turned out to be a never-ending slog through the bush, naturally with full kit, from one rendezvous (RV) to the next. At each RV, the instructors would meet us with a new little surprise, either a stiff PT session in the sand or leopard-crawling for what felt like miles. Then we would be given a new compass bearing to the next RV some impossible distance away, where they would meet us the following day.
For the first leg of our adventure we were given a grid reference on the Angolan cutline – the border between the Caprivi and Angola – to be reached by the next morning. Carrying packs weighing in the order of 30 kg, we walked through the night and were in time for a PT session right there in the Caprivi sand on the Angolan border. At 09:00 we got our next RV – another grid reference approximately 30 km further east down the Caprivi Strip. We had to report there by the following morning at 08:00, which I thought was impossible, given the thick vegetation and the state we were in.
Once they had given us our orders, the instructors departed. We had no food, and only the water left in our packs. Just us and the endless savanna of the Caprivi. Fortunately the bush was lush and green after the splendid summer rains. There was water in abundance in the omurambas (open stretches of grass-covered plain, generally running parallel between the dunes). I decided that there was no better time to cover the next leg than now. The less we needed to walk during the night, the better.
Easier said than done, as there and then I was confronted with a situation I regard as my first real test of wills with another adult. A fellow candidate officer, a character I did not have much time for, took the role of leader upon himself and declared that we would rest over the heat of the day and start that afternoon at 15:00, giving us enough time, he reckoned, to cover the 30 km before 08:00 the next morning. We argued. Everyone was tired and he won the day.
I decided that they could rest; I was leaving. Quietly, I turned around, put my pack on, found my bearing on the compass and started moving out. Only one other guy realised the stupidity of the group’s decision to wait out the day while being on recce wing selection. He shouted, “CO, wait, I’m coming with you”, shouldered his pack and fell in behind me.
For the two of us the experience turned out to be an excellent introduction to the realities of the bush. We encountered lots of elephant and other game. We soon learned where to find water in the omurambas, and how to avoid the elephant herds by circling downwind, and also how to watch each other’s back.
Once, while filling our water bottles at a water hole, we had a seriously close shave with an elephant bull. My buddy was sitting opposite me at the water’s edge, watching my back from the other side of the water hole, when I suddenly saw an elephant emerging from the brush right behind him. I didn’t even have time to shout. But he saw my frightened face and jumped. At that point the elephant still hadn’t seen him. His startled shout and quick reaction probably saved his life, as the elephant got as much of a fright as he did and charged away into the bush.
In the end, we were well in time for the RV. The rest of the selection group was found a day later, after they had started discharging flares and generally making themselves noticed by firing into the air. They had run out of water on the first day and got lost, as they did not keep count of the minor cutlines they had to cross during the night. To give them a reasonable chance (as the instructors did not really know what had happened), they were put back on the course. They were moved by vehicle to an RV further along the route the selection course would cover, and in the process did a much shorter selection than us.
The selection continued for another week. I lost count of the days and of how many candidates were left. To this day I do not know what distance we covered during the course. I also did not care how many guys properly passed the selection, because, as it soon turned out, after our selection and the Minor Tactics course, the first operational deployment sorted out the ones that were not cut out for the job.
I learned two critically important things during that week. The first was something I had already started to understand the day I had to dig the grave in the cemetery outside Ariamsvlei: never even think of giving up, because then you will. The second was: do what you believe is right, without compromise, and never blindly follow the crowd. These truths became my guiding principles during my Special Forces operational career.
I did three selection courses in my life: the first at 31 Battalion, the second at the Parachute Battalion – the infamous PT (physical training) course – and finally the Special Forces selection course. Looking back, I can honestly say that the first one was the toughest, by far. I can also declare that never on one of them did I even consider quitting. And I also know that, in a certain sense, there was an element of fun to all of them.
After a week of fattening up at Omega, our training started in earnest. During our recuperation week, we were issued with “special ops” kit – old alpine rucksacks, SWAPO webbing and an assortment of foreign weapons – AK-47s, RPDs, RPGs and some Eastern Bloc pistols.
The Monday morning after the rest week, we reported to the recce wing HQ and loaded our kit on the Unimog trucks lined up on the road. We drove out to Fort Vreeslik (Fort Terrible), the recce wing’s training base hidden in the lush Caprivi bush some fourteen kilometres south of Omega. Three highly experienced and tough-looking instructors from the (then) Reconnaissance Commandos had arrived from Fort Doppies, the Special Forces training base on the banks of the Kwando River (Cuando in Angola), to present our Minor Tactics training.
The training turned out to be an experience in itself. I had always marvelled at the term “tactics”, unsure of what it really meant, and what people could actually teach me about tactics. The course leader and his two instructors finally enlightened me. For four weeks we were drilled in the finer techniques of patrolling, anti-tracking, approaching and penetrating a target, contact drills, ambushing, evasion and reconnaissance. Finally, a week before the course was supposed to end, we terminated it ourselves.
One morning at 02:00 I was rudely awakened by AK-47 shots and some fierce shouting and swearing. When I tried to get out of my self-built lean-to shelter, frightened out of my wits, I found it blocked by the instructors. The next moment a smoke grenade was lobbed into the confined space, and I had no option but to evacuate the shelter, taking a thatched wall and some of the instructor’s T-shirt with me. By this time the entire base seemed to have erupted in chaos. Apparently, the instructors were not happy with our performance and had decided to show us some real action. The “action” was of course induced by a healthy dose of Red Heart rum – at the time the standard Recce beverage. Earlier that night we had watched as the three instructors steadily downed two bottles between them.
Smoke from the grenades filled the air, an RPG launcher went off and the rocket exploded in the branches of a tree some distance from the base. Everyone was shooting everywhere. I decided to put our recently acquired evacuation drills to the test, and ran blindly into the bush. Most of the guys were already there, having fled the base and reorganised in an open area to the west. Since there was still a lot of random shooting, we withdrew into the thick bush and bedded down for the rest of the night. By early morning we had made up our minds; as some of the guys were still missing, we would walk back to Omega and just call it quits, as everyone had had enough of the real-action treatment.
The officer commanding (OC) of the unit was not entirely happy with the turn of events. The instructors were called in to base and requested to return to Fort Doppies. Before they left, the course leader, a battle-hardened young officer from 1 Recce approached me and said, “Stadler, I expected more from you. I am really disappointed.”
Unfortunately I was too young and inexperienced to challenge him. I turned away and left it at that. But at least I knew that I wouldn’t be deterred from joining the recce wing by a pack of drunkards chasing me around.
Our unit commander reported the incident to the OC 1 Recce, who did not take kindly to it. Sadly, it created a lot of animosity between 31 Battalion
