The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale has been a source of fierce contestation and emotion for decades, but up to now little was known about the Recces’ presence and impact during this controversial battle.
In 1 Recce: Through Stealth our Strength, the award-winning author Alexander Strachan, himself an ex-Recce, reveals more on the Recces’ involvement there.
In this final book of the nail-biting trilogy, Strachan takes the reader along on night-time seaward operations into the heart of Luanda, through swamps in Mozambique filled with stinking mud that sucked one in, and ultimately into the final battle of the Border War.
Driven by their strong will to survive and excellent training, the Recces harnessed every possible tactic to avoid falling into the hands of the enemy. At times there were hairbreadth escapes. Sometimes there were victories, but often also painful losses.
Packed with suspense, adrenaline and unforgettable accounts by ex- Recces who experienced these adventures at first hand.
About the author
Alexander Strachan is an award-winning author. He received the Eugène Marais prize for his first book, ’n Wêreld sonder grense. His debut novel, Die Jakkalsjagter, brought him the De Kat/Potpourri prize. This was followed by Die Werfbobbejaan, Agter die suikergordyn, Dwaalpoort and Brandwaterkom, for which he received the kykNET-Rapport prize.
Extract
Operation Kerslig
Blazing inferno in the heart of Luanda The reconnaissance team move stealthily in the direction of the refinery in Luanda’s harbour. Soon the two men find themselves among buildings that did not appear on the old aerial photos and maps they had studied beforehand. With first light fast approaching, Jack Greeff fears they won’t reach their planned hide before dawn. They decide to move from one shadowy patch to another through the built-up area. The available night-time is running out, and they follow a rusted wire fence to where they can spot sparsely scattered bushes.
Along the way, Greeff notices dark objects in front of them, and when he looks with his night-vision goggles, he sees to his shock that the fence surrounds a large vehicle park. The duo realise that they are in the middle of a military area. They are hemmed in between the vehicle park east of them and the cliff face and the sea on their western side. They reach the sparse bushes and find a sufficiently spacious hide site with a small tree in the centre.
Despite its meagre leaf cover, it can be used as an observation post. The bushes around them reek of human excrement, but there is not enough night-time left to search for a better lying-up position for the day ahead.
Sam Fourie makes himself comfortable near the base of the tree and camouflages their backpacks thoroughly with leaves and grass. Greeff climbs the tree to scan the area better. He leaves his camouflaged Uzi submachine gun against the trunk. Everywhere he sees military vehicles, and even a T-55 battle tank some 20m from their hide. With the advent of first light Luanda wakes up, and the team hear traffic noises and harbour sounds around them.
From his seat in the tree, Greeff suddenly hears the word ‘capitán’ (captain in Spanish) clearly to their right. ‘I slowly turned my head and looked down at two camouflage-clad Cuban soldiers coming straight at us, about 30m away. I was stunned and realised that should I move; they would no doubt see me. I was trapped in a tree with almost no leaf cover and a mere fifteen feet above the ground.’ Greeff drops his right hand slowly to the bleeper on his left upper arm, bleeps a few times to warn Sam and remains dead quiet. He has no idea what Sam is doing below him.
‘The two Cubans came up to the bush talking loudly and in a jubilant mood. The one came into view in the bottom corner of my right eye, and I saw him undoing the zip of his fly, when he disappeared out of view. I was expecting to hear the muffled shots of Sam’s silenced Uzi at any time, whereupon I would leap from the tree onto the Cuban still alive. I dare not move. Where the hell is Sam and why did he not take them out?’
After what feels to Greeff like an hour, a horn honks somewhere and the two Cubans trot back to the vehicle. Once they are out of sight, he climbs down from the tree to where a wide-eyed Fourie is sitting. ‘He pissed on my foot and looked me straight in the eyes,’ he says indignantly. Fourie and their kit were so well camouflaged that the unsuspecting Cubans failed to notice him.
* * *
The lead-up to Greeff and Fourie’s recce had started in mid-1981 when the General Officer Commanding (GOC) Special Forces, Maj Gen Fritz Loots, instructed that a feasibility study be done into attacking and destroying the Petrangol refinery in Luanda.
The refinery covered a fairly large area on a low plateau just north of Luanda’s harbour.
The Recces had already notched up previous successes with similar operations aimed at disrupting the operations of the Angolan, Cuban and Swapo forces in southern Angola. The destruction of the fuel storage installations in Lobito’s harbour (in Operation Amazon)1 a year earlier, for instance, had had a significant impact on the enemy’s fuel supply. There was no big fuel storage facility in Lubango, capital of the Cunene province, or in Menongue in the Cuando Cubango province. Hence, the Angolans had to transport fuel by road to the south of Angola, which was a huge logistics problem.
As far back as 1977 Cmdt Jakes Swart, the then Officer Commanding (OC) 1 Recce, had instructed Maj Hannes Venter and the intelligence officer Lt Coen Vlietstra to do a feasibility study into the disruption of the enemy’s logistic routes in the Cunene and Cuando Cubango provinces. Venter and Vlietstra identified targets of strategic importance at that stage.
Among other things, this led to Operation Backlash in October 1979 in which operators from 1 Recce sabotaged a bridge and a section of the road surface in the Serra da Leba mountain pass as well as the Humbia rail tunnel to the north of the pass.
Venter and Vlietstra had also identified enemy logistic air routes, and in November 1980 teams from 1 Recce shot down two Antonov An-26 transport aircraft and two Mi-8 helicopters during Operation Agony.
The next target was Petrangol’s refinery in Luanda, which produced petrol, diesel, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and jet fuel.
A Belgian company, Petrofina SA, was a co-shareholder and ran the refinery. Most of the products were for internal consumption, with very little exported. Since the war effort in southern Angola depended on these products, the refinery in Luanda was a target of major strategic importance.
Hardly any intelligence was available, and 1 Recce had to rely on a variety of sources to gather information. Old maps, newspaper and magazine articles, and any other information the intelligence officers could lay their hands on were studied. They also got hold of an old black-and-white video about the harbour and the area further north. It proved to be of great help because the envisaged beach-landing site was clearly visible in the video.
During the feasibility study they had to identify, among other things, beach-landing sites for 4 Recce’s boats, potential access routes to and from the target, the layout of the target, and how it was guarded. SSgt Jack Greeff was also tasked with doing a feasibility study to determine whether a close-in recce of the target was possible. A more complete picture of the refinery and the immediate surroundings started to emerge. There were about 50 storage tanks for the various petroleum products, as well as two large round LPG tanks, three distillation towers and a refining installation. On the one side the installation was flanked by a huge squatter camp and on the other by an industrial area. To the west, in the direction of the sea, there was open, broken terrain with a surface consisting of loose sand and scattered rocky outcrops. There were bushes and shrubs dotted around that offered little cover against visual detection and fire. The slope down to the shore was very steep, with vertical soil formations stretching up to the top of the plateau. The typical Karoo vegetation here provided limited cover. From the top of the plateau the beach below was clearly visible, with one or two places that were possibly suitable for beach landings.
Southwest of the refinery was the Lagostas Point lighthouse, which could be used as a navigational aid. There were military deployments in the vicinity, including a 23mm anti-aircraft battery about 500m northwest of the refinery, and also a police post located just south of it. Security guards and possibly also Fapla troops guarded the installation. All in all, it was by no means an easy target.