In Angola

One night close to Menongue during Op Modular in Angola, we set up laager close to an MPLA base - close enough to be within Stalin Organ range. They had listening devices, so we were ordered to keep extremely QUIET, we were also ordered to dig our regular cosy trench (or grave) to sleep in. The joke was that they selected a dry pan where the ground was so hard that you could not make a mark on the ground without making a noise! If we had been detected it would have been ugly as everyone made the decision to minimise noise and forgo digging their trench. We managed to get some sleep and moved off undetected before sunrise. In the morning, we continued patrolling with no action to speak of, just miles of nothing, a village scattered here and there. The only inhabitants of these villages were hungry, begging children and military age males with missing limbs. 


Due to all the landmines, no-one was crazy enough to try plowing and farming the land! Apparently there are still more than 10 million mines lurking in Angola - more than 1 per Angolan. We set up a TB in a destroyed town which happened to have an airstrip, we did day patrols. One morning we heard an explosion and saw a plume of black smoke nearby, we rushed to the scene where a buffel had triggered a mine. Fortunately it was an anti-personnel mine and no one was injured thank God for mine proofed vehicles!

One Saturday night in the base camp in Oshakati, the whole company was ordered to form up on parade ground just after lights-out at 11pm. Most of us were drunk, (our stash of beer was hid under the sandbags around our tents.) Apparently someone had poured a red fire bucket of water over one of our most disliked officers while he was sleeping. We all thought that it was very funny - he could have had a polished 5.56.mm Nato round placed on his pillow, or even more final, a hand grenade could have been tossed into his tent. However, he did not see it that way and demanded that the troep who had threatened his life step forward. Of course no-one in their right mind would step forward after being threatened with Detention Barracks etc etc, so the company did pushups for an hour, situps for an hour, leg raises, sandbag PT, pressups .... until the sun came up. I felt like this was one of C company's finest days - there were no accusations, the wise-ass comments flowed steadily and non-one cracked. Eventually the camp Kommandant came looking for us as the food prepared for brunch had not been eaten. We were allowed to clean up, eat and then assemble on the parade ground again. This time we were ready and had water bottles as it was going to be a long, hot day (we were fortunate that the night had been cool, so dehydration had not been a factor, we also didn't do any running, they probably thought that the numbers would dwindle in the dark and repeated roll-calls would eat into interrogation time), the officers announced a "vol uitpak" inspection at 4pm (this would allow them to sleep while we worked towards a brutal inspection where problems would have severe consequences) 

We also did PT every day, often it was towbar or Samil tyre PT. Six to a Samil towbar, 2 carry it at a time and run down to tar road and back to the base. It weighs 186 pounds and cuts into your shoulder, you can't run efficiently and have to "glide" to minimise bouncing as it cuts into your shoulder. Painful, can't sleep on your sides for 2 days. Sandbag PT was another favorite - there are just a lot of sandbags in operation area base - dirty and tiring as the sand seeps out of the bag and coats your perspiring body as you run and crawl in the dirt.

One of our jobs was to mine-sweep the road from Oshakati to Ondangwa, there were so many crushed coke cans (from the combination of littering and heavy vehicles pounding the dirt road) that you gave up after you had dug up 10 or so. We got to recognise the "coke" sound and concentrate on the more life threatening signals. I have to believe that we were observed by SWAPO religiously sweeping the road every day so they could find our weak spots and routines as mines were occasionally found and then triggered with a grappling hook and fifty foot of rope.