A War Story Poem by Gert Strydom

There’s a story that have being told
(and I do not know if there is truth to it) ,
that after the slaughtering
of the 47th FAPLA / Cuban brigade at the intersection
of the Lomba and Cuzizi Rivers in Angola,

the mauling of several brigades on the way
to Cuito Cuanavale and the destruction
of that military airfield, the loss of many soldiers,
the destruction of nine Mig fighters
and the loss of huge amounts of Soviet equipment

Fidel Castro was very angry and in a terrible rage
brought his Cuban soldiers in Angola
up to fifty thousand, sent four hundred tanks
and his best pilots to Angola,
after the South African forces had withdrawn

which resulted in the Mig-23 attack
on the Calueque dam
in South West Africa (now Namibia) ,
where a Buffel troop carrier was lost
along with some South African soldiers.

According to the story in vengeance
a team of elite South African
Reconnaissance Commandos
was HALO dropped equipped with
the Fim-92 Stinger anti-aircraft systems

that UNITA had supplied to them,
along with some other weapons and equipment
that these special force soldiers do normally carry
to shoot down MIG-23’s
and Hind attack helicopters

that was putting UNITA under attack
and it has been told that they were dropped
near to an enemy airbase under the nose
of the large Russian aircraft that was scanning
the air for any approaching enemy activities

where they shot down
several fighter jets and attack helicopters,
but that the section-leader
left one pilot to fly off after seeing him
making a cross, begging God for mercy.

The Reconnaissance Commandos managed to withdraw,
were extracted at the allocated extraction point
without any further incident with either FAPLA
or any Cuban enemy units
but the story gets much more interesting.

It is told that while that Recce section-leader
was holidaying in the United States
he took a taxicab from the airport to his hotel,
where the driver (a former Cuban pilot) recognized him
and that he had left Cuba as a refugee.