Other Casualties of this Rank

Other Casualties from this Regiment

Other Casualties on this Date

He was based at the Mpacha Sickbay, Sector 70, and the circumstances around his death, was covered up somewhat, he had been trained as a normal ward medic at Klipdrift the SAMS Basic training centre in Jan-Jun 1986, before being shipped to Mpacha, on completion of Basic and 2nd phase training, he was a young eager to please guy, who volunteered to go out with an mobile infantry patrol along the cutline (the bulldozed open area that formed the country's border) between Zambia, and what was then South West Africa. The plan was that he would do the patrol with the infantry who on completion of their patrol would hand him over to continue on another 3-day patrol with an armoured car patrol before they returned to base. The infantry patrol returned as planned, and 3 days later when the armoured car patrol returned the Lieut. Patrol Officer came to the sickbay to register a complaint that he'd had to do his patrol without a medic. It was only then that it was discovered we had a medic lost in the bush for 3 days. The Lieutenant who had commanded the Infantry patrol was called and he showed that he'd dropped Pte Byrd off at a waterhole on the cutline by one of the firebreaks, instead of where the main Mpacha road intercepted the firebreak. A patrol was sent out to collect Andrew, who was found dead by the water hole, with 2 bullet wounds. The San tracker reported that he'd formed a simple boma around himself, but there were Hyena paw prints in the immediate vicinity. It was thought that Andrew who had not completed any formal bush or Ops medic training, had remained where left for 3 days waiting to be collected and had been too scared to move away from where he was left, and at night he'd be scared by the animals like the Hyenas sniffing around, and too scared to light a fire to scare them away as that could attract possible enemy insurgents His rifle was found loaded, on fully automatic, and the safety off in his hands with 2 rounds fired., the position of the body and rifle was that he'd been sat with his back to a tree, and it appeared that he'd fallen asleep exhausted with his finger on the trigger and while asleep he'd slipped to one side and caught his finger on the trigger and had fired 2 rounds into his chest (1 round lodged into his chest the other went straight through). The position of the entry wounds we're not in keeping with suicide, and the fact that his rifle and medical supplies etc had not been taken indicated that it was not enemy action. The result of this situation was that both patrol Lieutenants were reprimanded and told to brush up on their patrol procedures – one for leaving Andrew in the wrong place and not waiting for the pick up, and the other for alerting HQ that the medic had not been collected at the pick up point. Nothing was raised in regards to sending an untrained person on patrol. As a post script to this sorry affair, one of Andrew's friends who had been at school on the West Rand with him, and gone through basics and to the Border with him, had visited his home while on pass, and came back with the story (which I can't verify) that Andrew's death had been blamed on a motor vehicle accident and his rank at time of death was Candidate Officer, as there was so much disinformation around at the time we took it that they didn't want the really cause to be made public at this time. The reason I know the details is that at the time this occurred I was based at Mpacha Sickbay with Andrew and had the sleeping quarters opposite him in the medics bunker. The details were provided by the Doctors at the sickbay, as we were only a small unit and the National Service folk were all pretty cheesed off with the Infantry and Armored guys and our own Medical Permanent Force officers for covering up on the fact that the patrol leaders had messed up, and we had to send out a ward medic on patrol as the specially trained Ops medics were all based in other military camps in Sector 70 operating sickbays so there were no correctly trained medical personnel to go on the combat patrols.