Piet Nortje Bücher

Originally formed in order to lend support to the FNLA and UNITA in the Angolan war, 32 Battalion quickly gained the reputation of being an unconventional, secretive, yet highly effective group. Written by a man who was intimately involved with the unit and served as its Regimental Sergeant Major for two years, the book aims to explode the myths surrounding the legendary 32 and set the record straight. It records how and why 32 Battalion was formed, explores its unique identity forged by the men who fought in it, details the many operations in which they participated, and concludes with its eventual disbandment at the dawn of a new South Africa.What they did, and how they did it, would earn this controversial group official recognition as the best fighting unit in the South African Army since World War II. This book’s unembellished, factual reporting will fill a big gap in the highly popular military genre.

The soldiers of 32 Battalion were so feared by their enemies that they were called ‘the terrible ones’. This comprehensive two-volume work covers in detail the unit’s 117 documented military operations from 1976 to 1993. Nortje explains how the operations were planned and executed, what went wrong, what went right, and what the outcomes were. It also goes back to the early 1960s, covering events in Angola that would eventually result in the formation of 32 Battalion, and it ends in 2005, when the soldiers of the unit unknowingly betrayed themselves.This work builds a more complete picture than Nortje’s first book 32 Battalion , published in 2003. It is based on over 10,000 pages of documents in the Department of Defence Documentation Centre, which have only recently been declassified. Because of his security clearance, Nortje had access to these documents before their declassification, and was able to use them to write this book. Complementing the documentary evidence are 233 personal interviews that Nortje conducted with 32 Battalion members, as well as Portuguese, SWAPO, Cuban and Russian soldiers. These give the perspective of the men on the ground, an element often missing from military history.Based on rich documentary evidence which has never been available to the public military documents that were classified until recently, it gives the perspective of the men in the trenches.