19 With a Bullet (55 page)

I read about Nelson Mandela being released after 27 years in prison and being elected president of the ‘new South Africa’. I wrote him a letter of congratulation and to my surprise I received a letter from him enclosing a signed photo, wishing me all the best. I read how SWAPO whom we had hunted down in the Angolan bush as the sworn and hated enemy, who were the real ‘red danger’, had won free and fair elections in South West Africa and that not a peep had been heard out of them since. I pondered what it had all been about. Who was right and who was wrong? Were we the good guys or were we the bad guys?

I read cloak-and-dagger ‘tell-tale’ books on the old South African regime and realized that we might have been the ones sucked into one big lie and brainwashed for the sake of
Volk
and
Vaderland
.

In 1990, nine long years after Angola, I said ‘enough’ and visited a Vietnam veteran counselling centre in Los Angeles where I sat down and spoke to a counsellor. For the first time I told a living soul of my anger, torment and my debilitating visions. The moment the words left my mouth and travelled to another human being’s ear, I felt the spirits’ grip weaken. I walked out over the grass lawn later, elated.

It was difficult at first but I told another person, then another and each time the grip got weaker. My terrible secret was out.

I decided to write about my experiences in Angola. It took months of deep thinking, slowly bringing back the points of memory about my small war. Invited and called back, the memories all came flooding in like chickens coming home to roost but this time I was ready for them and wrote them down on paper for all to see.

The real healing had begun.

The first time I returned to South Africa to visit was in 1997, 12 years after I had left in 1985. On the second visit a few years later, I was determined to to track down some of my old 1 Parachute Battalion mates who were once my brothers.

They were difficult to find as they had bombshelled in many different directions around the world, leaving a very faint spoor to follow. Of the handful of friends I was able to find, their lives had all been affected by the bush war and changed forever.

John Delaney
: one of the first to get a kill in our company, had attended a seminary and become a missionary minister, going back into Angola. He ministered at the Town of Death, Ongiva, to preach and spread the word of God. John has travelled to almost every country in Africa to minister, as well as going in to give aid among Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers. He is married, has three children, lives in England, is a published author and still does ministry work.

Anthony Stander
: hardnosed, cold-as-ice ‘Stan the Man’, who was raised in an orphanage and reform school and who was caught with a huge amount of money after he had robbed five banks soon after leaving 1 Parachute Battalion, was sentenced to 30 years in prison. In prison Stan was reached by a Christian counsellor. He spent seven years in prison but is a saved man. Stan was, as he puts it, released after seven years on a ‘miracle pardon’. He too is married, with three children and lives in Cape Town. He is today, and has been for many years, very active in Christian outreach and is a minister in the church. He is as hard a man for God as he was a soldier in the bush.

Aaron Green
: Doogy’s war still goes on. At the time of writing he has been a security contractor for an British security outfit for four years. He still sees regular action in Iraq, Algeria and Afghanistan and a year ago was the only survivor in an ambush on his motorcade in Algeria. Doogy has lived in the UK for many years, has led an interesting life owning a number of businesses—including a small factory manufacturing Mercedes gull-wing sports cars under licence. He is divorced from his second wife, has a young daughter, and when in the UK he lives on his yacht.

Michael Roberts
: Mike was paralyzed from the waist down in a motorbike accident soon after leaving the army in 1981. His army mate, Anthony Stander, has stuck with him through many years and they run a roofing business together in Cape Town. Michael also stuck by Stan while in prison.

John Glover
: ‘The Fox’, the Englishman who didn’t have to do military service, and whose sharp eyes saved me from going on that never-ending patrol in the sky, is living on a farm in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, happily surrounded by fat cattle. He runs a construction company, is married and has three children. John tells me that his temper caused him big problems for many years, which he ascribes directly to those years when killing was something he did without the blink of an eye.

James Anders:
killed himself soon after leaving the army while challenging a group of thugs to playing Russian roulette in a bar. James suggested that they put two bullets in the chamber and that he would go first.

Taina
: my girlfriend, who had won so many beauty pageants and who had stuck with me for seven years, was quickly snapped up after we finally broke up a year after the army. She has been married ever since, with two children.

*****

So, many years now after the bush war in southern Africa, John Delaney, Aaron Green and I have got together over the years in different countries around the world and hoisted a few to the old days.

John Delaney and I prayed to lift any spirits and demons of death deep in our souls. I cried like a baby. I wept, too, when I burned the horrific closeup photographs of the dead SWAPO and FAPLA that I carried in my photo album and showed off for 18 years. Some of the people in those pictures I had personally shot. I burned them in Los Angeles, at John Delaney’s suggestion. I dug a hole in the backyard and buried the ashes there. As I did so, I felt a burden lift instantly from my shoulders.

I wished that I had done it ten years before.

I am in contact with Stan and John Glover. And yes, since I have now visited the Old Country several times and rebuilt relations with family and old friends, military and non–military, South Africa and my past are no longer a lost misty dream, but a warm reality that stays with me and nudges me into the future.

I too am divorced now, with a beautiful young daughter of thirteen. For many years I have lived and run a successful small business in Los Angeles, California. I live an active, happy life and look forward to the future. I am finally rid of most war-related cobwebs and blockages, but when they do sneak in from across the border every now and then, this time I have an ambush waiting for them.

Other books by 30° South Publishers
on the South African Border War

The Border

AJ Brooks

978-1-920143-10-7; R145.00; Softback;
234 x 153mm; 304pp

“There was an odd combination of anxiety and reluctant anticipation prevalent among the new troops as they made final preparations. Their dismay was evident as the section leader discarded most of the food-carrying compartments and altered the webbing to carry at least seven water bottles and as many magazine pouches. The harsh reality of Owamboland thwarted the infantry school’s textbook, for this was war … war in a thirsty land.”

“Inevitably, one of the insurgents found the pull ring to the cellar and shouted for support. John and some of the other men crowded around and watched as the guerrilla yanked the door up. As it was only the white woman and her young, he confidently jumped down the stairs into the darkness. John heard the dull crack of the magnum directly below him and the thump of a bullet striking the flesh of his own man. ‘They’re in the cellar!’ he shouted, ‘We’ll burn her out!’”

The Border
is a racy drama set against the backdrop of southern Africa’s border wars in the 1980’s.

This is a tale of intertwined lives; hatred, trauma and the horror of war forcing each to strangle some sense, some purity out of the world they now find themselves in while teetering on the border of their own sanity. An ordinary soldier fights for survival. A family torn apart by the brutality of war. Two women’s struggle to overcome the horrors they have experienced at the hands of the terrorists. A power-hungry brigadier whose personal failures cause untold disaster for his family and for the soldiers in whose hands they place their lives. But among the death and dust Corporal Kent finds himself enigmatically drawn toward a woman recently widowed by the very insurgents he fights against.

From Fledgling to Eagle—The South
African Air Force during the Border
War
Brigadier-General Dick Lord

978-1-920143-30-5; Cloth & dust jacket (hardback); R295.00; 544pp; 234 x 153mm; >300 colour & b/w photos, 40 maps, diagrams

From Fledgling to Eagle
chronicles the evolution of the SAAF in the ‘Border War’ that raged in Angola and South West Africa (Namibia) from 1966 to 1989, covering all the major South African Defence Force (SADF) operations from Ongulumbashe to the ‘April Fools’ Day war’ in 1989. Dick Lord, who writes in a ‘from the cockpit’ style, has drawn on his own first-hand operational reports and diaries, incorporating anecdotes from dozens of aviators from a wide variety of squadrons—Buccaneers, Canberras, Mirages, Bosboks, C-160s and -130s and helicopters. He also expands on the close relationship the SAAF had with the ground troops in a variety of operations—such units as the Parabats, Recces and Koevoet.

However, Lord studies the broader ramifications of the conflict in that it was not a simple black–white war. Angola was really just a sideshow for the Soviets who wanted to bleed the SAAF in a war of attrition before attempting total domination of South Africa—their ultimate goal. He is unafraid to admit SADF mistakes—of Operations
Hooper
and
Packer
he says: “Lines of communications were too long to ably support the battle, which is why we did not clear them off the east bank of the Cuito River and why they captured the three Oliphant tanks which was their only propaganda victory.”

Although he gives credit to the enemy when they put up a stiff fight, he clearly outlines the overwhelming South African successes and dispels, in accurate detail, all enemy claims by giving an accurate account of each battle. He says: “I agree with General Geldenhuys that we thrashed them severely on the Lomba in ’85 and ’87 … much recent publicity has also been given to the so-called victory of the Forces of Liberation [SWAPO, MPLA, and 50,000 Cubans and Soviets] over the SADF at Cuito Cuanavale in 1988. Nothing could be further from the truth—it is blatant propaganda.”

Vlamgat—The Story of the Mirage
F1 in the South African Air Force
Brigadier-General Dick Lord

9781920143367; Paperback; R200.00; 368 pages; 234 x 153mm; 56 colour photos, 200 b/w photos, 12 maps, diagrams

“Their hands are shaking ever so
slightly. They will be flying again in
the morning”

Vlamgat
, literally ‘flaming hole’ in Afrikaans, was the nickname the South African Air Force (SAAF) gave to the Mirage F1, its formidable frontline jet fighter during South Africa’s long ‘border wars’ in South West Africa (Namibia) and Angola from the late 1960s to the late 1980s. Battling Soviet MiG-21s and -23s over African skies, the
Vlammies
, the Mirage pilots as they were affectionately known, acquitted themselves with distinction and honour.