19 With a Bullet (47 page)

Lieutenant Doep was the luckiest man on earth. The FAPLA soldier had lain quiet, not ten metres in front of us for more than five minutes. He had probably lain down in the grass when he saw us coming. He knew that he had no chance of escape in the open field, that he had one shot before he died. He had probably held each of us in his sights at some point during that five minutes as he chose a target to take with him and had correctly identified Lieutenant Doep as our leader. He had five minutes or more to take his shot but he had missed and had died like he knew he was going to. With the violent way Doep was thrown back, the brave FAPLA soldier must have died thinking he had taken a Boer officer with him. In a way, I thought he was a brave man. He could have stood up and surrendered and taken a chance that no one would have potted him.

The whole operation was a slow-moving process of trench-to-trench and wait. By nightfall we still had many kilometres of trenches ahead of us.

“Hey, listen up. We’re going to dig in and spend the night right here in the base. Dig in properly and set up double-watch. No flame. Only cold food,” Lieutenant Doep instructed.

We dug shallow shellscrapes in the middle of the FAPLA military base to spend the night. There was no doubt that the maze of trenches ahead of us was still occupied as shots had buzzed past us all day and, as we knelt digging in for the night, the odd shot still rang out.

I rolled out my thin inner and lay on my back, fully dressed, with my rifle next to me. The whole scene took on an surreal feeling as everything around us was plunged into darkness. I lay and listened to a night that was still alive with the sounds of shooting, but it seemed kilometres away at the other end of the base. There was the roaring, far behind us, of some of the Ratels moving their position for the night. There had been a few bunkers of ammunition that had burned for hours throughout the afternoon, cooking off thousands of AK-47 rounds that popped and crackled and sounded like a never-ending fire fight, but they too had now burned out. I drew slowly and carefully on one of my last cigarettes and looked up at the dark night sky. There would be no moon tonight. It was pitch black and here we were, sleeping in the middle of a FAPLA base.

What a day!

I thought of how the RPG-7 rocket had missed me by centimetres, of what an almighty mess it would have been if it had hit me. Fuck it. I realized as an afterthought that it was my birthday and that I was 21 today. What a way to turn twenty-one. Other guys have parties, give speeches and get wrecked. I thought of my brother’s 21st, when every
joller
in town had been there and of the speech my dad gave as he handed my brother an oversized brass key that my dad had received on his own 21st birthday. But of course, not me. Instead, I get to dodge fucking rockets and anti-aircraft fire and face fucking T-34 tanks. I thought of my family who would be thinking of me today and wondered if they had any idea how I was spending my big day. Well, as the story goes, it’s the day you become a man. If that’s the case, then I guess it’s somehow fitting that I spent the day dodging bullets. What better way to see in manhood?

The artillery began a 15-minute barrage from several kilometres behind us. I had never heard the howitzers before and lay amazed, listening as the rounds whistled high overhead in the darkness and then crashed like rolling thunder many kilometres away, somewhere in the dark bush. This became a nightly routine with the artillery. The day’s activities had made me feel small and humble. I closed my eyes and tried to doze but the adrenaline still coursed through me like fire and I lay listening in the darkness like an animal. At about 21:00 I snapped out of a surprisingly restful state of being as we heard voices chatting casually to each other in what sounded like Portuguese. They were coming from the big trench that was about three metres from where I lay. Between the trench and me were John Delaney and John ‘The Fox’ Glover who was closest to the trench. I pulled my rifle soundlessly onto my chest and lay, hardly breathing, so I could hear better as they came closer. They appeared unafraid or unaware, talking loudly and seeming to be arguing in short sentences. I waited, my finger on the trigger. I knew everyone else was lying waiting in exactly the same manner.

What were we going to do? If we all jumped up shooting we would probably shoot each other in the pitch darkness. I knew that if anybody was going to do something, it would be have to be us on the end closest to the trench. The voices were quiet now but I could hear them shuffling in the trench, probably not six metres from me.

“Come here!” John Delaney shouted and broke the silence like a POMZ.

“Huh?” came a surprised grunt from the trench.

John’s grenade exploded metres from us but must have missed the trench, as seconds later bursts of green tracers flew over us almost at ground level, zipping a metre over my chest and off into the night. Silence. Another green burst. I lay on my back and watched the tracers flying in front of my eyes with dumb interest and thought, “Well, they’re definitely not our boys.”

I could hear scuffling as they ran down the trench into the darkness, making good their getaway. Damn! Good thing Doep had made us dig in because if we hadn’t, we could have been nailed. No one said a word or made a sound to jeopardize our position. I lay breathing, snatching shallow gasps, still holding my rifle on my chest. What a wonderful day I was having … and it looked like the party wasn’t over yet. I tried to doze again.

At about 03:00 our Fighting Group 20 and anybody within a couple of kilometres was brought to their feet by the thunderous sound of a thousand vehicles starting up at the same time. It sounded like the start of a huge midnight Grand Prix for trucks. It came from directly ahead of us. Acting on reflex, I was on my knees in a flash, peering into the darkness. John was also up from his hole next to mine.

“What the hell is that?” I hissed.

“I don’t know!”

“It’s fucking vehicles … lots of them!”

That’s it, I thought instantly. They’ve regrouped and they’re making a massive counter-attack. Clever motherfuckers to wait until the small fucking hours of the morning. Who would have thought there were so many of them so close to us ... and to think I was lying here dozing with 1,000 fucking FAPLA sitting in BTRs half a click in front of us! My blood ran cold. Everyone was up, huddled together, on our knees, peering into the blackness and chatting nervously.

“It’s that battalion of tanks they said was here. Now we’re in the shit!”

“Where’s the fucking Ratels? Aren’t they supposed to be with us?” I looked around behind me and could just make out the shape of the small Eland armoured car that was parked 30 metres behind us. I had seen him park there when we’d dug in earlier and knew that he didn’t have a 90-millimetre cannon, only a 20-millimetre which was not much joy against a BTR or a tank.

The thunderous sound filled the night for long, never-ending minutes. It sounded as if every driver of the thousand vehicles (we discovered much later it was actually about 50 vehicles) had his foot flat on the gas. If they were trying to scare us, they were doing a good job.

“Okay …
now
the fight only starts. They’ve been holding back all this time, the fucking bastards,” I said quietly.

Greeff was next to me, shaking his head. “Fuck it, man, why do they do this to us? They knew there’s a battalion of tanks in this base but they send us in with a few lousy fucking Ratels and they’re not even here!” He grumbled like a petulant child.

“I dunno,” I answered quietly and shook my head too. I also wondered why the big armoured Ratels had retreated for the night, leaving us with scant protection. I was in a bit of a mind-spin myself. It sounded like hell itself was about to come crashing towards us.

“Kit up! Kit up!” Lieutenant Doep shouted, not bothering to be quiet.

I shot to my hole, rolled up my sleeping-bag inner in doublequick time and hauled my kit onto my back. I was just in the process of fastening my chest strap when I heard an engine come gunning towards us through the darkness. I stopped, just in time to see a big black form barrelling onto us out of the night. I barely had time to jump aside and run a few paces as the Soviet-built GAZ-66 supply truck came hurtling past me in mid-air with his engine screaming at a crazy pitch. He was airborne as he bounced at least a metre off the ground in the darkness. I was so close that in one brief second I could just make out a figure, his head hitting the roof of the cab and his arms stiffly braced on the wheel, trying to control the truck as he drove for dear life. We all scattered helter skelter.

“Shoot! Shoot!”

“Hold your fire, don’t shoot!”

No one shot.

The GAZ-66 truck had passed right in among us. We watched as the dark shape bounced like a huge shadowy rock, rolling down the hill past the Eland armoured car. Seconds later the Eland’s machine gun lit up the night in a reassuring 30-second burst of fire. The driver must have got away. I never did get to see the truck in daylight the next day.

“They’re moving … here they come! Get ready,
manne
!”

THE END OF
OPERATION PROTEA

If 6 was a 9—Jimi Hendrix

The big armada of vehicles had started to move and we knelt in the dark. I held my rifle tightly and pulled out three grenades from the pouch and stuffed them into my pants pockets.

“Spread out, spread out!” Doep yelled. Instinctively we had grouped together in the dark.

“Horn, get that RPG ready! Green, set up your LMG with your second!”

Doep’s radio crackled to life. “Tango Lima, Tango Lima, Victor Four … do you read me?”

“Yes, I read you, Victor Four …”

“We have a big movement of vehicles approaching; sounds like hundreds of them, over.”

“Yes, we hear them too, Victor Four. Sit tight for now.” The voice sounded cool and calm on the other end. It was alright for him; he was away at the back somewhere, surrounded by Ratels.

Sit tight for now!

The noise of the vehicles filled the night. I got down on one knee and pulled out the two magazines taped together and snapped in a fresh, full one. I was not sure how many rounds I had left in them and I had no desire to hear the click of a empty mag in the heat of combat again. I had learned that lesson. I pulled back the bolt and put a round in the chamber. I stayed down on one knee and cocked my head to listen. After a minute it sounded like the revving engines were getting fainter. I held my breath to hear better. They were definitely not coming forward!

“They’re going away!” No one said a word as we all listened quietly.

“Yeah, they’re moving away. They not attacking! They’re making a run for it in the dark!”

I felt neither relief nor joy. I had prepared myself for an almighty shootout— and death—and was numb, detached and empty inside. We listened as the thousand-sounding engines faded into the night, making good their escape. I stayed on one knee with my head cocked and listening, holding my rifle in a death grip. No, we would not die tonight.

Neither they nor we knew that they were on their way to a rendezvous with the ‘Terrible Ones’ of 32 Battalion who were lying in wait miles away as stopper group on the very road they were travelling. An air strike was also called on them when they put up a fight and some of the convoy tried to flank 32 Battalion. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. Most would be killed, including several Soviet personnel as well as the wife of a Russian warrant officer, who, we later read in the newspapers, put up a fight lying next to her husband and firing with a pistol. Her three children were never found even though the SADF, at the surviving Russians’ request, sent out a large search party to look for them the following day. At least that’s what the newspaper that my mother kept for me said, when I read it weeks later.

It had been a very long night in the middle of a still-occupied enemy base. No one had got any sleep. The chilly dawn brought a long-awaited first light that bathed the bunkers and trenches of Ongiva in a soft grey. We had been up for hours but at first light we jumped into the big trench next to us and saw the spoor of our midnight visitors who had sprayed us with tracers. John’s grenade had missed the trench; we saw the burned white sand a metre and a half from the edge. It had been close.

We walked carefully down the trench and came to a fork and a section where it petered out and we could see open ground. One hundred metres away, the nose of an unoccupied Soviet GAZ-66 truck that seemed to have taken the wrong turn in the great escape poked out from behind a mound.

“Lieutenant, should I take out the truck?” Horn was eager to use his RPG-7 rocket-launcher.

Doep paused. “Ja ... take it out.”

Horn grinned, pulled the safety clip from his rocket and knelt down.

“You’ll never hit that, Horn. Why don’t you go closer?”

“Watch, stand away behind me.”

Horn was a farm boy of few words. We watched in silence as he bent his head behind the long sights and closed one eye.

Bang.
The launcher lurched in his hands with a huge report. The rocket flew with a
whoosh
in a rickety line but held its course and, sure enough, caught the truck just above the front tyre and exploded in white smoke. I recognized the
whoosh
of the rocket flying through the air as the same sound that flew just past my head the day before.