opposite side, but did not know whether they had seen us or not.
I decided to inform the Tac HQ immediately, as the terrain didn’t allow too many manoeuvring options, and we had no idea of the enemy’s position and strength. I didn’t even encode a message, but hastily informed Major Oelschig what our position was and what we intended to do. I also told him that I would give them an update in thirty minutes. We took in a hide to make a map appreciation, and had just settled down when we heard vehicles coming our way. I prayed that they would pass the cluster of trees where we were hiding, but our luck had run out. Ural trucks came to a halt on the opposite side of the little forest, and we could distinctly hear shouted commands, doors banging and tailgates being flung open.
It was time for action. I kept Xivatcha close to me, as I had learned to rely on his instincts in situations like this. We went down and prepared for the worst, as a stealthy withdrawal was now out of the question.
There were four trucks, all loaded with soldiers who were now making a lot of noise and shouting obscenities in Kwanyama at us, their enemy, whom they suspected to be the “boers”. After debussing from the vehicles, the soldiers formed up for a search. But for some strange reason – probably because they confused the tracks of the smaller group that we had initially encountered with our own – they formed up facing away from us.
As we watched this spectacle unfold, we realised that the enemy had no idea where we were, and were shouting and making a commotion in order to scare us out of our hiding place. It was only a matter of time, and sooner or later they would realise that we hadn’t left the cover of the bush, so I decided that we had had enough excitement for one day. We picked up our kit and, with that very cluster of tropical bush to mask our retreat, bent down low and ran in the opposite direction.
After some time Xivatcha, who was running ahead of me, tilted his head and looked at me, his face lighting up: “Aeroplane ...” he smiled. “Boer aeroplane.”
I quickly switched on the UHF radio,5 and straight away the reassuring voice of the pilot came across: “Kilo Sierra, this is Cheetah. Do you read me?”
“Cheetah, this is Kilo Sierra. Angels from heaven,” I managed to get out. “You come as if you were sent!”
“We have indeed been sent. Thought you were in trouble. Where’s the enemy?” the pilot asked.
The next moment two Impala jets thundered overhead, and we almost jumped with joy. I directed the pilots towards the area where the enemy had been, but either they had cleared out or were hiding their vehicles, because the Impalas could not pick up anything, and the pilots had to be content with delivering some speculative fire into the bush.
During the debriefing back at Katima, it transpired that Major Oelschig had dispatched the fighters directly after speaking to me on the radio, without waiting for my update thirty minutes later. He declared that he couldn’t afford to have South Africans killed on the opposite side of the river, as “South Africa was not at war with Zambia”. To the team it was reassuring to know that our ops commander was someone with vision and a gut feel.
On a practical level, I would learn many things during my years at Omega, not only about surviving in the bush but also about my brothers-in-arms. Our Bushman buddies were indispensable in most operations, but there was one thing you couldn’t ask of them: to do a tactical river crossing.
I discovered this during a mission when we had to cross the Cuando River to reach our target. The Cuando flows from the central highlands of Angola in a southerly direction, forming the border between Zambia and Angola and eventually cutting through the Caprivi (where it is called the Kwando) to its marshy end in the Linyanti Swamp in Botswana. A fighting patrol from the recce wing was tasked to harass a major SWAPO supply line – a road stretching along the eastern shore of the Kwando River to SWAPO bases along the Caprivi border.
To ensure that the team reached the road undetected, it was decided to cross the Luiana and Kwando rivers on foot, a task that soon proved to be nearly impossible. Firstly, it transpired that few of the Bushmen in the team could swim. Therefore we had to take inflatable mattresses and ensure that every non-swimmer was assisted by a guy who could swim. The situation was complicated by the fact that the Kwando River was no less than five kilometres wide at our point of crossing.
Fast-flowing streams rushed past marshes covered in thick reeds. The many small islands meant the team could take breaks, even though we had to battle swarms of mosquitoes that vigorously attacked us throughout the crossing. We made the rucksacks float by wrapping them in groundsheets, after which the webbing and weapons were tied on top.
Around a bend in a particularly broad stretch of river, I came across Joao Antonio, a Bushman who carried the team’s RPG-7. He looked at me with a guilt-ridden face that said it all: his equipment had capsized and the RPG launcher was at the bottom of the river, along with a set of three booster charges that formed part of the rocket. We dived after it and managed to retrieve the whole lot. After the crossing we let the boosters dry in the sun, hoping that they would do their job when we needed them.
The entire team finally made it across the river after 36 hours of painstaking work, and we reached the eastern shore exhausted but relieved. Approximately two kilometres from the intended ambush position we split the team in two; the team leader led the ambush party to the road and I stayed behind with a small reserve team, manning the radio.
Events at the ambush site turned out to be quite interesting, as I learned later. On the second day a SWAPO resupply truck came rushing down the road. Joao, the man with the previously submerged RPG-7 launcher, positioned himself squarely in the centre of the road, crouching down for a better shot. His first attempt was met by a disheartening “click” as the weapon failed to respond. No luck the second time either. The situation demanded desperate action. At this point Joao, fiercely aggressive and determined to stop the massive machine thundering down the narrow road, drew his alternative weapon, a 9 mm pistol, and started emptying it into the truck, which by this time was virtually on top of him.
Fortunately, the rest of the ambush party did not wait for Joao to bring the truck to a standstill and also opened up with every weapon they had. Joao cleared the road just in time before the truck crashed into the bush. Our team leader then made a sweep of the killing ground, took photos of the truck and the victims, and led his team back to our position. That same day, we were lifted by helicopter and flown back to Omega.
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