Koevoet! - Jim Hooper

Never before had an outsider been given unrestricted access to Koevoet, the elite South West African Police counterinsurgency unit also known as Operation K and officially as the South West Africa Police Counter Insurgency Unit (SWAPOL-COIN).

Author Jim Hooper spent a total of five months embedded with the semi-secret and predominantly black Ops K, which climaxed with one of the most vicious and determined infiltrations ever mounted by the communist-backed South West Africa Peoples Organization (SWAPO). Crossing regularly into Angola in pursuit of the insurgents, he saw friends die next to him and was twice wounded himself.

Hooper is a careful reporter, but also a born writer; his vivid word-pictures drag you in and hold you. He skillfully conveys his initially unwelcoming reception by an operational unit; the long, frustrating grind of search operations in punishing terrain and climate; the extraordinary bush skills of the Ovambo policemen; the shock of sudden contact, and its aftermath. Martin Windrow

Jim Hoopers account of South Africas successful Ops K in Namibia against South West Africas Peoples Organization guerrillas should be required reading. The classic narrative is as timely today as it was twenty years ago. Charles D. Melson, Chief Historian, U.S. Marine Corps University.

Hardcover, good condition , 236 pages