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DIE GRENS

 JULY 80

Ovamboland was a wonderous place…the vegetation varying from wide open grass plains, interspersed with Makalani palm trees and high ant hills to dense thorn bush and hard wood trees to mountainous regions in the north west around Ruacana. Baobab trees florish, and the ashonas miraculously fill with fish in the summer rainy season. In strange belts across the arid grass and thorn tree landscape, sub tropical vegetation spans the region, where paw paws and bananas grow healthily. Kuka shops, which could supply a cold beer or cool drink miraculously in the middle of summer, abounded. The Ovambo people numbering roughly a million, a proud and beautiful nation were divided and splattered by the war.

For anyone who has ever been there, the memory that will perhaps stay the longest are te sunsets. The bright orange on the horizon, fading upwards into amazing hues until eventually becoming black above you. The silhouetted makalani palm trees, ant hills and kraals completing the fine picture.

 The first few rounds hit the side of the Buffel. “Aksie links!” the command coming naturally as the 10 man stick leapt out of the lowered left hand flap and hit the ground. The section leader shouted commands…”LMG links,  skutters een tot 6 regs, lewer teiken aanduiding…gaan aan.” The bullets were flying, and no one could see from where. Peter pressed the pressel and shouted…”Een Zero dis Een Een …Kontak Kontak wag uit!” He identified the sound of AK 47’s with their characteristic rattle on automatic. “Teiken aan duiding! My posisie 12 uur, makalani palm, effensregs lanks miershoop, vyand..vuur!” ‘Fanie…patmor, 300m, laat waai” The training came back fast and furious as the section fired, each man for himself, yet as a team poured R1 rounds into the seemingly empty bush ahead of them. Moving forward in tactical bursts …the dash, down, crawl, observe, sights fire “ was instinct. A mortar round hit the sand a hundred meters away, ineffective. The radio crackled..”Een een, dis een zero, jou posisie oor” the section leader told his headquarters they were in the northernmost part of his sector, 3km from rendevous point Foxtrot. “Een Zero, wat is die vyand se sterkte oor?” :” Een een, vok ek weetie maar hulle skiet op ons!!!” The section were fired up….anyone who ever says it was fun to be shot at or to make contact talks shit. It was frightening. It was fucking frightening. The whole skirmish couldn’t have lasted 3 minutes.

 There were to be many laughs about that later in the bar…the sout piel that tells the Major he doesn’t know how many, but fuck, they are shooting!

 As the Intelligence NCO in the platoon, Peter was responsible for documenting the battle field. As the section moved forward, to the place where the gooks had laid in an L ambush position, they moved with caution…looking for tripwires and booby traps. Peter took pictures of the 5 dead terrs with the Nikon, making sure to place the AK across each one’s chest. The photos would be used for identification purposes by the Int guys back at the Sector HQ in Oshakati. They were also used by the SpesOps guys at the Sector HQ, in a double garage to print pamphlets for distribution to demoralize the PLAN cadres. He went through the rucksacks…trying to identify any of the  fighters…always amazed that they had no food with them…carrying TM-72, Tm-89, or a couple of one of the variations of the TM-62 landmine, each weighing up to 11kg each, RPG grenades, extra ammo, never mind a  PODNOS 82mm Mortar which could weigh up to 390kg with it’s base plate and propaganda pamphlets …a bit of water drawn from a shona somewhere in southern Angola or on the yati, and that was it. Peter looked for the political commissar…the dude carrying the money and pamphlets but he had fled…”lucky shit” he thought…maybe they would get him in the follow up. He looked at the rifles…the AK must have been the most versatile assault rifle in the world. It was brought into service in 1949, some of them he had found had been rusted or caked full of mud….but they still worked. The piston joined with the block was most certainly the secret to that….and the reason it would soon be copied by the Israelis in their Galiel and then as a follow up, the South African R4. It was sad, Peter reflected to find, in  the one guy’s rice pattern cammo shirt, 3 things…a pamphlet of a White South African Corporal holding a little Ovambo kid, with the simple message …”We care”. The second was a fading to pink picture of a pretty black lady in a short skirt posing against a fence in what looked like a township in South Africa and then a pamphlet which Peter had seen before, sky dropped by the ComOps Dragon Dakota, offering amnesty and money for SWAPO or the local population who handed in weapons. “Fuck’ Peter thought as the all round defense came in to tag and body bag the bodies..”This is a fucked up war”. They were careful to feel softly under the bodies for booby traps….even a hand grenade with the pin pulled…primed to explode when the body was moved. They were only18, but as hardened soldiers, they knew the tricks.

It was a good kill. 5 terrs, a Dragunov SVD snipers rifle with sights and 4 magazines, two F1 grenades, a RGD 5 grenades, four 4 AK47s , a RPG 7V1 with three projectiles, three POMZs in that gross green colour, complete with their trip wires and their 75gram TNT blocks and two TM-62P (plastic cased) anti vehicle mines. Funny how when he got back to camp and offloaded the bounty, Peter noticed that the bayonets, bush hats and water bottles were gone.

Diversions on the border were few and far between; drinking, talking kak, getting messed around, an occasional incursion by SWAPO, (well technically it was PLAN (the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia- SWAPO’s military wing) and reading whatever came to hand. Newspapers were great but they reminded the guys of home too much so we avoided them. The ComOps ous put out newsletter called “Bos Pos” which was funny but a bit “armyrig”.   Paperbacks were never seen or they were invariably bad cowboy novels. The all time favourite though were those beloved and much maligned “Photo Picture Libraries” or, as they were so fondly known: “Poes Boekies”. Those trashy produced pieces of literature fascinated the guys because you did not need an imagination, and if you did not understand the text you could always look at the pictures. They were better than a comic and were made in the “states” too.