platoon 6

When we first got to Spes we had to do a two week orientation with the oumanne. Jissis they hurt us hey. It was Clem da Mata and Kelly Chandler. When you came into Spes, old SWASPES, it had that l-o-o-ng road going up to the flagpole right at the top. It was about two kays. When you came through the gate on the red line, on the way to Okatope...what did they call it? Ovambo gate? Oshivelo gate? We called it Ovambo gate. Just through it on the right was a centre where all the PFs and them used to live, administration, and all that. About two kays further was this road that went all the way up the only area of high ground there. From the top you looked all the way across Etosha Pan. That was old SWASPES. That was where SWASPES was founded. We got there, ag fuck, now we had to offload the bikes. 350s, and the oumanne were riding 500s. We had the old XL 350s with big bashplates and fucking hand guards.

When we got to Oshigambo there was a different group, a different platoon in the base. The guys who had orientated us at Spes were klaaring out, they were on their way out. I'll never forget, 6 SAI was in Oshigambo. Captain Smythe was the company OC. Fucking cool oke, Smythe. His dad was Sergeant Smythe who got the VC in the Second World War. When I turned off the road just before Ondangwa to go to Oshigambo, I nosedived for some or other reason and I was concussed. It was only late that night or the next morning that I realised where I was and who I was and whatever. The bike platoon in Oshigambo had just killed a gook in a contact and he was lying in the KG hok. A big fucker, big lanky fit looking fucker. They took us all in there right away to have a look. The first dead gook I ever saw. Old Smythe was saying, if you can do what these guys did, I'll give you the freedom of my base. And he stuck to it. He fucking loved the bikes. And then, every night, the oumanne said come, we're going to do the 360 around the base. We had to keep up with their XRs on our XL 350s. Fuck china, it was a joke. The oumanne would just bolt and we had to keep up with them. It's dark, you're fucking lost, don't know where you are, never been in a war zone before. Okes were falling off and getting pinned under their bikes, if someone at the back didn't stop and lifted it you'd burn to death, that type of thing. The oumanne were gone, find your own way back. Eventually we got back to camp, the okes were sitting there having a beer laughing '...fuck you, wanker rowers’. It was great. We used to sit there and look at their bikes. Ja, you cunts are going to leave soon. Then when we got their bikes, we had to learn how to ride the fucking things. Quite interesting. That was Brian Dial, myself, Derek Brough, David Buck ... Craig Couzens.

I fell off when I turned off the road to go from Ondangwa to Oshigambo. We were on XL 350s because the oumanne were going to give us their 500s. As I turned off the road, straight line, with stones, my front wheel just went. Not concentrating. Those XL 350s were heavy, like tanks. I slid on the stones and I went straight into the ground. I had a pisspot on and went head first into the ground. I was rattled. I thought I was in Musita. The sergeant was a short-service oke, Kelly Chandler, he was screaming at me that I was a useless piece of shit and delaying the operation. When I got to Oshigambo, the only thing I could remember apart from Kelly screaming at me was Simon Barker who'd helped me get my shit together and pick my bike up. Cause those okes were hard hey, they didn't give a shit. Simon said, ‘Patrick, just follow me.’ He could see there was something wrong. I was totally gone, I thought I was back at the training area at Musita. I have another memory, of riding into this base, they had MAGs and the zig-zag walls you had to ride through. It was about four or five hours later when I came right again. That was serious, and I had a headache you wouldn't believe. But nobody gave a shit, man.

I told you about the guy who kicked over Fred Beets' bike, didn't I? The bikes were lined up for inspection one day. Fred Beets was a PF sergeant and Kelly Chandler a short-service sergeant. Kelly was checking, checking, checking the bikes. He walked up to Fred's bike and ran his hand over it, p-s-s-h-h-t…dirty. Boom! He kicked it over. I thought Fred was going to have a heart attack. But he never said a word, hey. Picked it up, and that evening one of us got fucked up for not cleaning his bike. Kelly was tough. He later went to 101 Battalion. When the oumanne left we got their XRs. I can only remember one ouman, he was the guy that slapped me in the bush. Fucking gave me a tight slap. His name was Justin Fouche. We used to tag along with them. They were suppposed to orientate us before klaaring out. We'd go to a kraal and we would do the outer perimeter while they went to search the kraal and loot and pillage. Jissis they were naughty hey, just took what they wanted, hit the cucas too. I was one of two okes who were put under this Justin. He said to me, ‘...Stay here. You don't move, you don't talk to them. Don't do anything.’ Fuck you, man, you know how it is. Some locals came out and I got off my bike. I was standing next to my bike and he just walked up and poesklapped me. Poesklap! Anyway, on the ride back, he was jumping over the anthills, doing those little heel clicker things, and he clicked himself right into hospital. They had to casevac him. He wasn't a very good rider. He fucked his bike up, he fucked himself up, we never saw him again. So that was my justice. But they were hard fuckers, hey.

Talking about the white sand, the first trip they took us on, they hurt us. It was tough. We went to Tsintsabis. It was far. You had to go back out the gate, onto another farm road and carry on in the white sand. We came back and the next day all the okes had eye patches. We had to go to the doctor to get all the white sand washed out of our eyes. Half of us didn't have goggles because you handed your shit in at Berede. The clever okes bought their own SCOTTs and took them with. What we had to do eventually was get hand-me-downs from the oumanne. They didn't have those old pilot goggles at Spes like we did at Berede, there was fuckall. You rode like this and jacked up your eyes. Some guys both eyes hey, dead for two, three days. The pain was incredible. For initiation , when we came back to the gate on the tar road we had to get off the bikes and push them up around the flagpole and about three-quarters of the way down the other side into the vehicle park. After you fueled up you had to push it all the way back up to the bike park, halfway to the flagpole, and service your bike. Air filter, chain, all that shit, park it, and then you could fuck off. Then we realised we could drink there, and went mad. But in the morning you had to be there on time.

On one ops we did, we stayed in a Koevoet base and operated with them. It was in 53's area, somewhere between Echo tower and Alpha tower close to Oom Willie se Pad. Somewhere around there they had this little police base. We had a great time. We got along well with Koevoet, nobody else did. I think it's because we were just as big a bunch of hooligans as they were. So it was steaks every night, beer, fuck this and fuck that. And we had no rank with us, just little lance-corporal Swanepoel. Yes.... Swannie was still alive then. We had a jol. It was just before we went on leave. We'd been there quite a long time, hey. Over six months. Okes were nafi. They kept postponing our leave and sending us out. We went and raced speedway around Echo tower. We went to Echo tower, and some crazy platoon commander had a really whacked-out bunch of okes there, manning the tower and shooting fire plans and all that shit. I forget if they were 2 SAI or 5 SAI, but they were bossies. So we came in there. They had never met bikes, and there we were, doing speedway around the tower with our R4s. They had R1s so we got into an argument about which rifle could penetrate more steel, the R4 or R1. The stats were that the R4's 5,56 mm bullet could penetrate seven millimetres of steel and the R1 five. Now we wanted to prove it. Where they pumped water was this big warehouse with big I-beams, like railway sleepers, in the roof. We went into the warehouse and shot at the I-beams. They both went through, but you should have checked the mess the R4 made on the other side where it came out. The roof was just ripped apart. The R1 bullet went through it and left a small, neat hole. Nee OK manne! That was just before Swannie got killed.

On the road from Ondangwa up to Santa Clara was Echo tower, I think there was a Charlie tower, and then Alpha tower right on the border at Santa Clara. Big water towers. They had pumping stations and pipelines running out from them. But Echo tower sticks in my mind for some or other reason. That area was particularly hot. We did a lot of follow-ups there and spent a lot of time sleeping there. They always had a detachment at the tower, sometimes two sections with a sergeant in charge and sometimes a platoon, depending on the season and the amount of gook movement. The okes suntanned up on the tower behind the sandbags and slept most of the time. Have you been to Santa Clara, the border post? I have some nice photos of us with the bikes there. The okes didn't like being up those towers because the gooks would take potshots at them. They did, hey. Fucking often too, in the middle of the night, KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA! Alpha tower was pockmarked with bullet holes. And they tried to whack them with RPGs. That was in my time, anyway. You know how high those towers are? There was a story going around about an oke who jumped off Alpha tower and broke his leg when they got hit with RPGs. They were trying to hit the tower from the Angolan side and this oke said fuck this and he bailed. They swore by all that's holy, all he got was a broken leg and a concussion. His mate used his brain and climbed down the inside of the tower. I don't know if it was just another army myth, but I had it on good authority and we used to laugh about it.

Johnny-Blou-Bal-Draad-Flip-Kanaal-Modder-Bloed-Poes was an oke in our platoon. Motorcycle platoon. Now you've got to understand what the words mean. ‘Blou’ means blue, as in bruise. ‘Bal’ is your ball, or your testicles. ‘Draad’ is wire, three-stranded wire fence. ‘Flip’ is when you pop a wheelie and you flip it over backwards and the bike falls on you. ‘Kanaal’ is is a channel in the ground, a water canal in this case. ‘Modder is mud. You ride like we did that day, in that black cotton soil, you just slide all over. ‘Bloed’ is blood - bleeding. ‘Poes’ is just...it's actually punda.

So we had this oke in our platoon before we got split up. We used to jaag around in the bush on those XL 350s and then we changed to the 500s. And every time, if there was an accident, whether we were in platoon strength or not, Johnny was involved in it. The first one, he was going down the road and he saw an anthill and he took off over it and there was a big fucking hole on the other side. He landed and his balls hit the tank. The guy was lying there, at the bottom of a three metre pit. For some reason we had some captain with us from 6 SAI or whatever, I don't remember who he was. Johnny was in agony and the captain was running around trying to get him to stand up and get his head between his legs so he can stand up and get his balls to drop. I can't explain how it worked but it was hysterical. The rest of us were standing around the hole and this captain was chasing Johnny Bal and Johnny was refusing to put his head between the captain's legs and up his arse. Johnny-Blou-Bal.

One day we went through an area and two days later went through the same area again. When somebody hit a contact, they used to call us and we'd go out and do the tracking. So they call us and we're really racing to get there, and in those two days a local had decided to fence off his property. Across this faint track. We didn't always ride on the roads because of landmines. So were riding there and and Johnny overtook me, which is irritating because it's dust and stones and sand in your face. We were riding in single file, it depended on how you were moving, in open terrain you were in a spread out line. The guys were good. Well, he decided to overtake me and he went by on my left and he hit this fence. It was a three-strand fence and this poor guy... the bike came back past me faster than it overtook me, and he carried on. So that was ‘draad’. Once again we had to lift him and get him casevaced back to base.

‘Flip’ was just something stupid. In between operations we wheelied and played with the motorbikes. You found something to jump, you wheelied, whatever. And this oke couldn't wheelie. Now, I'm not talking power wheelies, where the front wheel is two feet off the ground. Balance point wheelies, a proper wheelie, as long as your front wheel was spinning you could keep it like that for very long distances. Johnny always flipped over backwards and got the bike on top of him. Invariably he couldn't go out the next day because he was hurt.

‘Kanaal’. Kanaal was a good one. We went on a follow up, the guys from reconnaissance, a two man team, had set up a TB in a frozen area. When an area was frozen, no other forces were allowed in there. We were on standby for them. So these two operators were in there. That's the story I got afterwards when we cleaned up the mess. Anyway, one was up a tree and the other was down. SWAPO had abducted a whole lot of civilians, they had over eighty kids. When it got dark they accidentally picked that big tree the two operators were in to sleep under and around. The operators thought everybody was a terr, there was a lot of gooks in there at the time. They just saw guys with AKs and lots of movement. So they came down late at night and ran around this TB and killed something like 42 people. In the morning we got the call to go do the follow-up and find out where the rest of the group went. When we got there, we were finding bodies for over a kilometre. I met those two. Amazing hey. Weird shit. Then they sent out the paras in Buffels and they loaded up the rest of the bodies and took them back to Ondangwa. We rode back to Oshigambo. Now we're playing, it's late afternoon, the day is almost over, nobody got killed, bla-bla-bla, and there's a little ramp in the shona. Big open shona, a dry lake bed basically. And we're motoring, changing the formation from single file to spread out line. There's this little jump on the shona, and Johnny comes by me on my right. Full taps. I'm off to the side and I could see behind this jump. The locals had dug a trench, a canal or something. I'm screaming at Johnny, but when I let go with my right hand I slow down because that's the throttle. He flew by me, and I yelled ‘... NO-O-O!!’ He hit that thing and LAUNCHED. I heard him as he hit it, he started screaming and tried to separate himself from the bike. We had a rule, NEVER let go of your bike, no matter what happens. If you stay with it and you're lucky, you'll get out of it. Don't let go. He finally separated from the bike, and I have this vivid picture of him in my head He looked like those okes in supercross when they let go, except he was making like a swastika and he was screaming. Finished!

But he kept coming back. The guy was like a fucking iron man, he kept coming back. Two days in sick bay and he'd be back. The time he ended up in a thorn tree was the best. They flew him out in a helicopter, that was the fucking best. The whole platoon was still together. That place was hot hey, a lot of contacts all the time. We got called out two, three times a day to do follow-ups. You'd look at it and go: ‘... naah, too late, they're gone.’ So we were racing to get there through the thick bush. If the roads have been cleared you used it, otherwise you went single file through the bush. As soon as you hit an open area you spread out in a fighting line, everybody peeled off and spread out. When the bush tightened up everybody slotted into position again in single file. It's like here, people cleared the land for farming. We were on XR 500s and were motoring to get there because the sooner you get there the fresher the spoor is, the sooner you can start tracking and hopefully catch them before last light. So we're spread out on this omuramba and Johnny-Blou-Bal-Draad ...I don't know, he was always riding at the back, maybe that's why he wanted to overtake all the time. CP Nell, Johan le Roux, everybody was flattrack racing on this shona because it ends and there's one road into the bush and everybody wants to get there first because then you're not riding in the dust. Me, I wasn't as good a rider as some of those guys so I was quite happy to suck the dust up. I am not shitting you, I was probably doing well over a 100, full taps, going there. The guys are trying to catch up, everybody is trying to get back into formation, and Johnny comes by me. He passes about three guys. Now what the locals used to do in Ovamboland, they cut the trees down to clear the land so they could farm. So you had these short stumps all over with a few small bushes around it. Johnny is trying to cut in front of somebody where the big trees are and get on the road into the bush. And he hits a stump with his right footpeg. I watched this... he bounced off that stump, he was most probably doing 100 or 110, he bounced sideways and hit another stump within a meter, WAP-WAP... looked like pinball. Then he bounced into the air and rode into a tree as big as that fucking orange tree behind you. It was a haak-en-steek. This oke was crucified. It was like a fucking Walt Disney cartoon. He was in the middle of the tree, stuck, like this, with an XR 500 hanging off his ankles. Hanging, because when he hit that stump the footpeg bent up and crushed this ankle, the left one bent up and wrapped around his other foot. Bent. Finished. He was hanging in the tree, wha-a-a-a-a!! And we couldn't get this cunt out, you can't touch this stuff. You have to hack your way there. He had an XR 500 -- this is my memory -- that's a heavy motorcycle, hanging off his feet and he was crucified in the haak-en-steek bush. They flew an Alouette in. We cut him out of there. He was fucked. I think ... I don't know, I've never seen him since. That was the last time I saw him. He was bleeding a lot, that's where the ‘bloed’ came from. The ‘poes’ is from him saying, ‘...o poes, o poes, ek is seer. Ek het opgefok!’ We cracked, we just cracked. We put this poor guy on a stretcher into the Alouette and that was the last time I saw Johnny-Blou-Bal-Draad-Flip-Kanaal-Modder-Bloed-Poes. You should ask CP Nell, he was there. Lionel de Lema, Johan le Roux. Peter Fourie wasn't there, I don't think. Or maybe he was, before they went to Ombalantu. In fact, it could have been Peter who organised the chopper to come in.

Another mad guy we need to trace is Jerry du Preez. He was a little Durban boy, from North Beach snake park. A skinny, gangly little guy. They couldn't break him, hey. They could...not ... break... this guy. Jerry was always in kak. They'd give him the most horrendous opfoks and he'd laugh at them. That was him, he was fucking dilly. Always had a zaan in his hand. I was too chicken to do that shit. He always had a joint somewhere. He's the one who wiped out and tore his whole kneecap off when we went to help 44 Para. They got lost and they hit a landmine. We were jaaging to get there before last light and I think a dog or something ran in front of him. Only five or six of us went out, the other okes were working on bikes. We were on the road to Eenhana, to where you cut across on the Delta pipeline. He fucking swerved for a dog or something stupid happened. We brought a chopper in for him.

That was when they first formed 44 Para from ex-Rhodies and so on, to select them for other units like 32 and Reconnaissance. It was 1981 and they came in from Zim, Rhodesia, and they had to put them somewhere while they sifted them. You know how it goes, every second oke is a Selous Scout, all the paperwork had been lost and so on. So they gooied all these okes into one unit. Most of them actually got a raw deal. They got screwed big time. Some of them went to 32, I think that's when Jan Breytenbach actually formed 44 Para. From there they did selection for Reconnaissance. They sorted out who was Selous Scouts, who was SAS. I remember climbing out of my tent one morning at Oshigambo. Now remember, we were there for a long time, the SAI units came and went. It was very early, four o'clock or something, and this lot was parking there in Buffels. Some 32 okes, others with camo T-shirts and headbands and all that shit. Some okes were sleeping on top of the Buffel bins. I said to one of them, ‘..Where are you from?’

‘I'm fawhty-fawh parachute brigade, boy, and ah done two tours of Vee-et-Nam.’‍

I said ‘O-o-o-kay’ and went back to my tent.

They spent four days in base getting pissed every night. We knew 53's area like the back of our hands so we tried to orientate them to that Oshigambo/Eenhana/delta pipeline triangle. On their first patrol they hit a mine. They had to do a straightforward patrol, 19 kays to Eenhana, hook a left on the delta pipeline for about 17 kays to the bus route, then come back down the bus route for 21 kays. It was on that long leg that Swannie hit the landmine, by the way. From the main tar road at Ondangwa the road went up to the border past Oshigambo. The bus route was a little track that went through and peeled off just past Oshigambo, hit the delta pipeline, then went on to Oom Willie se pad. Delta pipeline and Oom Willie se pad were parallel to the border. The pipeline was very strategic but it was fucking dangerous. Oom Willie se pad was even worse because of the mines so we used the Delta pipeline. So 44 Para was given this task up there, and they were told to watch out for mines. How simple is that? 19 kays up, about 17 across, and 21 down and they hit a mine just after they turned onto the pipeline. They called in, ‘...we don't know where we are. Where are we?’‍

Five or six of us rode out there and Jerry fell. Anyways, we got there, and here was the Buffel lying on it's side, fucking oke bleeding here, nosebleed there. Nothing serious, cause it's soft, soft sand. The same oke I'd met that first morning lying on the Buffel bin ‘....I done two tours of the Nam, boy....’ was sitting there. He was wearing a red bandana, I'll never forget. His ears were bleeding and he had a nosebleed. He had a lot of sand stuck in his ears and nose, but he was OK. When he spoke, he was very loud, BLA-BLA-BLA-BLA.

I just fucking laughed. We were pissed off because one of our guys got hurt and they didn't even know where they were.

A lot of okes fucked off, hey. Didn't like this shit. Applied for get-out RTUs, whatever. Our group started with two platoons. It wasn't a full company, 75 guys or something. When we finished there were eight guys left in my platoon. I don't know how many okes left bikes but stayed on the border, or got hurt, or had family problems. Attrition was massive. Out of our platoon we ended up less than a section strong after Swannie got killed. We were eight guys who worked together for quite a long time. I don't know what happened to the rest. They just kind of disappeared. We had guys who got hurt and came back, but then they seemed to fuck off somewhere else.

That area was very difficult to navigate in. Very difficult, no features there. On the other side of Ruacana, in the Kaokoveld, you had features to look at. In the east it was just fucking flat. There weren't even any big trees, they were all the same size. We used time, distance and shonas to navigate, because the shonas were indicated on the topo maps. So we'd pick a shona, if you blinked and you were through it, it was a spot on the map. On the bigger ones you could get your bearings quite well. After a while we knew certain trees and so on. It was very difficult in the beginning.

I remember going on leave in the dry season and coming back after the rains had started. The first two weeks, we were totally, totally disorientated. Even some roads were closed, little bush tracks were closed. It was like being on another planet. I remember something Clem da Mata said to us one day. We were on a road we'd probably driven a hundred times, hitting schools, hitting schools, getting people to climb onto the roof because all the schools had a number painted on them. It took us a while to figure that out. We were seriously lost, and Clem stopped us. We were about a section and a half, before they split us up. He said, ‘...Listen, the next time we stop, if they speak Portuguese we'll know we're in shit, we must turn around and come back.’ We carried on, suddenly worried, it was hard riding, on sand tracks. We stopped at a school and got somebody on the roof and true as fuck, we knew exactly where we were on the map. We'd been there a hundred times. It just looked different. Two and a half, three weeks of leave and it all changed.

Almost exactly a week before Swannie hit the mine, we were called out to do a follow up for SAKK. They got revved somewhere near Echo tower so we used the same route. Now with us, the guys that rode in front toget to a place was not determined by rank but rather by who could find the place the fastest, some guys just paid more attention in certain areas thus knew the terrain better, also riding ability. Normally this was either Lionel de Lima or Johan Le Roux.

On this day Swannie took the lead, then we headed of on a bush track in the direction of E tower. Once again bunched up and moving as fast as possible. Once again I was behind Swannie and saw him hit the brakes and come to a sudden stop, all of us piled into each other with much swearing. A povo had covered the tracks with branches, this opposite a kraal. Spoke to the headman and he told us that his kids had seen Swapo digging in the road, so he covered the site as he did not want his cattle setting of a mine. Swannie called it in and we carried on. On return to base that night the sappers told us they had lifted a TM57.

So now we celebrate in Jerry Du Preez’s tent with typical bike squad 'fuck you we can buy booze' attitude. Lt Goosen and all the boys, someone asks a dumb dronk question, " ...what happens if a bike hits a landmine?" I reply “...one down and pop a wheelie”. As Nico stated, we thought we were invincible.