Courage, sacrifice and heroism on the road from Dalayate to Badhade

The distinguishing physical feature of the road from Dalayate to Badhade is ordinariness.

The grey sandy soils that pave all of its 120 kilometres are alternately bisected by thick bushes, forest cover and open grasslands that stretch across low hills and valleys, whose southern horizons promise the commercial city of Kismayu.

Depending on the season, the days are blistering hot and the nights almost freezing cold.

The signature feature of this road is its intensely African country character, complete with villages that dot its route.

Sparely dressed peasants and herdsmen tend to their crops and goats without the slightest hint of hurry.

But by the mysterious designs of destiny, this utterly ordinary setting hundreds of kilometres away from home is what would provide Kenya Army Lance Corporal David Olepusi with the severest lessons on life’s dual extremes: heroism and villainy, friendship and enmity, hope and despair, life and death.

Born into a warrior culture, trained in the profession of arms and posted in the elite unit of the Rangers, the experience of the 26-year-old native of Kajiado on the road from Dalayate to Badhade was the practical expression of the theoretical injunction that after you have prepared for all eventualities, now prepare for the unexpected.

Olepusi is an engaging young man with an easygoing demeanour.

Words come out of him easily and he does not need to be physically expressive to elicit your keen interest with its attendant laughter, angst and curiosity as the narrative unfolds.

On October 14, 2011 the Kenya Defence Forces launched Operation Linda Nchi following repeated provocations by the Somali Islamist militia, Al-Shabaab.

It was the first time in the country’s 50-year history that the defence forces had invaded the territory of another country.

DEFANG AL-SHABAAB

According to the Kenya Government, the objective of the mission was to degrade Al-Shabaab’s capacity to a point where it no longer poses any threat to the security of Kenyans or their economic wellbeing.

It was Olepusi’s job to make this happen.

This is what he signed for when he joined the KDF at the age of 20.

Thus, in the hot month of September 2012, Olepusi and colleagues from the Rangers unit found themselves enforcing the government’s will in the dusty road to Dalayate.

“When we captured the town of Badhade,” he says, “it became imperative that we secure it. This means that we had to conduct patrols to deter the enemy from attempting to retake it. One morning, I was summoned by my boss, Warrant Officer 1 Charles Oloo and our Commanding Officer, Lt-Col Rashid. They told me that our orders were to go to Dalayate from where Al-Shabaab fighters were launching attacks on us. Our orders were to crush them and pacify that place as well. We took off in a convoy of about 70 vehicles.”

Lt-Col Rashid and his officers made a textbook plan for the mission.

There was sufficient fire power. All the equipment and provisions were in place. Lt-Col Rashid loved to say: “As you go along this road, remember, you will have to come back by the same road. You must prepare for that.”

Like other soldiers, he liked Olepusi. Relaxing at base in Gilgil, he gave a lucid account of the operation from the Rangers’ perspective and when he was done and had to hand over to his troops, he motioned to Olepusi to begin. It was immediately easy to see why.

AMBUSHED BY AL-SHABAAB
The journey to Dalayate was uneventful. This was either the result of the pounding Al-Shabaab fighters had suffered from the KDF, or they were up to something, he thought.

Nobody let their guard down. There were stories that Al-Shabaab had taken off in the direction of Kismayu. But this was not information to be trusted.

This suspicion eventually served the KDF in good stead, but they were still in for a nasty surprise.

What happened is that when Al-Shabaab got wind that KDF were on the way, they scattered in the bush and let the convoy drive undisturbed to Dalayate.

Then they arranged themselves in a series of positions on the road and awaited the convoy’s return. And as they say, it never rains but it pours.

Says Olepusi: “Somewhere on our way back, I heard something like the sound of gunfire but it was far into the distance. At the very same time, a call came through my cellphone. It was from my elder brother.

HEAVIER AMBUSH

He told me: “Do you know, our step-mother has died.” I was immensely distressed by this news but I did my best to take it in my stride. My brother told me: “Ask for permission to come home so that we can arrange her funeral”. I told him that I was actually on the road but would do so immediately we returned to camp.

“I had scarcely finished that sentence when the hecatomb began. Al-Shabaab had ambushed us. Bullets were flying all over us. We radioed the vehicle at the head of the convoy to inform them of the development only to discover that they themselves were busy returning the fire of their own attackers. Suddenly it was a fully fledged battle.”

Olepusi was riding in an armoured personnel carrier with four other soldiers.

They exchanged heavy fire with their attackers for what seemed an eternity.

Some of the vehicles in the KDF convoy were made of soft skin and the occupants sustained injuries as bullets pierced them.

Then there was a brief quiet and the convoy started moving again, only to run into a much heavier ambush.

And this time, the attackers were even closer and more heavily armed than the previous lot.

It was almost an eyeball to eyeball confrontation. The intense fighting made the whole place an inferno of gunfire.

Olepusi remembers thinking: “Hapa tumekufa. This is it: we are finished. I’ve just lost my mother and now here I am facing my own death. I married only four months ago, I don’t even have a child and now I am in the middle of bullets and mortar shells. I said to myself, ‘whatever will be, will be. I will take the situation as it is.’

All these thoughts, elaborate as they may seem, happened in the span of seconds. He was firing his gun as they went through his mind.

It became apparent what Al-Shabaab’s plan was.

SUPREME LOYALTY

Lt-Col Rashid gave them grudging respect when he said: “They have a military capability, infused in them by foreigners from Afghanistan and Yemen that makes them a lot more lethal than would be expected of an ordinary militia.”

There is what one learns in textbooks and there is what one does from instinct in the battlefield.

In the heat of the battle, Olepusi saw an Al-Shabaab marksman taking aim at his boss, Warrant Officer I Oloo. He didn’t think twice.

He hurled his body across and both went sprawling on the ground as bullets whizzed over them.

It was an act of supreme loyalty, commitment, even love for his commander.

Why he did it, he cannot explain but WO1’s face glows with pride at his lance corporal when he talks about it.

“He is well-trained, but that was almost unbelievable. You feel more gratitude about it than you can talk about.”

People were facing live bullets. Olepusi remembers: “When you are training at the range you fire at objects; those objects don’t fire back at you. I have seen many bullets but in real life, they looked different as they came at me; they were lighting up like the flare of a match stick and they were whizzing past my face, making a deadly sound.

“One of my colleagues was a soldier of the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, our allies. He was so badly hit that a large part of his body had been blown away by a mortar shell.

As he lay dying, he told me to give him water so that he could wash himself before his death in line with Islamic custom. But where was I going to get water in the circumstances?”

GREATEST LESSONS
For long afterwards, Olepusi would think about this death.

But before that, he had two more ambushes to beat back before he could get back to Badhade. Each was more fierce than the other.

This would later give him one his life’s greatest lessons.

It was clear that Al-Shabaab had arranged themselves in such a way that they started with a small ambush and reserved the best for last.

Rashid’s dictum that the toughest part of the journey was its return rang true.

But KDF were victorious. The preparedness for the unexpected is what saw them through.

The casualties inflicted on Al-Shabaab were so heavy there was reluctance all around to put a figure to it.

There was a lot of death and when Olepusi safely returned to base, he thought long and hard about it.

He offers: “I thought about death for a long time afterwards. I thought many things. I particularly thought about that Somali soldier of the TFG because he had died beside me and I saw his fresh wounds."

PSYCHOLOGICAL SCARS

At the same time, his cries for water so that he could wash his body before his death were heartrending.

I saw a man’s commitment to his faith during his last breath and it was deeply moving.

The battle of Dalayate lasted all of six hours.

It is on record that the KDF carried the day because in the fullness of time, they marched on Kismayu and achieved the objective of cutting off the economic lifeline of the terrorist group.

But victory came at a price and Olepusi, with that infinite composed and even playful demeanour of his, does not hesitate to speak of his personal losses.

“That battle left lasting psychological scars on me,” he says.

“For a long time, I was not able to sleep without having a gun at my side. And even after returning home, I found myself waking in the night and frantically looking for my gun. I am not sure that I still feel safe in my safest house in the barracks without a gun. Secondly, I can’t get over the perfumes Al-Shabaab fighters wear. When they take a bath, they apply perfume and the close combat that I was engaged in with them in which my life was at stake ingrained that smell in my nostrils. I still smell it.”

Then there was the poignant homeward journey when his tour of duty ended and he was given his much deserved leave.

There was only one place to be and that was home with his new wife and his people.

There was also the chore to mourn his mother, who had died in his absence.

GREAT WARRIORS

He had to suppress the ever-present smell of gun-powder mixed with perfume and the fear of being unarmed so as to look as normal as possible to his relatives.

And he had to smile, whether he meant it or not. That was the price of duty.

They had already buried his mother by the time he got home. Then, when his leave was over, he returned to work.

He has an interesting view of friends and enemies.

Are Shabaab his personal enemies? Yes, when they fire at him and he will do every last thing possible to beat them, to kill them if that is what it will take. But what if he captures them?

“I will treat them humanely,” he says, without hesitation. “Actually, we have captured many. And we have found that they are victims of a perversion of Islam. What they believe in is not the real Islam, a religion of peace. They are misled. What they need is re-education.”

Almost wistfully, he contemplates his career ahead and what the series of ambushes on the road between Dalayate and Badhade taught him for life:

“Maybe I will be sent to the war front again and if I am, I will remember this: Never take anybody lightly. He may be wearing rags and akala sandals, he may be wielding a rungu but I will never take that person lightly. Al-Shabaab don’t dress like your professional soldier, but they fight and I will never, never take anybody, least of all them, lightly.”