1 Recce, volume 3: Through Stealth our Strength

By Alexander Strachan

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 the last book of the nail-biting trilogy about 1 Recce, the award-winning author Alexander Strachan, himself an ex-Recce, reveals more on the Recces’ involvement there.
Packed with suspense, adrenaline, high drama and unforgettable accounts by ex-Recces who experienced these adventures personally.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tafelberg
• Release date: Mar 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9780624088837

Alexander Strachan

Alexander Strachan is op 9 Junie 1955 in die distrik Ladysmith in KwaZulu-Natal gebore. Hy matrikuleer in 1972 aan die Hoër Landbouskool Tweespruit. Ná studie in tale aan die Universiteit van die Oranje-Vrystaat (en later in literatuur-wetenskap aan Unisa) word hy professor in Zoeloe aan die Universiteit van Zoeloeland. Ná sy bedanking skryf hy voltyds en sit sy wildboerdery voort. Alexander is ’n vlot Zoeloespreker en hou hom deeltyds besig met industriële teater wat hy volledig via die medium van die inheemse tale aanbied. Alexander se debuutbundel kortverhale, ’n Wêreld sonder grense (1984), is met die Eugène Marais-prys bekroon. ’n Wêreld sonder grense maak saam met die werk van ander skrywers (soos JC Steyn, Etienne van Heerden en Koos Prinsloo) deel uit van grensliteratuur. Daarna verskyn die romans Die jakkalsjagter (1990) en Die werfbobbejaan (1994). Hiermee wen hy De Kat en Antenne se Groot Romanwedstryd, en vir laasgenoemde word hy bekroon met die WA Hofmeyr-prys. Met sy derde roman, Dwaalpoort (2010), wen hy wéér die W.A. Hofmeyr-prys. In 2015 verskyn sy mees onlangse werk, Brandwaterkom.

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9780624089810_FC

Alexander Strachan

1 RECCE

THROUGH STEALTH OUR STRENGTH

Tafelberg

Dedicated to

Maj. Gen. Frederich Wilhelm Loots SSA SD SM

Author’s note

1 Recce: Through Stealth our Strength is the third and final book in the trilogy about 1 Recce. Like the two previous volumes, it is a narrative of the weal and woe of the people of this exceptional unit. It deals with the period stretching from 1981 to 1996, when the unit was disbanded. The three books therefore follow on one another chronologically. The first book, 1 Recce: The Night Belongs to Us, tells the story of the formation and establishment of this specialist unit and of a few early operations. 1 Recce (volume 2): Behind Enemy Lines covers the period from 1977 to 1981. It starts off with the search for Dr Jonas Savimbi and describes military operations in the then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and in Angola.

Only a handful of the many operations in which 1 Recce was involved could be dealt with in the trilogy. Nonetheless, these first-hand accounts and recollections give the reader a very good impression of what the day-to-day life of a Recce entailed.

1 Recce: Through Stealth our Strength kicks off with Operation Kerslig, a high-profile seaborne operation that took place nearly 3 000 km from Langebaan, in the heart of Luanda. This was a complicated raid on an oil refinery in the city’s harbour – a mission marked by dramatic incidents the Recces could not have foreseen.

In chapter 2 – about the Recces’ reorganisation – the reader gains further insight into the development of this formidable unit. It contains anecdotes about, among other things, the establishment of their own bar in the living quarters and the ensuing antics, as well as the origins of the proficiency badge for operators.

In another of the Recces’ regular raiding missions, Operation Katiso, the fuel supply lines from Beira to Zimbabwe had to be disrupted. Although it was a seaborne operation, the operators had to overcome several obstacles on land as they made their way to and from the target – including a riverbank with a mangrove swamp they had to cross. Their progress was hampered considerably by the stinking mud that sucked them in. Moreover, the men were tormented by swarms of mosquitoes as they laboriously hauled themselves forward.

To familiarise themselves with the environment in which they were due to carry out an operation, the Recces would usually rehearse for it beforehand in similar conditions. In Operation Equator (in which they had to sabotage railway locomotives and the shunting yard in the coastal city of Lobito), the plan was for them to move through sugar-cane fields to reach the target. Hence, part of the rehearsals took place in the sugar-cane plantations near Empangeni in Zululand.

The account of Operation Sea Warrior offers the reader insight into a deep-penetration operation with a deployment period of at least three months. The target area was in central Angola, where they had to disrupt rail transport while simultaneously training the Unita guerrilla forces. The Recces’ six-man team collaborated with Unita teams – who gave a very good account of themselves – in sabotaging the trains and railway lines. Among the features that made this deployment stand out was the effective cooperation with Unita. On their return after three months, the members of the Recce team were almost unrecognisable with their long hair and beards.

Shooting down aircraft was high on the Recces’ agenda. This was a particularly complicated and technical task that required specific skills on the part of the operators as problems tended to crop up with the launching of surface-to-air missiles. In the chapter on Operation Sea Warrior 2, the reader is given a penetrating view of operations of this nature.

Escape-and-evasion techniques constituted a vital part of the operators’ training. The chapter on Operation Gwarri tells how a reconnaissance team that was discovered by the enemy managed to survive by applying these techniques. Seldom in history have two operators been hunted so relentlessly by an enemy force. Driven by their strong survival instinct and their experience, the two men used every technique at their disposal to avoid falling into enemy hands. Their superhuman effort exemplifies how an operator would continue dragging himself along through the bush despite having reached the end of his strength.

‘Halt the advance on Jamba!’ – the battles around Cuito Cuanavale – is to an extent the culmination of the book, and much of the narrative is devoted to these events. A mechanised force and artillery were employed conventionally, but here the emphasis falls on the Recces as the eyes and ears of the combat groups’ commanders. For months they were deployed between the South African and the enemy forces in observation posts from where they could surveil the enemy from close up and give fire control orders over the radio. Disguised in Fapla uniforms and carrying foreign weapons, the Recce teams concealed themselves so well in the bush that it was even feared the South African mechanised advance might drive over them when attacking a Fapla brigade. With their clothing reduced to rags, in time they were virtually unidentifiable to any outsider.

The book concludes with an account of the last Recce who died in a firefight and the eventual disbandment of 1 Recce in 1996.

In all the operations referred to, the Recces’ objective was first and foremost to be invisible to the enemy. They avoided contact and relied on stealth to carry out their various tasks undetected. The subtitle of this book is derived from 1 Recce’s motto ‘Through stealth our strength’.

ALEXANDER STRACHAN

Glossary

CHAPTER 1

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 20 m 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 30 m 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. These included, among others, the fuel storage depots in Lobito and Moçâmedes (known as Namibe between 1985 and 2016), as well as the oil refineries in Luanda and Cabinda.

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.²

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 23 mm anti-aircraft battery about 500 m 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.

On the conclusion of the feasibility study, Col. Ewald Olckers, the OC 1 Reconnaissance Regiment, informed Loots that the operation could be executed provided that the EEIs (essential elements of information) could be confirmed. For this reason, it was recommended that a close-in reconnaissance be conducted by 1 Recce. Loots submitted the recommendations to the Chief of the Defence Force, Gen. Constand Viljoen. Viljoen ordered that the operation be planned and executed by the end of November 1981. The precondition was still that the EEIs had to be confirmed.

Against this backdrop, Operation Kerslig was officially registered, with D-day on 29 November 1981 – which fell in the dark-moon period.

1 Recce was tasked with conducting the operation and the initial close-in recce. 4 Recce would provide the boats with their crews, as well as the reconnaissance swimmers who had to reconnoitre the beach-landing points. Loots was in overall command, and the designated new GOC Special Forces Brig. AJ (Kat) Liebenberg (he took over the command from Loots in January 1982 and was promoted to major general) would accompany the force as an observer aboard the strike craft SAS Oswald Pirow. Liebenberg would go along in order to gain exposure to Special Forces operations, specifically seaborne operations, which were foreign to him.

The SSO Ops Navy at the Special Forces HQ, Capt. (Navy) Woody Woodburne, was the operation commander on board the SAS Oswald Pirow, where his tactical headquarters (Tac HQ) would be. Cdr. Arnè Söderlund was the commander of the naval task force and captain of the SAS Oswald Pirow. The SA Navy also provided a second strike craft, the SAS Jim Fouché with Cdr. Fanie Uys as captain, and a support vessel, the hydrographic vessel SAS Protea, captained by Capt. Bob Pieters.

The South African Air Force (SAAF) was tasked with providing a C-130- or C-160 aircraft to serve as Telstar (an aircraft deployed for communications purposes during operations) in case escape and evasion by the ground force should become necessary, as well as a Wasp helicopter that had to be on board SAS Protea. The Detachment Medical Special Operations (known as 7 Medical Battalion Group since 1987) was tasked with deploying a surgical team with their equipment on board the SAS Protea in case there should be serious injuries, as well as two doctors on each strike craft.

The reconnaissance and the raid were to be executed in a combined operation on account of the great distance – Luanda is 1 500 nautical miles (2 778 km) from Langebaan. The two strike craft, with Capt. Woodburne, Brig. Liebenberg and the reconnaissance team aboard the SAS Oswald Pirow, would sail to the target area for the reconnaissance. The mission commander, Cmdt. André Bestbier, the Officer Commanding 1.1 Commando at 1 Recce, and the raiding group would then follow a few days later on the SAS Protea. After the reconnaissance, the two strike craft would join up with the SAS Protea west of Luanda. Capt. Woodburne, Brig. Liebenberg and the reconnaissance team would then be transferred to the SAS Protea for an intelligence debriefing by the reconnaissance team. If necessary, replanning could be done at that stage. At the same time, the two strike craft would be refuelled and revictualed.

The plan was that on D-day Capt. Woodburne, Brig. Liebenberg and Cmdt. Bestbier, together with the raiding group, would sail to Luanda with the two strike craft while the SAS Protea remained in a holding area west of Luanda. If the reconnaissance team could not confirm all the EEIs or believed that the operation could not be executed successfully, or if the plan had to be changed radically – which would necessitate further training – Woodburne was to call off the operation and the force would return to Langebaan.

The draft plan was approved, and 1 Recce and 4 Recce embarked on detailed planning in their respective units. Everything was coordinated by the operation commander, Capt. Woodburne. Bestbier and the raiding group commander, Capt. Douw Steyn from 1 Recce, and the team leaders spent hours in the planning room, where maps and all other available documents and intelligence reports were studied in detail.

The operators knew something was brewing but had no idea of what or where. Sgt. Roy Vermaak, too, noticed the activities: ‘The first floor of the HQ Building at 1 Recce was the ops floor, belonging to 1.1 Commando [called the Commando]. In the HQ wing of the Commando the ops memorabilia of the Commando were proudly displayed, ranging from downed-aircraft parts and spent SAM-7 missiles to campaign shields, as well as proud operational photos, in the well-secured ops room across from the OC’s office. The leader cadre would be in and out of the ops room and we other ranks knew the very distinct and highly developed SADF operational sequence had started in all earnest.’

The meticulously worked-out plan was submitted for approval to Maj. Gen. Loots and the respective chiefs of the Defence Force, the Air Force and the Navy. Gen. Viljoen had a few questions and then authorised it.

Training now started in all earnest. There were daily PT sessions to make the already superfit Recces even fitter. They went on extended runs along the beach and in knee-deep water, did route marches in full combat kit with heavily laden backpacks, as well as strenuous swimming exercises in the swimming pool at the Durban naval base. The operators were excited because something was afoot.

Day and night they rehearsed infiltration techniques, obstacle crossing over abutments, walls and wire fences, contact drills, medical procedures and evacuation of casualties – a 16-hour working day. Everyone knew exactly what was expected of him. The teams also practised over and over how to place limpet mines on fuel tanks. These were the same type of limpet mine that had to been used in Operation Amazon, but this time with new time-delay mechanisms that included an anti-lift device. The mines had been developed by EMLC (a highly specialised and secret engineering company that supplied special equipment to Special Forces).³

The team leaders visited the oil refinery in Durban to acquaint themselves with the typical layout and functioning of such installations. Meanwhile WO1 Peet (Pote) Coetzee, 1 Recce’s aerial-photograph interpreter, had built a very accurate scale model of the target. The operators also built mock-ups of the target at the old whaling station on the Bluff. But they still did not know where and what the target was. 1 Recce’s counterintelligence officer took great pains to maintain OPSEC (operational security) to the letter. Lists were compiled of the names of all those who had knowledge of the operation. He also made sure that documents were kept under lock and key and that no one except the leader element had access to the planning room.

At night the teams practised attacking large electric substations in the vicinity of Durban. They conducted close-in recces, determined access routes, studied lighting and monitored their readiness in order to identify weaknesses. Cpl. Piet (Vaatjie) van Zyl recalls an incident during one such rehearsal: ‘There were