Winds of Destruction: The Autobiography of a Rhodesian Combat Pilot

by Peter Petter-Bowyer

  Willie and van Heerden.

  A young ranger aged about thirty by the name of van Heeden drove the vehicle, with Willie and me sharing the front seat. Four black game-ranger-trackers were standing behind us holding a rail that ran around the rear section of the open vehicle. We were a long way southeast of Shapi Pans searching the sandy road for fresh buffalo spoor when one of the trackers pointed to the road and said there were boot tracks of someone moving in the opposite direction to ourselves. We stopped and without hesitation the tracker said that these had been made no more than two minutes earlier.

  I recognised the sole pattern immediately. It was the wellknown figure 8 pattern of boots issued to terrorists. Sand was still trickling at the edge of the spoor. Realising that we had passed close to a terrorist who was obviously trying to make his way back to Zambia, I warned the rangers there was the possibility that other terrorists were with him walking off the line of road. We turned around and had only gone a short distance following the spoor when it moved left off the road into the bush.

  Willie, ignoring my advice to keep moving, climbed out of the vehicle and followed the tracks a short distance armed only with a dart gun that was intended to anaesthetise buffalo. He shouted out to the unseen terrorist to surrender. Nothing happened so Willie returned to the vehicle. I recommended that I drive the vehicle and drop off the young ranger with one of the trackers in an ambush position once we were down the road and out of sight. This was agreed. When we had gone about 150 metres and had thick bush on our left, I moved the gear lever to neutral whilst maintained engine revs and applied gentle hand-braking. The two men dismounted and we continued on to Shapi to collect troops.

  When we returned after sunset a dead terrorist lay on the road. He had appeared as soon as we left and had run across the road, waited a while, then run diagonally across to the other side. His next crossing would be straight towards the hidden ranger who stood up and called to the terrorist to surrender. The unfortunate terrorist raised his weapon but knew nothing of the .375 magnum bullet that removed one vertebra from his neck. Van Heeden said he had aimed for the neck because he understood it was important for identification purposes not to damage a face.

  The young ranger was deeply concerned that he might be placed on a murder charge and was feeling guilty because the SKS rifle this man was armed with had only one round of ammunition in it. When studies of papers and a notebook in the terrorist’s possession proved that he had been at Inyatue, the ranger accepted the legal situation but he remained shaken and depressed for having killed a human being.

  On this same day, tracks of the five survivors from Ian Wardle’s contact were found and followed into thick bush close to the National Parks southeastern border game fence. A call to the terrorists to surrender was answered with automatic fire. Under covering fire, the RAR officer crawled forward and lobbed in a phosphorus grenade. This single grenade spewed phosphorus over all five terrorists whose smouldering bodies were found close together during a sweep through the site.

  Earlier in the day, an RAR patrol spotted two terrorists collecting water from Leasha Pan. Long-range fire was initiated too early when these two men spotted the troops. One broke north and the other south. The man who ran north was ignored by the troops but was killed later that day by the game ranger. Tracks of the second moved south and led RAR trackers to a resting place from which about sixty terrorists had departed in a hurry.

  Disastrous twenty-four hours

  TRACKERS MOVED FAST ALONG THE trail that showed the terrorists had moved at a run for a considerable distance through open scrubland. When the trackers reached the point where the terrorists had broken through the game fence, Lieutenant Nick Smith arrived to take command of the follow-up along with extra troops flown in by Hoffy.

  Two helicopters from Shapi Pans (I was still out with Willie de Beer) joined Hoffy in deploying other troops under command of Lieutenant Ken Pierson. Ken’s orders were to set up ambushes on the Nata River directly in line with Leasha Pan and the point the terrorists had crossed the game fence. It was dark when helicopters, flown by John Rogers and Ian Harvey, returned to Shapi Pans where Chris Dixon, who had recently arrived, joined them and me in a helicopter forwardlift of fuel for the following day.

  All night long under a brilliant full moon we lifted fuel to a location just beyond the game fence close to a Botswanan border beacon known as Point 222. This was a frustrating job because we could only lift two drums of Avtur in our underslung cargo nets to Point 222 but then had to use one of these to get back to Shapi Pans for the next load. The net result of four helicopters flying throughout the night was that only twelve full drums of Avtur were available at the remote forward logistics base at dawn.

  At the commencement of the fuel lift, Prop Geldenhuys flying a Provost at height provided communication between soldiers on the ground, Tac HQ and Brigade. The first sign of trouble came when Sergeant-Major Timitiya told Prop that Nick Smith had been shot and that he was under heavy fire. Nothing more was heard. Nick Smith failed to come up on the HF radio at the scheduled reporting time of 18.00 and there was no response to any call from Prop, the two companies or Brigade HQs. When Ken Pierson checked in on schedule, he reported having heard heavy firing from Nick Smith’s area and said he could not raise Nick on VHF. Deep concern had already set in as Prop continued trying, unsuccessfully, to raise Nick. I remember how impressed I was by Prop’s cool manner and efficiency in conveying what needed to be said.

  Prop was then a PAI (Pilot Armament Instructor) on 4 Squadron, which amazed me because, as a past student of mine, he seemed too young to be doing such a responsible job. It took some time before it dawned on me that I had been just as young in similar circumstances.

  More anguish was added to the night when Prop relayed the appalling news that Ken Pierson was dead. Ken had been shot by one of his own men when he moved from one ambush position to another. As dawn broke I flew from Point 222 to the Company HQ were Hoffy gave Bob Whyte and me a very welcome cup of coffee whilst we refuelled from his diminishing stock of Avtur. All he had in the way of food was tinned pilchards in tomato sauce. Having eaten nothing since breakfast the previous day, I was able to face the cold fish and hard ration biscuits in preparation for what promised to be a long day.

  Front from left: Prop with 4 Squadron instructors: Pat Meddows-Taylor, Bill Jelley, Ken Edwards (OC), Nobby Nightingale, Rob Tasker and Justin (Varky) Varkivisser. Back: Chris Weinmann, Bill Buckle, Hugh Slatter (sitting on canopy rail), John Bennie, Mark McLean and Harold Griffiths.

  At some time during the night John Rogers had flown Major Mac Willar from Shapi Pans to the Company HQ. Mac was still in discussion with the company commanders Ray Howden and Taffy Marchant when Ian Harvey called the ops room to say he had been attracted to the game fence by smoke rising from a small fire. Here he found some of Nick Smith’s troops in a state of despair. They reported that they had run out of ammunition following contact with many terrorists in ambush but did not know what had happened to Nick Smith or Timitiya.

  John Rogers and Hoffy lifted Mac Willar with troops and spare ammunition forward to link up with these men. By the time he arrived the rest of Nick Smith’s troops, drawn by the earlier noise of Ian’s helicopter, were also there. Mac moved off with the troops to the site of the ambush where he found the bodies of Nick Smith and Sergeant Major Timitiya. In the meanwhile, I had collected the one and only terrorist captured thus far. He was an SAANC man who had panicked during the firefight and had been found and arrested by locals living in a small tribal village about eight kilometres away.

  Hoffy and I landed at the ambush site when trackers confirmed the area safe and terrorists well clear. They had left this position in the direction that should have taken them directly to the ambush positions Ken Pierson had prepared. I joined in on an inspection of the contact site that showed the terrorists had moved across open ground, which they had obviously selected as ideal killing ground for a prepared ambush. They then orbited in a wi
de left-hand circuit and setup a crescent-shaped ambush along the edge of a line of scrub overlooking the selected killing ground. Here they dug shallow shell-scrapes to await the arrival of troops they knew must be close by, because they had heard Hoffy’s helicopter deploying Nick’s callsign at the fence.

  Site of ambush. The helicopters are parked in the ‘killing ground’ with the ambushline lying just beyond the tree belt. In white shirts are: SB officer, his assistant and the SAANC prisoner.

  The terrorists may have been forced to initiate the ambush early when troops of the left echelon were about to bump the right side of their ambush line. By this time, however, Nick and Timitiya were abreast of the RPD machine-guns clustered at the centre of the ambush line. Nick was totally exposed with no cover at all whereas Timitiya was next to a lone tree. The firefight that ensued was intense and it was clear that Nick and Timitiya had used deliberately aimed conservative fire, whereas the other troops had expended their limited issue of ammunition. In retrospect the standard issue of two full magazines and only twenty rounds of reserve ammunition was way too little for situations such as this. It was a hard-learned lesson!

  Clearly the eight dead terrorists, five with RPD machineguns, in the centre of the ambush line had been taken out by deadly accurate fire from Nick and Timitiya. The tree that Timitiya had used to steady himself whilst firing his MAG machine-gun from the hip was riddled with bullet strikes high above his head with just one single graze mark from the round that struck him in the head. Most bullet strikes to his body had occurred after death. Judging from his line of spent cartridges, Nick had run directly towards the ambush line before he went down because, without any cover, outright aggression must have been his only option.

  Of greatest concern was that Nick’s VHF radio had been taken by the terrorists. Also taken was Nick’s FN rifle, Timitiya’s MAG and a number of packs which had been thrown off when the firing started. The capture of SF clothing by the terrorists posed a greater problem than the radio, because all spare batteries were still in the possession of one of the RAR survivors.

  The bodies of two terrorists.

  Only when the loss of the radio became known was Hoffy able to make sense of a VHF call he had received from an African male asking him to come and pick up wounded men. The caller had used the word ‘helicopter’ instead of the usual ‘Cyclone 7’ when a caller did not know a helicopter pilot’s personal callsign. Hoffy had tried to get this caller to give him a locstat (grid reference) of his position. There was no reply so Hoffy got on with what he was doing.

  There was plenty of evidence to show that a number of wounded terrorists had left the ambush site with the main body. Along the trail an RAR tracker detected drag marks leading to a clump of scrub off to one side of tracks that showed the group had been walking in single file. Here the bodies of two more terrorists were found. I popped in to take a photograph of these bodies on my way back to Point 222.

  A sudden change in course by the terrorists, who had been heading directly for the RAR ambush sites on the Nata River, must have been induced by the sound of the gunfire that killed Ken Pierson. A tracker-combat group under Lieutenant Bill Winall picked up on the tracks from the Nata River at around 10 o’clock.

  The SAP helicopter arrived at Point 222 where the pilot indicated he was keen to become involved. However, we could not task him until we were given instructions on how he, his technician and his aircraft were to be employed and what restrictions, if any, applied. Nevertheless, both pilot and technician were able to assist with the interrogation of the SAANC prisoner who could only speak Afrikaans and Xhosa. They established that an SAANC man was leading the group and that he would respond to radio calls in Afrikaans.

  John Rogers piloted the SAP helicopter whilst the two South African men held the SAANC prisoner and monitored his VHF transmission as he attempted to get a response from the terrorist leader. John kept an eye on the Becker Homer hoping to get a direction, but no reply was made. In hopes that the terrorist leader was listening in on the radio, the prisoner transmitted a prepared message in Afrikaans and, using his own pseudonym, recommended that the leader should surrender because there was no chance of anyone surviving as he could see the Rhodesian security forces were determined to kill him and all his followers. We never did find out if those calls were received.

  When I flew over to check on his progress at around 11:00, I noticed that Bill Winall had two police handlers with their dogs. His callsign was moving in single file through high dry scrub with the dogs following the trail, now heading east for the first time. Flying high so as not to give terrorists any specific indication of the follow-up, I did a survey of the ground ahead. On the line of movement, about six kilometres ahead of the troops, thick scrub gave way to open, treed savannah where ground rose gently to a flat crest before descending more steeply to the banks of the Tegwani River. On a section of this river bright-green trees lining both banks contrasted strongly with the otherwise drab brown countryside. Here I found surface water in the riverbed, the only water for miles around.

  Having seen this, I flew off northeastward well away from the area before heading back across the line of the followup group. When I passed over Bill Winall’s callsign, I was surprised to see how little progress had been made in the twenty minutes since I had plotted his last position. The line of men was moving very slowly in terrific heat and most noticeable was that the dogs were no longer leading but were trailing behind the troops.

  At Point 222 I liaised with John Rogers and Major Mac Willar who had been gathering in new troops for deployment ahead of the terrorists. I told them of Bill Winall’s last position and of the water in the Tegwani River. We agreed the terrorists must have reached the high ground from which they would certainly have seen the green trees along the Tegwani River. This would undoubtedly attract them, having been without water since leaving Leasha Pan. I suggested we try jet-strikes along the south bank of the river and this was agreed.

  An Airstrike Request was processed through Flight Lieutenant Doug Butler’s FASOC at Shapi Pans. We asked for a Hunter strike at 15:00 to be followed by a Canberra strike at 18:00. The reason for two strikes was that, if the terrorists had been caught in a Hunter strike, survivors would return to water and any kit they might have abandoned after about two hours believing that no further strike would occur. If on the other hand they had not yet reached the water when the Hunters struck, thirst would make them move to the inviting green trees feeling confident that no further air action would follow.

  At 14:50 I passed high over Bill Winall and in veiled language told him that, “Cyclone One (Hunters) will be making a speculative strike, I repeat speculative, on a location ahead of you.” It was necessary to use veiled speech knowing that the terrorists might be listening to me on the captured radio. Ten minutes later, on a different frequency, I talked the Hunters onto the stretch of green trees on the south bank of the Tegwani. Four Hunters struck with 68mm rockets and 30mm guns exactly as instructed.

  John Rogers’ helicopter was without fuel so he commandeered the SAP half-full helicopter to control the Canberra strike. At 18:00 he talked two Canberras, each with ninety-six 28-pound fragmentation bombs, onto the target. On his way back to Point 222 he switched from the airstrike frequency and immediately received a frantic call from Bill Winall. Bill’s callsign had been attacked by the terrorists and had suffered serious casualties. He had fought them off but did not know how far they were from his position.

  John Rogers was too low on fuel to go to Bill’s immediate assistance. At Point 222 all fuel drums lay empty and it was getting dark. The SAP helicopter as well as John’s and mine were empty and it would be ages before Hoffy, Chris and Ian returned with fuel from Shapi Pans. In any event, any thought of going into Bill’s location that night was discarded as any helicopter with its landing light on would be a sitting duck to the terrorists whose location was not known, but whose aggressive intentions had been demonstrated on three separate occasions.


  Earlier in the day I had seen an old half-filled drum of dieseline at a disused road camp near the game fence some two kilometres north of Point 222. In darkness Bob Whyte and I pumped this fuel into our helicopter to get us to the Company HQ where only one full drum of Avtur remained. We had been airborne less than ten minutes when our fuel-filter warning light came on. This meant having to land immediately to clean the filter. Four further night landings in remote ground were necessary before we finally reached the company base. There we had to drain our fuel tank of all polluted dieseline before we could take on Avtur to get us to Shapi Pans to join in on another night of lifting Avtur to Point 222.

  The Shapi Pans base was deserted except for a handful of full Avtur drums because Brigade HQ and FASOC had already departed for Tjolotjo. This small village lay east of the action and only half the distance to Bill Winall’s position with operations moving that way. Shell & BP worked throughout the night transporting hundreds of drums of fuel from Bulawayo to Tjolotjo.

  At midnight we lifted out the last of the fuel from Shapi Pans. Back at Point 222, after forty-two hours without sleep, the helicopter crews managed to get in four hours’ rest. At first light we commenced lift-out of Bill Winall’s dead and wounded to Tjolotjo where the Brigade HQ and FASOC were already established. This is when we learned the details of what had happened to Bill’s callsign.

  Bill had not yet reached the edge of the treed area at the base of the rising ground when I spoke to him about Cyclone 1. He realised Hunters would be striking but failed to take in my essential words “speculative strike, I repeat, speculative”. Bill saw the Hunters and heard their strikes as his weary callsign continued its move to the area where trees provided welcome shade at the base of the rising ground. They reached this point before the Canberras’ strike and Bill had told his callsign to rest and ‘brew up’. Most men removed their boots and were sitting or lying down brewing tea. Unfortunately for Bill, he had come to the erroneous conclusion that we knew exactly where the terrorists were, hence the airstrikes. But he failed to follow fundamental soldiering procedures by not conducting a perimeter clearance patrol or even posting sentries.