1 Recce. Alexander Strachan
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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.
5
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