while our sister H Company, who we hardly ever saw, would be doing patrols in another part of Owamboland. This is a section of Namibia (or South West Africa, whatever you want to call it) named after the Owambo tribe who lived in the roughly 600-square-kilometre area. It is a dry and sandy area, like the rest of South West Africa, which is basically desert, but the terrain can change in a few kilometres from open sparse bush to thick bush with high brown grass that is impenetrable by man or vehicle. But always the ground beneath you is white sand. Always sand.
They said you couldn’t find a rock or stone in Owamboland, and they were right. There were no stones to be found; maybe hard-packed clod but no stones. The sand was sometimes as hard as rock and sometimes as loose as a beach, but there was always sand—hence the nickname of our base, ‘the white sands of Ondangs’. But things change in the rainy season when the dry sandy ground springs to life, as it does in Africa when the rain falls on the thirsty earth. Small flowers of every imaginable colour bloom thickly. In the place of long dead grass rises thin, new green grass and the long flat chanas and sandy areas sprout fine, thick, short green grass that gives the area the look of a well-kept lawn or a golf driving range.
Chanas , or shonas, are clearings in the dry Owamboland bush with no trees or brush. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some are long clearings hundreds of metres wide that meander through the bush like a fat dry snake for many kilometres until they fade out and blend into the bush. Others are just a wide clearing in the middle of the bush that are sometimes 400 metres and sometimes 20 metres across. These chanas are as sure as the sand—they are all over Owamboland and southern Angola.
We soon all got settled into our new home and John Delaney, John the Fox, Stander and I ended up together in a tent that was a lot closer to the crappers than we would have liked. At night when a slow breeze blew, we got the sickly smell of a full cesspool wafting through our tent flaps. Besides the unfortunate location of the tent, it was quite a cozy set-up. The tents were semi-permanent; they had a little table and chairs in the centre and four beds in the four corners. Brown mosquito nets hung from the roof of the tent and draped over each bed, giving it a snug bushveld feel, with a bit more privacy when you were lying in your bed at night. John Delaney bitched and moaned about being the one closest to the crappers but he had been the first to throw his kit on the back bed when we were assigned the tent, only realizeing his folly a couple of hours later.
“That will teach him,” smiled John Fox as he pulled his gear from his balsak , his kitbag, and packed his drawers, placing his clothes in impeccably neat squares on the first shelf and folding all his brown pants in the same way on the middle shelf. “He’s always quick to claim what he wants ... let him enjoy what he’s got this time!”
We found it amusing how Delaney tried to con and bribe his way out of his situation, to no avail.
Later that afternoon we were brought out and told how Fireforce worked. There would always be at least one platoon on standby with light kit packed for three days in the bush in case of any follow-up after contacts or hotpursuits across the border. If any infantry or any other unit made contact we would immediately be flown and dropped into the contact area or on the spoor. The platoons on Fireforce were not allowed to leave the tent area and had to keep their long pants and boots on. All we would do was lounge around the small plastic-lined swimming pool and suntan, sleep or play pool in the recreation room at the canteen until the siren wailed, signalling us to ‘kit up’ and move to the choppers in doublequick time.
Each platoon would spend a week at a time doing Fireforce. The platoons not on Fireforce would be doing foot patrols or vehicle patrols in Owamboland
They said you couldn’t find a rock or stone in Owamboland, and they were right. There were no stones to be found; maybe hard-packed clod but no stones. The sand was sometimes as hard as rock and sometimes as loose as a beach, but there was always sand—hence the nickname of our base, ‘the white sands of Ondangs’. But things change in the rainy season when the dry sandy ground springs to life, as it does in Africa when the rain falls on the thirsty earth. Small flowers of every imaginable colour bloom thickly. In the place of long dead grass rises thin, new green grass and the long flat chanas and sandy areas sprout fine, thick, short green grass that gives the area the look of a well-kept lawn or a golf driving range.
Chanas , or shonas, are clearings in the dry Owamboland bush with no trees or brush. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some are long clearings hundreds of metres wide that meander through the bush like a fat dry snake for many kilometres until they fade out and blend into the bush. Others are just a wide clearing in the middle of the bush that are sometimes 400 metres and sometimes 20 metres across. These chanas are as sure as the sand—they are all over Owamboland and southern Angola.
We soon all got settled into our new home and John Delaney, John the Fox, Stander and I ended up together in a tent that was a lot closer to the crappers than we would have liked. At night when a slow breeze blew, we got the sickly smell of a full cesspool wafting through our tent flaps. Besides the unfortunate location of the tent, it was quite a cozy set-up. The tents were semi-permanent; they had a little table and chairs in the centre and four beds in the four corners. Brown mosquito nets hung from the roof of the tent and draped over each bed, giving it a snug bushveld feel, with a bit more privacy when you were lying in your bed at night. John Delaney bitched and moaned about being the one closest to the crappers but he had been the first to throw his kit on the back bed when we were assigned the tent, only realizeing his folly a couple of hours later.
“That will teach him,” smiled John Fox as he pulled his gear from his balsak , his kitbag, and packed his drawers, placing his clothes in impeccably neat squares on the first shelf and folding all his brown pants in the same way on the middle shelf. “He’s always quick to claim what he wants ... let him enjoy what he’s got this time!”
We found it amusing how Delaney tried to con and bribe his way out of his situation, to no avail.
Later that afternoon we were brought out and told how Fireforce worked. There would always be at least one platoon on standby with light kit packed for three days in the bush in case of any follow-up after contacts or hotpursuits across the border. If any infantry or any other unit made contact we would immediately be flown and dropped into the contact area or on the spoor. The platoons on Fireforce were not allowed to leave the tent area and had to keep their long pants and boots on. All we would do was lounge around the small plastic-lined swimming pool and suntan, sleep or play pool in the recreation room at the canteen until the siren wailed, signalling us to ‘kit up’ and move to the choppers in doublequick time.
Each platoon would spend a week at a time doing Fireforce. The platoons not on Fireforce would be doing foot patrols or vehicle patrols in Owamboland
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