Adeus Angola

Cape Town: Howard Timmins, 1976 How was it? What was it like? What did you do up there? These are the three questions that every soldier who took part in the Angolan affair has had fired at him since his return. Old soldiers want to compare experiences, parents want to fill in the gaps in the necessarily scanty news items which emanated from the operational area during that worrisome time, brothers simply want to know if it was anything like the films. Unfortunately there are many things which cannot be told now, thanks to the requirements of military and political security. There is a good deal, however, which can be told, and this is what Willem Steenkamp has attempted to do. He tells me that he spent much time pondering the form his book should take; having come to the conclusion that a detailed chronological account of what happened in Angola would be too scanty, he opted for the personal touch, the person's-eye view, as it were. Some of it is sad, some funny, some informative. It is singularly lacking in place-names and all the names are pseudonyms (although anyone who was there and served with the author will recognise his men - Stretch, Baz, Mac, Griper, Charlie, Melvin and the rest - and others like Freddie the postman, Pantser Piet and Joe the Sapper) but the people and places are all real. Rare book about the Border War where South African soldiers joined Jonas Savimbi's American-backed forces to fight the Cuban-backed MPLA and FAPLA communist forces. A rare book. ------------------ Orders over $100.00 are shipped using tracked courier delivery services.