I came across a Buffel that had detonated a mine. Well, actually, the Buffel had simultaneously detonated three Soviet TM-57 mines, which are shaped like rounds of Gouda cheese, and which had been placed one on top of the other, just in case ten kilograms of high explosive wasn’t enough. It was like using a 12-gauge shotgun to swat flies. The occupants of the vehicle, those who were still alive, were writhing grotesquely in the sand in a disorderly ring around the burning wreck.
As I circled around them at a height of a few hundred feet, it seemed to me that they must have been travelling bare-chested at the moment that the mines had exploded, because none of them had on the nutria-brown shirts normally worn by our soldiers. Closer inspection showed that some of them were trouserless too.
The radio crackled into life and someone from the operations room at the nearby base asked whether the injured troops below me were white or black. This really got my back up, as I felt that the skin colour of the troops was immaterial.
‘They’re our guys!’ I shouted into the radio. ‘Just get medical help here, asap!’
‘Are they black guys or white guys?’ the voice persisted.
‘They are all white, but what the fuck does that matter?’ I spat back.
‘We have already dispatched medical people to your location and the casevac choppers are on their way too but we have no white troops in the area,’ he responded. ‘Are you sure the guys you are looking at are white?’
I was about to erupt with anger and indignation at what I saw as senseless racism but decided first to get a closer view of the casualties. I descended to around 100 feet (30 metres) above the ground, circling the smouldering wreck of the Buffel.
Flip Pretorius and I saw the shocking reality at the same instant.
‘They’re black guys, Loot,’ he said quietly, ‘but their skins are burnt off.’
Once again, my automatic switch activated again and numbed my brain.
On Christmas morning 1979 at around 06h00, while all of us Alo crews were dozing in our beds at AFB Ondangwa, contemplating a rare rest day and a substantial feast for lunch, there was a single loud explosion from a distance of about one kilometre away. Since I wasn’t that familiar yet with the full range of Border War sounds, my first instinct was to think it was a mortar being fired at us. I braced for the imminent impact and started to plan my escape route to the underground shelter, located a few metres away from the door of our terrapin. But there was no sound of a mortar exploding and I relaxed again.
At breakfast, we were told that a civilian vehicle containing three local Home Guard soldiers, who were travelling to their homes in Oshakati along the main road from Ondangwa, had detonated three Soviet TM-57 cheese mines laid by PLAN in the tarmac. The explosion, which killed all three men, had occurred just a few hundred metres past the entrance to AFB Ondangwa. It served as a chilling reminder to all of us of the proximity of the conflict to our ‘home’.
Consequently, we politely declined any invitations to drive on the roads in the area, even if just to visit the shops in nearby Ondangwa town, citing the oft-repeated excuse that if God had meant for SAAF aircrew to drive or walk on the ground, the colour of the earth would have been blue and not brown.
That Christmas morning also delivered a surprise of infinite personal value to me – a parcel of goodies from my parents. On its own, this was not a rare thing, but the parcel contained a card, handwritten by my mother, which remains one of my most treasured mementos. It was also the last written communication that I would ever get from her. It reads:
Son,
I want you to remember, to never give up no matter what.
I want you to keep going ahead, even if it pains a lot.
I want you to understand, that life can be unfair.
I want you to remember, that I will always be there.
I want you to remember that you could never disappoint me.
At that time, I was quite oblivious to the fact, which was apparent to everyone at home, that my mom deplored my involvement in the Border War. It tore her soul apart every minute that I was in the operational area, and she found it difficult to sleep until I was back home again from my operational tours.
I sailed along, blissfully unaware of her anguish. After the festive season passed, I began to count down the days until my return to ‘the States’, as we called South Africa, and the European skiing holiday that I’d planned.
