Читать книгу 1 Recce - Alexander Strachan - Страница 10

First Recce casualty

‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’ Dewald suddenly called out. In the sand in front of them boot prints clearly showed where the Swapos had crossed the old Ovambo road. The spoor was still fresh, he said. On the basis of Dewald de Beer’s estimate, they had an idea of how far the Swapos would have walked from this point. The guerrillas had to be quite thirsty by now. The group of Recces decided to get to the waterholes as quickly as possible and lie in wait for the Swapos there. They were in a hurry in case Dewald was a day or two out in his estimate of the age of the spoor.

It was 23 June 1974, very close to the shortest day and longest night in the Southern Hemisphere.

A week or so before, the Recces had received intelligence that Swapo cadres were infiltrating southern Angola. Breytenbach’s team knew the area well – after all, they had mapped all the waterholes there four years earlier in their first operation, Operation Da Gama. It had been tedious work at the time, but now they were reaping the benefits in that they knew where the old Ovambo road ran.

By that time the Swapo group had been on the move for two weeks, and the Recce team, in two Land Rovers, had hurried deeper into Angola to intercept them. It was wintertime, and the team reckoned the Swapos would move from one waterhole to another. Their strategy was therefore also based on this assumption.

Jan Breytenbach was in the lead vehicle, which was driven by Trevor Floyd. Dewald, the one tracker, was perched on the left front mudguard, and Eric, the Bushman tracker, on the right mudguard. Fred Zeelie, Nella Nel and Chris Hillebrand were also in the front vehicle. Behind them drove John More, FC van Zyl, Koos Moorcroft, Kenaas Conradie, Anton Retief and the other Bushman tracker, Langman.

More’s Land Rover, which drove at the back, stopped first and the crew dismounted to set up an ambush at a waterhole nearby. Dewald’s group continued for a few kilometres until they were close to a sizeable water-filled pan. They took up their positions a short distance away.

Fred concealed himself under a fairly large bush. Ahead of him, the wind from the side rippled the surface of the water. The many tracks leading to the pan indicated that it was visited frequently.

Dewald and Eric were positioned on the far-left flank, in case the enemy came round the fairly large bush. Fred and Chris now moved to more or less in the middle and were on slightly high ground near a collapsed anthill. From that position they could look down right next to the waterhole to the opposite side. Nella was on the right flank and slightly ahead of them inside the hollowed-out anthill, covered with branches.

Just after the group had formed up, an urgent radio call came through from Rundu and Breytenbach had to return to the vehicle. While he and Trevor were busy at the Land Rover, Dewald spotted a movement. He had to blink twice to make sure his eyes were not deceiving him … five Swapos casually came out of the bush! One was walking swaggeringly with a small cow-tail switch in one hand with which he hit against a tree trunk. Dewald could hear its swishing sound. The next moment, Fred’s LMG started firing with a deafening roar. It was only a brief salvo, as the light machine gun jammed almost immediately. Then Chris opened fire.

The bush erupted in a chaos of gunfire. On the pan, the water was spouting into the air in all directions. For a few moments it seemed as if everyone was concentrating their fire on the pan. The Swapo cadres had come round the anthill from the wrong side, which had put a spanner in the works. The first one, the leader, was shot dead at the large tree in front of the anthill. Directly afterwards another man fell, and they turned back. Near the anthill the LMG again started firing furiously, and everyone knew Fred had cleared his machine gun’s stoppage.

Dewald saw a Swapo soldier who stayed down, but the man was almost invisible in the dust of Fred’s gunfire. Both his legs had been shot off and he was already dead. Fred did not stop firing, however, and the dust kept swirling around the corpse.

At that moment, Trevor and Breytenbach came running up from the vehicle and yelled, ‘Follow through, come!’ As they got to the dense bush, Dewald said: ‘Wait a bit, I shot one here! I saw him stumble and throw away his gun!’ He ran round the bush and shouted: ‘He’s lying right here next to me. I shot him with a heavy calibre, his shoulder’s clean off!’

They were under the impression that they had killed three Swapo cadres. But the next thing they saw, there were only two bodies. A wounded guerrilla had meanwhile jumped up and fled. Two days later the group learnt via a radio report that he had also died subsequently, from a shot that had hit him in the abdomen.

Eric, who was armed with an old .303, had meanwhile received one of the fallen Swapo soldiers’ more modern SKS (a Russian semi-automatic carbine) as a gift from the Recces – he was now equipped with a far superior weapon.

Then More and his team came driving up in a rush. ‘Climb!’ Trevor yelled, and Dewald, always the tracker, again jumped onto the left front mudguard and Eric onto the right-hand one. The Swapos had fled along a path, and the two vehicles now followed the same route in the hope of tracking them down.

While they were driving, even before the Bushman tracker’s sharp eyes picked it up, Dewald suddenly yelled: ‘Here it is! Here it is!!’ He had once again detected the spoor. The vehicles stopped and everyone jumped down. To Trevor, it seemed as if the whole group were running – one moment they were on the one side on his vehicle, the next moment on the other. Moreover, the Bushman tracker had spotted something next to the path, and they discovered a canister half filled with ammunition as well as a backpack and a medical bag. The cache was an indication that Swapo was close by.

Koos’s Land Rover started playing up, and Trevor, who knew the ins and outs of how engines worked, ripped open the bonnet and proceeded to fix the problem. It was then that he suddenly realised they were in big trouble. One look at Koos confirmed his suspicion: they were right in the middle of the killing zone of the Swapo ambush, repairing a Land Rover! The only reason why Swapo had not started firing yet was probably because they were unsure of the Recces’ numbers, and the Recces might also have entered the ambush from the wrong side.

Trevor grabbed the LMG, took aim across the engine and opened fire, but there was far too much bush in front of him. He clearly heard Breytenbach call out to Fred, who was sweeping the bush along with Chris. This involved walking in an extended line, combing the area for signs of the enemy. When Trevor opened fire, these two immediately provided fire support, and the contact started in earnest. It felt as if everything was happening simultaneously and time was standing still.

Breytenbach was constantly shouting fire control orders at the group. At the Land Rover, the bullets were whizzing over the heads of Trevor and Koos. Luckily, the Swapo soldiers fired high. Trevor replied with another few salvoes across the engine. He and Koos heard their own people in the bush and could therefore not aim too low, but they hoped at least to keep the Swapos’ heads down. Then he closed the bonnet since he did not really know what was going on.

Everyone was now searching the bush, with Fred as the scout on the left flank of the sweep line. ‘Get into fuckin’ line!’ Breytenbach shouted at him. Those might have been the last words Fred heard. The next moment, more shots rang out. Dewald remembers some of the fire control orders to this day: ‘Kenaas, go forward! Peel off to the right! Buddy-buddy!’

With the opening salvo Chris was immediately pinned down, but Fred fearlessly and instinctively stormed the ambush and shot dead an enemy machine-gunner. Chris had the clearest view of what happened in the crossfire. Fred had advanced a good 40 to 60 m with his charge. Then more shots rang out from Swapo’s side. ‘Fred! Fred!’ Breytenbach shouted again. ‘The lieutenant’s been floored, Commandant,’ Chris replied. It was as if a brief moment of silence suddenly descended – the time was exactly 17:45. Fred Zeelie’s death was a great loss to the Recces.

While the contact was still under way, Eric came walking out of the bush with his new SKS gun and glumly dumped it on the back of the Land Rover. At first Dewald thought the Bushman was going to run off, but he had merely come to fetch his old .303. Eric could not get along with the modern SKS. Then he returned to the bush with his faithful .303, the only weapon he was absolutely familiar with, and confidently rejoined his team.

Sporadic fire still continued for another 15 minutes, with neither side suffering further casualties. Swapo then stopped firing and fled. The Recces wanted to pursue them, but it was already late afternoon.

Breytenbach urgently requested choppers to evacuate the deceased Fred Zeelie and assist with the follow-up. He was intent on catching up with the insurgents before they reached the Zambian border. But the high command wanted to deploy Breytenbach’s team in the vicinity of an old airfield in south-eastern Angola instead. He refused point blank, and kept insisting that the Swapos were not there. It would be a waste of time because they were on their way to Zambia, he said. Nobody would convince him otherwise.

More recounts that they drove to a small thicket where they set up a temporary base for the night. There they wrapped Fred in a groundsheet. More lay fairly close to him. He remembers it being a very, very long night full of strange noises which he hoped never to experience again – a corpse is not silent. Fred was dead, and it was as if the rest of them had no appetite for conversation.

Practically the only words spoken were when Trevor told Koos: ‘Your Land Rover’s fine again.’ Just before dark they heard gunfire in the distance. Later they would learn that it was one of the wounded Swapos who had been cornered by a group of paratroopers – Capt. Johan Verster and SSgt. Gert Kitching, both of whom would later become Recces, were part of this stopper group.

Throughout the night they kept hearing occasional sighs. But no one wanted to talk. It seemed as if no one wished to be reminded of the events of the day; everyone was preoccupied with his own thoughts. Only the following day was a helicopter dispatched to collect their fallen comrade.

Breytenbach and his team then returned to Fort Doppies. But two days later the security police arrived and begged him to carry on with the follow-up operation. Breytenbach said he could not cross the river with the Land Rovers, he needed helicopters. By that time the spoor was a few days old, and Breytenbach decided to call for reinforcements as their numbers were limited. Johan Verster and Gert Kitching of 1 Parachute Battalion were already deployed with a platoon in the vicinity of southern Angola. Lt. Charl Naudé and Sgt. Frans van Dyk (who later became Recces) were also there with a paratroop section.

So Breytenbach ordered Charl and Frans to follow Swapo’s trail as quickly as possible with their paratroop section, supported by Bushman trackers. They were instructed to radio reports at regular intervals on the direction in which the guerrillas were fleeing as well as the strength of the enemy force. On the basis of this information, the Recces would then ambush them at possible river crossings.

With Dewald’s help, Charl and Frans estimated that the Swapo group consisted of 23 men. The guerrillas ran in single file and the tracks showed up clearly in the soft Angolan sand, which facilitated the tracking. To estimate the number of people, they drew two lines in the sand, a metre apart. They counted the number of tracks between the lines and divided them by two. In soft sand where tracks are clearly visible, this is a very accurate method. It was full moon (the period during which Swapo usually operated) and the tracking team could keep running on the spoor for the most part. The pursuers were fitter and advanced faster, and gradually they started catching up with the Swapos. Each time the telltale signs of the places where the guerrillas had stopped to rest and prepare food were fresher. Later the ash on the spots where they had made fires was still warm – depending on weather conditions, ash stays warm for three to four hours after the fire has burnt itself out.

One evening it was Frans’ turn to navigate on the spoor, and he took the compass bearing. He explained to Charl, who stood behind him, that the good-sized tree on the horizon was the next navigation point. As the team hurriedly started moving towards it, Frans ran slap-bang into the tree, with Charl bumping him still deeper into the thorns from behind. It was a clear sign that the team was by now so exhausted that they had mistaken the tree right in front of them for a distant object on the horizon. Thanks to the white Caprivi sand and bright moonlight they could follow the 23 Swapos’ spoor uninterruptedly, and at that stage Charl, Frans and their paratroop team had been on their trail for three days and nights, with little sleep in between.

After another two days, they were less than half a day behind the Swapos – the ash of the fires was still very warm. The tracking team expected to make contact at any moment. They kept strictly to the established procedure and radioed the information to Breytenbach so that he and his team could get moving. The Recces headed right away for a possible crossing at the Kwando River, an area they knew well.

They swiftly located the site where the Swapos had crossed the river. To their disbelief, the spoor was only a few minutes old, so fresh that water was still seeping into the sand from the drag marks left by the makorros (canoes made from hollowed-out tree trunks). The Swapos had escaped across the Kwando in the makorros and were safely inside Zambian territory for the time being.

‘The terrs ran; bloody hell, they ran like blazes during those few days,’ Trevor recalls the follow-up operation. ‘As you know, that was the very first time the terrs were hit in Angola!’

Breytenbach was equally furious with the security police about the way things turned out: ‘We could’ve nailed and shot dead those bastards on the first day already, but then you people wanted us to go to the damn airstrip!’

That was the end of the follow-up operation.

Lieutenant Fred Zeelie was the first Recce operator to be killed in action, on 23 June 1974. In the bigger scheme of things, he was also the first South African soldier to die in action in the Border War. For his valour under fire, he was later posthumously awarded the Louw Wepener Decoration (LWD) on Breytenbach’s recommendation. He was buried in Alberton with full military honours.

Sgt. Dewald de Beer received the Van Riebeeck Medal (VRM.) for his bravery during the firefight. This was the first and only time that the VRM was awarded for an operation on land.

Years later, the very last soldier of the SADF to be killed in the Border War also happened to be a Recce. He was L/Cpl. Herman Carstens of 1 RR, who died on the SWA border in a battle with Swapo on 4 April 1989. The idea is now being mooted that his uniform should hang next to Fred Zeelie’s in the National Museum of Military History (previously known as the War Museum) in Johannesburg.

After Fred Zeelie’s death, Frans van Dyk and Charl Naudé returned to the Singalamwe base from where they did daily patrols with their paratroop platoon.

One afternoon Charl spotted a fish eagle nest high up in a tree on the banks of the Kwando River. After watching it for a while and still seeing no sign of the female, he climbed up to the nest and found two badly malnourished chicks. Their condition confirmed his suspicion that the mother was probably dead. So he carefully removed the chicks from the nest, tucked them inside the front of his shirt, and climbed down.

The chicks thrived under Charl’s vigilant eye. One afternoon two Recces, Marius Viljoen and Nella Nel, turned up at the base with the message that the Recces were challenging the paratroopers to a soccer match at Old Doppies. The following Saturday Frans and Charl, along with nine paratroopers, went to the Recce base for the match. As a gesture of goodwill, Charl donated one of the fish eagle chicks to the men of Fort Doppies.

After the soccer match played in the omuramba (a big grasscovered pan) near Old Doppies, they all socialised in the bar. Charl and Frans realised once again how much they identified themselves with the Recces’ work ethic and lifestyle. All the way back to their base they kept egging each other on to join the Recce unit.

Meanwhile both of the fish eagles were growing up fast. The one at Fort Doppies, however, would suffer an unfortunate fate. It was kept in a spacious cage, but burnt to death during the fire at Old Doppies.

After a few months in the Caprivi, Charl and his fellow paratroopers returned to Bloemfontein with their fish eagle. Having grown to a fair size by now, it was hidden in Charl’s equipment. In this way the fish eagle ended up unnoticed in 1 Parachute Battalion, which was to be its home for many years. A year or two later the colourful bird reached maturity, and its distinctive African call would echo across the parachute battalion’s base.

It so happened that the stage had arrived at which 1 RC had to recruit its next members. Maj. Jakes Swart of 1 Parachute Battalion was also in the Caprivi during this time as commander of A Company (in which Charl and Frans served). But Swart, who was due to captain the Orange Free State rugby team against the visiting British Lions in 1974, had already departed earlier for Bloemfontein.

The rugby match took place a few weeks before the soccer match at Old Doppies and just after the Swapos had miraculously escaped across the Kwando River. Directly after the follow-up operation, Charl and Frans rushed to the RV point where they sat huddled around the high-frequency radio and listened as Swart’s Orange Free State team narrowly lost 11-9 to the Lions. That year the touring team humiliated all the other South African teams, including the Springboks.

Charl and Frans had impressed Breytenbach during the follow-up operation against Swapo, and he instructed them to undergo the Recce selection. Charl went first and Frans a few months later. They were overjoyed when both of them passed the selection.

Great things also lay in store for Swart. Little did he know that Gen. Loots had earmarked him to take over from Breytenbach as commander at the end of 1974, or that he would become involved with 1 Recce even before Charl, Frans and a third member, Johan Verster.