Episode 78 – Operation “foreskin” and 32 runs into a SWAPO firestorm

South African Border Wars

We’re traveling with 32 Battalion’s Echo and Golf companies which had entered Angola and were deployed in pseudo-operations – something called Operation Forte was on the go in 1984.
When we left off, the convoy of vehicles had headed directly north and were heading towards Savate about 50km into Angola.
Colonel Eddie Viljoen led this unusual operation. It was early September 1984 and after crossing the cutline, the convoy stopped north of Katwitwi on the road to Savate.
At first light the following day, Sergeant Nortje climbed aboard a Buffel with 4 soldiers and drove off to a UNITA base 15 kilometers away to pick up a guide. But UNITA gave the sergeant a less than cordial welcome. They were detained as UNITA guards could not believe that they weren’t FAPLA because the South Africans had arrived from the north.
In early November the leader group was summoned to Eddie Viljoen’s tent.
The time had come he said, to be circumcised.
And just to show true leadership, Viljoen said he’d go under the knife first. A special Forces doctor Lieutenant Piet Coetzee was to carry out the surgery – the first on a South African soldier almost 200 kilometers inside enemy territory.
On the 11th February, a platoon from 32’s Charlie Company was involved in a routine patrol near the Bale River when things went very badly wrong. The company had been warned to make a detour around the area where Echo company had been hit by rocket fire, but the platoon leadership decided to take a short cut.
They marched straight into one of the better protected SWAPO bases on the entire cutline. And they were hopelessly outnumbered.