So much for the theory, these are a few things that happened along the way. As in most armies the very important thing is to get the soldiers to be familiar with the assault rifle they are using, in this case the AK47. We did just that, for hours on end, every day, for weeks. Strip, assemble, strip, assemble, ad nausea. At first we set up competitions amongst the troops, and, when they got better, we challenged them ourselves. This type of thing never having been my strongest point, eventually my troops were giving me a run for my money. On more than one occasion some of them beat me, much to everyone’s delight. Sergeant Ze always beat me.
We moved onto the Light Machine Gun of Russian manufacture called a PKM. We really loved that weapon. Belt fed, with a spare barrel, we had 4 brand new, out-the-box to play with.
Interspersed with this we did my personal favourite from early army days: Fire and Movement, with a little bit of leopard crawl added in just for fun. Because I have some stupid ideas, like: don’t ask someone to do something you cannot do yourself, and having read some shit about “leadership by example”, I went back to camp filthy dirty and most times with bloody elbows and knees. Fire and movement involves running forward toward the enemy, throwing yourself flat on the ground and returning fire, while your buddy follows and gains a few feet. Then, as he returns fire, you pull yourself up and repeat the process, gaining a few feet past him. As your buddy is actually firing right past you it is recommended to stay in a straight line! This means that you cannot casually look around for the best, softest spot to fall down, or run around that scratchy little thorn bush. It is Murphy’s Law that you will encounter at least half the known thorn bushes found in Africa in one’s path, and a few interesting rocks for good measure. (If I ever catch this Murphy chap, I will torture him to death, the bastard.) This continues until the enemy either withdraws or is dead (or you are dead, hadn’t really thought about that one until now). To practice this is no fun; if you’re being fired upon, however, the inspiration to abuse your body in this fashion comes quite naturally, as it is the lesser of two evils.
Big Five Wars is my main mission for now and they also get updated regularly.
I was running the Rhino Anti Poaching Unit at Mabula Luxury Lodge, situated about 40km from Warmbaths (Belle Belle now?). We were doing solely night duty and at dawn I used to get back to the compound we lived in (horrible!) and walked to the small dam to watch the sunrise. On this day a hippo and her baby had moved in to the dam. As you see from the photos in the video, the mom kept a beady eye on me the whole time. The baby moved from her and played with some reeds.
Then it decided to come have a closer look at me! Real close. The mother started making a noise, snorting and what not. But. She did not move. One animal I am wary of is the hippo, with good reason, they kill more people than any other large animal in Africa. They are F-ing quick and I was much too close, if she charged? BIG kak. But. You know me, I kept one eye on her and the other on the baby taking photos.
The baby eventually got bored and went back to its mommy.
This video is made up of those photographs.
Big Five Wars is my main mission for now and they also get updated regularly.
First, the Mortar Training crew: this consisted of the lawyer, two other men and our interpreter (or “talks” as we called them). He was ex 5 Recce and a black man, thus able to blend well with the environment, and therefore always MIA (Missing in Action), normally to the Cuca (local shop) or the whorehouse. Later these “talks” would prove to be a huge security risk, for this precise reason.
This mixed bag moved further up from the main parade ground, passing other groups who were trying to sort out their own troops ( who did not look like troops at all). If one went to a halfway house for street children in Hillbrow one would find healthier, better-dressed children. In a clearing we found our own trainees. From the FAA (Force de Arma Angola, or something) side we were blessed with a little combat veteran, all of 20 years old, Sergeant Ze. With the “talk” MIA and Ze not speaking a word of English, we managed with sign language and drawings in the sand. Ze was extremely quick to catch on what was needed and carried out orders with great enthusiasm. A bonus was that his troops were probably even more scared of him than of us!
Our instructions were to start with basic infantry training. We set up a schedule the same as what we had done ourselves in the SADF, except now we were shouting the odds. Each morning was to start with roll call, some PT, drill, brunch, oh, and a new one: in Angola everyone has siesta after brunch until 2 o’clock. We thought this weird but by 12 o’clock on the first day we understood extremely well. South Africa doesn’t get hot, not even in the Northern Province; comparative to Longa it is just warm! An example: one day during siesta I was lying half-cooked on my bed when I noticed that a screw on my AK was working loose. As this is quite a serious thing I begrudgingly moved to fix it. The total energy expenditure was not too great. I picked up a screwdriver, reached for the rifle and turned the screw all of two rotations, max. This caused sweat to drip off my chin onto the rifle. It is very seldom my face ever perspires; now and then in northern Natal’s midsummer, and when I work with dangerous snakes, one might see a drop or two. After that devastating experience I left any work until the sun was way down on the horizon. After siesta, weapons training and formation / manoeuvres.
Big Five Wars is my main mission for now and they also get updated regularly.
As one moved away from the river, one encountered the first baobab trees: like huge, ancient beings. They give off a special “vibration”, different to any other trees I have known. Once out of the gully we could see more of what the landscape had to offer. There was a plain leading up to a few small hills 3 km away. The bush was sparse, with very little grass, just dusty sand, interspersed with these stately baobabs. The beginnings of roads could be seen, and signs of human traffic were evident. We passed an old Russian tank, a T58 or something, and a couple of artillery pieces. Some of the tiffie-looking guys stopped here. Tiffie types are unique looking: even in a well-disciplined army they manage to look untidy and a little dirty. Here they stuck out even more because of the lack of rules, and they were the only fat guys in the whole place. The rest of Longa had either fit guys (ours), or half-starved children (FAAs).
Around the next corner was the rough parade ground. Now here was a shock…. It was full of half-dressed little black men! Normally in any army I’m one of the smallest guys; here was an entire Brigade, all smaller and skinnier than me. Not only that, what clothes they had on were rags; if they had any footwear at all, it was decrepit, falling-apart takkies or slops. As we got closer you could see how young they were. The average age must have been about sixteen. Spread amongst this sorry lot were a few better-dressed but no less dirty adults. One or two in each group had AKs and quite a few had a weird-looking rifle, which I learned was an ancient model called a G3. G3 in army medical lingo means unfit for duty, a small piece of irony which was not noticed by many. On the side of the parade ground was a large tent with all the paraphernalia of an Ops room. In the tent were a few fatter, but not much, well dressed (i.e. in uniform) black soldiers. They were listening intently to what two white Executive Outcomes chaps were telling them. Well, I just stared at it all in surprise.
Big Five Wars is my main mission for now and they also get updated regularly.
Onboard your property with Marloth’s Way. Simple, effective, and complete peace of mind. Guest PIN access Timestamps of entry to guide Guest acknowledgement Absolute peace of mind with educated guests 👉 https://marloths-way.pages.dev ✉️ marlothsway@gmail.com Enjoy Marloth. Respect Marloth. Leave it as wild as you found it.
So… we’ve been listening. 👀🌿 Over the last few weeks we’ve had some great feedback, a few good suggestions, and yes — even a couple of “maybe change that bit” moments. So we did. Marloth’s Way™ has had a little polish. Nothing dramatic. We haven’t tried to reinvent Marloth, because frankly, Marloth doesn’t need reinventing. We’ve simply made it easier for visitors to understand how things work around here — the wildlife, walking, driving, noise, fires, the bush and those little things that locals know but visitors often don’t. And instead of telling you how wonderful we think it is, we thought we’d do something much simpler: Go have a look. 🌿 marloths-way.pages.dev 🔐 PIN: 972866 Have a wander through it. Press the buttons. Read the pages. See what your guests would see. For owners and property managers who want it for their guests, Marloth’s Way is R500 per property per month, including controlled guest access and the electronic acknowledgement system behind the guide. Want to know more or get your property set up? 📧 marlothsway@gmail.com It isn’t about Marloth’s Way. It’s about Marloth Park
On the whole we saw very little wildlife of the larger variety, mainly insects of the extremely large variety. A few guys had to be casevaced because of spider-bites and scorpion stings.
One morning, very badly hung over, I was too lazy to put my boots on and stumbled barefoot along the path to the mess for coffee. I suddenly felt an excruciating pain in my little toe, as if someone was putting out a cigarette on it. My first thought was that I had stepped on someone’s cigarette butt, then I saw a whitish, small scorpion scuttling off. Strangely enough my scorpion sting, while painful, did not upset my nervous system as it did the other guys who got stung; they all got seriously ill. I waited for the inevitable, but, apart from minor swelling where my little toe became my big toe, nothing really happened. It must have been all the vodka acting like a serum! On a scale of pain, it was high up: much worse than a bee sting, about three times worse than a wasp, but Mickey Mouse when compared to an adder bite. So far those are the only references I have managed to collect, but I am still working on it.
The grossest insect-related thing I saw, and thank God it didn’t happen to me, involved little white worms. There we were, minding our own business on the shooting range. Some of the guys were complaining about these painful pimples they had developed. One artilleryman had a lovely beer belly and was digging at a pimple on his stomach with his none-too-clean fingernails. Much to everyone’s disgust, an ugly little worm-thing wriggled out. It was highly amusing to watch all these rough and tough soldiers, who had similar pimples, run screaming like a bunch of frightened women to find the medic. I suppose it was only funny because my skin was a lovely brown colour and free of blemishes! Brian, the medic, spent the afternoon digging out these horrible little worms.
Big Five Wars is my main mission for now and they also get updated regularly.
A big thank you to everyone who has taken a look at Marloth’s Way since we opened it up yesterday. 💚
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In another sloppy tent I could see what our magazine. Two tiffie types were half-heartedly cleaning a well-used machine gun. In the tent was precious little, certainly not the 50 assault rifles one would have expected. We were divided up into our specialties; to get to Longa one had to have had a special training, or have told some convincing lies at The House. So I met my fellow mortarists, and in typical army fashion they were all pretty mellow guys. One was a divorced, unsuccessful lawyer. He got his 15 minutes of glory a couple of years later on Special Assignment, even though he was one of the first to resign when we went operational. The mortar crew had also only been there for a couple of weeks.
The time had come to meet the troops we were hired to train. As we walked up to the training area I got a better idea of my surroundings. Our base was spread, about 500 m or more, along a huge river which looked deceptively slow-moving. This was Rio Longa; it still had 6 km to run to the sea. Along the bank were lush green reeds and huge mango trees. On one memorable occasion a couple of hippo came through those reeds to inspect our camp. It was in the middle of the night and they crashed through a few tents before returning to the river, never to be seen again. Not that I blame them; the Executive Outcome chaps, on the whole, were quite ugly and they had screamed awfully loudly! The other animals that came to visit us were some monkeys. They were black but had a heart-shaped white ring around their faces. The reason they came was to eat mangos; there were a lot of mango trees near the river. One bright spark decided to throw a mango at them; big mistake. They returned fire, their inaccuracy compensated for by sheer volume and the speed at which they threw green mangos back.
The Angola colobus (Colobus angolensis), Angolan black-and-white colobus, or Angolan colobus is a primatespecies of Old World monkey belonging to the genus Colobus.
Spoke a bit about where the frame and what it took to get it made, the crushed glass and whatnot. The next step was to get the damn thing in place … and hold it there. As you may remember, I did not have any help. But. Got the rather heavy frame “pinned”, then stated building it into the structure, bottle by bottle. I was still working on a final product for my Bottle Bricks, as this was not only an awkward way to make a house from bottles, it took too long!
The Crushed Glass, as you can see, was then set in place. Silicone. Here, take it from me, do NOT buy the cheap stuff, you will cry later. I had learned that already, fortunately. The Marine Silicone is the best. The windows were sealed in with this. Put my Gecko in too!
Then I wanted some bright colour so started experimenting with food dye. Got Gracia wine bottles, like the shape, and put coloured water in. The screw lid sealed them off. But. The harsh Bushveld weather EATS little pieces of tin like the cap. Marine silicone applies paper thin solves that kak.
That’s it for today. We are getting close to the Bottle Brick recipe, I promise.
I will post, a series of what would be my OLD MAN’s CV.As the place where I am is up for sale…Gypsy on the Move?
