They call me Trinity

Floats like a butterfly, stings like a bomb!

Floats like a butterfly, stings like a bomb

Those who spent time in Angola during the border war of the 1970’s and 80’s will understand this; FOXHOLE-digging in Angola was without doubt your favourite hobby, one which you ‘enjoyed’, from the day you crossed over the border into ‘Nam’ – as the country was colloquially known – until the day you returned back over the ‘Red-line’ into South West Africa/Namibia. Even the laziest sleg-gat ‘I don’t wanna be here’ slack-ass trooper would consider digging ‘foxies’ an integral part of life in ‘The Bush’, it was akin to breathing, you did it to survive.

 A foxhole is simply an open-cast pit which we dug until large enough to drop into during an artillery bombardment, or air-strike, because you didn’t really want to be running round like a blue-arsed fly seeking cover from incoming enemy fire when the bombs were landing – too late boetie! I and others did on occasion dive into the deep tracks made by our vehicles in the powder soft sand, but this would not be for lack of available fox hole, simply that there was no advance warning, thus no time, to run then 20 paces to your custom made foxhole, if the bombs are landing, the smallest piece of razor-sharp and hideously-jagged shrapnel, whizzing about at nearly supersonic speeds could tear a limb off, or worse. So the foxhole made this type of contact 99.9% safer, and it’s safe to say that most of the foxholes I dug were superfluous, surplus to requirements, however not all. Having a foxhole, being inside it during enemy bombardment, you still shit yourself, but only a direct strike on, or in very close proximity to your foxhole could cause you real problems.  Our boys knew first-hand the risks so we didn’t play musical chairs with foxholes; every man dug and owned his own pit! Any soldier running around looking for a ditch when the music stopped playing was dicing with death.

I can admit now that I wasn’t a natural born Corporal, not really the Alpha-male bawling-in-your-face type, I think I was more suited to the ‘we don’t get our hands dirty’ Officer ranks I’d originally trained for, but as I explained earlier in the story I’d kinda screwed that up. So, my year as a Corporal was a little uncomfortable, and sometimes, before we entered Angola, struggled to convey to my Troop, many of them older and all of whom were from exactly the same intake in January ‘86, what I needed them to do – some were more compliant and were happy to follow my orders, others needed a lot more convincing, perhaps they could sense my unease or perhaps they resented being told they had to do something unpleasant by a guy with no more experience than them during National Service which they didn’t particularly care for, whatever the reasons, I just really didn’t enjoy forcing the lads to do things they didn’t want to do, however foxhole digging in Angola was a completely different story, for once I had on my side one of mans greatest motivators, self-preservation! Shit, if I’d known this all along…..

During Operation Moduler we were constantly on the move and thus remained quite fit digging countless foxholes wherever we went, although senior staff probably got their lackeys to dig spares or perhaps a double, large enough to share – fair enough. If you consider that FAPLA had over 10 000 troops gathered to the North of the Lomba, SADF forces numbered around 1 000 and UNITA a further 2 000 to the South, between us we must’ve turned the landscape into something resembling a block of Swiss cheese!

Digging into the soft Angolan soil was relatively easy, the ground was loosely packed, there were very few stones, and I don’t recall encountering much thick or heavy clay-like soil. The flipside to the soft soil, as any kid will tell you after a trip to the seaside, is that the side-walls are constantly trying to undo your efforts by collapsing back into the pit almost as quickly as you and your trusty spade could shift it. Occasionally we may’ve been close to a water-pan or river so once water level was reached things got a lot more stable. Whatever the challenges, foxhole digging became something of an obsession and for some of the more ‘paraat’ (disciplined) lads vying to produce the most ergonomically engineered and strategically well-placed foxholes. Bottom line, your pit had to be accessible at a moments notice.