You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: The South African Border War - Meanwhile back at the South West African Border and 32 Battalion.
I have a 32 Batallion story. I was serving with 6 SA Infantry and we were based in a platoon camp at the Okavango River crossing at Bagane (about half way between Angolan and Botswana borders) (April to June 1975). As you described we would do week long foot patrols and lots of hearts and minds meetings with local people.
On one of those foot patrols, we received radio communication to get the hell out of the omuramba we were patrolling and to withdraw to a point in arrears where we would be picked up. Apparently 32 Batallion had been dropped into the other end of the omuramba - we would have been toast.
Yup, nothing worse than friendly fire.
That would have been one hell of a "blue-on-blue" incident as the Americans call it. Good thing your people caught it on time.
Was not very often our radios were working but they did that morning. Only ever seemed to work at night.
Wow. I wonder if there's any scientific explanation for that; weather conditions or something. I seem to remember there being some early-20th-century trick for bouncing radio waves off the ionosphere to get them across really long distances.