Speaker 1Welcome back to South African Border Wars with me, your host, Des Latham. This is episode 31 and it's the start of Operation Randia, the twin assaults on Kasinga and Chatequera in Angola on May 4th, 1978. Colonel Jan Breitenbach was leading fighting forces on the ground at Kasinga, code-named Alpha, assisted by Commandant Dion Ferreira. Swapper's code name for Kasinga, by the way, was Moscow, so I will sometimes refer to it by that name. 17 medium transport helicopters were going to be used to airlift the paratroopers out of Kasinga after they were airdropped in. And you know by now this would be the first major airborne attack carried out by the SADF anyway. On May 2nd, the South African government of John Forster finally gave the go-ahead for Operation Randia two days before the SADF would launch its invasion. The date was calculated to follow a United Nations Security Council debate on Southwest Africa. According to government officials later, this was to avoid making things difficult for the big five Western nations who had been tacitly supporting Pretoria at the UN. The other target was Chatequera, as I mentioned, which was 30 kilometers from the cut line. Major Frank Besbier was commanding the ground forces there. The plan was for the combat group called Juliet to strike the base from the north. The mechanized force would later turn into 61 Mech, one of the SADF's most feared battle groups of the border war. So Juliet would cross the border in the mid-morning, of May 4th, and then head east of a secondary target called Dom Bondola. They would then form up north of Chatequera and attack from the north. But as we're going to hear, the SADF planners underestimated two things. One was the time it would take to overcome Kasinga defenses, and the second was the Angolan bush, which was going to cause battle group Juliet some difficulty. On the other side, SOAPA's armed wing plan had established large bases in Angola in a chain of supply routes and a network of Soviet and Cuban support. Kasinga was the prime military camp and SOAPA's headquarters in Angola, and it was what we would call a classic military base run along conventional lines with a known hierarchy of personnel, including SOAPA's regional commander, Dimu Amambo. Under him were a list of officers, NCOs, political commissars, and cadres. By January 1978, there were smaller camps scattered along the inside of the Angolan border, around 20 kilometers or more from the cut line. These were FAPLA and Cuban bases into SOAPA bases, which was an attempt at disguising them and to lend protection in the case of an attack. You'll hear how one of these at Teche Mutete, 16 kilometers south of Kasinga, was going to mobilize and fight the South Africans. At the same time, the ANC's armed wing, Mkontu Kwasizwe, was also in southern Angola by now, but they were ordered to stay out of any combat by both the MPLA and their own commanders. Later, some would spread disinformation that they committed heroic acts during the border war. By 1978, many were located in Mk bases around southern Angola, but all of these cadres ultimately failed to infiltrate South Africa. In fact, there were three mutinies by dissatisfied Mk members in Angola, two of which were violently suppressed by the Angolan authorities, and in the end, Mk's security department and FAPLA's presidential guard killed more members of Mk in Angola than the SADF did. When Namibian independence was granted in 1989, the Angolans immediately threw Mk out and ended up in Uganda. Thus, the long-term tension between South Africa's ruling party, the ANC, and the MPLA in Angola. But back to Rwanda. By the first quarter of 1978, Swapo was gearing up for a major incursion, as there were signs that the United Nations election process in southwest Africa could take place soon. Pretoria, on the other hand, wanted to weaken Swapo on the eve of these presumed elections. A number of things took place just before the attack. One was the smokescreen exercise outside of Angola. Swapo was a member of the U.N. Security Council of the United Nations. They had no idea that one of their top naval officers, called Dieter Gerhardt, based at the SA Defense Communications Center at Silvermine in the Cape, was feeding the Russians information. He was a spy. This included some details about an imminent invasion planned by the SADF. The Soviets duly passed this information on to Swapo, which then sent around 1,000 extra cadres into Kasinga. Some were housed in the town center, and some were housed in the town center. Some were housed in the tent camp you heard about last episode, just before the SADF drop. Chetukweta, to the south of Kasinga, and just over the border, was a far simpler mission, at least on paper. As you will hear, the mechanized force Juliet had issues negotiating the sand and thick Angolan bush compounded by one of the battle groups led by General Fulyun losing their way. At Kasinga, Colonel Breitenbach was taking an even bigger chance by ignoring the infantry handbook that stipulates that an attacking force should be two and a half times the size of a landing force inside a fortified position. During the training, Breitenbach had realized that extraction was the biggest issue. It would need two waves of helicopters to bring the 450 men to safety. General Fulyun had ordered that all used parachutes must be brought back from the Kasinga airdrop, which was another big problem. Parachutes and their recovery bags are heavy, and 450 of them would need half a dozen choppers alone. This was one of the reasons to create the Helicopter Command, which had been deployed to the east of Kasinga. Then, because of all these additional orders, Breitenbach had to reduce the number of paratroopers to 343. The SA Air Force would have to make up the difference in manpower using firepower, and they beefed up the initial bombing run, set for 0800 hours on the morning of the 4th. Meanwhile, the paratroopers of two and three battalions were waiting at a farm outside Bloemfontein, and at this point, some had begun to guess why they were there. Initially, May the 1st had been air marked as D-Day, because the traditional communist holiday was Workers' Day. The SA DF planners believed that Swapo would hold a big military parade at Kasinga to honour the day, and indeed, this was what was planned. By now, 450 of the paratroopers were at the Brug camp, and somehow Breitenbach needed to thin out the numbers without alerting them about possible action in Angola. Remember, by now these men, who were all civilian force paratroopers, had become sick and tired of all the training and moving around and nothing happening. When he announced that he needed volunteers to return home, a large number decided they'd had enough and wanted to go back to Savy Street. They still had no idea about the airdrop planned for them. About 100 were cheerfully sent on their way. Then the camp was sealed off, and no traffic was allowed in or out. MPs were posted at the entry and exit routes, and from now on, the men were quarantined until D-Day. They were still in the dark about the attack, being told merely they were part of Exercise Quicksilver. It was at that point that Breitenbach called them together on the parade ground. Because so many had left to go home, he had to supplement the total by including a platoon of national servicemen from one parachute battalion. Members of that battalion provided the mortar group, which the combined two and three parachute battalions lacked. Colonel Breitenbach switched off the public address system to stop anyone from recording his message. Then they lined up, and in his dry and direct style, he told the somewhat shocked paratroopers what lay in store. He said by remaining behind, they had actually volunteered for a combat drop into Angola. There was a moment of absolute silence before the paratroopers burst into raucous cheering. Moments later, a low-level fly-past of C-130s and C-160 aircraft took place. These were the planes from which they'd jump into Angola. It seems odd now that the men would welcome the chance to fight and possibly die, but remember they'd been training for weeks and there'd already been one false along. Their disappointment about all their time and effort was running high. The first clue, though, that things were going to change was when they spotted Breitenbach. The second was the construction of a large-scale model of Kasinga inside the farm shed. Every building in Kasinga was recreated, along with bunkers, trenches, administration buildings, trees, bushes, and that river a kilometer west of the town called Kulonga. It was a tributary of the Kaneni and was running fairly swiftly and was going to cause the men a great deal of trouble. The entire command structure met in the shed, and each company commander sat along the table edge representing the points on the compass where the men would land. We heard last podcast how Captain Johann Blau would land his one parachute battalion serviceman at the northern end to subdue the area and then link up with Captain Piet Boertes to form the northern line of stopper troops. Captains Gerrie Steyn and Hugo Murray sat together on the western side, where their companies A and B would form the main assault group that would sweep the camp west to east. Commandant Monty Brett sat on the east side, where his stopper groups would cut off SWAPOs seeking to escape. Captain Tommy Lamprecht sat on the southern side, along with Lieutenant Pierre Hoogh, the anti-tank platoon commander, who mined the road to stop the Cuban armor based at Tecumetete from getting to the town. For many, staring at this town criss-crossed with bunkers and trenches, it looked like a First World War fortress. Three sides were protected by these extensive defenses, while on the fourth side, the western side, there was that wide, fast-flowing Colonga River. Breitenbach then outlined the operational orders, which comprised of six main aims: First, maximum losses must be inflicted on the enemy, but their leaders were to be captured and brought out if possible. No one surrendering nor prisoners of war were to be shot in cold blood. Second, documents and useful mobile weapons were to be located and removed. Third, the base itself must be destroyed if possible. Fourth, skirmishes with Cuban and Angolan Army or Fablar Forces were to be avoided if possible. Fifth, photographs were to be taken after the attack to counter enemy allegations that this camp was anything but a military site. And sixth, women and children were to be spared in the ensuing battle. The fact that the town was going to be heavily bombed made that last point somewhat moot, but the commanders knew what this meant. There would be no arbitrary shooting of civilians by paratroopers when their blood was up. There was no formal mention of the possibility of Sapper van der Mescht being located after some reports said he was in the town's prison. Then it was time for the final training jump at Debrich, two days before D-Day. It just so happened that Colonel Breitenbach headed off to Pretoria to sort out last-minute details and Brigadier Duplessis stood in for him. The training jump was an absolute shambles. Men got lost, misplaced their companies and stopper groups missed their positions. While this information was suppressed in later SADF propaganda, it actually turned out to be ideal training for D-Day, which was also going to be pretty shambolic. Two days later, the paratroopers were flown from Bloem Spreit Air Force Base near Bloem to Grootfontein in North-Southwest Africa. Because they were being kept away from prying eyes, the men landed in the early evening on the 3rd of May and were housed in a large hangar on the airfield. The meal was steak and chips with cans of beer produced by Dankietanis, or thank-you aunties of Grootfontein. These were similar to the women's voluntary service members and were mothers, or the troops on the border, mostly. Colonel Breitenbach's book, Eagle Strike, has a great deal of detail I can't go into. We just don't have time. But the hangar had been pre-prepared for the paratroopers with their parachutes neatly laid out in their sticks, or chalks, as they were known. That was the order they'd be jumping into combat. Breitenbach outlined how these were meticulously set up by permanent force members with each main chute leaning on its reserve parachute, annotated and numbered with the paratrooper's name, position in the stick, rank, personnel number, and the main chute. They were using the notorious T-10 main parachute known as the pumpkin, which is extremely difficult to control and would make some of the paratroopers' lives miserable as they drifted towards the river trying to turn their pumpkins away. This was going to cause more of an issue than the anti-aircraft guns intelligence had mistakenly thought were absent from Kasinga. At around 4.30am on May 4th, the paratroopers marched out of the hangar in the chill of early morning winter. It was first in, last out as they lined up to climb aboard the nine large transport aircraft. Although there was only a slight step up to the ramps, the men found it difficult carrying 40 to 60 kilograms of material. Their main parachute, plus the reserve chute, clipped to tight harnesses, battle paraphernalia hanging from the webbing, pockets packed. They carried between 11 and 20 magazines of 7.62 ammunition, a few carried 100 round belts of light machine gun ammo, handfuls of M26 grenades, and phosphorus grenades. These were going to come in handy clearing the bunkers and trenches. Others carried medic kits loaded with saline drips, while some had clusters of 60mm mortar bombs dangling from their belts. Then there were bottles of water and the R1 rifles. This was before the lighter 5.56mm R4s and 5s the parabats used later. The anti-tank platoon carried number 8 cheese mines, as they were called, and everyone packed emergency rations. Rifleman Mac William had thought ahead and he actually strapped a six-pack of beers in a wet sandbag, the bush fridge as it's known, along with 10 packets of cigarettes. I'm using some of his comments in a book that he published called "Battle for Kasinga" and he explained that he was just making sure that he'd been prepared for a long retreat should the extraction fail. Something happened to Mac William then that he could not shake off. A paratrooper called Skili Humon, who was married with a young daughter, appeared agitated. Humon had a premonition that he was going to die at Kasinga. After a long chat with the company commander, Humon returned to his platoon and others commented that this was completely out of character. Unlike most of the paratroopers around him, he'd actually had a great deal of fire force experience and was always fighting from the front. I'll return to what we think happened to Humon next episode because he was going to disappear. Captain Steyn, who commanded A company, hauled out a dog-eared copy of Shakespeare's Henry V and proceeded to read Henry's speech, before the Battle of Agincourt. He that outlives this day and comes home safe will stand a-tiptoe when this day is named, and rouse him at the name of Crispian, that he shall live this day and see old age, will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors, and say, "Tomorrow is St. Crispian." Then he will strip his sleeve and show his scars, and say, "These wounds I had on Crispian's day." This story shall the good man teach his son, and Crisp and Crispian shall ne'er go by. From this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remembered. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, for he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother. These remarkable words from Shakespeare continue to echo down the ages, used in movies, one of course called Band of Brothers, but on that day the words were read at Grootfontein in A Bomberland. It was not St. Crispian's Day. It was Thursday, the 4th of May, 1978, Ascension Day. Another irony of war here, the parachutists were going to descend on a day dedicated to ascending. At 05:19, four Canberra bombers took off from Watercliff Air Force Base in Pretoria, heading towards Rundu in the eastern-southwest Africa. From there, they turned northwesterly towards Kasinga. They were to approach Kasinga from the north at below 500 feet, and each would drop 300 alpha bombs, then remain low and head to the cut-line before climbing to cruising altitude, heading back to Grootfontein to refuel. Alpha bombs are around 25 centimeters wide, spherical with outer steel walls, and they are anti-personnel devices. The inner rubber linings and cavities are filled with explosives and shrapnel. Each bomb arms itself by bouncing off a hard surface. Then around head height, they explode, scattering shrapnel for a considerable distance. 1,200 of these were going to land at Kasinga, mostly concentrated in the center of town around the parade ground. At 05:43, four buccaneers took off from Watercliff. One was armed with 72 68-millimeter Sneb unguided rockets and needed to land at Grootfontein to refuel. That would be on standby for close air-to-ground support if required. The others carried eight 1,000-pound bombs in the wings and in their bomb bays. They'd also fly low over the target and bomb the town behind the campers. Commandant Simon van Gaarderen explained to Breitenbach how the plan was to use a carpet-bombing technique, which meant the bombs would fall in a line from north to south. They'd also depart at low altitude and then head back to Grootfontein. Breitenbach was a little shocked by the attitude of the flyboy. Van Gaarderen said all Breitenbach's men would have to do is survive the airdrop and then count the bodies. To kill enemy soldiers in the heat of battle is acceptable, but to gloat over mutilated carcasses afterwards was the most sickening prospect I was not going to force on my troops, Breitenbach wrote later. That counting would be up to the intelligence. A DC-4 carrying what was known as an airborne brush station would intercept enemy radio traffic, and Spanish-speaking Chileans had been specially recruited to listen out for Cuban pilots. That would be the SADF's early warning system should the MiG-19s and 21s scramble. A much smaller aircraft, a single-engined Cessna, would take off from Undangua with Commandant Archie Moore on board, which would circle overhead Kasinga to assist with the regrouping of the Parabats, the phase 2 of the mission. So at 0600 the paratrooper task force left Grootventijn for Kasinga. Four Hercules C-130s and five Transall C-160s flew extremely low to avoid enemy radar. Then two C-130s carrying the reserve force, which was to fly along the cut line as the battle commenced, swung away. They'd be in the air during the attack on Kasinga and respond to requests for reinforcements should any request arrive. On the move, including one of the ANC's Encontre Reciproque Commanders, Captain Joseph Corbo, who had been based in Kasinga for some time before the attack. His views about what would happen next are crucial. Captain Corbo was posted to Kasinga by MK to take charge of logistics support in the field and was working closely with SWAPO in the town. He wants to stock up the main base at Kasinga and then move the logistics forward to the operational bases closer to the south, near the cut line. He controlled the movement of goods hundreds of kilometers from railheads, using vehicles, and carriers on foot, to make it to the forward supply dumps and, as I said, he was working closely with both SWAPO and the Angolans. From there Corbo sent food, ammunition and other goods via cattle and game trails into northern Ovambo land, where they'd be hidden in arms caches. It was SWAPO's Ho Chi Minh trail. The increased deployment of ANC-MK fighters embedded with SWAPO and even FAPLA at times was not disputed, and it was this deployment that would lead to the mutinies I mentioned. The ANC's counterintelligence organization known as Mbokodo, the Rock That Crushes, was feared by these fighters because of what they alleged was arbitrary execution and punishment meted out at times. Take place later at MK's notorious Quattro Punishment Camp near Luanda increased their Remember, in a war, no one gets out smelling of roses, as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission revealed in 1994. So now we must prepare to jump, and we've run out of time. Next episode, I'll deal with the bombing runs and the assault on Kasinga, which did not start well. I'd also like to say a big thank you to Geri, who's provided excellent background information, and Johan, who runs the remarkable website warinangola.com. He's placed links to my podcast there very kindly. Thank you so much, Johan. As we go through the Border Wars series, please do head off to warinangola.com for Johan's maps, which are so important in order to fully understand the complexity of some of these battles. Please rate the podcast on your platform of choice. It helps increase the visibility of our story. You can also direct message me on Twitter, at Des Latham. Until next, Karanawa. Transcription by ESO. Translation by —
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