Look, they’re almost on the Mirage. I think they got him.”

A Mirage dropped like a pinhead from the sky, followed all the way down by puffs of white smoke that seemed right on his tail.

“These kaffirs can shoot ... look at that. Aw, fuck.”

I was coldly impressed. We had been led to believe that when the big bombs started falling the Angolan army would try and find a quick way out, but not so. The gunners were staying right there and keeping their heads with thousand-pound bombs falling among them and they were almost shooting down the Mirages. (A handful of Mirages were in fact hit by shrapnel.) We watched the show, fascinated. Every time a little pinhead dropped out the sky at incredible speed we pointed it out to each other, and every time there was a cluster of flak puffs just behind it. We cheered as the bombs exploded, sometimes two at a time.

Bullets had begun to buzz overhead like angry bees and we put our heads down behind the protection of the Buffels. I risked poking my head up and snapped a picture as a thousand-pound bomb erupted into a huge plume close to the tree line on the other side of the
chana
.

Kurt was grinning at me with his head bent low. I grinned back.

TRENCHES AND BUNKERS

Fortunate son—Creedence Clearwater Revival

South Africa said today that it had destroyed Angolan radar installations and killed at least 240 Angolan government troops in its assaults this week in southern Angola. Anti-aircraft installations protecting the radar units were also knocked out, according to South African officers in the area.
New York Times, 30 August 1981

Boom
...
boom
… the hollow-sounding explosions of big 82-millimetre mortars.

Shells started to drop among our Buffels. The movie was over; now we were getting involved.

“Drive! Drive!” Doep roared, as we slowly started moving forward.

Boom
.

Sand covered us from a mortar exploding 40 metres away. Doep shouted to us that one of the Buffels had been hit by a mortar and couldn’t continue. I don’t know why but he shouted it a couple of times to us. (We found out later that the mortar exploded right next to the vehicle.) I was bending down low and had forgotten about the bombing.

I was saying a quick prayer but could think of no words but “Please, Lord— look after me.” I crouched low and tightened my bootlaces for at least the third time that morning and checked the magazine in my rifle for the tenth time. I smiled at Doogy who was fiddling with his LMG. He had solemn look and nodded back at me. We rolled slowly forward. I was no longer the cold killing machine I had been on the ambush, or when we’d hit FAPLA on Operation
Ceiling
. I had the jitters.

Perhaps the feeling of impending doom was the legacy of my birthday curse, or perhaps it was because I had gone through no training for this op and had just walked in cold after three weeks of lazy
bal bak
, goofing off, at Ondangwa. The bombing had stopped. How a half-hour seems to fly when you’re having fun! A couple of anti-aircraft guns were still firing in long
burps
—the Mirages had obviously not taken out the guns, the main objective of the bombing.

I knew it would be like this. There was some commotion and bullets pinged musically on our Buffel. We were taking some fire from close by. I could not see where from and nor did I really want to look, but Doep had his head half over the side of the Buffel and was pointing to some small huts about 100 metres away.

“Green! Green! Fire with the LMG into those huts!”

It took Doogy a good few seconds to get his shit together but finally he stood up and, even though bullets were buzzing around us, he let rip with a long burst from his MAG. He fired into the huts and down the small tar road that was the landmark both for the beginning of the base and for us to disembark at the banana-shaped trenches. I didn’t see anybody fall or run but Doogy still let out a yell of triumph as he quickly ducked down inside again.

We had fired our first shots.

“Get ready to deploy!” Doep shouted as loud as he could. Bullets cracked over our heads in earnest, twanging on the side of the Buffel. I tried to empty my mind of all thoughts and become as single-minded as I had been in the other contacts but I wasn’t having much success.

“Get ready to deploy … get ready!” Lieutenant Doep was shouting very loudly, almost hysterically.