'Operation Savannah

 3^rd TRIP 1975/6: going into Operation Savhanna

It was the begining of November. When we saw the rows of cars at Rundu, it made us realize something was up. No one told us anything. We decided to camouflage them further with paint and sand and stuff, we were experts by now at this.  We were sent up to relieve the other half of our squadron, comprising of Ed Stone, David Katz etc.,We got angry because  we wanted to be home by Christmas, then five weeks away. 10 weeks later we were still there. SF eventually stormed an ops meeting demanding we go home.

Fortunately central Angola is very tropical and a lot of fruit grows wild. This supplemented our ration packs and if we had not had it we would have starved. Once we gathered so much fruit that we made a massive fruit salad for the 12 of us.

We were having a break and lazing around, when we saw a wooden log hanging from a tree- high up! Curious to what this was we threw stones at it, when we eventually hit the log, we found out rather swiftly that we had a beehive of very cross bees! We ran for the armoured cars, but a few of us were stung, specifically Dup who was stung above the eye. He must have been allergic to the sting since half his face swelled up and he looked like a Chinaman from the side. Operation Savhanna

At Ebo we captured a Cuban called Carlos. Carlos could speak a little English and while visiting him in hopspital, David asked him why he was fighting in Angola. Carlos replied he worked in a textile company and thought he had a job in Angola in thier textile factories. On arrival he was given a weapon and told to fight.

We were beaten at Ebo and found out after our retreat that the Cubans were ready to cede the battle.