During The South African Border / Bush War: Operation Hooper Poem by Gert Strydom

With G-5 guns firing up to two hundred shells in support
and hitting approaching enemy targets form miles away
facing a enemy T55-tank it felt as if it was the Judgement Day,
the Ratel-90 had to halt to fire its gun, shook as it did report,

at speed we left, had to return to hit it again in another effort,
a hit on the right spot made it burst out in flames and sway,
we ran into a ZU23-2 AA-gun and three APCs, did them slay,
against two BTR-60PB armoured-cars the action was short.

While refuelling a Cuban Mig-23 was bombing nearby,
to our surprise a UNITA Stinger missile brought it down,
in pursuit of a Mig-23 we saw a Mirage high in the sky,
into battle again with bushes the terrain was overgrown,
running into two T62-MBTs, a Olifant MBT passed by,
it fired and fired again and we were saved by our own.

[Poet's note:The G-5 was a 155 mm howitzer gun.The Ratel-90 was an IFV (infantry fighting vehicle)(armoured-car)armed with a 90mm semi-automatic gun and two 7.62mm machine guns. It could run at 105 kilometres per hour (65mph)on the road and at 30 kilometres per hour (19 mph)off-road but still faster if its governor was broken..AA-gun here denotes an Anti-Aircraft battery.The Mirage was a South African fighter-bomber. The term MBT stands for Main Battle Tank. The Olifant MBT was a South African main battle tank.

"The results of the campaign up to April 1988 was 4765 killed on the Cuban / Fapla side, with 94 tanks and hundreds of combat vehicles destroyed, against 31 South African soldiers killed in action,3 SADF tanks destroyed and 11 SADF armoured cars and troop carriers lost.A total of 9 Migs were destroyed and only 1 SAAF Mirage shot down."(General)Jannie Geldenhuys. (1994) : At the front. Jonathan Ball Publishers. P240.

"In early October the Soviet-Fapla offensive was smashed at the Lomba River near Mavinga. It turned into a headlong retreat over the 120 miles back to the primary launching point at Cuito Cuanavale. In some of the bloodiest battles of the entire civil war, a combined force of some 8,000 UNITA fighters and 4,000 SADF troops destroyed one Fapla brigade and mauled several others out of a total Fapla force of some 18,000 engaged in the three-pronged offensive. Estimates of Fapla losses ranged upward of 4,000 killed and wounded. This offensive had been a Soviet conception from start to finish. Senior Soviet officers played a central role in its execution.... Huge quantities of Soviet equipment were destroyed or fell into UNITA and SADF hands when Fapla broke into a disorganized retreat... The 1987 military campaign represented a stunning humiliation for the Soviet Union, its arms and its strategy.... As of mid-November, the UNITA/SADF force had destroyed the Cuito Cuanavale airfield and pinned down thousands of FAPLA's best remaining units clinging onto the town's defensive perimeters." Crocker, Chester A. (1992)High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighbourhood. (Crocker was U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs during the Reagan Administration.)

"The South African force, under the command of Colonel Deon Ferreira, was tasked with carrying out three operations (1)Operation Modular - The aim of which was to halt and reverse the FAPLA / Cuban advance on the UNITA strongholds of Mavinga and Jamba, (2)Operation Hooper - The aim of which was to inflict maximum casualties on the retreating FAPLA / Cuban forces after they had been halted and (3)Operation Packer - The aim of which was to force the FAPLA / Cuban forces to retreat to the west of the Cuito River." Nortje, Piet (2003) .32 Battalion. Zebra Press.

John Turner claims that: "following their losses, the Cubans were convinced that further military confrontation with the SADF would not succeed." Turner, John W. (1998) .
Continent Ablaze; The Insurgency Wars in Africa,1960 to the Present. Cassell Plc.

Comments made by a Soviet adviser to the Cubans in Angola: "The people's armed forces for the liberation of Angola have not been able either, even with the help of the Cubans, to decisively defeat the enemy and drive him out of the territory or the country." M. Ponomariov, Krasnaya Zvezda Magazine; 20 May 1988.

"According to the fashionable view, Pretoria agreed to with draw from Angola and Namibia with its tail between its legs, a spent force.In other words, sanctions and Fidel Castro won the day.This is not the analysis that emerges from Castro's own version of the events in his speech to the Cuban Council of State on July 9, when it met to confirm the death sentence imposed on General Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez, chief of the Cuban mission in Angola from November 1987 to January this year.Instead, it becomes clear that by the late 1987 Castro had concluded that the MPLA regime was an irredeemable military and economic basket case, whipped in the field and four years behind in the trifling $20m a year the Cubans claimed to be charging for their services.SA and Unita had effectively won." Simon Barber,27 July 1989, Paratus, September 1989.]