Day 7 - Border Tour 2009 - To 'Nam and back - A nostalgic tour of the South West African ('Nam) / Angolan War Zone of the 70's and '80's
:North of Tchipelongo we'll turn northwest until we reach the Chicusse/Cahama turn off, lager again to the south of the road and repeat the patrols, remember this is heavily mined area, both by the Angolans and SADF forces… so watch your step… just a quick reminder of what happened on this turnoff in 1983 … a canon tractor turned on the crossing to position the 5.5 canon to be able to shoot in the general direction of Cahama, should enemy action be detected… a platoon commander on a Buffel noticed that the canon tractor had lifted an anti-tank mine out of the soft ground and that the detonator was a few centimeters from the rear tyre, the projectile storage are is just above this area… his alarm brought the whole convoy to a halt … as the troopers disembarked as per laid down procedures they saw that the whole area was covered by anti-personnel mines , including jumping jacks, pom-z, buried AP mines, even coffin mines….. a perfect setup for an ambush……that was after one trooper had actually stepped on the trip wire of a pom-z…. the mine did not explode… … a careful evacuation of the area was followed up by all round defense…. the sappers took nearly a half a day to clear the area; while the force was a sitting duck throughout this operation… it just wasn't their time to die …. someone up there gave them another chance…. in the words of a high ranking SADF member Gravelroad "45 Degrees" Badenhorst "Iemand daar bo hou ons dop"... the reasons for his nicknames .... Gravelroad ... his strange deep voice due to too many cigarettes and 45 Degrees ... well the angle he always turned his head when addressing some-one.... true words.... Going south east to Xangongo should be easy … Falcon teams are active in the area to the west of the town and we'll constantly communicate with them…. would not like to be caught in friendly crossfire …. we'll then spend the night at he old missionary station … still used by Roman Catholic nuns who assist both our forces and the enemy forces…. prepare for a rowwe evening with the bats and the few pantzer guys at the base in town… we'll sleep in tents and guess what, it’s guard duty again …. tomorrow we turn south … to Oshikango … enter S.W.A. through the Santa Clara border post and then south to Etali where we'll meet the same Battle Team again for an operation in the area … this time joined by RM ("Reaksie Mag" – reaction force) teams of 201/101 Battalions, Koevoet and SAAF gunships…. gentlemen… the pub’s open … just remember stand too … reason for stand too is to be vigilant at both sunrise and sunset, adjust your vision to the changing light and at a different times of night again to be alert, should the enemy attack… the latter depends on intelligence received, history or speculation…
Santa Clara border post ('77) Trooper on Alpha tower ('77)
Alpha Tower ('77) Trooper on giant ant-hill ('77)
Navigation:
During training soldiers were taught to pay attention to nature when navigating .... shona's / sjonas run roughly in an east-west direction and ant-hills tend to point in a northerly direction ...... that's if you're in northern S.W.A. / Namibia....
Other ways of determining where you were was to look for a beacon.... beacon 1 being in the west, north of Ruacana and beacon 42 being in the east in Kavango, close to Katitwe, just north of Nkurunkuru. The water towers , starting with Alpha tower, close to Santa Clara gate and running alphabetically to the east was another way of plotting yourself.... the area being very flat, with virtually no topographical features made navigation quite difficult, even when working from aerial photographs, or even worse from the old Portuguese maps.... the problem with the latter was that the squares were 2km's by 2km's where as the squares on the South African maps represent a kilometer by a kilometer. Navigating using a compass .... well... it sounds easy, but actually not ....