'It was controlled utter f****** chaos'

Soldiers who survived the Battle of Bangui for the first time give a full account of their ordeal

The first sign of trouble was when the special forces Land Cruisers arrived at the base riddled with bullets. Some men were limping and bleeding. The rebel advance had begun.

The base was on the outskirts of the steaming capital Bangui, near a Y-junction where the two main roads into the city meet. One headed northwest to Bouar, the main route to neighbouring Cameroon, the other due north to Damara, 70km away. The junction would soon become a site of carnage, where 13 South African soldiers were to die in three days of fierce fighting against impossible odds. Two more would die later of wounds.

Hours earlier, at 3pm on March 22 2013, a special forces convoy of four Land Cruisers and two Hornets (rapid deployment vehicles mounted with heavy machine guns) pulling rocket launchers were attacked on the Damara road by 200 Seleka rebels. Three men were wounded in the 15-minute fight.

The men of Charlie Company from 1 Parachute Battalion in Bloemfontein had been settling down for a quiet night, but instead, the 150 paratroopers had to spring into action. They loaded mortars, machine guns and ammunition on to trucks. It was dark by the time they left the base and deployed on two hills 4.5km away, off the Damara road.

"The streets of Bangui were quiet," recalls Rifleman Given Mulaudzi.

"That's always a bad sign."

The next morning, force commander Colonel William Dixon had just left the French embassy on the banks of the Ubangui River when word came that his paratroopers on the hills were under attack. Dixon raced to the front in his Land Cruiser, which doubled as his tactical headquarters, consisting of a driver, a signaller, two pathfinders and his second-in-command, Major Michel Silva.

"As we drove through town we saw civilians running everywhere," says Silva.

Waves of "technicals" - pick-up trucks carrying Seleka rebels and with Russian anti-aircraft machine guns bolted on the back - raced down the Damara road, straight into Charlie Company's arc of fire.

Far from the small, ragtag force they had expected, the South Africans faced thousands of rebels armed with machine guns, AK47s, mortars, grenade launchers and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

Seleka Colonel Ali Abubaker's technical was one of the first hit. "I lost seven of my men and three wounded," he recalls.

In a pattern that would be repeated in the coming hours, he fell back into the bush to attack again. Soon rebels were fanning into the bush to attack two South African platoons positioned on the left hill.

Combat medic Staff Sergeant Serole Mampa returned rebel fire while a wounded soldier was rescued. "They had to carry him on a stretcher behind our vehicle until we reached an ambulance while I kept firing back," he says.

When Dixon and Silva arrived at 10am, the platoons on the left hill had withdrawn under heavy fire. Now the priority was to retake the hill. By then the special forces group had joined the action. "It was a moerse firefight," says Silva.

The South Africans unleashed a barrage of machine gun fire, mortars and rockets at the hill, catching some civilians in the crossfire.

"Within 30 minutes we gained the initiative," says Silva.

By 2pm the rebels were being driven back. The South Africans thought the fight was over.

The worst was yet to come.

During the lull, civilians were streaming past the soldiers towards Bangui, some carrying the severed genitals, ears and hands of slain Seleka rebels.

"They were cheering us and holding up those things and saying: 'Thank you, South Africa, see what you have done!'" recalls Mulaudzi.

Mampa confirms the story: "Some carried testicles and some had hands as souvenirs. They said: 'Good, you have won! But tonight we will beat you at soccer.'" They were referring to a World Cup qualifier between the Central African Republic (CAR) and Bafana Bafana played in Cape Town that night.

Ten minutes after the special forces group and Dixon's tactical headquarters reached the base in Bangui to rearm, the observation post on the Bouar road reported that 30 technicals were bearing down on the city from the northwest.

The special forces group raced past the Y-junction to form a skirmish line 10km from the base with four Land Cruisers and two Hornets armed to the teeth, along with Dixon's tactical HQ.

An estimated 4500 rebels descended on the 35 South Africans , who held the line for two or three hours .

"It dawned on us that the Damara road attack was just a diversion," says Silva.

A platoon of CAR soldiers on the road fired a few shots at the rebels, then fled.

"While they were running, they changed sides and some of them started firing on us," says Silva. "We were being shot at from all sides."

Four Hornets armed with 20mm cannon arrived from nowhere . They had just been flown in from South Africa and drove straight to the front from the airport - but only after an hour had been wasted offloading canteen stock from the plane, including crates of beers .

"The rebels just kept coming, in wave after wave," says Dixon.

"It was controlled utter f****** chaos."

Mohamed Tahir, a Seleka commander, says he lost "more than half" of his 500 men. "It was a very hard fight. The South Africans had very good materials and were good fighters," he says.

With the sun setting, Dixon ordered his men to fall back. They limped to base on the rims of their Hornets and Land Cruisers, whose tyres had been shot to shreds. Nine of the men were wounded, including the special forces commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Solomon Lechoenyo, who briefed Dixon holding a drip in one hand, while medics attended to the bullet wounds in his legs.

Incredibly, not a single South African soldier had been killed yet, although both roads were littered with Seleka dead.

By now it was getting dark, and Charlie Company on the Damara road would soon be cut off. Silva was sent with every available vehicle to evacuate them. When he arrived, Charlie Company was under attack again and had given up the left hill. Returning heavy fire, the men piled into a convoy of four Geckos and four Land Cruisers.

The convoy set off in the dark. Even though Dixon had requested armoured personnel carriers two months earlier, he had to evacuate his men in unprotected vehicles. It would cost them dearly.

Mampa and Mulaudzi were in one of the lead Geckos. Mampa recalls seeing four men in Muslim robes sitting at the Y-junction. "They looked sad, as if they knew something bad was about to happen," he says. Next he saw a bloodied Muslim robe laid over a checkpoint rope lowered to the ground. Then sparks started flying as AK47 bullets struck the road ahead. Suddenly bullets, rockets and grenades rained down on them.

The survivors leapt off the vehicles, found cover and returned fire. Mampa heard frantic calls of "Medic! Medic!" He found himself dressing neck wounds on the run while rockets fell around him. But he had to prioritise, attending only to those he could save. "Some said: 'Go, go, I'm going to die fighting them,'" he recalls.

Some Land Cruisers exploded with drivers still in them. A CAR pick-up loaded with RPGs went up in a ball of flame. In the ensuing hand-to-hand combat one soldier beat a rebel over the head with the butt of his rifle and another buried his bush knife in a rebel's chest.

Rebels interviewed described the encounter. "It was a big battle, very hot. There were many killed and wounded on both sides," says Captain Amin Ndojokama.

Silva says: "The force broke out of encirclement and fought their way back to the base in different groupings."

Some of the troops lay low for a while before they made their way stealthily back to base at about midnight. By then Dixon's combat force of 200 soldiers had fired off 10 tons of ammunition and killed 1200 rebels. Headquarters ordered him to keep fighting, but he was virtually out of ammunition.

"I told them: 'Either we start negotiations or we will be wiped out to the last man.'"

At 9pm a Seleka commander called to ask for a ceasefire. By then 25 of his men were unaccounted for. Dixon agreed. Not to would have been suicide.

stephanh@sundaytimes.co.za