61 Mech’s veterans, unlike the proverbial old soldiers, did not simply fade away. In 2005 Jaco Kirsten wrote a few humorous feature articles in the travel magazine Weg in which he looked back on his days in the SADF in 1980 and 1981. Kirsten’s stories were greatly enjoyed by readers who had also served in the armed forces. One of them was Ariël Hugo, Roland de Vries’s erstwhile expert bush navigator of the Protea days, who was now living at Caledon in the Western Cape.

Kirsten’s writings had re-awakened treasured memories of his time at 1 SAI in 1980 and 61 Mech in 1981, so he wrote him a letter of thanks and passed on a link to a website. Another reader of the same vintage was Gert Minnaar, who had enjoyed Jaco’s writings as much as Ariël, so he set about tracking him down.

In December 2006 the two former Bravo platoon commanders met up for the first time since they had parted company in January 1982, almost 25 years earlier. Needless to say, the conversation began with some intensive catching up on what they had been doing in the intervening quarter-century, but then inevitably segued into their army days, basic training at 1 SAI, their advanced training at Oudtshoorn and De Brug,

Ariël's letter to Weg

induction into 61 Mech’s ranks with the notorious “Omuthiya Special”, pleasant encounters with Tsumeb’s enormous steaks and ice-cold beer, the doubtful joys of arriving at and departing from Grootfontein, the follow-up operations during the SWAPO incursions into the Death Triangle, freezing nights during training at Lohatla, anxious moments at places like Humbe, Xangongo en Ongiva, and later at Chitequeta and Bambi …

Then, when they had covered all this ground, they began to wonder what had happened to all their old comrades, both the national servicemen and the Permanent Force members they had met up with and sometimes served under during their years of active service in the SADF.

Gert & Ariël's first meeting in 2006

Right there the idea of a 61 Mech veterans’ association was born, and sealed on the spot with a photograph taken by a passing waitress they had roped in for the purpose. Ariël admits to being somewhat sceptical about the likely response after the passing of so many years, but Gert had no doubts about the fact that setting up a veterans’ association was virtually a fait accompli, and he was right. The idea developed, as Ariël says, into “a mighty tsunami” as one old comrade after another was run to ground. The association grew exponentially as each rediscovered veteran looked for others within his particular network of friends and acquaintances, and the newly discovered ones did likewise.

The combined search spread its tentacles to all conceivable places. Chris Walls (anti-tank fire group controller in Bravo Company in 1981, another of 61 Mech’s expert bush navigators), was found in Bahrein, of all places. Etienne Gertzen (Bravo Company’s mortar platoon commander in 1981, and Alpha Company’s in 1982) was in Pretoria, while Etienne Gilbert (Alpha Company platoon commander in 1981) was nearer home in Cape Town, and was in contact with Ferdi de Vos (platoon commander in Alpha Company in 1981 and adjutant in 1983) and Hubrecht van Dalsen (also a platoon commander in Alpha Company in 1981 and later the company’s second in command during 1982); Ferdi was in Somerset West, within easy reach of Ariël and Gert, but Hubrecht was considerably further afield – in the Australian city of Brisbane, to be precise.

After a while Ariël and Gert concluded that they would have to do more, that they would have to track down the past commanding officers and RSMs as well as other career soldiers who had served 61 Mech in a variety of capacities between 1979 and 2005, because without them the veterans’ association would not be able to reach its final form. “The truth,” according to Ariël, was that “junior ranks associated with their commanders … everyone remembers all his life who his commander was.”

It also became clear that the men who had served in Frank Besbier’s Combat Group Juliet in 1978, and in doing so unknowingly laid the foundation on which 61 Mech had been built, had just as much right to belong to the broader brotherhood as their successors. Juliet had shown the way, and under Johan Dippenaar and his successors 61 Mech had taken General Viljoen’s original vision and turned it into reality.

Ariël explained his and Gert’s idea. De Vries immediately offered his support and provided Ariël with contact details for a number of other 61 Mech men. The first new contact Ariël made was Jan Malan, the Cuvelai ambush exponent. After that it was WO1 H G “Killer” Smit, now retired to Stilbaai in the Western Cape, then the indefatigable WO1 Henri “Duppie” du Plessis, the LWT maestro between 1980 and 1982, in the Karoo town of Worcester.

Others followed, and the result was that during the weekend of 10 and 11 August 2007 there was a gathering at Caledon of Gert van Zyl, Ariël, Hubrecht van Dalsen, Henri du Plessis, Servaas Lotter, Ferdi de Vos, Kowie Steyn, H G Smit, Chris Walls, Gert Minnaar, Roland de Vries, Ep van Lill and Jan Malan.

The weekend was not devoted merely to nostalgia, and by the time they parted company a series of decisions had been taken, particularly the following:

• As far as possible, past commanders and other senior personnel of their time must be involved because, it was argued, the rank and file associated themselves with their command elements, which meant that they would have a point of reference.

• 61 Mech’s distinctive ethos must be preserved..

• The memorial column must be moved from Lohatla to a more accessible location.

• The regiment’s military legacy must be properly documented.

• The veterans’ association-to-be would not have any political agenda and wished to make a concrete contribution to nation-building and the restoration of relationships; it was made clear that the association must embark on a long-term process aimed at reconciliation between former enemies.

The 13 men who convened in Caledon to discuss the possibility of a veterans organisation for the soldiers who served at 61 Mech Battalion

Front from left to right: Gert van Zyl, Ariël Hugo, Hubrecht van Dalsen, Henri du Plessis and Servaas Lötte

Back from left to right: Ferdi de Vos, Kowie Steyn, HG Smit, Chris Walls, Gert Minnaar, Roland de Vries, Ep van Lill en Jan Malan

• The association must create a home for past members of 61 Mech who were still struggling with the scars left by the bush war.

• The processes required for the establishment of a full-fledged veterans’ association must be investigated.

Front- Ferdi de Vos, Ariël Hugo, Paul Louw, ? , Lawrence Maree, Kobus Kemp, Chris Barnard

Back; Jan Malan, Ep van Lill, Kobus Smit, Camille Burger, Gerhard Louw, Johann Dippenaar, Fanus Hansen, Gert van Zyl, Willem Steenkamp, Roland de Vries, Donovan Webster, Jaap Steyn, Ettienne Visagie, Paul Fouche, Koos Liebenberg

• The possibility of battlefield tours to Namabia and Angola must be investigated.

• The possibility of establishing a website must be investigated

A possible date for the formal establishment of the association was reached - August 2008 - and Roland de Vries was chosen as the interim patron. From this point on the as yet informal veterans’ association began to pick up momentum, fuelled by its founding fathers’ energetic efforts. The result was that when the founders group and later joiners met in Pretoria on 30 August 2008 it was possible to formally establish the 61 veterans’ association, which was later turned into a Section 21 not-for-profit company.

Now, too, a vision and several aims for the future were adopted:

We, the past commanders – officers, warrant-officers, non-commissioned officers and riflemen, undertake to cherish the unit’s particular military legacy, and promote it for the benefit of past members, military history and the general public.

Consequently we set the following goals: .

• To involve all past members, from all arms of the Defence Force, and once more make them part of the unique camaraderie which characterised the unit.

• To let the ethos of 61 Mech continue as regards the professional actions, respect and trust, singular friendships, good discipline and proud actions which characterised the unit. We had been interdependent in the hour of conflict, and we wanted to maintain this esprit de corps in times of peace as well.

• There would be no political connotation attached to our activities. Any action we took must gave a positive effect on nation-building, peace and reconciliation in general.

• To see that the unit’s military legacy was properly documented – both human expriences and the great contribution made to the development of mobile-warfare doctrine.

• We accept that some past members still seek closure, and we accept a responsibility to help them with this.

General Johann Dippenaar was appointed as the association’s first substantive patron – an entirely fitting appointment for the man who was 61 Mech’s first commanding officer and played such a major role in shaping and leading it at a time when the entire concept was still untried and frankly doubted in some SADF circles.

Having established a secure base from which to operate, the association began to structure itself and launch a variety of actions. An application for formal recognition was submitted to the SANDF; under Gert Minnaar’s leadership a website was established to facilitate communications and begin harvesting past members’ recollections for inclusion in the planned regimental history – the “software”, as it were, which would add substance to the “hardware” – as well as formal archival material, which would result in a book which was both factual and readable. Arrangements for the book were then put in hand, with the association executive providing a set of general guidelines, one of the aims of which was to produce a strictly factual history which future generations could consult without qualms about the possibility that it might merely be propaganda.

Work also began on solving a pressing problem: finding a suitable permanent home for 61 Mech’s regimental memorabilia. The memorial column was still lodged at Lohatla where it had been planted after Etienne Visagie’s semi-clandestine hijacking, but 61 Mech’s physical connection with the Combat Training Centre had died in 2005 after the regiment’s disbandment, and, more importantly, the CTC was remote from almost anywhere else in the country.

General Johann Dippenaar speaking at the launch of Mobility

This meant that for practical purposes the collection was not accessible to the bulk of 61 Mech veterans and therefore could not serve its primary purpose.

The situation of the items held at 1 SAI, which included the Hind Memorial Bell, the flags, the regimental colour and other museum items originally entrusted to 1 SAI, plus an Olifant tank and a captured BRDM scout car, was even worse. Initially they had been looked after, as had been agreed, but in the course of time the officers concerned had been posted away, and their successors of the new SANDF had made no effort whatever to continue honouring the original solemn undertaking.

A new permanent home would have to be found for 61 Mech’s treasures, and the association got to work. “The process began to drive itself,” Ariël Hugo recalls. “61 men began to take ownership of their renowned past, and from far and wide people began to make contact and offer help. Our history would be insensitive but for the eagerness and determination of the past members who tackled the relocating of the memorial needle, the Lomba clock and museum items. Our leaders took the lead, as we had learnt to know them.”

General Dippenaar immediately set about negotiating with the SANDF command structure to have all the 61 Mech memorabilia which were still in military possession transferred from the CTC and 1 SAI to the safekeeping of the Association. Inevitably this was a delicate and protracted process which was destined to take almost 18 months.

West Rand "Skouerskuur"

The Association did not sit on its hands while this General Dippenaar’s assault on the SANDF’s red tape entanglements proceeded on its leisurely way. Regional structures were systematically set up and matters such as membership, association dress, documentation of the regimental history and the organisation of the annual memorial parade were attended to. An important innovation was to set up periodical meetings for 61 Mech veterans, dubbed “skouerskure” (literally “shoulder-rubbings”), where they could burnish the camaraderie of the wartime days, meet old friends again and allow those who felt the need to open their hearts and obtain closure.

In the years to come this last has proved to be enormously successful. At the skouerskure past members could gain clarity and perspective about the events in which they had been involved and which had influenced their later lives, for good or ill; past commanding officers could deliver their thanks and a word of encouragement for a generation of which some members had not yet been able to come to terms with the fast-paced changes which had permanently changed South Africa’s political landscape since April 1989.

The implicit message of all this was, as Roland de Vries put it, that the officers and men of 61 Mech had fought to obtain a better type of peace.

The first “skouerskuur” was held at the Casa Mia Shellhole of the Memorable Order of Tin Hats in the Pretoria suburb of Centurion, and it was a resounding success. A friendly environment was created members, and especially their families, could feel free to swop old stories and even shed a tear or two if the need arose. Just as important, Ariël Hugo says, it provided “the first real opportunity for our past leadership to convey the message that we had fought for a better form of peace. Just this short but powerful message and shaking hands with ex-commanders gave the soldiers peace of mind. We were still together in it, we were still a band of brothers and among us we would be looked after – the support network was in place again.”

It was also the start of an enduring relationship between the Association and the Moths that has led to the veterans holding almost all such events at one or other of the Moth shellholes in various parts of the country.

The skouerskure resulted in yet another important development. Roelf Schoeman, a former Permanent Force member but now at the Department of Theology at the University of Pretoria, became involved in delivering short lectures on post-traumatic stress disorder and got members to tell their stories. He developed his presentations into a “homecoming” for many members under the title “The expectations of the new South Africa and the veterans’ role in our country”, and then wrote a book based on all these stories called “Weermagstories – dienspligtiges verbreek die stilte” (Defence force stories – national servicemen break the silence).

One skouerskuur participant who has rendered an important service to the Smokeshell brotherhood is Paul Louw, whose platoon had lost 12 men there. Paul took a very long time to recover spiritually from that day, but became a stalwart of the Association, and “to this day he has contact with each and every one of his fallen’s families,” Ariël says. “He is still a leader of men when his comrades rally around each other every time they meet up.

When TV broadcaster Ruda Landman looked around for interviewees for a programme entitled “A life with … in the border war”, Paul was an ideal candidate, and he was just the right man to describe to the nation the brief but savage encounter which had changed forever the course of his life and those of his soldiers, and make the point that in spite of everything there was a life to be lived and enjoyed, even after such a horrific event.

However, that was just the start of a concerted support effort at all levels and using all means which continues to this day. Using its regional structures and the social media (see Facebook’s s “61 Mech Bn Gp – gone but never forgotten”) it has been possible to build a strong network among members to keep the legacy and brotherhood alive.

These efforts have enabled the Association to learn about past members’ hardships – both emotional and financial – and become involved in rendering a helping hand in various cases of need, whether in concrete form of simply by providing a place where veterans could “shed a tear in front of our horses, or Ratels”, as someone remarked, which would help to wash away or even just soothe emotional and spiritual war scars and help each sufferer to be a better spouse, father of sibling, and ultimately a better South African as well.

The Association acknowledges that all these activities might well be just the tip of the iceberg. But Rome was not built in a day and fews campaigns are won with a single battle. Like the good soldiers they still are, the Association’s members continue to advance, meeting each challenge as it arises and doing the best they can with what they have or can lay hands on. General Jannie Geldenhuys’s old dictum lives on in the Association’s ranks: Defeat is not an option!

It must not be forgotten that the need for reconciliation was written into the Association’s aim, and this was not merely a noble thought.

61 MVV website - An Annual General Meeting of the 61 Mech Veterans Association taking place in the JC Lemmer auditorium at the National Museum for Military History in Saxonwald

In 2009, a group of 61 Mech veterans went on a visit to some of their old battlefields in Namibia and Angola, led by the renowned WO1 Koos Moorcroft, the former Sergeant-Major of the Army.

On an emotional level the tours were, of course, very special occasions; “walking in places where South Africans had fought their fiercest engagements since World War 11 gave all those present goose-bumps, and it was a homecoming for one’s mind,” as one of the veterans says. What made it even more memorable was the general amity that prevailed between the former enemies and the broader local population.

Ariël Hugo recalls. “Late-night discussions around braaivleis fires allowed time to get rid of the demons that haunt all fighting soldiers – and sometimes there was raw emotion – which left them all in a better emotional place.”

At home the Association continued developing itself, giving attention to smaller but equally important details, such as finalisation of its emblem and putting itself on a sound financial footing by setting up a system of membership fees (R150 a year, or R1 000 for lifelong membership), which gave each member entrée to the website and the right to wear association dress.

Veterans standing at the memorial needle after the service

But on 12 June 2010, exactly three decades and two days after the attack on Smokeshell, there was a particularly memorable get-together at the National Museum of Military History at Saxonwold, Johannesburg. Smokeshell has always occupied a very special niche in 61 Mech’s annals. It had been a defining moment in every sense: the first conventional bush-warfare action of the kind for which the unit had been specifically designed, and the baptism of fire for the evolving bush-war doctrine. But what made the occasion especially memorable was that 61 Mech’s memorabilia had finally been united in a new home. Everything had finally started coming together in the first half of 2010.

General Dippenaar’s efforts (his “magic tricks”, as Ariël would have it) to get everything transferred to the custodianship of the veterans’ assocation had achieved success at last; Jan Malan had tackled the task of securing suitable premises at the National Museum of Military History and by the early autumn of 2010 had succeeded.

Kobus Smit, who had retired early and re-invented himself as an architect, poured his skills and empathy into a suitable design for the memorial site that would fit into the allocated space. Jaap Steyn inspanned a whole team of builders from Lichtenburg to move the 61 Needle and other items to from Lohatla and 1 SAI to Saxonwold. Given the time available it was an intensive process, but once again 61 Mech beat the clock, and by the 30th anniversary date everything was in place.

The physical cost of the enterprise was R37 459.49 – not counting, of course, the many hours of unpaid effort by the Association team.

It was accounted a worthwhile expenditure of time, energy and money; a regiment may lay down its arms, but it lives on as long as there are still people who honour its memory, even when the last of the men who actually served in its ranks have marched into history. And so was born an enduring institution.

Every year the Ratel men and their friends and colleagues of sister units gather at the museum on the second-last day of August, a little older each time, with gaps in their ranks where some have passed on, but their rows of medals are as bright and their spirit as undimmed as ever.

Some retired as generals, others returned to civilian life as riflemen; it makes no difference to the heartiness of the handshakes or the trading of stories about done long ago, because all the 61 men and those who fought with them belong to the fraternity of the little dagger badge they wear so proudly on their lapels.

All this proves that the decision by the “Caledon clan” of 2007 to directly involve the senior echelons was the correct approach. Soldiers do indeed associate themselves with their old commanders, rallying around them in all possible (and sometime impossible) ways to advance the goals of the association. The attendance at the annual commemoration parade is further proof of what the regiment meant and still means to those who served in its ranks. Although they are much older now, with the scars of life often visible, the veterans perform their parade functions with pride, because 61 Mech was built on a foundations of mutual respect, and, many years later, so was the Association.

Just how far the Association is willing to go was seen once again as the production of this book went into its final stages in August 2015.

The Association was determined to illustrate the book with maps which would be unsurpassed for accuracy and readability, and so it came up with an innovative way of achieving its goal. A major problem that had been anticipated from the start was that much of the fighting took place in dense, virtually trackless bushland where landmarks of any kind were very few and far between. It was a cartographer’s nightmare, but in true 61 Mech fashion a highly unorthodox solution was found. Camille Burger, an armoured soldier in his youth, prepared detailed basic maps which had been plotted as accurately as possible, using available information from a number of written, verbal and graphic sources.