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

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. <br /> When we left off, the convoy of vehicles had headed directly north and were heading towards Savate about 50km into Angola. <br /> 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. <br /> 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. <br /> In early November the leader group was summoned to Eddie Viljoen’s tent. <br /> The time had come he said, to be circumcised. <br /> 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. <br /> 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. <br /> They marched straight into one of the better protected SWAPO bases on the entire cutline. And they were hopelessly outnumbered.