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Interview with Major Peter Schofield by Mike Cadman 21/08/07

Reconnaissance Regiment - Project Missing Voices

TAPE ONE SIDE A

Interviewer I’m sitting with you here just outside Barkley West. Tell me a bit about your background before you joined the South African Defence Force in the mid seventies.

Peter I was born in December 1937 in Leeds, Yorkshire. I was brought up by my grandparents for various reasons. It wasn’t a particularly happy relationship. The war started, there was a lot going on around me, particularly of military influence, and I early determined that I wanted out of that domestic situation. The only way that I could…I was sent to private boarding school. I was looked after and educated in a proper and gentlemanly manner and all that, but I wanted out from under the influence of my grandparents. And the only way I could think of doing it at the age of 15 was either running away to sea or something equally dramatic. Then I discovered that I didn’t have to run away to sea because at the age of 15 in those days you could join the services. I only ever considered the navy at that stage and I applied to the navy without the knowledge of my grandparents and was accepted for an interview. My grandfather did his tank but realised that being strong headed as I was that there wasn’t going to be any deflecting me and so as I was looking at a technical training he went along with it and took me down for an interview in, I think, Portsmith. It was a 3 day interview and they decided that I had the aptitude to be trained as a technical person, as an (inaudible) as we were then called. We were the artisans of the Royal Navy and in March of 1953 I joined HMS (check) My naval training was 4 years. 2 years as an apprentice, but during that time I was selected as a candidate officer and passed the selection course for the Royal Naval College Dartmouth. I was a member of the first 17 year old entry into Dartmouth. Prior to that it had been 15 year olds, but I was a member of the first 17 year old intake, and so I joined Dartmouth, I think, in March of 1955 as a cadet engineer. I had a year and a half very happy period at Royal Naval College and I became a midshipman engineer, but during that time the realisation came upon me, although I loved the sea, I didn’t particularly like engineering. I did however have the aptitude for flying and got a very good mark on my flying course and was recommended for pilot training. I also took a liking to the outdoor life with the Royal Marine Commandoes at Beckley - rock climbing, abseiling, running up and down rivers and over Dartmoor and that sort of thing. And I started coming to the realisation that I should have a rather more physical career than I would get as an engineer in the navy. So at the tender age of 19 I took on the admiralty and tried to get them to either convert me to deck, which meant deck officer, which meant I could go to pilot training, or even to the Royal Marines. Apart from thinking that I needed certifying,

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because they just didn’t see my point of view, they’d put a lot of money already into my training over those 4 years, and basically told me to wind my neck in and get on with my job. I then, as I say, took on the Royal Navy and at the age of 19 you don’t get very far in such a campaign and I lost. I was given short shift and short notice to leave the Royal Naval College by that very evening when I finally faced the skipper, the captain. And having realised…first of all having got really quite drunk that night, so I couldn’t leave the ship by four o’clock…I left the next day, got on a train, and thought well, I don’t dare go home and tell them that I got thrown out of the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth. So I went to Aldershot instead and joined the parachute regiment. They found this a very amusing situation that suddenly they have actually a naval officer who suddenly rocks up at their door to be a recruit in the parachute regiment and I think that within about 24 hours I was in uniform and in recruit company for paras. Because I’d done 4 years training I was way ahead of the other recruits when the platoon finally formed up and I ended up basically as a lance corporal, PTI boxing team, filling in, dah dah dah, for about a year.

Interviewer PTI is a physical training instructor?

Peter I was just an assistant, I wasn’t qualified, but because I was very, very fit and aggressive and a good boxer, I just assisted the PTIs with training and fitness training. And obviously I did the rest of my basic military training at the same time, but in a rather more privileged situation than the recruits themselves. I was also marked as a potential officer, which means that you carry a white stripe or used to carry a white stripe around on your shoulder so that people could spot you and follow you and see what you were doing and report on you. I lost a year there because I was held back for boxing championships against other regiments for a year. And finally got my way through to (Mons?) (counter at 54) Officer Cadet School where after a very intensive course I passed out as a lieutenant to go to the parachute regiment although I still wasn’t in the parachute regiment as an officer because I still had to pass my parachute selection course. I spent that particular Christmas, which is probably Christmas of 1957 I think, or ’58, running on Blackpool Beach with a 60 pound rucksack, a steel helmet, and a pair of boots, which must have been quite an impressive sight for the local civilians who thought that this madman was running up and down the promenade…but it probably wasn’t that surprising to them because at about the same time, two of our Royal Air-force sergeants from the parachute unit were walking across America. So people were beginning to take on these sort of physical long distance survival things and although it was an unusual sight to see somebody running in a helmet and a rucksack, maybe it wasn’t that surprising, I don’t know.

Interviewer …the beach to maintain your fitness and so on and so forth and people were starting to get an awareness that the parachute

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battalion were something different, something to aspire to.

Peter Well yes, the parachute regiment were considered to be the elite fighting unit of the British army and I believe it still is. It was a regular unit which maintained 3, 4 battalions and has done for many years. In a matter of interest, it’s been on continual (effective?) service since it was formed in 1945. There being some paras in action somewhere in the world since then. Anyways, I then reported to the regiment in, I think, January ’58, ‘59, I can’t remember, and did my selection which is a fairly tough physical two weeks and then parachute course at (Abingdon?) where on my last jump but one, my 7th jump, I managed to break my ankle, which set me back for 6 or 7 weeks, and to add insult to injury that night, when I was lying on the ground grovelling with a broken ankle waiting for the ambulance, the ambulance came and ran over my fingers as well. So I got a double whammy. Once I’d qualified at Abingdon and got my wings I was posted to the second battalion, the parachute regiment 2 Para, as a platoon commander for Platoon B Company in Cyprus. And it was the tail end…the main part of the EOKA Campaign was over. My regiment has played a very active part in that. But we still had a lot of civil disturbance and disobedience and did a lot of riot drills, particularly in Nicosia. But that was actually a delightful tour of nearly two years, Cyprus being a lovely island. I there gained an interest in archaeology and it was just an idyllic place for a young man to learn his trade. That also included, as a matter of interest, a quick trip into Libya where we did several exercises before Colonel Gaddafi took over and I was introduced to the desert for the first time and again, I particularly remember Leptis Magna and the beauty of Roman architecture when Leptis Magna was still a big pile of sand with just a few little bits sticking out. Now it’s virtually uncovered. I saw photographs of it the other day and it’s absolutely magnificent. I’d really like to go back there one day and see what it’s like. Ok, from end of Cyprus we’re now into about ’60, ’61, I was posted back in the privileged position of being an instructor at the parachute regiment depot and I spent 2 years there training recruits. But the last part of those 2 years was actually as a battle school instructor at our battle school in Beckingham Wales. We were the first unit to come up with this concept of our own battle school because we weren’t necessarily satisfied with the battle drills that were being taught at the school of infantry and things…they weren’t pertinent to the way we operated and the light weapons we carried and the whole light fast movement principle that we used. So we ran our own battle school for many years there. During that time I met, courted and married a South African girl. And we were married from the depot parachute regiment with full regimental wedding. I remember my father in law who came out with a big contingent of South Africans being a little bit concerned about the possible cost because of the standards of the whole performance and the champagne and all the trimmings, and he was amazed to find it cost all of 76 pounds, which might have been a relatively large amount of money in those days, but believe me, for 76 pounds

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we had a fairly plush performance. Anyway, we’d been married all of 6 weeks when I suddenly found that I was posted to Bahrain due to somebody having been killed and somebody else having resigned and slots being made, and 3 Para, 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment needed a signals officer, and I suddenly found myself, married 6 weeks, posted for a year to Bahrain unaccompanied. With a South African wife who was now also pregnant. So I had to send her back to Tzaneen and I split in a different direction and went off to Bahrain. Had quite an adventurous tour there because the very first thing we were involved in was planning and preparation for an operation against Madagascar because the Chinese were moving in, in a big way, at that stage, and putting a lot of armaments in and so on. Fortunately that operation never happened because then we might well have got shot to bits before we even got out of the airplanes. And as soon as that was cancelled we then became involved in another operation in the Radfan Mountains north of Aden, which was a typical sort of northwest frontier situation with long distance sniping, taking the high ground, holding the high ground. We were in there for 6 weeks without a change of clothes. We came out like a rag tag bobtail raggy ass army, but people wouldn’t come a hundred yards of us because we all stank so badly. And our clothes were literally falling to pieces. But it was an interesting camp and we suppressed and subdued the particular tribe that was giving the trouble up there at that time. During the course of that tour I actually resigned from the army so I could come down to South Africa and meet my son, and perhaps start civvy life here in South Africa. So that was in 1964/5. But it just didn’t turn out that way and in a fairly short time, about less than a year, I said no, I’ve had this, I’m going back to the army, and that’s what I duly did. I went back to the British army to the regiment, who re-accepted me very kindly, and my first posting was to be second in command of our Boys Company. Now, as I said at the beginning, I’d joined the services when I was 15, and I believe it was a fabulous system. And my period with the Boys Company, the Parachute Regiment Boys Company was a wonderful time. Because we used to get 200 entrants a year out of a possible 8000-10000 applicants.

Interviewer Roughly what age?

Peter 15 years old. And if the (Hitler?) youth were ever any good, boy, the Parachute Regiment Boys Company was 10 times as good as the Hitler youth were ever. They had a complete academic education as well as tremendous sporting opportunities, adventure training opportunities, and military upbringing, military tradition instilled into them from that age, and they for many years became the absolute backbone of the parachute regiment. And the socialist government, the labour government actually stopped, for some reason best known to themselves, the whole business of boy’s intake. I think it was contravention of human rights apparently, because you didn’t get much of a childhood really. You didn’t get a normal teenage period. But with the

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education that was given and with the technical training that was available, or in their case, the infantry training they got, the outdoor living, the general adventure training experience, I believe it was a fabulous system and I think it’s a great pity that it was ever disposed of. However it was. From Boy’s Company I became interested in free fall parachuting and qualified on the sports side of free fall parachuting to start with and then I gradually became more and more deeply involved with free falling to the point where I ended up running the regimental parachute team, the Red Devils, which was basically at the recruiting arm for the regiment, but we also became the experimental arm for the British army. And we did all the prototype work and the writing of doctrine for free fall high altitude operations. And a lot of it was totally new and unknown. We were wondering what would happen about jumping through clouds, and jumping through clouds at night in groups. And nobody knew, nobody could tell us. We didn’t know whether the Russians were doing it. The Americans hadn’t started doing it. And there was only one way to find out, and because we were such a close knit group as a competition team and a demonstration team it was easy to make the transition as disciplined soldiers, to think out drills and ways of safely jumping in small groups through a cloud. And in fact the very first cloud penetration jump we did we were expecting a band of 3 or 4000 feet of cloud. When I got up above Salisbury plain where we were jumping, the pilot came back to me and said, 17000 feet of cloud, are you going to take it? I said, of course, so what, let’s go. And it was at night as well. Now obviously we had lights on our backs…it was all very amateur and basic but we bombed out at 25000, we were jumping that night, and we penetrated 17000 feet of cloud on our first cloud jump and it was an awesome experience. And further more, we were able to land within a hundred metre grouping at that stage on our first jump. So the principle was already proved, it was just a question of refining it, which we did over a number of years. And we also pushed the limits for altitude and general doctrine of how these free fall penetration principles could be used.

Interviewer You’re obviously using oxygen at that altitude.

Peter Oh yes. By night you use oxygen above 4000 feet according to the Royal (Navy?) aeronautical establishment in Farmborough, and by day above 12000 feet. Civvies, sky divers as they’re called, they push these envelopes up to about 15, 16000, but you’re pushing the envelope and likely to kill somebody. Depends on his fitness to a large extent, on other aspects as well, and it’s bloody dangerous. Above 12000 feet you’re pushing your luck without oxygen. That’s above sea level obviously. Ok, so I became more and more specialised in the free falling. I spent a great deal of time in America with the American parachute team, the Golden Knights, and discovered they were into experimental programs with what were then called flying canopies, of which there are various types, triangular, square, rectangular, oblong, oval, all sorts, and this is very much linked in with the NASA

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space program who were looking at different ways of recovering their space craft but preferably with possibly a glide angle rather than just a vertical descend and around parachutes. And inevitably I think I became involved in the research and development side and I got to know a couple of the American designers very well. And I actually, as the Americans called it, plugged in to the R&D side, the research and development side, and I had first go at quite a number of the development parachutes. Without going into technicalities, there’s no need to, but I went right through the basic flying parachute program from 0-100% over the next 4 or 5 years. As technology increased and improved so I kept importing the parachutes to England to my team, for 2 reasons. One we were a demonstration team and we were there to please and charm the public with new things, which we did. And secondly, competition wise, to stay ahead of the civvies. Because the civvies were good, but we were better, and we stayed better by having better equipment and more knowledge. Ok, so, I commanded the Red Devils for about 10 years, and I was coming up to 37 which was my first pension option. I’d already blown any real career…I’d made the rank of major but I wasn’t going to get any further because I’d spent too long doing something that was really off the mainline of military duty and it was clear that although I might get some promotion in some administrative post, or public relations particularly which I was doing a lot of at that time, I didn’t have a real military career, I wasn’t going to get a battalion command. That was clear. So I thought well what the hell. My wife wanted to come home to South Africa, we had 2 kids by that time. She wanted to come home and see her parents and spend some quality time with them before they turned up their toes, and so I resigned at 37, which was in 1976, and we pulled out to South Africa. I’ve already said that, we were talking last night, and I said earlier on, that had I known, genuinely known, what the position was in Angola and Mozambique in ’75, ’76, I might have thought more carefully about emigrating out here. I’ll be perfectly honest, the Soweto story didn’t worry me at all, because if that was a massacre, I’d seen massacres, I’ve seen other massacres perpetrated by the Brits if you like. I’ve seen crowds shot down, crowds out of hand who were shot. And I know in other countries plenty of more people were killed in riot situations than were killed at Soweto. And right now in Baghdad of course you’re killing 5 or 6 times as many with one set of vehicle bombs. So, the massacre of Soweto never rang true in my mind in the meaning of the sense of the word massacre. Red Square in Beijing, that was a massacre. Some of these car bombs have been massacres. Soweto was unpleasant but it didn’t worry my conscience particularly.

Interviewer Except in Angola and Mozambique to a lesser degree the situation was far more serious.

Peter Yes, I didn’t know how serious it was and I didn’t realise factually that the country was at war. And it’s a fact it was. Regardless of

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politics and regardless of whether you…I didn’t support apartheid…I knew that apartheid was totally unsupportable, in so far as…I’m not a religious person but my first and only argument was if they can’t come into your church then what’s the point of your religion? So in my sort of understanding of religious principles and things, apartheid just didn’t work and it wasn’t workable and was unacceptable. But, I was coming to live here because the climate is warm, I thought I’d be able to get a decent civvie job and my parents in law were here and my wife wanted to come home. So we came home. However, having had now spent 20 odd years…just over 22…in service, I didn’t settle to civilian life. I started off with a transport company in the Transkei, which was an absolute farce. Although I was supposed to be the understudy managing director, all I actually was in fact, was the bodyguard to the managing director. And it was clear that I wasn’t going to make any progress there, A: because I was a Brit. B: because I came under suspicion as a spy and a destabilizer of the work force. At one stage one of the big strikes in East London I was the only person the strikers would talk to, and against the advice of the police cordon and management I was going in and out, back and forth, negotiating between the strikers and the police particularly on the outside. And as a result of that I was actually accused of being sent out from England to foment destabilization. So that was not a happy relationship and I left that job. And all I could get after that was selling life insurance which I’m afraid wasn’t actually my style. We had a number of people, came down from the British army, they got head hunted by the bomb disposal squads, because of their experience particularly by that time in Northern Ireland when bombs were going off more or less every day, including in our own headquarters in 1970 in Aldershot. We had a lot of very experienced bomb disposal boys. There were none here in South Africa, and a number of them got head hunted. As it happened the commanding general of Special Forces at one stage was talking to one of them about something or other and the question of specialised parachute equipment and specialised parachuting came up. And this particular guy called Willie Munro said to the general, but general, you’ve got one of the world’s experts sitting in East London kicking his heels doing nothing, why don’t you get hold of him? So very shortly after that conversation I got a phone call from headquarters Special Forces in Pretoria, would I like to go and meet General Lootz? And I said, no, not particularly. Well, how about it, dah dah dah. I said, no, I didn’t come back here to join the army. He said, but you’re not earning a living, so what are you going to do about it? He said, look, I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll put a return air ticket in the post for you, I’ll book you in open booking in at the Burgers Park, if you feel like coming up to Pretoria sometime for a weekend, bring your lady as well, come up and have a weekend, have a look at Pretoria, and if you feel like it come and meet me and we’ll talk it through. And in the end I said to the missus, what do I do? And she said, oh you’d better get on the plane because you’re not doing anything here. so we

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went up to Pretoria and I ended up meeting the general and basically joining the Defence Force as a member of Special Forces. I was in fact head hunted in a way because of my specialisation in parachute delivery of all sorts, both free fall, halo, high altitude low opening, modern techniques, air cargo delivery, radio control parachute delivery, which was a completely new art. And I even became peripherally involved with these German spy planes, because I had knowledge of them. I also had a designer friend in America who was producing them. So I was able to get hold of the technology on those as well. (counter at 336)

SIDE B

Peter …huge potential. I knew that a lot of Rhodesians at that time had spent time in Kenya. So I really did want to come and live in Africa anyway, and I’d applied for citizenship, so I was in fact on the way to being a South African citizen. And I personally felt throughout…and I’m not subscribing to Reds under the beds, or some of the Groot Crocodile’s dispositions or his explanations of things…but I was and am convinced that I was fighting Mother Russia. Or I was about to be fighting Mother Russia by joining the Defence Force. The influence of Russia, particularly, and its satellites, Cuba, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and others was here and heavy. And, let’s face it, had we lost that war, we wouldn’t now be governed by the ANC. If the Berlin Wall had not come down we would be governed by Mother Russia. I’m quite convinced of that.

Interviewer But in your eyes you weren’t necessarily a mercenary, you were fighting for the country which was your spouse’s own country…

Peter I wasn’t even fighting for the country, I was earning a living. But I don’t believe that I was a mercenary. It’s my profession, it’s all I know, it’s all I knew then, it’s all I know now. But I was fighting against the Communists. I was fighting against Communism. And I do believe that. It never occurred to me to me funnily enough that I was fighting against the black people or the indigenous Africans. And in fact I was assured that as a member of Special Forces I would never be required to operate internally in South Africa against our own people. And I had a further provisor that I asked my then commanding general that I not be deployed at any stage against the Queen or her subjects or her troops. And that was agreed to as well.

Interviewer But if another nation had come along and said, listen we’ve got a fantastic lifestyle in South America, would you come and serve in the national army…?

Peter No, no way. No, no. I mean, I came to live here and as it happened really it was the only way I could earn a living anyway. But I wouldn’t have gone wandering off a la mercenary. In my younger days I might have considered joining the Foreign Legion whom I’ve always admired enormously. But that’s really a school boy fantasy. I probably would have joined the Legion if the

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circumstances had come up and it had been right. So then I found myself in the Defence Force. I reported to my unit in 1 Recce on the Bluff in Durban one late afternoon. It all seemed a bit casual and I was shown my room, and about half way through the evening there’s a knock on my door and the duty corporal said, excuse me sir but you’re the senior officer on the base and we’ve got a national serviceman running loose with his rifle. So I said, and what’s that to do with me? Well you are now it because you’re the decision maker on base.

Interviewer And your rank was major.

Peter I was a major…full major…substantive major. And so I thought, oh dear, oh dear! So I walked out into the night, that balmy evening breeze on the Bluff, looking for this young gentleman running around with ? threatening people and I found him and I talked him into a slightly more peaceful frame of work and persuaded him to approach me and hand me his rifle, whereupon I promptly placed him under a rather heavy arrest, because I clouted him with the rifle butt first to make sure I didn’t have any further problems from him. And I locked him up for the night. So that was my first introduction to Recces. Then the next day my new commanding officer turned up and we met and…

Interviewer Who was that at the time?

Peter That was a chap called John Moore. Ex parachute battalion. Very civilized and capable man. And he said, draw your kit and here’s a copy of the manual of military law, read it by lunchtime because by lunchtime you can join the climbing course. I said join it…yes, ok join. And so I went and drew my kit. Now I’ve never actually had the experience of walking into a store with a quartermaster not knowing how to deal with me, what I was permitted to have and what I wasn’t permitted to have, and it was like Alice in Wonderland or a kid in a sweet shop that had completely free rein and this quartermaster clearly didn’t have the service experience that I had. And I walked out of there with a mountain of stores like you’d never believe. I’d never seen so much…officer’s bath towels…all sorts. It was like Christmas. Anyway, so I had my kit drawn, I had ironed and boots polished and dressed by lunchtime. I had read the first part of the manual of military law, particularly the preamble. And I’ll never forget it because at that stage the preamble for the manual reads something like: any action taken in good faith will be considered as a legitimate action…so in other words if you were acting in good faith your actions would be acceptable to the Defence Force. And I thought, well, that’s pretty broad and I like that. Laughs Anyway, and then I had lunch and went looking for the climbing course. Now, it wasn’t a very long walk but I walked along the length of the camp where there was a helicopter, (albeit?) about a hundred feet. And I stopped on the edge of the hockey field where this was taking place and watched this, and out came a couple of ropes and a couple of guys came whizzing down in sort of abseiled fashion. And a couple more came

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whizzing down sort of abseil fashion. And a couple more. Then one came out, and came into free fall. And he literally, he got hold of the rope a little bit, but he just fell a hundred feet flat on his back wearing a rucksack and a rifle. And I didn’t even bother to walk over to him, I thought he’s dead. He can’t fall that far and not be. And obviously the ropes were cast off and the chopper landed. They whipped him into the chopper and flew away. I didn’t know where to, but it was in fact to Addington Hospital, which is about 3 minutes flight away. And, I thought well this must be quite something of a unit, because basically they carried on with the rest of the course, as though nothing had happened. I thought, well, I better introduce myself to the senior people here and see what’s going on. So I walked over and met the senior members of the course, and it was being run by a bunch of senior NCOs and I was impressed by the lack of concern that anybody showed for the fact that the guy had just fallen a hundred feet from a helicopter. A guy called (Tuffie?) Joubert. And Tuffie is still alive and kicking and serving in Baghdad right now. And I said, what the hell are you doing? How did he fall over there? They said, well nobody’s ever done it before. I said, ok, show me what you’re doing. And they were actually tying the abseil ropes direct to the gearbox…of the rotor box in the roof, I think it was, in the Puma. Which gets to about a thousand degrees in no time flat. So if they had gone on long enough, they’d have broken at least one if not all four of the ropes with people on them. I said, well let’s change that. And anyway you’re not abseiling properly so let’s send the helicopter away and let’s do some theory on abseiling and then we’ll go and do it off a building or something that stands still for a while before we progress to helicopters. And then I went back to report to the commanding officer, John Moore, that I wasn’t really terribly satisfied with the way things were proceeding on this climbing course. He said, oh well, have you done it before? I said, yes, I’ve done a hell of a lot of it, I was a rock climbing instructor apart from anything else. And he said, ok, well take over, run the climbing course. So I did just that. And again I was so impressed with the fairly laid back attitude of everything.

Interviewer It sounds almost non military in that it’s so laid back.

Peter It was…you could say that yes, as you will hear in a moment. Apart from anything else I then began to look around the unit and find things out and I got into the armoury and I have never seen the likes of that armoury. The weapons I didn’t recognise. I recognised AKs but I didn’t know what RPDs were, I didn’t know what RPGs were really. I’d never come across them in the Brit army. We had a hell of a lot of foreign weapons. Many of them brand new still in their grease delivered from wherever they’d been delivered from. And at some stage I saw a bunch of gentlemen wearing green jackets and green trousers sitting cleaning these weapons. And I asked one of the NCOs, because I did have a little problem here, my Afrikaans was non existent. And so, I could only really communicate with those who could

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speak English, and I asked one of the senior NCOs, who were these guys who were cleaning weapons? Banditas. I said what? What’s a bandita? No, they’re prisoners from the local jail. I said, hang on, hang on. Are you telling me that here we’ve got this highly secret unit supposedly, with all these highly secret weapons that people aren’t supposed to know we’ve got and don’t supposed to know we use, and you’ve got prisoners from the local jail cleaning them! Yes, what’s wrong with that? So I went back to Colonel Moore again, and I said, hey, I don’t know what security is like around here really, but this is not a good idea. He said, what? I said, they’re getting prisoners in from the jail to clean these weapons. And he went hairless, he went bananas, he had no idea it was happening. It’s because the guys themselves were too idle to get the paraffin out, and get the grease out and clean the weapons themselves. So they were going and getting prisoners from jail. So as far as I was concerned right then, security, there wasn’t any. So I tried to get that sorted out and it was. We never saw prisoners in there cleaning weapons again. Now, when I was interviewed by General Lootz in Pretoria, because of my age and background and experience, he had said, that although there was…obviously I had to pass the medical selection and the psychological selection, there was no need for me to do the physical selection because I’d already done the selection for para and I’d obviously already done a great deal of physical work and map reading and all the rest and really no need. And I said, no general, if I’m to be accepted in this unit, particularly as an English speaker, as a Brit, I have to do selection. He said, on your own head be it, but no need if you don’t want to. I said, well I do want to. He said, ok, fine. And so I was waiting now for a selection group to form up. As I say, I was 39, I kept my fitness still pretty good for a 39 year old, and I’d watched these youngsters appearing now…at that stage National Service was of course the way of the army. The army was built as a National Service army at that time in 1976 and I saw these school boys arriving at the unit dribbling in, in 2s and 3s and 10s, and they were only school boys, they were 17 years old. They were straight from school. The majority of them. Some were coming in from other units but the majority were kids from school. And that selection unit in 1977 formed up over 700 strong. We were put on to a train in Durban and trekked up to…I didn’t know it at the time…but to Jozini up in the north of Zululand where we were invited to get off the train and run for our lives. Laughs Which we started doing. The first march was a 50 km night march from Jacini to somewhere up in Sodwana. About 48 kms, I think, overnight and it was a speed march carrying weight. And I was appalled and amazed because I set off minding my own business at my own pace with these youngsters. The average age was 17. I spoilt the average because I was 39. Some of them set off almost running, and I thought hey, I’m never going to keep up with this lot. And I’m just plodding along in my airborne shufflers we call it, which is a sort of heel dragging, almost a skiing motion without skis. And I started to overtake

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people and I started to overtake gear. They were throwing away sleeping bags, they were throwing away jacket greatcoats, they were throwing away parkas, jackets, spare boots, water bottles, you name it, and as they marched along they were lightening their load and just chucking stuff away, I couldn’t believe it! And as it happened on the same time, on that road, I hadn’t met him before, I met jock, Scots Corporal, ex 3 para, ex 3rd battalion parachute regiment, who inevitably was Jock. And Jock and I sort of buddied up from thereon in, throughout selection, and for other training later on. And by middle of the night, I suppose, Jock and I were somewhere up in the first 50 probably. But every time we got to a checkpoint one or other of the regular corporals who were doing running selection…you know you’d go in and…I don’t know if I can swear on here but I’m going to…you’d march into the checkpoint and I’d say, ok where to next corporal? Fuck off Soutie. I’d say, hey come on, where’s the next checkpoint? Fuck off Soutie. They wouldn’t tell me where to go. They wouldn’t tell me the direction and we were backed…those woods and forests up around that coastal area. And so, Jock and I, if we were together we’d literally have to stand and wait there until somebody else came and got an instruction, then we’d have to set off behind them and follow them to see where we were going to next. And I think we thinned down that night on that night march from 700 odd, I think to about 150. The others packed up and went home. And then the real fun started, and the thing about selection, it was extremely hard. It was extremely hard for the youngsters because they got bloody hungry. It wasn’t hard for me because I didn’t get hungry, really, as hungry as the young ones did. My metabolism as an older person I suppose being different . I’d also taken…I was a smoker at that time…and I’d taken the precaution to take all my webbing to pieces, take out all the padding and packing and repacked it with tobacco. So throughout 6 weeks I was able to smoke and they never discovered how I was achieving that. And it used to infuriate them. Had I been running selection which I did later, if I had something like that going on I would have just taken the guy’s full set of kit off him and given him a new set of kit and then problem solved. Because obviously there’s something going on. But they hadn’t spotted. And it became…selection, for Jock and I particularly, became us versus them and we were winning hands down against the instructors. There clearly was a fair amount of drinking going on amongst the instructors during selection as well. They were savage sometimes in retribution and not averse to pulling an AK and letting rip into the woodwork around you and into the woods. I escaped on one occasion when I was supposed not to escape and be captured inside and tied up and buggered about. And I thought no I’m too old for this and I got seriously worried with the amount of AK fire that was following me into the woods. And again I realised what sort of unit, or what sort of mental attitude I was getting into. Selection eventually ended 6 weeks and 37 of us passed out of that original 700 odd. From there went into small arms training which was the most thorough

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and interesting course that I’d probably ever attended in my days in the army, because we dealt with not only all the South African weapons, we dealt with almost all every foreign weapon you can possibly imagine existed, right through. The Communist Bloc weapons, American weapons, French, German, the whole nine yards. Interruption Including Sam 7 for instance. I became a Sam 7 instructor during that period. RPGs two a penny. In the British army if you got to fire a 3.5 inch rocket once at any ranks, you were damn lucky. You got to watch somebody else firing it but if you got the straw and you got to pull the trigger you were considered being very lucky. To throw a couple of hand grenades, you were also…everybody threw 2 I think, and that was it, we never threw another one until such time as we were needed to throw them. The equipment scale by that time in the Defence Force, the budget in Special Forces was such that we wanted for nothing. We wanted for absolutely nothing. For all training purposes we had everything we could possibly dream of. So yes, we didn’t just fire one RPG per group, we fired 2 or 3 rockets each. So we really understood the weapon and could use it. And, I can’t remember them all there were so many, but you name it, we fired it. And in rocketry as well as grenades, 40 ml grenades under the American launcher, the AR 15 or AR 40, whatever the hell it’s called, the launcher under it. We were using a lot of 556 ammunition, or 223, which was fairly new on the market so to speak. Obviously the AK wasn’t in service by that time but a lot of Heckler and Koch variations were and we had those available to us. And so it was…from my point of view, it was very interesting and enthralling and I really enjoyed the small arms course. We then had to do parachute training. The selection course was considered to be also selection for parachute training, so we didn’t have to do any further selection from that point of view. And rather to my annoyance to be honest, I had to also go and attend the basic parachute course as a student. And I think it was a bit short sighted from the authorities point of view because I wasn’t very popular at parachute battalion due to the fact that I had over a thousand jumps, I was an internationally known name in the parachuting world, including by many of the instructors in Bloemfontein who hadn’t met me but they knew who I was and what I was…

Interviewer That’s 1 Parachute Battalion Bloem, the parabats?

Peter Yes. And consequently I had 2 or 3 head-ons with senior ranking members of the Bats, including their regimental Sergeant Major and their then commanding officer. And on one occasion for instance, my instructor had to leave…we were working in the hangar doing parachute landings, and my instructor was called away for a few minutes and he just straight away said to me, Major will you take over for a few minutes while I’m away, and I said sure. And I went straight in to carry on with the lesson. And the regimental Sergeant Major of the hangar saw me doing this and threw his toys out of the cot in a big way. And I was before the Commanding Officer before you could say Jack Robinson

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with some rather stupid threats being made and some rather stupid things being said. And I never pushed the fact that I was a Brit, I never pushed the fact that I was experienced, but they knew I was. And they made the point, not me…and they gave me a hard time at Bloem for a while…well for the whole of the course, which clearly I passed but…it was just unnecessarily unpleasant. It was stupidly unpleasant.

Interviewer It was small minded basically.

Peter Small minded. And this is one of the things then that I get on finding the culture shock of coming to an army that was really run by corporals and senior NCOs. It was not being run at that stage by competent senior officers. Not our unit anyway, not the Special Forces. There were senior officers around but they seemed a little bit lost. A lot of them hadn’t been through selection which interested me. Up to about captain they’d all been through selection and they were bloody good material. But control was left almost entirely to the senior NCOs and it’s one thing that I determined I was going to stop as soon as I could get my fingers into it. Because I do believe that senior NCOs are an incredibly important part of a military system, but these guys weren’t just a part of it, they were running it, and that’s not what senior NCOs are for, that’s what officers are for. I also found that we had joint mess facilities…I’ll go back a point. I also realised that they used to do this potential officer’s course in the Defence Force whereby a group of guys were selected for potential officer training. My son did it in his National Service. And away they go all to the same place at the same time, and at the end of the course they’re either commissioned and become second lieutenants or they become corporals. And those same guys could go back to the same unit and have to serve together, which is an impossible situation. There was too much personal contact between the non commissioned and the commissioned ranks. And I do believe that the officer class is a privileged class and it must be socially separated for the other ranks for the simple reason particularly for a young man, like a second lieutenant who hasn’t got the experience to handle the personal relationships that are involved, he needs something on his shoulder, his prep or whatever it is, that puts him socially and mentally apart from his troops. And it’s not something to be feared but it’s something that should be respected. He’s made it as an officer. And I never understood and I never will understand how you can…after all doing the same course you can say, ok, you’re an officer and you’re a corporal, you’re an officer and you’re a corporal. When they’ve worked and lived together for months, they know each other intimately. They all know each other’s weaknesses as well as strengths, and so some of these corporals, I suppose now to respect some of these lieutenants, whom they clearly didn’t respect…and some of the corporals were a damn sight better than the lieutenants. So I think that the actual selection system of officers and NCOs in those days…and I don’t know what’s happening now, I don’t care…was very arbitrary.

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Interviewer How do you think it evolved like that? I mean, there was a strong element of having served in the Allied forces in the Second World War and the First World War alongside the British army, alongside the American army. How come the South African army seemed to evolve…?

Peter I think that came about with the Nationalist takeover, the Nationalist government’s takeover, where they detribalized, the deAnglicized so many institutions and one of them was the army. I mean, I couldn’t understand when I first came out here, why I was considered to be a Khaki, which was derogatory, referring to my British army service, but I was appalled for instance when I’d go into a bank here in uniform with an identity card, and have my cheques questioned or the cashing of a cheque questioned. It never occurred to me that anybody would question an army officer in uniform going in and cashing a cheque. In England I could have walked in and probably presented a cheque for several thousand pounds that the bank would clearly know I didn’t have or most certainly knew I wouldn’t, they would still have cashed it. Because if ever in the Brit army I had bounced a cheque, that would be the last cheque I would bounce, I would be gone. My uniform in Britain was sufficient to give me credibility to do almost anything anywhere anytime. And it just wasn’t the same here. The Boere managed to destroy as they destroyed themselves during the Boer War. They destroyed a system because it was a British system, I think. And they lost out by doing so. And to a large extent they had this very odd social system…that everybody’s equal and can discuss the matter as to what they’re going to do next. And it still to this day runs down to the fact where…well I don’t know about this day, but certainly by the time I left the unit…you’d make a plan and issue a set of orders and then at some stage some young corporal wants to discuss the matter with you, as to, well sir, don’t you think we should be doing this that and the other. I’d say, no. That’s what I said is going to happen and that’s what’s going to happen. And so that aspect of it I never did get the handle on. This business of questioning orders or questioning rank almost. Or lack of respect of rank.

END OF SIDE B (counter at 380)

TAPE TWO SIDE A

Peter The messing situation, where we all ate in the same mess hall. I used to eat with my troops in the British army occasionally. As orderly officer I’d always go and eat one plate of their food to make sure it was edible. And I would inspect the kitchens and make sure that everything was as it should be. But I would never have considered sitting down in the mess hall with them. And just the same as I wouldn’t consider sharing a bar with them. In fact I think that’s even worse because it gives the opportunity for familiarity, for comments that you don’t want made, for discussing matters that shouldn’t be discussed between senior and junior

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ranks, and giving them the opportunity to question you and authority and everything else. And it was a hell of a culture shock let me tell you. And again, over the first couple of years I think the authorities finally realised it and we were separated out and the thing began to be more organised. But I was personally determined to attempt to stop this business of what I called the secret 7, running Special Forces, and the secret 7 was one captain and several senior NCOs. And they were running the unit, not the commanding officers. So it was quite a culture shock.

Interviewer So you’ve now done the courses, the weapons training and so on and so forth.

Peter Yes. but it was…remember the intake was 17 years old, so they had to go from scratch to Special Forces operators. So the courses were very intense and spread over the period of a year. And I went through the whole cycle. So from basic drill and wearing uniform and minimal traditional sense, we went on through to the parachute training, then small arms…the small arms included of course a hell of a lot of range work. And again, I was impressed because we actually went to Ladysmith to do about a ten day shooting course where we fired thousands and thousands of rounds through many, many different weapons. We didn’t just use the R1 or the LMG. We used almost every conceivable weapon you can think of and a lot of ammunition. So we were familiar with almost anything we may come across in the field. But we set the ranges around Ladysmith on fire. And I was very impressed. I’ve never seen a big veld fire before. They weren’t one bit bothered, they just went on with the shooting boy. The fire raged around us and past us and I thought it was going to burn Ladysmith down at one stage. And they didn’t even bat an eyelid with regard to putting it out, they just let it burn. And that also rather impressed me. Ok, from there, an exercise was set up and we were to do a parachute assault onto some unknown drop zone in…an exercise setting and a whole load of nonsense. But once we’d mounted…first of all I realised that we had no ammunition whatsoever, which worried me because there was a war situation in South Africa and I thought well why haven’t we got any ammunition in case something goes wrong or we come up against some sort of opposition somewhere. And secondly, we flew for a hell of a long time from Durban. And it was clear we weren’t given a P-out, we were told we were going to parachute, we had fitted parachutes, we were wearing parachutes, but we weren’t given a specific P-out, which is jump time, but it was clear that it was going to be around last light because we were running into the late afternoon. And when finally it was stand up for equipment check and get ready, dah dah dah, stand in the door, I could see we were over bush for miles and miles and miles. And I could see some water and nothing else. And red on, green on, go, and out we piled. There was a drop zone party clearing marking the drop zone with some smoke, and we basically hit the ground at last light, and then Caprivi, which is where we were in

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fact, that last light just turns and in a couple of minutes it goes from daylight to dark and boom. And the next thing I knew was that I was being kicked and thoroughly worked over. And I had an AK shoved in my face by a black gentleman. And I thought, my goodness me now what! And I thought of various possible scenarios, of escaping and this that and the other, not knowing where the hell I was but I was carrying a knife. And then I thought, aah aah, hang on, this is an exercise. And it was. It was a very, very well organised capture. As we hit the drop zone we were stripped off of all our kit, and we went straight from there into a captive situation which became survival training. A couple of years down the line we turned that around and made it into an escape and evasion situation without training and that then became the survival exercise. But this actually led straight into survival training, but under a captive situation where we had to learn the Frelimo and Swapo and general Marxist songs. We had political indoctrination endlessly day in, day out. We learned their drill. And our base was built as a terr base. Ters we then called it. in the style of Swapo and the others. As they were instructed by these Germans and the Cubans.

Interviewer And the purpose of that is so you could understand the guys who were meant to be…

Peter Yes, well not only that, but there was another purpose, which was a clever purpose, because later on that base was going to be used in what we called small tactics. …

Interviewer So this was all part of your…

Peter This is the culmination of the year’s training in effect. Or nearly a year’s training. And we turned a bunch of schoolboys…albeit only about 32, 33 of them, into highly professional soldiers.

Interviewer Were they Permanent Force or were they still viewed as conscripts?

Peter No, the system…if they came to Recce, they actually had to sign on for a minimum of 3 years. That then gave them full Permanent Force pay. If they finished their 3 years at least, they had no further reserve commitment, and it was obviously in their interests to get through and get into Special Forces. But it takes a special type of person to go to Special Forces, to think of serving with Special Forces, and there was a very definite common factor throughout…I’ve dealt with, I’ve met, I’ve known the SS and a lot of the SS guys who were ex parachute regiment. A lot of my friends went to the SS. I’ve worked with the SS and trained the SS. I’ve worked with the Selous Scouts, I’ve worked with Rhodesian SS, I’ve jumped against, worked with and played against many of the western Special Forces, particularly the Americans, but others as well, and I’ve also competed against the Russian, Czech and Polish Special Forces. And you can actually interchange one from one country into another group, and you wouldn’t notice the difference. They are interchangeable pieces of equipment. They all have the same sort of mindset. I

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think probably have a very similar physique, except the Brits tend to be smaller than most of the others. The average Brit soldier is about 5 foot 8, 5 foot 9, whereas the South Africans were bigger. But obviously they’re highly trained, they’re very fit, they’re mentally alert, don’t ever think that to go to Special Forces you have to be stupid. You actually have to be really rather bright, because the technical training particularly on explosives, mines, and other technical aspects, if you haven’t got a brain you’re going to kill yourself. And so you don’t get stupid people getting through into Special Forces although a lot of people think that is the case, it’s not. And as I say, internationally, the personality type, I believe, is totally interchangeable. You could take a Recce and put him with Spetsnaz with the Russians, or in G6, German Special Forces. The difference would come, particularly with regard to Recce, is our guys were so terribly young. And although highly, highly trained, very fit and very aggressive, they lacked general military experience.

Interviewer But you were looking at it then through the eyes of a much older person.

Peter Well I was, but also I looked at them through the eyes of somebody who for instance knew the SAS. You cannot apply to join the SAS unless you’ve got 3 years service…because obviously Brits have full permanent force, there’s no national service. You’ve got to have 3 years service. You’ve got to be 25 years old at least. And so you’ve already got an experienced, mature soldier going to Special Forces in the UK. Whereas our guys I feel they’re probably over confident actually, although they were damn good, and they took on incredibly crazy odds sometimes. And willingly so, because they were over confident. I don’t think it cost lives. I can see no proof of that. Although we did lose a lot in casualties, but we lost a lot of casualties because of the situations into which we were going not because the guys were stupid or inexperienced.

Interviewer There you’re talking about (maths?) as well, they were a long way behind enemy lines, fighting…

Peter Big odds. Usually…they look at a ratio of 10:1 as being more or less fair do’s, unless there were…if there were East Germans involved they’d reduce it to probably 3 or 4 to 1. Cubans 5, 6 to 1. But Swapo and the like, 10 to 1 was fair do’s. getting above 10:1 starts getting a bit sticky. But they, as I say, they were massively self confident, if not over confident. But they very rarely came short on over confidence. They sometimes came short on wrong intelligence or bad luck, but rarely on over confidence.

Interviewer What is the commonality on those Special Forces guys? You mentioned that there’s a similarity.

Peter Well I think first of all, intense selection. I suppose…I don’t know, I’ve never been told but I suppose…I wouldn’t say we’re aggressive psychopaths, but certainly aggression comes into it and you can’t be with Special Forces unless you’re either are

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aggressive or are trained to be aggressive. A love of what you’re doing, an interest in what you’re doing, otherwise you wouldn’t have joined because you go through absolute hell to become a member.

Interviewer Which you did at a relatively advanced age…

Peter I was the oldest person ever to pass Recce selection, when I was 39. And the average age of my intake was just over 17. But that’s not as clever as it sounds in so far as I was able to take the lack of food and other deprivations more easily than they could, and also I knew what to expect and how to take the hammerings that we were given, and use various techniques that were used on us to break us down. All they used to do was actually amuse me because it was a bunch of young corporals who were barely wet behind the ears trying to teach an old dog new tricks. And sometimes it was just to me laughable.

Interviewer So now you’ve been in the Caprivi, your ? training has culminated in what you were doing there.

Peter Right. The small tactics courses, the last course you do when everything is brought together, all the training, I once got hold of over 3 million rounds of 7.62 ammunition which was to be destroyed as being unsafe. And I certainly destroyed it, but I destroyed it through the barrels of the weapons. And one course that I ran, a small tactics course, fired three million rounds during the course of 4 weeks. And at the end of that time they could shoot.

Interviewer You came across 2 million rounds just sort of lying around…?

Peter No, it wasn’t lying around, it was in one of the ammunition depots and it was sort of beyond its sell-by date, and somebody said would we like to go and destroy it? And I said, certainly I’ll destroy it. As I say, I destroyed it through the barrels of the guns. We did a hell of a lot of shooting. But anyway, this was the culmination of their training and from there the guys then went to their different units which were, as everybody knows now, 1 Recce, which was an all purpose unit, urban or rural, mainly white but with some black and coloured support members, or members included. 4 Recce, which is the seaborne, based down at Langebaan, and they specialised on seaborne assault. And 5 Recce, which was basically the black commando, but again, mainly with white officers and NCOs.

Interviewer Where did the black guys come from? Were they South Africans or…?

Peter No, the majority of them were Angolan and Mozambican. A lot of them captured. They were returned captures. And they very quickly got into the capitalist way of things. once they had been debriefed and elected to serve with us, they got the full privileges and position in the unit. Their ranks often. Full pay. And they liked the capitalist way of life, enjoyed it, and they were damn good

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soldiers.

Interviewer Did they drink in the same bars as the white soldiers?

Peter Yes. We had total integration. When I joined Reconnaissance Commando in 1977 it was totally integrated already. No problem at all. In fact it caused bits of fun now and again because once or twice if one particular coloured guy who’s a great friend of mine, whose name I won’t mention, got into trouble with a fairly young white female, and an irate father turned up at the gates of the camp, with his 9 millimetre pistol drawn, yelling the odds that he was in the Security Police and he was going to kill some son of a bitch. And the commanding officer actually went to the gate which was locked and people that had drawn weapons and were ready to defend laughs the guy concerned anyway as he was prepared to defend himself. And the commanding officer said, in the old style of things, listen do you really want to make a case about this? This gentleman from Security Police said, yes he did. And then my commanding officer said, well you do realise of course that this whole thing is across the colour bar line do you? Ooh and did this guy back off very quickly. He didn’t want that story in the press. He dropped his charges and went away.

Interviewer And so those were the Special Forces.

Peter We also had a Citizen’s Force which was…

Interviewer 2 Recce.

Peter 2, based in Joeys. So they were Citizen Force Commando.

Interviewer What was the relationship with 32 Battalion? Was 32 considered Special Forces?

Peter No, not at all. There was no relationship as such except that Jannie Breytenbach actually formed the first Special Forces group. And as it happened as well, we often worked closely together. We’d go and do a lot of the Recces for work that they were going to go and do or raids they were going to carry out, and once or twice they came to our assistance and pulled our fat out the fire when we got caught out, particularly at a place called Eheke, where 22, 23 guys were supposed to be raiding a base up there that was supposed to be holding about a hundred people. And when they sort of started totalling up to around 3000 plus, they realised they were in some trouble and started to withdraw. We actually lost I think 7 guys on that job and without 32 Battalion who marched a hell of a long way, hell of a quickly, I don’t think anybody would have got out of that particular trick. So there was a good relationship between 32 and ourselves, but there was no specific formal relationship.

Interviewer And in the minds of Recce operators 32 were not Special Forces?

Peter No.

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Interviewer I find it used interchangeably quite often in the writing that I read sometimes.

Peter No. They were never, from my point of view, considered to be Special Forces. They were bloody good bush operators but I wouldn’t personally put them down as Special Forces and I didn’t think of them as Special Forces. In so far as they didn’t have the extra edge of technical and academic training that our guys had. They were damn good soldiers because they were experienced soldiers. And they were very aggressive, well led unit, with something like Jannie Breytenbach running the show they couldn’t be anything else.

Interviewer And what was the relationship…perhaps relationship is not the word…but how was the 1 Parachute Battalion, the Parabats ? were they considered to be purely National Servicemen who could back the Special Forces when necessary?

Peter Yes. There was a certain amount of respect towards the Bats from Special Forces, but there was obviously tremendous rivalry and Bats didn’t like Special Forces at all because we used to pinch their best men. We had the option of anybody in the army, anybody that wanted to come to us could come for selection. And the better members of a lot of members of Bats came across to us. And we bled them of some of their best people, so we weren’t exactly popular with them.

Interviewer And before we go on to talk a bit more about the guys after you’ve qualified, you mentioned that National Servicemen could sign up for 3 years and that way there’d be no further obligation for camps or any other…

Peter Very few of them went out after ? Very few. Most stayed on. We took a lot of casualties but most stayed on, and served many years in some cases. A friend of mine has just left the Defence Force. He was 17 when I first met him on selection. And that was 30 years ago. So he’s done damn near 30 years in Special Forces.

Interviewer So now after all of this training you’ve got all these young men who are highly qualified and then they go off to war.

Peter Yes. Depending on what was required. Oil installations were targets. Railway terminals, bridges, particularly in Angola but some in Mozambique. But the main supply routes in Angola had to cross bridges and the bridges were our targets. Even electrical supplies, electricity…oil ? installations. We might occasionally have gone looking for certain senior ANC politicians in different cities in southern Africa. Specialist jobs of that nature. Undercover jobs. Some of them have been published. One of the guys who used to operate particularly as…his cover was that of a game ranger, and he operated up in Zambia alone often, or with one partner or one backup somewhere near. But basically he operated by himself. But mainly on intelligence in those cases. Doing reconnaissance. That’s all we were. We were

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reconnaissance troops.

Interviewer How would it work? Presuming that the head of the SADF and his generals had planned some kind of operation, for example, Angola. Would he call in Special Forces…?

Peter Yes, I guess…I was never privy to the actual routing. Occasionally I think we proposed our own operations, opportunities that we’d seen or knew about, but I would guess that it came down from the top. We wanted to stop oil flowing out of Kabinda or whatever. Would you guys be able to do the job? Would come down to one of the groups would be tasked with doing a reconnaissance. They’d go up by submarine and be dropped off, have a walk around the outskirts of Luanda, go into the oil installation, have a look at it, see what there was. If they didn’t recognise the bits and pieces they’d either draw it or take photographs of it. But we used to spend a lot of time working for instance in the oil installations around Durban to understand what the different pieces of equipment were and what they did, and what would cripple…what’s the easiest way to cripple that particular installation. Then they’d come back and do their reconnaissance report. And then if it was then became a potential task, a complete scale model would be built and rechecked, and they might even go and take another look at the target. Or, you’d do an aerial photo reconnaissance. Scale models would be built…table models, and then if it was going further than that, you would try and find a similar installation in country here, and that would be practised on. Or an installation would be built. Plywood and bits and pieces to simulate the actual building or buildings of interest. And rehearsals would be carried out, and the method of insertion would be decided, whether it would be by sea, by parachute, walk in, jump in and walk some more, whatever method was going to be used. And re-supply for that was very important. The problem always was water. And sometimes the guys would actually set off walking carrying their own body weight, most of which was water. An operation was really limited by the amount of water you could either carry or access at some stage or another. No water, no operation.

Interviewer You talked about taking a walk around Luanda…that’s an incredibly dangerous thing to do when you’re a couple of thousand kilometres behind enemy lines.

Peter Yes, Du Toit found that out, didn’t he. But you see he was young, new, fresh, and he got caught out. He didn’t know what he was doing and again, the coloured gentleman I spoke of earlier, Quiros, had he not been there as a really experienced hand, I don’t think it would have just been Du Toit who was captured or killed, nobody was killed. And everybody got out but Du Toit. And they wouldn’t have got out if it hadn’t been for Quiros. His experience got them out of it.

Interviewer So now you’ve got these young guys and not so young guys but everybody’s doing real operations now when necessary, whether

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it’s oil installations or bridges or simply out there gathering intelligence. You speak of insertion, now you’re a parachute specialist, can you give me a rough idea of how Special Forces operated the…inserted behind enemy lines by parachute.

Peter Yes, until they beefed up their Sam 7 defence system, we used to just jump in by static lines, low level. And then they started increasing these anti air craft batteries and they became a problem and we then started going into HALO (high altitude low opening), particularly stand off HALO, which is perhaps even opening your parachute high but across another border, from in say, an airline route. So you would look as though it was a standard airline on passage from A to B, and only a very, very experienced radar operator would actually pick up the fact that half a dozen parachuters just came out of it in free fall. Then they’d open high and you could cruise 20, 30 kms under the canopy to a landing zone using GPS because that was another bloody useful thing that came in and started coming in towards the end of my time and even more so after I’d left. So square parachutes made a big difference to our operational capability. We also experimented extensively with radio control square parachutes. Both self homing to a beacon. So a Recce group would go out and if they required some item of equipment to be dropped in, or a large aerial bomb for instance, they could set up a beacon, call in a drop for one of these units and this thing could be chucked out at 25, 30, 35 thousand feet, travel a long way across country, as long as it was within range of its beacon, and it would home on the beacon. Once it got above the beacon it would go into a spiral and literally hit within metres of that beacon. So, if you needed re-supply, that was re-supply. If you needed bomb, it was bomb. And anything in between. We also started playing with…I never did it but it’s now fairly common practice…what is called tandem jumping, where take for instance, if you needed a surgeon on the ground urgently and you didn’t have a free for all or halo qualified surgeon, a qualified tandem jumper could strap the surgeon onto him instead of kit, and jump with the surgeon and deliver the surgeon to the spot. So those were things that were in the pipeline and continued after I’d left. I think they are now perfected.

Interviewer What year did you leave?

Peter I left in ’84, I think. But I went and broke my back at some stage. I compressed my 5th and 6th vertebrae and it put me out of operations, and although I continued with research and development and teaching…running parachute courses still, I was very restricted in what I could do because of those injuries.

END OF SIDE A TAPE TWO (counter at 380)

TAPE TWO SIDE B

Interviewer …that you know with the parachute technology and tandem jumping and so on you could jump in and supply medical supplies or surgeons or whatever. Now you’ve parachuted your men in

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behind enemy lines, how do you get them out?

Peter Well again, often by submarine. You couldn’t safely…your luck wouldn’t last long enough to walk the length of Angola from north to south without somebody spotting you, picking you up, spooring you. So if it was way up north in either Angola or Mozambique then it was usually a sea recovery. It was possible occasionally to land a light aircraft to pick up a small party or even fly in a chopper. We at that stage had probably the best helicopter pilots in the world. And I’ve always thought that the Royal Navy’s helicopter pilots were the best. But I was incredibly impressed with our South African Defence Force chopper pilots, they were very special. And they would fly incredible distances and if necessary would actually pre…

Interviewer You could pre schedule a pick up zone.

Peter Yes, we’d actually go and create a refuelling zone and so the chopper would know that it had extra fuel for the route out. So it might be at the end of a particular helicopter’s range. So you’d go out, put down fuel and a couple of guys to look after it, and then the chopper would go back and another chopper would come through for the actual operation, pick up fuel again, go on to do the operation, get back to the refuelling base, refuel again to be able to get out. So there were all sorts of combinations you could work for refuelling deeper in. And the other way was to walk or run in some cases. Again, with Eheke when 32 Battalion went to pull us out of trouble, the guys basically ran for about 12 hours with people hard on their heels. They were actually pulling claymores out of their gear, shortening the fuses, lighting the fuses on the run, planting the claymore on the ground behind them on something like a 3 second fuse and keep running. And 1000, 2000, 3000, boom. And that’s how close people were behind them in some cases. But if it was a clandestine reconnaissance that had been done and a long walk in, then it was clandestine reconnaissance and a long walk out. And if it was a small group, one or two guys, they walked out just as they walked in. Or they walked out just as they’d parachuted and walked in. They did incredible distances with big weights.

Interviewer Was there such a thing as the Gunston 500 as I’ve read somewhere, any guy who’d walked more than 500km in a single mission with full kit and so on?

Peter I never came across it specifically. I’ve never heard of it. People had all sorts of funny little quirks and ways but I don’t think people ever counted the clicks because they did so bloody many. You know these guys were very…I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again…they were very young, they were very fit, they were highly trained, and they enjoyed their job, they enjoyed the work. Very few of them left after 3 years. Many stayed on and it just takes a certain mindset and if you’re a Special Forces animal and you actually go to Special Forces, you’re almost lost for life really because there is no other way of life.

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Interviewer So Eheke was in what, the early eighties, I think?

Peter No, Easter ’78.

Interviewer Ok that would have been just before the attack on Cassinga.

Peter Yes.

Interviewer But now you say that 32 went in and actually…

Peter Pulled our bacon.

Interviewer Yes, pretty much so. What was the attrition rate? Was it high for the size of the unit or…?

Peter Well I attended 17 funerals in my first 3 years with 1 Recce and the unit was not much more than a hundred strong. That was 17%. And that was across the board. That was youngsters and some of the older guys. We had a period where our timing devices and/or fuses were not working well. And we lost a couple of guys or three to their own explosive devices that they were setting or setting up or laying. And in one case even I think working on in a workshop. An engineer staff sergeant, a damn good one. Either he made a mistake or there was something wrong with the equipment. But when you play these games these things happen I’m afraid. One gentleman in Durban was preparing a mines lecture and he went into the explosives storeroom and for whatever reason there was a TMB, which is the big Russian anti tank mine, and he was fiddling with that and the detonator, and the commanding officer and the senior ranks were all having tea in basically the next room when there was a hell of a bang and I was one of the first people out the door because I was near the door and I found this chap with his hands blown off and most of his face, lying a few paces away from the explosives store. And how that TMB didn’t go off as well I do not know. And if it had it would have wiped out the command structure of 1 Reconnaissance Commando completely. It would have killed us all there and then. And so what do you take it, was it stupidity, was it over confidence, was it…? There aren’t accidents, with explosives you can’t afford to have accidents. So I don’t know what it was, but he lost his eyes and he lost his hands. He stayed in the Defence Force for another 10-15 years. And did a very good job of it too. He’s a major and he became very, very competent. Uncanny, in his recognition of voices and his ability to make phone calls and so on. Especially even without his hands. I mean his hands were a mess.

Interviewer In those years the arms embargo was starting to be quite strictly imposed on South Africa. Was there any difficulty in if you needed special explosives for example to blow bridges and so on?

Peter Explosives I wouldn’t know where we got it from, what we got it. I’ll give you an example. Assuming this isn’t going to be read by anybody else. I was sitting in bed one Sunday morning reading

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the Sunday…whatever it was, Sunday Times, I think, in Durban. No, I was listening to the radio, the news, and they just said that an aircraft had been arrested in America carrying a consignment of AR15s, colt commando pistols, M40 grenade launchers, something else and something else. And I said to my wife who was sitting there, I said, shit, that was my last shopping list. And that was exactly what had happened. I was planning an operation and I’d asked for those particular weapons for various reasons, because we never cross the border with any South African equipment whatsoever. And I’d asked for those weapons, they were weapons I liked and trusted and suited the job we had to do. And the CIA had followed every bloody move. And I think it was 2 guys from Armscor or somewhere, or the third secretary of the American Embassy who had gone off and bought this stuff. And the CIA had followed it right to the loading point and they were ready to take off, the aircraft, when the cuffs got put on, and all our equipment got lifted. So the answer to that is very simple. Money talks. I have seen Communist chips in Durban harbour with their names changed and their hammers and sickles painted out unloading unbelievable things in very large quantities much of which went into our warehouses.

Interviewer So essentially the Recces if you needed…

Peter It wasn’t just us, the whole Defence Force. If they needed something they got it, but we specifically…I needed to build two fast attack vehicles for another job that was…when I was in R&D, for another job that was planned and we needed 2, I think the Americans call them Spiders now, we’d call them off road racing cars. And I’d proposed that this was the sort of vehicle we might need for this particular operation and we didn’t have one. So I was the R&D officer, I said, ok, I’ll go and build one, no problem. And I got into amongst the off road racing crowd in Durban, first of all to find out how it all worked and who built these cars and then…it will tickle you…I then went to them with a proposal that I was a TV producer or a film producer, and I needed these 2 cross country vehicles with a sort of turret mount on which I could mount cameras. But because we were operating deep in the bush we’d also need a co driver radio operator and a space for some fairly decent electronic equipment for recording, whether it transmitted or received or not was not their problem, and as I said, some sort of mounting that would swivel on top of the vehicle that I could mount cameras on. And they bought this for a long time and they started building these 2 vehicles to my specifications and under my supervision. And I said, listen, what’s the problem? They’d say no man, the Americans have got far better suspension systems and…I forgot what they called, but the rods that go, the steering bits, tie rods, and this that and the other, they’re much better than we can lay hold of here. You’re obviously a Brit and can’t you get them…would you bring them in for us from the UK? I said, sure, no problem. And like I had them delivered within 4 days from the States. All the bits and pieces they wanted for the suspensions. And these 2 vehicles were built

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and they were actually fantastic. And then I eventually appeared…everything was structured to then take a turret ring for twin mags so you could swivel the twin mags through 360 degrees and the gunner could actually walk the guns around. But these were for cameras. And then one of them obviously had done his National Service or something, he said, these are gun rings. I said, no, no, no, well they might be like gun rings but they’re to mount cameras on. And he says, this isn’t a camera vehicle. I said, have you read the small print in your contract? No. I said, well get your contracts out guys, let’s sit down in the office quietly and they had signed the official Secrets Act and they didn’t know it. laughs

Interviewer But they suspected that…

Peter They realised then. And I had to come clean. And they thought it was very funny and they helped us…they taught us to drive them and then we took them up under cover into St Lucia training area. We ran tests on them there, and then they went up to Caprivi and they were tested there. They were never actually used in operations as far as I know. And the guys abused them because they wouldn’t wear the full force 4 point suspension. One guy got killed assign about driving these things. Whether they ever finally got used I don’t know, but they were magnificent vehicles in their time. Very heavy fire power, very good communications ability and highly mobile.

Interviewer But you needed the right terrain for that.

Peter And the money was there. If I needed it, it was there. I don’t think we ever went without anything we needed. I even needed on one occasion some railway equipment and I went to the South African railways and they gave me, lent me…they thought they lent me, they never got them back…two aluminium trolleys with detachable wheels and adjustable track width wheels that had been used to make some commercial or documentary about the railways. And we’d heard these trolleys existed but we didn’t know where and I went and scrounged them through the railways and in that case I went openly as Defence Force, Special Forces, and said we need them. Will we get them back? Oh yes, you’ll get them back. They didn’t. They vaporised under an explosion somewhere at some stage or another. But yes, what we needed we got, and we had plenty of it. Incredible weaponry.

Interviewer With those trolleys you needed variable gauge because railway gauges are different across southern Africa?

Peter Could be, yes.

Interviewer The Recces themselves within the Defence Force…I mean, you had some very old generals who’d served, when you started they’d probably served in the Second World War. You had a lot of the sort of English Afrikaans tensions. Were the Recces considered to be the blue eyed boys of the Defence Force?

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Peter Oh totally. It was frightening what you could get away with once you put that beret on and went into a room…I used to go and get videos in the Caprivi from the post office at Katima and I’d go in, in uniform, and I’d just walk in there and there was a special strict rota basis that you could only have one of the A class movies for 2 days and it had to come back, this that and the other. I used to walk in there and just take my pick of whatever I wanted and the storeman there wouldn’t bat an eyelid. He would never question. If a Recce major wanted them, a Recce major wanted them Sir! and that was it. There were special identity cards issued at certain ranks, which required the assistance of whoever that identity card was presented to on the spot, regardless of what the assistance was, without question.

Interviewer Ok, so you could go to a pilot or a doctor…

Peter Yes, and say please fix now. I never heard of one being turned down but airports, police, authority, you produced one, you got what you required. Which also included getting our guys out of jail. Laughs Which they did tend to get into a bit. Because as I say they worked bloody hard and there were enormous tensions and pressures, especially when you were burying friends. And when they came back from bush they wound down, and they wound down in a big way, often with a very large amount of alcohol involved, and that almost inevitably ended up with trouble. Especially if they were broke, they used to target the Father’s Moustache in Durban which was a drinking establishment, beer and milk basically, in a big upstairs hall.

Interviewer At the Malibu Hotel.

Peter Yes, at the top of an escalator. And so if they were end of the month and short of money and going to town, they’d say ok they’re going down to the Father’s Moustache. Then they would have 2 or 3 guys detailed to hold the bottom of the escalator, 2 or 3 guys detailed to hold the top of the escalator, just to hang around, do nothing, not drink. Then others would go in to the Father’s and they’d get their jug of beer on the table and as happened with all the tables basically, there was a kitty. And they used to watch then the kitties building on tables around them, until they reckoned there was sufficient funds for their requirement for the night. At a signal, a fight would start at the table, would very rapidly spread to the other tables, and whilst the fight was in progress of course all the cash got lifted. Then on signal it was withdrawal through a door of the Fathers, through the top of the escalators which were now held by the party at the top, down the escalators which were held by the party at the bottom. The party at the top would then withdraw, and everybody would split to the next RV where the money would be then pooled on the table, either drunk on the spot or shared out, and they’d have their night out in Durbs. And that was a fairly regular performance. They then tried at Don Smuggies, and I mean, Smuggies was a hairy place in those days because it was a strip

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joint and there was nothing like that in South Africa.

Interviewer Smugglers in Point Road.

Peter So they did Smuggies once. Then they thought no, that was an easy one, they’ll do it again. The next time they went in there they found 4 or 5 of 1 Reconnaissance majors acting as barmen. Laughs So the owners had spotted that one very quickly and solved it very quickly and it was just a question of a fickle finger pointed to them and they just turned around and left and went back to Father’s Moustache.

Interviewer So you’ve got all these young men who have seen some tough stuff and living a very stressful life. Did the Special Forces have any attempt at counselling the guys or psychologists assessing the guys to see if they were coping with their stress?

Peter No. ? I think this is something that’s only relatively recently been introduced into any of the defence forces. Certainly with the…I mean, I know you’ll laugh at me, but I’ve never actually believed that there’s such a thing as post traumatic stress. Clearly I’m being glib about that. But I don’t believe there’s such a thing as post traumatic stress for a professional soldier. Especially if he’s a well trained professional soldier. Why should he get stressed? He’s doing the job he’s always wanted to do. His adrenalin has been so high, and believe it or not, you might be frightened absolutely shitless during a contact, but the adrenalin is up and you go on, you do your job, and you look forward to the next one. And you actually, in some cases certainly, they thrived on it. Ok, the reaction would set in afterwards, short term, and they’d drink a bunch of booze and have some wild parties, and they’d get ready, get themselves cleaned up, get fit again, and go off and do the whole damn thing again, over and over again. And it’s…I don’t know, it’s an adrenalin, it’s an addiction, it’s like skydiving or base jumping or bungee jumping, except it’s bigger and better. Let’s face it, infantry combat is the ultimate sport if you’re professional. There can’t be a more ultimate sport than that. If it’s a one on one with reasonably equal weaponry it’s best man wins. And as I say, maybe I’m glib, maybe I’m crazy, I don’t know. It’s difficult to describe and it’s difficult to put across to somebody who hasn’t been there, hasn’t done it, and just doesn’t understand what I’m talking about. But, I don’t know if you’ll find this…I mean, I’m about the first of these guinea pigs at the moment that you’re going to talk to. I don’t know what their attitudes will be and I don’t know what their reactions will be, but I’ll bet you that a lot of them have said, yes I was frightened but I enjoyed it. Yes, if I was young enough I’d still go and do it again. And I would. And I think a lot of them would. It’s a way of life.

Interviewer It is. And I hear your sports analogy, but how does that equate to when you go home to your wife and your small child who wants you to come and watch a soccer match next Saturday and you say well I can’t I’m actually going to be doing something else?

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Peter It was tough. My wife, even whilst I was with the parachute team, she reckons that within our first 14 years of marriage in the parachute regiment I was away for 10. I missed the birth of both my children. I was in…I was fighting, I was having the shit shot out of me in the (Radfan?), and she knew it, whilst Antony was being born here in Tzaneen, and I was jumping at the B? show for Princess Anne, the afternoon my daughter was born in Aldershot. I thought I’d get back in time. Laughs And I missed it by about 2 hours. So I wasn’t at the birth of either of my children, sadly. And I was away a hell of a lot. And my son, he’d be the one to talk to really, because sometimes he says, he felt that I did deprive him of certain things during his childhood, but he’s a modern child who would say something of that nature. I thought in my Victorian view, that I was a bloody good provider. My family never lacked anything. My family had a home, we were the first young officers in the British army ever to buy a house. Generally speaking people depended on quarters. We bought our own. Because I was well paid in the parachute regiment. And because I was frugal with my money. My kids were always well clothed, well educated, well housed. They had a good mother who looked after them when I wasn’t there. And in general terms, my son for instance, although he says I deprived him, he for many years basked in the glory of his skydiving father and had many, many days and weeks of happiness and fun and freedom on drop zones with parachuting equipment, in airplanes and so on. My daughter not so, but she was a different creature and is a different creature. And furthermore I think anybody would tell you that we’ve bred two very stable, well adjusted, mature, competent, qualified adults. Regardless of my absence.

Interviewer But this has happened…your marriage has endured for 45 years, you’ve got 2 stable, successful children who are now adults themselves. That’s not always the case. What about the youngster who went in straight out of school, age 17, completed selection course, and went in straight into a life of war without the maturity that you view it from? Have they been so lucky in their…?

Peter You know a lot of them have done surprisingly well. I got into trouble with Recce over the formation of CCB. I didn’t know exactly what was happening but I could see that something was happening and that my youngsters were being persuaded to join a secret organisation whereby they had to give up their military identity and identity cards. And when I heard that I got as many of them as I could together and said, guys, do not do this. You shed your military identity card, you are outside the law, you are not going to be protected…if you get in the tripe, nobody is going to come and pull you out, nobody is going to admit your existence, nobody is going to say, we the government sent you. You’ll be on your own. But a lot of them still…because it was further adventure…a lot of them did it. now, one or two of those guys, and this I will not tell you…that’s something you have to find out for yourself…one or two of those guys set up cover stories, cover

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businesses, and two of them in particular did extremely well in business. And one or two of them are still in that business that they set up under the guise of CCB. Another one, he never went CCB and unfortunately he’s just recently been killed in a head on car crash, amazingly by a guy he knew very well, they wiped each other out. And he wasn’t a drinker, he was a mature, stable and very successful businessman. He designed a sniper rifle…I think it’s 22mm, with like over a km range, a 2 man carry, big weapon, which was produced by one of the funny companies in Pretoria that worked for us, and in ’94 when he split from the Defence Force, he demanded and got the patent rights back. Because the patent rights should have stayed at the Defence Force. But because with one of these funny companies that was an undercover company, he actually got his patent rights back. And he carried on manufacturing ? both the Indian and Pakistani army particularly, in fact right to this day I think they’re buying. But he was killed in a car crash quite recently in a head on. But he did bloody well in business. Another of the commanders…several have done very well. Some of them have not done very well. Two or three…no, more…but certainly two or three killed themselves on big motorbikes. But that was not unhappiness or maladjustment, it was just adrenalin and big bikes. Kaffir Smith, who was the debt collector I told you about, he did drink a fair bit but he got killed in a car crash later on somewhere along down the line, I don’t know the circumstances. We’ve had a couple who died from cancer. Those who smoked like me, used to smoke a hell of a lot. I don’t know of any real disasters. There’s another guy who is public relations marketing manager and doing very well that I know of. Vossie who left and he’s now security but nevertheless he’s got a huge security job in Nigeria. I hope you’ll get to talk to him.

Interviewer Some of the guys have gone off to Baghdad and other places.

Peter They’re still doing it. Some of the older ones…Tuffie Joubert, the guy who fell out of the helicopter, I know Tuffie is doing security work in Baghdad, if he’s still alive. But as I told you earlier, the guys, the South Africans who go to Baghdad as soon as they get spotted they get targeted. South Africans are considered to be dangerous men. Very efficient, well trained and not easily moved aside. And so they get targeted very quickly if they get spotted. So there have been quite a lot of the guys killed out there. Then of course you’ve got the merry men from the Seychelles fiasco and you’ve got the merry men from the Equatorial Guinea fiasco. I mean, Corporal Boonzaaier, he was released on…what’s the word…

END OF TAPE TWO (counter at 371)

TAPE THREE SIDE A

Interviewer What did the guys who…I know that there’s some who have gone into game ranging, because I think it’s an…

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Peter Anti poaching. A natural follow on.

Interviewer And it gives them the life in the bush which they love and so on.

Peter And they’re good at it.

Interviewer Within the sort of inner circle as it were, there’s huge resentment for people who claim to be Special Force operators.

Peter Not resentment. I don’t think we resent them, I think people just think they’re pathetic. They’re wannabees. That’s why you get these gross hairy stories about, oh I didn’t want to be a Recce because on selection they give you a puppy and you’ve got to look after it for 6 months, then you’ve got to kill it and skin it and eat it. I mean what nonsense! Please! So if somebody has built themselves up, I think in any form of selection for anything anywhere, and they fail…and in Special Forces cases, probably has, throughout the world the highest failure rate of candidates…they’ve got to have an excuse for having failed, especially if they’re bullshitters and they’ve built up the whole thing that they’re going to be a Recce! And so the myths and the silly stories come about a lot from those wannabees, want-to- have-beens. And yes I do talk about it a lot, it was my life, I loved the army, and if anybody gives me half a chance I’ll talk about it, any aspect of it, because it’s all that actually interests me, to this day! I wish to go I was younger and be a soldier again. And when I find…and I’ve come across personally dozens, I’ve heard of dozens of people, who’ve said, yes, of course I was hush hush, I was a Recce actually but…and I know bloody well they weren’t. I know by their age group, and all you need to do is ask a couple of simple questions that every Recce can answer. They can’t answer. And I think, well just you’re an asshole. And I never confront them and say listen you were never…why bother? You just turn the other way and say, well what an asshole really. When I was on the parachute team I should think I had something like several thousand people came up to me at one stage or another, and said, well of course in my day when I was at Arnheim, and I know damn well that anybody who was at Arnheim would be wearing something like that. But now they wanted to tell me how they could do this that and the other with parachutes and this modern parachute they’ve never seen before in their lives, and never going to see again probably, but they want to tell me all about it. And that sort of thing pisses me off. I mean why bother. If you want to be, go and do. But don’t pretend you were. And it’s another area, for instance Peter Stiff I think has caught a cold, he’s overworked the system to the point where, where he couldn’t fill in with fact he made it up as he went along, or he’s got bar stories and put them together. And yes, you asked about other successes…not a lot, but a number of the guys did go out to be game rangers. Now in some cases that was cover story for something else. In the early days they were game rangers because they were stopping infiltration through the game parks. And their jobs was not looking after the animals, it was

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spooring and tracking and making sure that whoever was trying to get through didn’t get through. But then some genuinely left the Defence Force, did their academic work, which didn’t come easy to them. Because they had the bush skills and the shooting skills…one or two are legend and I know one probably won’t speak to you, he wouldn’t give you the time of day because he’s just one of those people, but that’s Jack Greef. And Jack went off to the Kruger Park as a ranger, provisional to him getting his national diploma, which meant academic work, which he wasn’t good at and hadn’t done for years. And in those days he couldn’t string more than 3 words of English together. Jack went to the armourer at the Kruger Park…he was told to go and get a rifle, so he went to the armourer and he looked through everything there was, and I think it was a Mannlicher that he got, it was a .458, it was the biggest weapon on the shelf basically, and they…I don’t know if he’s still there but they had an Austrian armourer, and this Austrian looked at Jack’s build, looked at his choice of rifle, he said, why have you chosen that? Jack said, it’s the biggest and the best. And the armourer said, how do you know? He said it’s a Mannlicher and it’s this that and the other bolt and it’s got this action and that action. But will you do the following with the sights for me? And this armourer loved Jack to bits because he obviously recognised that Jack knew what he wanted. So Jack then got his rifle and he went and fired it in and sorted it out to his satisfaction, and within about 2, 3 days of him arriving there with his new rifle, he’s sent for by the head warden of his section. There’s an elephant giving problems, a big bull elephant. He sends for Jack and he said ok, shoot it. So Jack says, yes…twitches…when he gets pissed off with something his eye starts. And he starts walking, and this chap says, where are you going? Going to the elephant. And the chap says, shoot it from here. Jack says, no, why? I’m going to get close to it. Up to you, and he’s backing him, walking behind him. And this elephant starts flapping and kicking dust. So Jack stands, this elephant gives a couple of mocks, then he’s coming. And this guy is saying, shoot, shoot, and Jack is still standing there. He hasn’t come up with the shoulder, he’s still standing and waiting, waiting. Bam! And the tusks came down at his feet. He said, will that do? Senior ranger had gone. He was about 50 metres back.

Interviewer After the attack he had no difficulty in getting…

Peter Cool hand Jack. And Jack actually did the protection of rhino and elephant on the Mozambique border for 4 or 5 years. And Jack basically got eased out of the park because he was killing too many poachers. And he was good at it. And he’s gone on now, he’s older and more sage perhaps and doesn’t need to kill poachers anymore, but if he has a poacher who bugs him he will kill him, easy, no second thoughts about it. He’s a professional and an extremely professional game ranger. So yes. Another one who really stuffed up was Jack’s mate, Sam Fourie. Sam was having an affair in the park with a Canadian researcher. He organised a walking weekend with her, which is quite illegal, and

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he as a ranger and she as a researcher hand in hand with their little rucksacks set off into the woods together for the weekend. And they came across a bloody ellie that doesn’t want to know. And we don’t know, nobody will ever know what happened. He was trying to protect her clearly, this ellie charged, he fired one round and Sam was also a bloody good shot. So he obviously tried a warning shot over his head, because he was illegal, he shouldn’t have been doing what he was doing and if he killed an ellie he was in big trouble. And then he didn’t completely recycle his second shot. And I’ll tell you what killed Sam. His training killed him. Because all of us…and I still do it to this day, and I’m scared of using a bold action rifle for this reason. I double tap every time, it’s just so inbuilt. That with a semi automatic rifle, I don’t fire one, I fire two. With a handgun I fire two shots. It’s just built in.

Interviewer Just explain to me for the purposes of what I’m doing, why you fire 2 rounds double tap?

Peter Well it’s twice as good as one. If you’re a good shot one’s great. But if you can put two into the same target it’s even better because you’re pretty certain he’s dead and not coming at you again. You put it, you stop it, you put it back, whether it be an animal or something on two legs. So double tapping is...it’s a good saver of ammunition. You never go onto a fully automatic, except in the first instance of a contact, and then maybe you’re on full auto with a 50 round mag and then you hose the place just to get on top of the fire fight before the real fire fight starts. But in general terms when you’re restricted with the ammunition you can count, you don’t fire automatic. So toc toc toc toc, it’s a good way of working. And what Sam almost certainly did…my opinion so what…was that elephant, when he decided no I’m going to have to kill this elephant, he fired his first round warning shot and he pulled again. Then he only recycled and then it was too late. And he never actually go the bolt forward again. And the ellie nailed him. So that was Sam gone. And Jack had to go and deal with it. which wasn’t too good. There was a bit of a fuss about that but nobody could blame Sam because he’d gone. I actually honestly don’t know of any of the Special Forces guys who have ended up on skid row and really gone to the dogs. I don’t know. Except for those who’ve been involved in, as I say, the Seychelles, they only did a couple of years anyway. Most of them got qualified whilst they were inside anyway one way or another, they did architectural courses and all sorts. And now of course these poor monkeys in Equatorial Guinea and some still up in Chikurubi. But that was just plain stupidity. Boonzaaier who was released from Equatorial Guinea on compassionate grounds recently…and I don’t know the inside story…but I believe those compassionate grounds were paid for. His wife is a very active lady and she worked her ass off and I think she got the money together to grease palms where he got his compassionate discharge. Whereas Nick du Toit of course is still up there and probably will be there forever. So yes…but I don’t know. You

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never settle. Very few people actually settle into a normal life again. Having said that, Malcolm Kinghorn who I commanded for, is a gentleman…I don’t know what he’s doing now. Hannes Venter who planned and executed some brilliant operations. He’s something to do with creating some tents that the United Nations used that are double skinned, that keep you cool in summer and hot in winter…I don’t know what they are, but special stuff for the United Nations. He heads up a company that does that. As I say, what’s his name who was killed in the car crash, he was producing sniper rifles. One or two of them was farmers. No, they didn’t get counselling, that’s the answer to your question. And most of them being relatively or very intelligent seem to have done alright for themselves one way or another. I don’t know of any real disasters from Special Forces, I really don’t.

Interviewer And when you get together and talk shop as it were…

Peter Talk shit not shop. Laughs

Interviewer You’re not political but is there any sort of sense of resentment that hell we spent all those years fighting, risking our lives, under incredibly dangerous situations and now we’ve got a government that we don’t necessarily support…?

Peter No, funny enough, there are one or two right wing inclined, yes, as in any society. But the average guy, I don’t think he’s got any resentment. He did his job, he did what he considered to be his duty at that time, he enjoyed doing it, it was a hell of a challenge, he’s proud of having done it, he’s proud of having been a member of the unit. We do get together occasionally. It’s smaller and smaller gatherings. There have been an awful lot gone down, that have gone and bought the farm. One or two to cancer even. I don’t think there’s any resentment, I don’t think there’s any bitterness. They as they saw it did they duty and furthermore they enjoyed doing it. Don’t know from there.

Interviewer And when you get together, are there any particular heroes? I know that the Rhodesian War, I always hear stories about André Dennison or Schulenberg, are there any similar sort of legacies…?

Peter Well André Dennison, the name you should mention there…when I went to Cyprus to T? my first platoon, which is 4 Platoon B Company, I took over form André Dennison, and he was in the parachute regiment. He then went to the SS. He had a bit of a cock up somewhere in Borneo with the SS, and I think actually was invited to go elsewhere and do something else. Because what he did, he went out on a patrol and he came back in on his same route, which he shouldn’t have done, and very nearly tripped one of the ambushes, of his own ambushes. Anyway, I don’t know what happened. But André left the Brit army and he came out here and I lost touch with him. Until I heard about the awful business of at Elephant Hills and his journalist girlfriend. His medals on her breast and all that crap. André was a super nice guy. There are people who were respected in the unit. I told

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you briefly about one last night. Two, that I know of. I know a number of them who were exceptionally brave under certain circumstances, and who I like as people, who I admire as soldiers. Very few of them I respect as elders and betters because there aren’t any. And we have mutual respect for each other. And the bond…the bond is actually…that’s where the bonding comes or the…you have reached a point on a barometer that’s a common factor for all of us. Officer, NCO, private soldier. And we’ve been through that, all of us have been through it together. Or all, not together. Some together, some separately, but we’ve all been through the same fairly horrendous 6 week rigmarole. That’s another thing I’ll say…the difference…again I mentioned earlier about the SAS, you’ve got to be 25, 3 years regular service. Their selection is a set routine. It’s a British army thing…they know it’s 2 weeks. So the guys who’ve got the guts and the ability, they know they don’t have to hold out beyond next Saturday. Here, open ended. Once Recce have got you, they can do what they please with you, or used to be able to, and it may have changed now. I had no idea how long our selection was going to take. It took 6 weeks. We stopped actually at Ghost Mountain end. And Hennie Blaauw, the boss, he got out his map and compass and he said, ja manne, 70 graade. I learned a few words of Afrikaans, and ? was one of the first one I learned. I set my compass, I didn’t listen to him because no point. I set my compass, I orientate my compass and I look…I thought no please not tonight, and it was straight over the top of Ghost Mountain. It was like 4 hours we had to be just on the other side, and it was going to be a bitch of a night if we were going over. And they would have had 3 check points on the top, so there’s no question of saying, I’m not going, I’ll go around the side. They would have been there waiting to count you through. But as we were setting off he said, ok…and they used to do this to us a lot anyway, memory games. And a blanket was pulled off a pile of things…and I said, that’s a dozen cases of Castle, a case of brandy, a case of… laughs I was in there boy. Had a bottle of brandy and the top off, and they would have had to kill me to get…and the guys realised that it wasn’t Kim’s game anymore, it was end of story. And it was an emotional moment, but that was the end of selection for us. And those are the sort of memories that you have. But we all went through those experiences. And that’s the common bond I think. Apart from the fact we buried a lot of friends together too.

Interviewer And also must have experienced lots of action together at different times.

Peter Yes, but I take the attitude and I have terrible arguments with my daughter on the political scale, and I may or may not be wrong, and your archives may or may not show me wrong. For instance you take the number of people who now live on the Cape Flats in absolute poverty in shacks. They were forcefully removed by the ANC from the Eastern Cape and other places in order to tip the balance of power when they came to power, which they inevitably

37

were going to do. They wanted a voting base, and they moved those people down there. And they created that problem in the Cape. And my daughter doesn’t like me to talk about Recce…she’s ashamed of the fact that I was a Recce and she thinks it’s something bad and we did evil things, but we didn’t. We did soldierly things but we didn’t do evil things. I didn’t ever torture anybody for the fun of torturing somebody. I didn’t kill anybody unnecessarily. If I had had to render first aid to the enemy I would have done so, etc, etc. So I have no shame…I feel no shame whatsoever at having been in South African Special Forces. In fact I feel pride. I am proud of the fact that I got there and I’m proud of the fact that I served in one of the best Special Forces units in the world. One of the best. And I think a lot of the guys feel the same. But as I say my daughter, she doesn’t see it that way at all.

Interviewer Is she opposed to the idea of soldiers and war anyway or is it specifically the Recces?

Peter No, I think it was specifically in South Africa and the whole apartheid thing and so on. Which she’s the younger generation…but where this comes from is…and I say to her, finally I say to her, listen I’m sorry but your mother and I opted to bring you out here, which we did. You didn’t have any choice in the matter because you were too young, but what I did in Recce and what my youngsters did in Recce, and the young men who served National Service relatively cheerfully, and without complaining too much and did their jobs bought you and the rest of South Africa another 20 years. And in that time I ensured that you and Antony got not only your school education but you got your university education without interference of other political influences or other colour groups or anything else. And so don’t tell me that I shouldn’t have done what I did because you wouldn’t now have got what you have got if I hadn’t have done it. And I do feel that also quite strongly that…my son did his National Service. He was lucky, I got him deferred because he was going to university as an engineer and he did this bloody stupid corporal’s officer’s leadership course and became a second lieutenant, as an engineer graduate. And he actually became a lieutenant because he was a graduate. And he went to Kroonstadt, and for 2 years he had a ball. He enjoyed…he didn’t have to go and do anything ugly. He went to the floods down at…whatever it was. The marks of his propeller are still on one of the signboards in the main street. He played hockey for the Free state and he played hockey for the army and he had a ball. And a lot of the youngsters did. A lot of the youngsters didn’t have a ball. Felt it was a waste of time, felt it was an intrusion in their lives, but the average South African guy made the most of it, kept his mouth shut, did his job and benefited for the rest of his life, I believe…I may be wrong…you did it and you can tell me whether you felt that it was that or not, but I believe that it was good for a young man to do that, a couple of years discipline. I don’t say it was good for him to go into combat situations or anything of that

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situation, but I don’t think National Service did anybody any harm in the broad sweeping terms. As I say I don’t believe that traumatic stress syndrome exists but it may possibly does and it probably does but as I say you can’t take a joke you shouldn’t have joined.

Interviewer Without going into specifics because I know you don’t want to speak about specifics of sort of exactly what happened, when and where, but I think we’ve covered a broad swathe of…

Peter You’ve covered me, I haven’t given you much inside into the…

Interviewer Correct. But is there anything you want to add that…I mean we’ve covered you and your views and your career in…as I say it’s a pretty broad swave of modern SADF history. Is there any aspect that we haven’t touched on that you want to add that we should look at? If we want to inform a historian who’s at these papers 30 years down the line…?

Peter Yes, there’s one particularly that I will bring out straight away…this just occurred to me again…re-occurred to me. and that is the Boere is his own worst enemy and has been since apparently time immemorial. He lost the Boer War through being arrogant, stupid, individual who wasn’t disciplined, who would go off in his own direction at any will or whim that he fancied. He was ill disciplined…I’m not saying for a moment that our troops were not disciplined, they were extremely disciplined and they were damn good. But the Boere has this ability to want to argue with authority at any level, and I think had the Boere generally pulled together in the same direction throughout the whole period things may or may not have turned out differently. But no matter what they’d have done, there is still no excuse or reason for apartheid. And therein lies the rub that it was a system that just could not continue to exist. And it was imposed artificially, and as I say I’m not a religious person but my biggest jibe against any one of them was, is God a white man? And is your God a white man? And why can’t they come into your church? And that was the whole ridiculous aspect of apartheid as far as I’m concerned. They were so religious and holy and yet the black man wasn’t good enough to come to their church.

Interviewer Was that made apparent all the time that there was partly a religious justification for apartheid…what role did chaplains play in the day to day (consult?) with the Recces?

Peter Oh, you haven’t talked to me about this before, this was another big bone of contention on my part. I found that one of the priests in Recce…he was a full colonel, and his wife just happened to be a highly paid public relations human development expert who was employed also by the Defence Force at great expense to tell us how to run selection, for instance. And she came up with all sorts of theories of how everything we were doing was wrong and she had a much better way of doing the whole thing and she was paid 40 or 50 thousand rands a month or whatever it was to come up with a load of absolute garbage, whereas anybody who

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had been involved with selection of men for any sort of work over 30, 40 years, all of us could tell her she was wrong. But they didn’t want to listen to us because we were just mere soldiers but they’d listen to her because she was a bloody psychologist, psychiatrist, or whatever the hell she was. But this priest was always interfering. This dominee. And I got a friend of mine to send out some centre pages of Playboy, and I put them up around my office. And he came in and he told me to take them down. I said, this is the Research and Development. A lot of secret stuff in here dominee and I’m not sure that you’re totally cleared to come in here, anyway, and if you don’t mind my pictures don’t come in here, because they’re staying up. In the end the colonel came around and told me to take them down. But I kept the dominee away from me and my troops as best I could. The religious influences were, I thought, bad in the Defence Force. But again, I’m not a religious person so I objected to priests interfering with me and what I was doing with my troops. Politically it wasn’t…yes, it was…it did play a large part. At one stage there were one or two of the youngsters who were basically approached to join the Broederbond and were worried about it and I advised them not to. Because I said it was no part of soldiering. The senior officers clearly were politically influenced…when I say senior, I mean sort of colonel upwards. Except for the likes of Jannie. I think the whole political and religious atmosphere was unhealthy. It could never have happened in the British army, didn’t happen in the British army fortunately, but it did play a part. And a lot of the youngsters…young Barrie Walker, when he was killed at ? and one of the things…he was shot through his bible. He was carrying a small bible in his pocket, as a lot of the guys did. And a lot of the Afrikaners were genuinely, deeply…I wouldn’t necessarily say religious, I was going to say…what is it when you’ve been brainwashed?

Interviewer They’re devout but they’re…

Peter They were brainwashed. And so whether they were genuinely religious or whether they were just Pavlov’s dogs, I don’t know. And it suddenly seems to have slipped a bit, doesn’t it, when they’ve suddenly realised that maybe when the church decided that apartheid really…maybe they’d been wrong. Suddenly a whole lot of things fell to pieces for them. But it did play a part and most of the guys were or had or appeared to have religious feelings and beliefs, which is find by me, not my thing but…

END OF SIDE A (counter at 384)

SIDE B

Interviewer …the black guys and the…you know there were a lot of Angolans and Mozambicans, whereas Catholicism is quite strong. Did those soldiers have a strong religious affinity or were they merely doing their job and they kept their religion out of it?

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Peter I think like me they were doing a job and if they were required to go to church they went to church. They had prayers every parade, you took your hat off, you bent your head and you mumbled or didn’t mumble as the case may be. I had to lead prayers when I was taking a parade, and I had the Lord’s Prayer in Afrikaans written out in my beret because I couldn’t remember it. And they used to get lots of sniggers and guffawing with my fabulous Afrikaans, but I’d get through it. Then you had the attitude of say guys like Malcolm Kinghorner who commanded 4, basically set 4 up. He was an English speaking guy but he had an incredible usage, particularly of Afrikaans, and he could twist Afrikaans in a way that infuriated the Afrikaners, but he wasn’t being offensive. But he just had the ability to use language in the most outstanding manner. And he did. He used to pull the legs all the time. But the Afrikaner do not have a sense of humour. Well certainly not a Brit sense of humour. That’s the other thing I didn’t come up with either, religion and politics. It was only some years later, because basically I fell out with the system. I fell out with the system in the end over the forming up of the CCB, and telling my troops not to join, not to become involved. And I was hauled up by General…Captain Liebenberg, he’s now dead fortunately. I say that laughs only because I’m being rude about him. I didn’t like the gentleman, he didn’t like me, and in the end they basically set me up to put me in a position where I had to resign. And they were succeeded in that because I got very cross, and I resigned. And some years later I wrote to an ex Selous Scout who is teaching tracking in Nevada in the States now. He teaches Red Indians to track. A guy called (David Scott Donovan?), he was the agent to the scouts. And I wrote to him about something technical and I got a reply, and I got a long rambling letter of apology. And I couldn’t understand what this letter of apology was about. I thought has he come out of the tree or something, come off his rocker? And basically what he was saying was that he feels so ashamed now that he had listened, because we became quite close friends and I introduced him to a lot of people in Tzaneen…he was with 5 Recce…and I introduced him to a lot of people socially in Tzaneen. And then suddenly he cut me off and he disappeared and I didn’t think anything of it, I just thought well I didn’t sort of miss or anything, I just thought well our paths haven’t crossed. And he was apologising profusely for having not supported me and this that and the other. Last sort of line was, I was warned not to have any further contact with you because you were a British spy. And that was at official level. So…those were the sort of attitudes we were ? Although I enjoyed my time I sometimes think, really…at least they paid me the whole time and that’s what it mattered. And by the youngsters it was never considered to be correct, and the crowd that I went through selection with are still the crowd I drink with every 2 or 3 years when we get together. Funny old crowd altogether, funny crew.

Interviewer Thinking of the Rhodesians, was there resentment when in 1980 a lot of the Scouts came down and a lot of the SAS…?

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Peter The day the Rhodesians came on parade, the first day they came on parade, about a week after they’d come south, with 1 Recce, when they were going to form up 6 Reconnaissance Commando I think they were going to be. And they formed up out of the sight and they marched on as a unit with their commanding officer, little Garth Barrett, who was like a little kaffir dog, all bones and ribs and the RSM with his pace stick and his two coloured sergeants with their pace sticks, and they were immaculate. They marched on, their drill was perfect, they halted, turned, faced 1 Recce that was a shambles. The RSM was a scruffy bugger with long hair. He was a tough cookie, Trevor Floyd, but he was an ugly piece of work. And the moment they marched on and I saw them march on like that, I said to myself, guys, you’ve just blown it. You are finished, you are stone dead in the South African Defence Force. It was so resented that they were so smart, that they were so disciplined, that they were so organised. They were deeply resented by the South African contingent. They were put on to something like 4 hours of Afrikaans a day. These were all combat soldiers. Then we did some operations…they did some operations. Extremely hairy, of which they carried the brunt. In other words they became cannon fodder. Within a year, I don’t think we had 20 left. Gone. And I think it was deliberate on the part of the South African Defence Force, was to get rid of them.

Interviewer They didn’t want them.

Peter No. All that experience and that excellence, and they were experienced and they were good, was a threat to the Afrikaner idea of things, I think.

Interviewer That’s very interesting because I’ve read and I have a vague memory of it, is that, it was thought that this would be a great fill up or boost to the SADF.

Peter Could have been.

Interviewer Could have been. ? politics die hard.

Peter No, I’m not saying…

Interviewer No, I’m referring…thinking about politics you insisted that you not be called to serve against the British queen or the English queen, and you said that you wouldn’t serve internally.

Peter No.

Interviewer When the guys were asked to do internal operations…

Peter We never were.

Interviewer Were you never asked?

Peter No. We did show of force, is all. When the school kids were performing in the early eighties, we did a couple or 3 drive throughs in the Durban area. We had some superb land rovers called Sabres, which were custom built for us, long distance tanks, stainless steel water tanks, 3 or 4 gun mountings, long

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distance desert tyres, 4 good radio fits, the whole lot there, and they looked impressive. We had about 50 of them. They were brought down to Pretoria and so often we used to sally forth with the black goggles, helmets and just quietly cruise around in the calm of 50 and to everybody it looked impressive. Through the main street of Durban. And I had a couple of protestors who came alongside the vehicle and started giving me stick, why don’t you do this that and the other? I said, why don’t you fuck off! Why don’t you…I said if you don’t fuck off I’m going to drive over you. Pshoom! Laughs Yes, so all we did was…all I know of internally was show force. Now who had the bread van in the Cape that the sides dropped down and fire was opened from, I do not know. I’m not sure. I think I might know. But that was a different set of circumstances. I don’t know. To my knowledge we did not work internally at all. That doesn’t count Lesotho or Swaziland…

Interviewer No, sure. Foreign countries.

END OF INTERVIEW (counter at 91)

Collection Number: A3079 Collection Name: “Missing Voices” Oral History Project, 2004-2012

PUBLISHER: Publisher: Historical Papers Research Archive, University of the Witwatersrand Location: Johannesburg ©2016

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