Van Der Merwe, Jaco Petrus (J P)

At that stage I had been in Angola for 7 months myself. I didn't know JP personally but we were together in the convoy being extracted back to Namibia. We had stopped at a river to give everyone an opportunity to wash clothes and get ourselves clean. It was in the afternoon when I was sitting in the cab of my truck, having bully beef for lunch, when I heard the men calling around for JP Van Der Merwe. Eventually we were all searching for him. Some of the troops saw him swimming in the river as many of the other men were doing. It was the first relaxtion we had had in many months. As I understand it, JP was swimming close to a large rappid when he went under and it is believed that he got caught in the turmoil at the bottom of this rappid. We stayed there for three days, ever searching the banks of the river for kilometers. I recall that his body was found on the third day, although I read on another site that his body was never recovered.