Recce. Koos Stadler
men to do demanding jobs – particularly those behind enemy lines that could not be done by regular soldiers.
Upon receiving the warning order at Omega, a brief appreciation would be done to determine essentials, such as the size of the team, weapons and equipment to be taken along and the duration of the deployment. An HQ element would then be despatched to the Sector HQ at Katima Mulilo, Rundu or Oshakati – depending on which sector was involved – to set up the Tac HQ, initiate the necessary liaison with the HQ, the Air Force and other support elements, and start collecting information.
For deployments into Zambia, the teams settled at a secluded location, normally a fenced-in old building close to the runway at Mpacha Air Force Base, which was about 20 km from Katima. The team leaders would typically do their appreciation and planning at the Sector HQ in Katima, while the rest of the team, under the leadership of the senior NCO, would start preparing radios, rations, water and whatever specialised equipment was needed. The final briefing to the HQ was done by the senior team leader, always with the air liaison officer (ALO) and pilots in attendance.
Written orders and overlays with the emergency plan were handed in and the team then gathered at Mpacha for final preparations. Rucksacks were secretly loaded onto the helicopters by the support guys while the teams stayed out of sight. Our standard procedure was to wait, already blackened and kitted up and all nerves, at a small hut near the end of the runway. The choppers would taxi out, as if they were doing routine preflight checks, until they reached the exact spot where the teams would slip from the brush and jump on board.
On one such deployment, we were to fly out in two Alouette helicopters after following the same boarding procedure. The pilots were briefed that the team would consist of two whites and two Bushmen and that we would board each Alo as a black and white buddy pair. The other white guy in the second buddy team was a sturdy farm boy from Namibia. By the time we had to board, he had already covered his face with camouflage cream and wore an Afro wig to round off the picture. Once my buddy and I had boarded the first helicopter, the pilot took off. But the second Alo didn’t move. We circled back and the flight engineer eventually handed me a headset. The pilot in the Alo on the ground wanted to know where the second white team member was, as only two Bushmen had boarded his helicopter. I cleared it up when I told him to look a bit closer at the second “Bushman”.
Another one of these missions across the great Zambezi took us into an area east of Sesheke. The terrain was new to us and quite difficult to operate in. The Zambezi flood plain, which extends quite far north of the river, consists of open marshy areas interspersed with clusters of tropical forest barely 100 m wide. While under the cover of these clusters of bush, everything was fine – except for the squadrons of mosquitoes and battalions of ticks that pestered us. Once in the open, though, the team would be completely exposed. We also knew that should we be isolated inside one of these forest clusters, escape would be virtually impossible, as a mobile enemy force could easily encircle them.
The team once again comprised four members – two whites and the now trusted couple, Xivatcha and Chimango. We were in quite a predicament since we needed daylight to find signs of enemy presence, but moving in the day was risky. We therefore decided to move in the early morning and late afternoon to scan the area for tracks. We would adopt the typical casual style of patrolling that the SWAPO cadres used – single file and with weapons slung across our backs – in the hope that from a distance we would be mistaken for SWAPO should we be spotted. After dark, we took off our shoes and moved barefoot to find a hide far away from where we had been the previous day.
On the fourth afternoon we suddenly heard voices in front of us – in the same cluster of trees we had just entered. As we moved into cover we noticed boot tracks all around, and realised that we must have entered the lion’s den. The next moment we saw soldiers leaving the thicket on the opposite side, but did not know whether they had seen us or not.
I decided to inform the Tac HQ immediately, as the terrain didn’t allow too many manoeuvring options, and we had no idea of the enemy’s position and strength. I didn’t even encode a message, but hastily informed Major Oelschig what our position was and what we intended to do. I also told him that I would give them an update in thirty minutes. We took in a hide to make a map appreciation, and had just settled down when we heard vehicles coming our way. I prayed that they would pass the cluster of trees where we were hiding, but our luck had run out. Ural trucks came to a halt on the opposite side of the little forest, and we could distinctly hear shouted commands, doors banging and tailgates being flung open.
It was time for action. I kept Xivatcha close to me, as I had learned to rely on his instincts in situations like this. We went down and prepared for the worst, as a stealthy withdrawal was now out of the question.
There were four trucks, all loaded with soldiers who were now making a lot of noise and shouting obscenities in Kwanyama at us, their enemy, whom they suspected to be the “boers”. After debussing from the vehicles, the soldiers formed up for a search. But for some strange reason – probably because they confused the tracks of the smaller group that we had initially encountered with our own – they formed up facing away from us.
As we watched this spectacle unfold, we realised that the enemy had no idea where we were, and were shouting and making a commotion in order to scare us out of our hiding place. It was only a matter of time, and sooner or later they would realise that we hadn’t left the cover of the bush, so I decided that we had had enough excitement for one day. We picked up our kit and, with that very cluster of tropical bush to mask our retreat, bent down low and ran in the opposite direction.
After some time Xivatcha, who was running ahead of me, tilted his head and looked at me, his face lighting up: “Aeroplane ...” he smiled. “Boer aeroplane.”
I quickly switched on the UHF radio,5 and straight away the reassuring voice of the pilot came across: “Kilo Sierra, this is Cheetah. Do you read me?”
“Cheetah, this is Kilo Sierra. Angels from heaven,” I managed to get out. “You come as if you were sent!”
“We have indeed been sent. Thought you were in trouble. Where’s the enemy?” the pilot asked.
The next moment two Impala jets thundered overhead, and we almost jumped with joy. I directed the pilots towards the area where the enemy had been, but either they had cleared out or were hiding their vehicles, because the Impalas could not pick up anything, and the pilots had to be content with delivering some speculative fire into the bush.
During the debriefing back at Katima, it transpired that Major Oelschig had dispatched the fighters directly after speaking to me on the radio, without waiting for my update thirty minutes later. He declared that he couldn’t afford to have South Africans killed on the opposite side of the river, as “South Africa was not at war with Zambia”. To the team it was reassuring to know that our ops commander was someone with vision and a gut feel.
On a practical level, I would learn many things during my years at Omega, not only about surviving in the bush but also about my brothers-in-arms. Our Bushman buddies were indispensable in most operations, but there was one thing you couldn’t ask of them: to do a tactical river crossing.
I discovered this during a mission when we had to cross the Cuando River to reach our target. The Cuando flows from the central highlands of Angola in a southerly direction, forming the border between Zambia and Angola and eventually cutting through the Caprivi (where it is called the Kwando) to its marshy end in the Linyanti Swamp in Botswana. A fighting patrol from the recce wing was tasked to harass a major SWAPO supply line – a road stretching along the eastern shore of the Kwando River to SWAPO bases along the Caprivi border.
To ensure that the team reached the road undetected, it was decided to cross the Luiana and Kwando rivers on foot, a task that soon proved to be nearly impossible. Firstly, it transpired that few of the Bushmen in the team could swim. Therefore we had to take inflatable mattresses and ensure that every non-swimmer was assisted by a guy who could swim. The situation was complicated by the fact that the Kwando River was no less than five kilometres wide at our point of crossing.
Fast-flowing streams rushed past marshes covered in thick reeds. The many small islands meant the team