1 Recce. Alexander Strachan

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СКАЧАТЬ such an offer. As a bonus, it would mean he could leave Pretoria to move to a more affordable environment.

      Back in Oudtshoorn, More reported to Breytenbach that he had identified the ideal candidate to become their admin officer. Breytenbach immediately called Gen. Willem Louw (his old friend since parachuting days) to arrange the transfer. The next thing Kinghorn heard, he was summoned by Louw who told him to ‘pack his bags and go to Oudtshoorn’.

      Kinghorn was well acquainted with the Oudtshoorn area – as a young officer he had done courses there at 1 South African Infantry Battalion (1 SAI) – and seized the opportunity with both hands. Besides, he had known Breytenbach and company since the days they had come to Pretoria to request Sabre vehicles to be used during Operation Da Gama. In March 1973, Kinghorn became 1 RC’s adjutant.

      Because the group had lacked an adjutant up to that point, these tasks were performed by Dan Lamprecht and More. When Kinghorn arrived, Breytenbach was in the Caprivi, setting up Fort Doppies. Kinghorn immediately took the role of adjutant onto his shoulders and also took care of an array of other tasks. He was assisted by Hoppie Fourie. Hoppie was a former paratrooper, but had become the storeman after falling out of favour with Breytenbach. Malcolm and Hoppie got the unit’s administration up and running – Hoppie in his stores depot and Kinghorn in a small room right opposite him.

      Kinghorn realised there was only one way to gain his colleagues’ full acceptance: he had to voluntarily undergo the Special Forces’ entire training cycle. He did so, and succeeded in meeting the requirements of a Recce operator. His training started in 1974 with the diving course in Simon’s Town. All the members of the Oudtshoorn group tackled the diving course at some or other point. Some suffered badly from claustrophobia, however, and were unable to pass the course. But they were still employed with great success in many other capacities.

      The group often went diving together in the Mossel Bay area. One day while they were taking a break at the Pavilion on Santos Beach, two men came racing up in a rubber duck. The two were part of a team who were in the process of culling seals – in those days it was still allowed. Their nets had got caught on the rocks, and they needed assistance to extricate them. So Koos, More and Kenaas went along to lend a hand.

      They quickly managed to free the nets. When the younger man asked how he could compensate them, Koos asked them to catch him a live seal cub. He had seen in the circus how cute such a baby seal could be and now wanted a seal of his own.

      The young man then caught a baby seal and presented it to Koos. The cub tried to bite, but with a struggle they managed to shove the wriggling animal into the diving bag. By that time they had been gone for two hours, and Breytenbach’s patience was wearing thin.

      ‘Where the hell have you been the whole time?’ he asked angrily. But when Koos produced the cub from the diving bag, Breytenbach’s mood changed and he was chuffed with the new ‘find’. The seal would be the Recces’ mascot, he declared, and fittingly baptised the cub Klein-Koos (Little Koos).

      By ten o’clock that evening they had finished with the exercise and headed back to Oudtshoorn with Klein-Koos. It was only then that they started wondering what they were going to do with the seal. Koos suggested that they put him inside the enclosure at the fish pond of the non-commissioned officers’ mess.

      The next morning, the Command was in a state of commotion. Feathers lay strewn around, the ducks were dead, and not a single live fish was left in the pond. The RSM was frantically looking for the persons who had caused the havoc. Moreover, the Recces discovered that Klein-Koos was missing. They went searching for him surreptitiously up and down the streets of Oudtshoorn, but with no luck; there was no sign of the seal.

      The same night they had arrived at the base with the seal, a national serviceman happened to be returning from pass at midnight. He walked into the base unsuspectingly, was gobsmacked by what he saw, and rushed to the sergeant on duty. ‘Sergeant, I’ve just seen a seal walking out of the gate!’ he announced. The sergeant was so annoyed with the cheeky troop that he decided on the spot to arrest him for drunkenness.

      Koos and the rest now knew that Klein-Koos was definitely outside the base, but still they could not find any trace of him. Then they came across a clue in Oudtshoorn’s local newspaper: ‘Cape fur seal found in Oudtshoorn!’ the paper reported. A housewife had found the seal among the milk bottles on her stoep as she opened her front door. The protesting seal had been wrapped in a wet blanket and released into the sea at Herold’s Bay. The incident had also been reported to the SPCA, and this organisation was urgently in search of the culprits who had removed the seal from its natural habitat. Thus Klein-Koos had found his way back to the sea via a strange detour, and the Recces were without a mascot.

      There were often pets of some kind or other 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 СКАЧАТЬ