Читать книгу 1 Recce - Alexander Strachan - Страница 9

Training and early operations

In the summer of 1971 there was great excitement when the Dirty Dozen were ordered to report to Rundu in the former South West Africa (SWA – now Namibia). Their assignment was in a sealed envelope that Breytenbach was only allowed to open on his arrival at Rundu. This gave the men the idea that they were going to conduct top-secret operations against Swapo in Zambia.

So they were rather disappointed to learn on the opening of the envelope that their assignment merely involved mapping the locations of the waterholes in south-eastern Angola and the western Caprivi for future operational purposes. This exercise was named Operation Da Gama.

For two months they patrolled the area in six Sabre vehicles (Land Rovers that had been modified for military use) and plotted the waterholes. In the process they became well acquainted with their Portuguese neighbours and also discovered that the Rhodesians had started operating in Mozambique. Thereafter the whole group returned to Oudtshoorn. While this might have been an ‘unexciting operation’, the knowledge and experience they gained in the process would stand them in good stead in future.

Each era produced its own quota of controversies. One of these gave rise to the founding of Fort Doppies, the Recces’ later famous base in the then Caprivi. In the early 1970s, Operation Dingo6 (also known as Plathond) took place. The Bureau for State Security (commonly known as BOSS) decided that a group of dissidents from Zambia should receive military training in the hope that they would destabilise the position of the Zambian president, Kenneth Kaunda. This group, who had fled from Zambia to Angola, were flown to the Caprivi by the Portuguese security police with the assistance of BOSS.

The Recces were tasked with training the group in guerrilla warfare. Since Oudtshoorn was too much of a security risk for such clandestine training, they retreated to the remote wilderness of the western Caprivi. This region, which abounded in elephants, rhinos, buffalo, hippos and crocodiles, was the ideal place for Breytenbach and his team to set up a base. The base was initially called Elephant Camp because of the many elephant trails that ran through it. The camp would later be renamed Fort Doppies.7 It was nonetheless in the vicinity of Elephant Camp that Breytenbach’s team of Recces trained the group of Zambian exiles (now equipped with communist kit and weapons).

Nine months later Breytenbach returned to the area to inspect the training. He found only the training team there, with no sign of the Zambians. He was told that they had been recalled to Zambia on high authority for an urgent operation; and that they were by no means ready for operational deployment. The Zambian armed forces were waiting for them across the Zambezi River, where they were intercepted and mown down in a well-laid ambush.

The Recces’ training was occasionally accompanied by unexpected mishaps. In December 1971 Breytenbach and the ten members of the Oudtshoorn group were due to do a water jump with diving equipment in the Swartvlei Lake. They were joined by two members of the Navy’s diving school, WO2 Ken Brewin and Chief Petty Officer Willy Dewey. These two would later participate with the Recces in the first seaborne operation, which involved a sabotage mission in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

The water jump was scheduled to take place about a week before everyone went on their annual leave. The group eagerly looked forward to the exercise. Spurred on by Trevor Floyd, some of the men also made plans for a jaunt of their own afterwards. They would stay on for another week to do what they called ‘fun diving’. Among other activities, they intended to move up and down the coast spearfishing. Plans were concocted for this holiday to fund itself. One idea was to pick up lead sinkers on the beach and sell them for booze money. Another was to detonate charges in the sea pools that would cause dead fish to float to the surface. They would then braai some of the fish and sell the rest to the nearest butchery.

1 Parachute Battalion supplied the aircraft and parachutes. Shortly before the jump, everyone switched over to oxygen. They were due to continue with the diving exercise after the water landing, and were equipped with oxygear designed for attack diving. With this breathing apparatus, the attack diver’s presence can remain undetected because there are no air bubbles that rise to the surface.

But things started going wrong right from the start. When the Dakota’s green light went on, they jumped out one after the other. The moment Trevor exited, the slipstream grabbed his equipment and he found himself hanging upside down from the parachute’s suspension lines. Luckily, he managed to extricate himself and landed safely in the water.

Fires van Vuuren was the third to jump. Close to the surface he readied himself to ‘get out as for water’, as they say in parachuting lingo. This meant he had to get out of his harness the moment his feet hit the water, otherwise he could become entangled and the canopy would collect water and drag him down. Fires’ diving goggles were fogged up, however, which prevented him from judging the distance properly. At about 10 m from the surface, which was still far too high, he was already falling out of his harness. He hit the water with such force that the straps with which the oxygear was attached to his body snapped on impact, and the expensive apparatus disappeared under the water.

A fuming Breytenbach could not believe his ears when he heard this. ‘Next thing, the dispatchers will probably tell me the Dakota is missing!’ was his indignant reaction.

This bad news immediately put a damper on the group’s enthusiasm. They had only seven oxygear sets, and now they were told on top of it that one such set cost the same as a Volkswagen. In the wink of an eye the whole adventure had turned into a nightmare. They had to drop everything else and search for the missing oxygear.

‘Get that thing!’ Breytenbach ordered. ‘No one’s leaving here until you’ve found it!’

There were only five days left before their leave was due to start. Breytenbach’s instruction meant that they would now have to search for the apparatus in their holiday time. For one of the men, John More, it was even worse – he was supposed to leave for Europe on his honeymoon the following morning. His successful appeal to Breytenbach resulted in him being the only member to be excused from the search. More rushed to Oudtshoorn to collect his luggage and flew via Port Elizabeth to catch his flight in Johannesburg. As his plane flew over the Swartvlei Lake, lo and behold, he saw through the window the men still searching incessantly for the oxygear.

Day after day they toiled, but in vain. They found nothing. The two naval divers showed them how to use rope lines and conduct the search systematically. They slept in a caravan park at night and lived on canned food: bully beef, vegetables, and endless tins of peas. Their pocket money was fast running out since there were no fish or sinkers they could sell. Fires became quieter by the day. He was suddenly the most unpopular member of the group, and the others did not feel like talking to him anyway.

The whole week was devoted to the search, and before the final dive on the Friday afternoon the oxygear still had not been found. Breytenbach then played another card: ‘I suppose you’re all going on holiday now and I have to stay behind on my own to sort out your mess!’ Whereupon he asked for volunteers to dive with him during the holiday. Koos Moorcroft, Kenaas Conradie, Dewald de Beer, Jimmy Oberholzer, Fires and Dave Tippett agreed to join him in continuing the search. They had no money for a holiday in any case. The Special Forces soldiers did not earn much in those days and did not receive the present-day allowances either.

Late that Friday afternoon they did their last dive of the day. During this desperate attempt, Koos spotted a piece of rubber in the water next to the swimming line. On closer inspection, he saw that it was indeed the mouthpiece of the oxygear. He immediately dived down, felt all around him with his hands, and, to his own disbelief, touched the oxygear apparatus! As he surfaced with it and the men saw what he was holding, their relief was indescribable.

Sometimes things went awry during operations too, and in one case this was to the Recces’ great relief. BOSS had received intelligence that a Norwegian vessel was transporting a shipment of mines and explosive systems to Tanzania. The consignment would be unloaded there and then brought to Mozambique and Rhodesia by convoy. This was one of the routes used to supply ammunition to the Mozambican liberation movement Frelimo.

The South Africans knew when the ship was due to dock in Durban harbour, and Breytenbach, Trevor, Koos and Kenaas were instructed to plant mines on the ship. An expert from BOSS prepared the mines for them. These were still the old kind of magnetic mines that functioned with obsolete delay mechanisms. With a ‘balsak’ (a canvas bag in which troops stored their kit) filled with mines, the team approached the ship from Salisbury Island in Durban harbour and attached the devices to the hull.

The ship was scheduled to leave the same evening, and the mines had been set to detonate once the vessel reached the open sea. Unbeknown to the operators, the ship’s captain had received permission from the harbour master to stay over for one more day. By the time the sabotage team heard this news, it was too late to do anything about the matter – the mines could not be removed as they had already been activated. It became a very long night for them, knowing that Durban harbour with its many fuel tanks was literally a powder keg waiting to explode.

To their relief, nothing happened and the ship put to sea the following day. It was assumed that the delay mechanisms might have malfunctioned or that the mines had slipped off and landed at the bottom of the harbour. Another possibility was that the ship could have departed with all the mines attached and that they had been washed off somewhere in the ocean. The fate of the mines has remained a mystery to this day.

This foray by Cmdt. Jan Breytenbach and his team of Recces was nevertheless the first South African operational diving exercise, albeit that it was executed on home soil.

Their first sabotage mission outside South Africa’s borders took place in 1972. A decision was taken at government level that the regime of President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania should be destabilised because he had made training facilities available to Frelimo. In the view of the decision makers, these facilities were contributing to the escalation of the guerrilla war in Mozambique. The plan was to foment unrest in Tanzania with a series of sabotage attacks.8 It was assumed that the Tanzanians would attribute any act of sabotage to Nyerere’s opponent Oscar Kambona, a former non-Marxist cabinet minister.

The Recces were tasked with conducting the operation, and the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam was chosen as the first target. Somewhere en route to their destination, the team would board a Navy submarine that had already sailed from Simon’s Town. The plan was for the submarine to deliver them to a position close to Dar es Salaam, from where they would paddle to the beach in kayaks under cover of darkness and infiltrate the city on foot. Specific infrastructure targets were identified on which they had to plant limpet mines with delay mechanisms. After withdrawing to the beach, they were to paddle in the kayaks to a predetermined RV where the submarine would pick them up.

Breytenbach chose five men to carry out the assignment with him: Trevor, Kenaas, Koos and the two naval members who had dived with them at Swartvlei Lake in December the year before, Ken Brewin and Willie Dewey. Since they were total novices when it came to seaborne operations, the Recce operators first spent four months on sea training.

They used Cockleshell Heroes by CE Lucas Phillips and HG Hasler as a guideline. The book is a detailed account of a similar submarine-launched raid by British commandos during the Second World War. But Breytenbach and company were faced with a practical problem: the group had no kayaks. Koos’s father then came to their rescue by ordering three Klepper kayaks (a kind of collapsible canoe) from Germany for the planned operation. James Moorcroft had very good contacts among the Germans, and the Kleppers were brought into the country clandestinely.

Strict security was maintained throughout the group’s training, and no one except Breytenbach knew where the operation would take place. The Special Forces always used cover stories – which had been planned and coordinated at the highest level – to conceal the real nature and location of an operation.

The team would fly from Pretoria in a Skymaster to the Mozambican coast where they were to be picked up by a Portuguese frigate (a small, fast military ship). Breytenbach briefed the team on the target and the task at hand. Kenaas (their explosives expert) prepared the charges, and each member of the group knew exactly what he had to do and how the task had to be carried out.

On their arrival at Nacala on the Mozambican coast, they discovered that the Portuguese frigate had failed to arrive – it was waiting in Beira. So they flew to Beira, where they boarded the frigate. In the open sea, the frigate made contact with the submarine SAS Emily Hobhouse (S-98), which was captained by Cdr. LJ ‘Woody’ Woodburne, and the operators went aboard.

The initial plan was that the team would be dropped at a distance of 20 km from the target because the Chief of the Navy, V. Adm. J Johnson, was worried that the living coral reefs in the vicinity of the harbour could damage the submarine. When Breytenbach objected vehemently, Woodburne undertook to drop them off secrectly much closer to the coast.

The six-man team assembled their three Klepper kayaks on the deck of the submarine and packed all their equipment and explosives inside. At 20:00 they were dropped about 14 km from the coast. They could see the lights of Dar es Salaam in the distance. The group was very tense, especially as it was the first time they were tackling an operation of this nature.

Each team member was armed with an AK-47 with only one magazine. Koos and Trevor had each strapped a canvas pouch with a few extra cartridges to one of their legs as an emergency measure. The operators were all in civilian dress. If they ran into anybody on shore, the clothing would assist them to explain their presence with a fictitious story.

The sailors helped to keep the Kleppers stable against the hull of the submarine with ropes while the team climbed in. It was difficult because the Kleppers could overturn easily, especially in rough sea conditions. Luckily, the sea was fairly calm that night, and everything went smoothly. The sailors released the ropes, and the submarine disappeared under the water. Now the team were thrown on their own resources. It was dead quiet around them, save for the sound of the water lapping against the Kleppers.

They reckoned that in the favourable weather conditions they would be able to paddle at 6 km per hour and reach the Tanzanian coast within two and a half hours. Koos recalls that at that moment a great calm descended on him, probably because they had practised everything so thoroughly.

Breytenbach, who paddled in front along with Floyd, navigated and led the formation. Koos and Kenaas were to the right of them, with Ken and Willie a short distance behind. At some point, a wave that came surging from behind suddenly thrust Koos and Kenaas’s kayak past that of Breytenbach and Floyd. An annoyed Breytenbach ordered them to keep to the established procedure.

At the target area, the beach was dark and deserted. The two naval members stayed behind there to hide the kayaks and keep guard. By then the sea water had already washed off the ‘black is beautiful’ with which the team had camouflaged themselves on the submarine. To Breytenbach, this was a minor setback: ‘A white guy wearing black is beautiful actually just looks like a white guy wearing black is beautiful.’

The streets were still busy despite the late hour, and passersby paid little attention to the four Recces in their civilian clothes. They first headed for the golf club, sneaked across the green lawns, and placed mines under the vehicles in the parking area. The golf club, which was frequented by dignitaries, had great publicity value. On the spur of the moment, even the British High Commissioner’s Rolls Royce got a mine against its engine block. All the charges were set with time-delay mechanisms. Then they returned to the Kleppers to fetch the charges for the bridge. They followed the course of the riverbed towards the target. Placing the mines on the bridge was nerve-racking, as there was a constant flow of vehicles over it. Everything went smoothly, however, and Breytenbach enquired whether there were any explosives left. Koos and Kenaas placed these against a power pylon to disrupt the power supply for good measure.

Their task completed, the four operators withdrew to the beach where Ken and Willie were waiting anxiously. Everyone was now in a hurry to get out, and they launched the Kleppers through the waves at great speed. According to Koos, they ‘paddled so fast that one could have skied behind a Klepper’. They were about a kilometre away from the beach when the first charges detonated. When Koos looked back, he saw a horizon reddened by the blasts. At the golf club, too, the charges were now going off one after the other.

They paddled uninterruptedly towards the RV point where the submarine would be waiting, determining their direction by constantly taking compass bearings. Excellent navigation was always a hallmark of the Recces. As this was still the pre-GPS era, the group had to rely on time and distance to reach the correct destination in the open sea without the benefit of fixed reference points. Fourteen kilometres on, they reached the RV point at about 04:00. To their dismay, however, there was no sign of the submarine – and their emergency plan was somewhat sketchy. Unlike today, there were no Barracuda boats, helicopters or other surface ships to pick them up. They had to fend for themselves, and the emergency plan was to paddle from island to island in the direction of South Africa – something they were quite game for, as they were exceptionally fit and resolute after all the training.

They decided to wait for a while. By this time their throats were parched, tension was running high, and the adrenaline was pumping strongly. To their immense relief, the submarine surfaced nearby just after 04:30. They quickly dismantled the Kleppers and took them into the submarine. Later they would discover the reason for the delay: the submarine had become entangled in the nets of a fishing boat, and Woodburne’s crew first had to get rid of the problem before they could proceed to the RV point. Bits of fishing net were still twisted around the propeller of the submarine, and the naval divers went down to remove these the following morning.

They remained in the vicinity of Dar es Salaam the next day to monitor the Tanzanian radio broadcasts from the submarine. From the broadcasts they were able to conclude that political commentators were generally of the view that the blasts were the handiwork of insurgents who had started an armed revolt under the leadership of Oscar Kambona.

Back in South Africa, Woodburne and Breytenbach were each awarded the Van Riebeeck Decoration (DVR) for their part in the operation. The other team members all received the Van Riebeeck Medal (VRM) .

But V. Adm. Johnson did not want to give permission for their next operation, an attack on the oil refinery at Dar es Salaam. He was still concerned about the risks that the uncharted coral reefs posed to the safety of a submarine. They had been very lucky to return unscathed the first time, he said. Although the Army was in favour of a follow-up operation, the Chief of the Defence Force supported Johnson in his decision.

As a result of the Dar es Salaam operation, Breytenbach wanted the Recces to undergo more advanced seaborne training. They subsequently went to France for two to three months to complete an attack-diving course.

In early 1973, Breytenbach started looking around for a suitable officer to serve under him as adjutant. This was a key appointment, as the adjutant was the unit commander’s chief administrative staff officer. He was responsible for various administrative functions and had to look after discipline in the unit together with the regimental sergeant major (RSM); thus he also served as the eyes and ears of the commander. Because he got to see all information, the adjutant was familiar with everything that happened in the unit.

Capt. John More happened to be on his way to Pretoria to make enquiries about diving watches. There he bumped into his old friend Capt. Malcolm Kinghorn whom he knew from the Military Academy. At that point Kinghorn was working with controlled items of the SA Army – hence with anything that had a serial number, whether it was a watch, a pistol or a truck. He told More about the high living costs in the capital city, and that he was considering leaving the Defence Force for a career in tertiary education. More soon discovered how thoroughly Kinghorn had his finger on the pulse of all numbered items in the army; for instance, he could immediately establish the number of vehicles or weapons at any infantry unit and report back on it.

Kinghorn’s skills could be of great advantage to them, More realised. He had outstanding writing skills, he knew the entire system at Army HQ, which included all the people, and he was an expert at organising projects. Moreover, he had a broad general knowledge and was a historian in his own right to boot.

So More asked him if he would consider coming to Oudtshoorn, and suggested that he do the jump course at once in order to earn the extra R20 parachute allowance per month. No, said Kinghorn, he had high blood pressure and teeth implants, and wore glasses. And besides, he added, he had ‘no aspirations to become a hero’. But More encouraged him enthusiastically, and he was prepared to consider such an offer. As a bonus, it would mean he could leave Pretoria to move to a more affordable environment.

Back in Oudtshoorn, More reported to Breytenbach that he had identified the ideal candidate to become their admin officer. Breytenbach immediately called Gen. Willem Louw (his old friend since parachuting days) to arrange the transfer. The next thing Kinghorn heard, he was summoned by Louw who told him to ‘pack his bags and go to Oudtshoorn’.

Kinghorn was well acquainted with the Oudtshoorn area – as a young officer he had done courses there at 1 South African Infantry Battalion (1 SAI) – and seized the opportunity with both hands. Besides, he had known Breytenbach and company since the days they had come to Pretoria to request Sabre vehicles to be used during Operation Da Gama. In March 1973, Kinghorn became 1 RC’s adjutant.

Because the group had lacked an adjutant up to that point, these tasks were performed by Dan Lamprecht and More. When Kinghorn arrived, Breytenbach was in the Caprivi, setting up Fort Doppies. Kinghorn immediately took the role of adjutant onto his shoulders and also took care of an array of other tasks. He was assisted by Hoppie Fourie. Hoppie was a former paratrooper, but had become the storeman after falling out of favour with Breytenbach. Malcolm and Hoppie got the unit’s administration up and running – Hoppie in his stores depot and Kinghorn in a small room right opposite him.

Kinghorn realised there was only one way to gain his colleagues’ full acceptance: he had to voluntarily undergo the Special Forces’ entire training cycle. He did so, and succeeded in meeting the requirements of a Recce operator. His training started in 1974 with the diving course in Simon’s Town. All the members of the Oudtshoorn group tackled the diving course at some or other point. Some suffered badly from claustrophobia, however, and were unable to pass the course. But they were still employed with great success in many other capacities.

The group often went diving together in the Mossel Bay area. One day while they were taking a break at the Pavilion on Santos Beach, two men came racing up in a rubber duck. The two were part of a team who were in the process of culling seals – in those days it was still allowed. Their nets had got caught on the rocks, and they needed assistance to extricate them. So Koos, More and Kenaas went along to lend a hand.

They quickly managed to free the nets. When the younger man asked how he could compensate them, Koos asked them to catch him a live seal cub. He had seen in the circus how cute such a baby seal could be and now wanted a seal of his own.

The young man then caught a baby seal and presented it to Koos. The cub tried to bite, but with a struggle they managed to shove the wriggling animal into the diving bag. By that time they had been gone for two hours, and Breytenbach’s patience was wearing thin.

‘Where the hell have you been the whole time?’ he asked angrily. But when Koos produced the cub from the diving bag, Breytenbach’s mood changed and he was chuffed with the new ‘find’. The seal would be the Recces’ mascot, he declared, and fittingly baptised the cub Klein-Koos (Little Koos).

By ten o’clock that evening they had finished with the exercise and headed back to Oudtshoorn with Klein-Koos. It was only then that they started wondering what they were going to do with the seal. Koos suggested that they put him inside the enclosure at the fish pond of the non-commissioned officers’ mess.

The next morning, the Command was in a state of commotion. Feathers lay strewn around, the ducks were dead, and not a single live fish was left in the pond. The RSM was frantically looking for the persons who had caused the havoc. Moreover, the Recces discovered that Klein-Koos was missing. They went searching for him surreptitiously up and down the streets of Oudtshoorn, but with no luck; there was no sign of the seal.

The same night they had arrived at the base with the seal, a national serviceman happened to be returning from pass at midnight. He walked into the base unsuspectingly, was gobsmacked by what he saw, and rushed to the sergeant on duty. ‘Sergeant, I’ve just seen a seal walking out of the gate!’ he announced. The sergeant was so annoyed with the cheeky troop that he decided on the spot to arrest him for drunkenness.

Koos and the rest now knew that Klein-Koos was definitely outside the base, but still they could not find any trace of him. Then they came across a clue in Oudtshoorn’s local newspaper: ‘Cape fur seal found in Oudtshoorn!’ the paper reported. A housewife had found the seal among the milk bottles on her stoep as she opened her front door. The protesting seal had been wrapped in a wet blanket and released into the sea at Herold’s Bay. The incident had also been reported to the SPCA, and this organisation was urgently in search of the culprits who had removed the seal from its natural habitat. Thus Klein-Koos had found his way back to the sea via a strange detour, and the Recces were without a mascot.

There were often pets of some kind or other in the unit. At Oudtshoorn, Dewald de Beer kept 42 snakes of various species in a cage. Among others, there were cobras, puff adders, boomslang and even a green mamba. Next to the snake cage was a cage in which he bred mice to feed the reptiles.

The reptiles also came in handy during survival courses to train students in snake identification, venomous species and the treatment of snakebites. This was how Dewald justified his snake cage to the authorities.

He knew his snakes very well and would spend much time studying their behaviour in the snake cage. According to him, a newly hatched snake was ‘one of the most beautiful little things on earth’. Unfortunately, the thin hatchlings easily slithered out through the wire netting of the cage and escaped. In this way, 17 baby snakes once ended up in Trevor’s tool chest.

This behaviour on the part of the little puff adders once had unexpected consequences. To be eligible for a parachute allowance, everyone regularly had to do a number of compulsory jumps. 1 Parachute Battalion in Bloemfontein usually supplied the Dakota, parachutes and dispatchers. Since there were many thorn trees in the Oudtshoorn area, there were always twigs, thorns and dry leaves in the canopy when the parachutes had been rolled up after a jump in the veld. The used parachutes were first taken to a building in the base where they were shaken out and folded up roughly. All the equipment would then be taken back to Bloemfontein in the Dakota the following day.

One day, after such a parachuting exercise, a highly irate Maj. DJ (Archie) Moore (later commander of 1 Parachute Battalion) phoned from Bloemfontein: ‘Are you people now trying to be funny, or what?’ he asked indignantly. John More was completely taken aback and tried to find out what the problem was. He was informed that the women who unfolded the canopies in Bloemfontein to repack the parachutes had nearly fainted from shock when they came upon a whole nest of baby snakes. More immediately realised what had happened.

After the jump the parachutes had been left lying on the floor for a day, and Dewald’s little puff adders had used the opportunity to make themselves at home in the folds. But it was impossible to convince Archie Moore that this had been merely an unfortunate coincidence. He maintained that the Recces had deliberately put the baby snakes in the parachute canopies to sow consternation in Bloemfontein.