Arn Durand - Zulu, Foxtrot Reloaded: More Life and Death With Koevoet

ZULU FOXTROT RELOADED

ARN DURAND

Zulu

Foxtrot

Reloaded

More Life and Death with Koevoet

e-book ISBN: 9780620797566

For Rob and Carol Mitchell

1.Shit Happens

2.Changing Times

3.I fucked up

4.Wedding Bells ringing in the Bishops Chapel

5.The rain came

6.Oshakati life

7.Gone Fishing

8.Perspective

9.Discipline

10.Stuck in the Andoni Vlaktes

11.Poaching

12.Boats

13.Stolen diesel

14.Ex-SWAPO PLAN

15.Fuckup a Okatopi

16.SWAPO Terror

17.The rotten apples

18.The Royal visit

19.TRC special report

20.Wolf v Casspir stuck in the mud

21.The foreign journalist

22.Homeward Bound

In October 1981 while serving three months of South African Police counter insurgency duty and while I was posted at the South African Police counter insurgency base at Ongha north of Ondangwa in Ovamboland Northern South West Africa Namibia during the Angolan Border War I joined the unit of the South African Police, Special Operations (K) Koevoet which later became the South West African Police Counter Insurgency Koevoet. I left the unit toward the end of 1986.

This is my story about my experiences as a member of the unit during my last two years. My only objective was to record my story as truthfully and as honestly as possible. I simply do not care about any consequences in writing this story and urge anyone who may object, differ or disagree to write or record their own accounts.

Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality of those who seek to change a world which yields most painfully to change.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY, A Farewell to Arms, 1929

US author & journalist (1899 - 1961)

The pitch of the planes engines changed slightly and brought me to the present. We were making a gradual descent.

Suddenly the left wing dipped and we started a fast downward spiral. Were going to crash, have we been hit? I didnt hear an explosion, I thought. What the fuck is going on? Is this the end?

I was being sucked down into my seat as we went down. I couldnt lift my hand up, and my cheeks were being pulled down by the G-force.

Suddenly, at about 200 metres, the C-130 levelled out and landed in an instant. Fuck, these pilots are damn good, I thought.

The plane stopped and I heard the whine of an electric motor driving the hydraulics to open the rear cargo door. Bright white sunlight streamed in. After four hours in the darkened plane, the intense sunlight was harsh on my eyes, but I could see two Alouette gunship-helicopters still circling. They were providing air cover for the C-130 to land at Ondangwa airbase.

The C-130s and C-160s that we called Flossies transported police and military troops, civilian passengers, as well as cargo. They also carried our dead and wounded back home.

They landed like this, not to give the passengers the thrill of a lifetime or to terrify them, but to avoid the possibility of the plane getting hit by enemy fire.

Most feared was the SAM-7 surface to air missile. The RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenades were a threat too but had a maximum range of only 900 metres and werent all that accurate while a SAM-7 was very quiet, capable of bringing any aircraft down with deadly consequences. An insurgent needed to be within an effective range to fire and hit an aircraft with any weapon and thats where the circling helicopter gunships came in. Any insurgent firing anything at the Flossies or other aircraft could possibly be spotted by the gunships circling and their deadly 20 mm auto-cannon with optical sights hardly ever missed a target.

However, a few missiles had been fired at the Flossies and other aircraft in the past, such as the DC-147 that had its tail shot off by a SAM-7 but miraculously a skilled pilot was still able to land.

A complete SAM-7 (Soviet Surface to Air missile) at the time was worth about $120 000 on the black market in the Middle East. I cant remember what kopgeld (bounty) was paid to our black members to be shared among themselves when we recovered or captured one. It was probably about R 1000-00 which was the same price for a captured SWAPO PLAN or R 800-00 for a dead one.

A SAAF C-130 that we called the Flossie

We had headed south that morning from Eenhanna, down through the rugraad gebied (backbone area) on regular patrol, stopping at the kraals, questioning the locals while our Ovambo members kept a keen eye out for any suspected enemy spoor. At about 10:00 our trackers spotted some enemy insurgents spoor and soon we were after them and almost onto them. With some persuasion where the spoor passed some of the locals kraals, the locals confirmed that we were chasing four SWAPO PLAN insurgents.

We flanked our trackers on the ground with two rows of Casspirs on either side, each rows Casspirs one behind another. Two Casspirs rode up ahead to see if they could pick up the spoor in order to gain on the enemy or possibly by chance bump into the enemy.

We progressed pitting our tracking and all our skills against the enemys skills of avoiding and getting away from us, for the rest of the morning into the midafternoon.

At precisely the right time after consulting with our trackers Pete had placed the gunships at Eenhanna on standby. Now it was time for them to come. The spoor was hot, very hot.

Sersant, hulle gaan nou kak, (Sergeant, they are going to shit now), Bennie said to me.

The pitch of the sound from Alouette III gunship helicopters rotors changed to a harsh dull, thuck-a-thuck-a-thuck as it turned above us, sounding almost like loud automatic gunshots but we knew the sound of gunships 20 mm auto-cannons that sounded like lightning thunder in the form of retribution being poured down from the heavens above when the gunner/engineer would have the enemy in his deadly accurate optical sights and open fire. The sound from the rotors gave me a surge of adrenaline and boosted my confidence. If the enemy heard it too, it would demoralise them.

Wessie, can you see the gunships anywhere? I called to Wessie over the RSA 53 short distance FM radio in my Casspir.

No I cant see them, Wessie replied. Perhaps theyre out of range, flying too high so I cant see them. I doubt theyd be able to see the enemy on the ground from that height either, he added.

We were being sarcastic and knew exactly where the gunships were while we could see them. We wanted them to come down and fly at treetop level. They were obviously fresh gunship pilots with crews.

The gunship guys were a different breed of men who often defied their standing orders and went way beyond their call of duty to assist us with their marvellous flying skills and close support.