The area was flat and open with rocky ‘gomos’ (granite outcrops or koppies). The RAR had surrounded the area and when we landed the RAR Company Sergeant Major (CSM) told us their officer had been shot and they couldn’t get to him. Russell Phillips and I with our respective sticks immediately ran up to the side of the outcrop. We came under heavy fire, and when I say heavy fire it was accurate and was intense. My guys just pumped the fire back into the cleft in the granite koppie with the MAG machine-gun barking a full belt at a time. We battled but eventually made the bottom of the koppie and climbed up to the cleft. We found Lt Jeremy Fisher in a really bad way outside of the cleft. He had a serious chest wound and was visibly fading.
Russell and I grabbed him and hauled him back and down slightly about 10m behind a small ledge, while our sticks carried on pumping fire into the cleft/cave entrance. At this stage the boss was screaming for info and trying to find out what was going on. As I was the only one that could hear and see what was going on I had to try to co-ordinate what was happening on the ground as well as trying to prevent my head getting shot off. I organized the medic and tried to calm the RAR guys down. It was absolute mayhem with everybody trying to talk at the same time.
The boss kept on $hitting on us for not answering the radio – how the hell you talk on a radio when you are getting the $hit shot out of you I never found out. Russell said to me “stuff this”, dropped his webbing and rifle and grabbed his 9mm Browning pistol and dived into the cave, shooting like an absolute master. That was the only time I heard a 9mm Browning sound like an Uzi submachine-gun on automatic. It seemed like every few seconds he called for another magazine which I had collected from my guys and tossed to him as needed. It sounds quick but we were in and out of that cave for over three hours trying to duck shots and ricochets. We ran out of 9mm ammo until the RAR guys came up with some.
The gooks were below us in a cave below the main cave and shooting up a crevice which meant that most of the rounds were ricocheting all over the place. How we were never hit was unknown. I couldn’t go in with Russell as if I disconnected my FN from the radio there would be no coms and there was no way to swing an FN in that tight space. I stayed at the mouth of the cave and learned just how Jeremy got shot as when I stood there my shirt and webbing were drilled three times. Russell went deeper into the cave and after his eyes became accustomed to the dim light he dropped two gooks in the top cave and then we set about trying to get the others out from the cave below. We angled our rifles and shot down the cleft and then we tried to drop a grenade but it jammed halfway down the cleft and nearly took our heads off. This Mexican Stand-off went on for ages and as someone passed in front of the cleft the gooks shot at us. Things quietened down in the late afternoon and we suspected the gooks were running low on ammo or were wounded or hurting. An RAR sergeant was with us trying to talk the gooks out during the quiet phases but that didn’t work either.
Corporal Sandro Mazella, the troop medic, had been working on Jeremy for all this time with bullets and shrapnel flying all over the place. For the civvies reading this you must appreciate that the noise in a contact is unbelievable. You have three to four choppers circling overhead and with the firing and grenades you do not hear too well. We managed to cassevac Jeremy and continued into the late afternoon trying to winkle out the gooks but they were well ensconced in the caves.
This thing was going to have to continue overnight...
Death of an officer and an act of valour...
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