Traveling in Southern Africa

Hi Cat

As I read your first paragraph and saw the word Angola, my instant question was did you get to meet Savimbi. Of course you answered that in the next paragraph.

I have a friend, a good friend, who after doing some things in Vietnam for the US Army was called back to the states where he was assigned to set up the John Kennedy Training Center and help create something called the Green Berets. Many of the first years crop knew him. Later on when his Army tour was up he was told if he re-enlisted he would not be rotated back to Vietnam because he was needed to provide more training. So he left the US Army and joined the Marines who agreed to send him back to Nam. He did two more tours in Vietnam, Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol mostly (LRRP) stuff. When that ended something else was beginning on your continent and peace time in the US seemed boring to him and somewhere along the way in Vietnam he had acquired an intense hatred of communists anyway.

So back then, things were a little looser legally and he asked the Rhodesian Army if he could join them. They said Heck yes and he did. He stayed there until the rigged election happened then like many others he left.

When I moved to this area and joined my State's Home Guard (VA has an official organized militia of it's own) I met him and he was one of my trainers, and later a Command Sgt Major (CSM) (a position he has held 3 times in 3 different organizations. I was very pleased and honored a few years ago when the US Army realized they had made a huge mistake and I got to attend a ceremony in which they awarded him his Green Beret since the work he had done in Vietnam before setting up the first Green Beret training center was the actual model the Green Berets were based on.

More recently in 2004 he was contacted by the African Union and served a full year as a Peacekeeper in the Nuba Mtns of Sudan.

In 2012 for personal reasons he retired from our State Militia. He may have done other things since then. He lives only a few miles from me and runs a farrier shop and makes also makes some fairly tough special order knives on his forge.

I just thought you may be interested.

BTW, I nearly went to Angola myself back in '75, fresh out of the Army and bored to tears I saw a recruiting ad in SOF and very nearly responded. Instead I made some calls and wasn't that satisfied with what I was hearing (the phone number went to an answering service that took messages, not to a recruiter per se and even in those pre computer days I was able to learn a bunch of businesses and individuals were using the same phone number, and just outside Chicago address so I made some more calls and an Army buddy of mine swung by the address and reported it as being a for rent warehouse with only 1 occupant, the answering service. That was too shadowy for me, so I did more research and eventually had a long talk with a guy named John Stockwell. Of course back then he didn't tell me his last name. Just a guy on the phone named John. He wasn't evasive per se, he did answer some questions, but others, important ones (like medical support. logisitics. etc) he was really evasive on. That bothered me so I declined it. Of course later it turned out this was the same outfit that recruited Daniel Gearheart (poor unlucky guy) and George Bacon. So there, but for the grace of God (and my paranoia and good sense) went I. Years later I was standing by a display someone named Herb Hetu (that's open) had put up and I made a comment to the person next to me also looking at it and he replied. The voice rang a bell and I said, aren't you John? Yep. John Stockwell. We talked awhile about other stuff. Of course he later became infamous when while the Snepp thing was going on he left his employer and wrote a book about the whole Angola thing called In Search of Enemies and revealed him and Kissinger had intended for the men recruited to not have support and be sacrificial goats, and the US got annoyed at him for violating his secrecy agreement, so he fled the US and went off to Northern Europe where he teamed up with Phillip Agee to publish the Covert Action Bulletin (CIB), a newsletter that Snowden's revelations were just echoes of as it had all been revealed in the CIB decades before. So I missed Angola, but I am still breathing which is more than most recruited by Stockwell per Kissinger's decisions and did go can say.

BTW, Savimbi lasted as long as he did, solely by being anti-communist in the Cuba days and in President Ford's era, that counted a lot.

Cat, good luck on your trip, and keep your eyes open for

Hi, Cat:

Hmmm, that was indeed remarkable experiences in your early traveling...

Yes Cat. But being a mercenary did not become an internationally recognized War Crime in and of itself until midway through the trials of Gearhart and the others captured at the airport with him. This of course created the window of opportunity for contractor groups such as Direct Action and Blackwater.

Is southern african are a black people??

I'll take this one Cat, yes peachy they are black, Cat here wears makeup when he comes online....

I'll take this one Cat, yes peachy they are black, Cat here wears makeup when he comes online....

Peachy, a recomended made for TV fiction documentary movie series that laid the groundwork and pretty much explains how it all started. It got even more convoluted after the ending of the King shown in this documentary.

Episode 1





The other episodes are there too, but the preamble will help tell you a lot.

awww..

i thought more on white people there.

Look at catfoot??? he is a handsome man,right?

thanks Ken,

thats too long to play 52 mins..

lets unwind and have some wine/vodkas instead of 52mins .

and how about the languages of SA,it seems like the same way with a spanish, as I have watched the documentary film that gave by Ken.

Peachy, just do the first 7 minutes, it brings you up to speed.

To me, an obvious question. What do you use on Kudu, a 9.3mm or something more American or British in caliber?

Have fun Cat, take care, catch ya later. What an interesting life you have had.

@ Ken,

Don't believe what Cat tells you about the .303 cos previously he told me he only uses an AK47 on hunting trips.

You'll be snoring the place down by now. Not too late for me to place my biltong order, right? I couldn't do what you are off to do, but I am quite able to eat the results, and biltong posts fairly well.

Just send me your bank details and I'll transfer the money to cover the biltong and the postage.