Winds of Destruction: The Autobiography of a Rhodesian Combat Pilot

by Peter Petter-Bowyer

  It was obvious that aerial tracking this old trail in such dry grassless conditions was a non-starter but I had other ideas in mind. Looking over the ground ahead I could not help seeing a patch of bright-green trees about twelve kilometres away beyond a series of descending ridges. The walking distance was at lease twice the direct distance. The trees were off to the right of the direction the terrorists had been heading, but they gave the distinct impression of being sited on water. I was absolutely certain the terrorists must have been drawn to the spot having travelled so far without water. I called Dumpy and asked if I could fly his trackers forward to see if my guess was right, promising to have them back within fifteen minutes if I was wrong. Dumpy said it suited him but I must first get Rob Southey’s blessings. For this I had to climb quite high to make contact with RLI Tac HQ. Rob Southey did not accept my suggestion, so I set heading for base.

  About one minute later, I received a call to say it would be fine to return to Dumpy and lift his trackers forward, providing Dumpy was with them. I raced back to pick up Dumpy and two trackers. When we landed on smooth short green grass next to the copse of green trees, the trackers climbed out and immediately pointed to terrorists tracks on the very spot we had landed. They established that there was no surface water as I flew the rest of Dumpy’s callsign forward to tracks now assessed to be five days’ old.

  Pressing my luck, I headed off low and slow over a vast expanse of leafless trees in the direction the trackers were moving and noted a single prominent and unusually high tree with distinctive smooth yellow bark. Although it was a long way ahead it was certainly on the line the trackers were moving. At this stage I was short of fuel and returned to base.

  I went to Rob Southey to suggest moving the trackers forward again. Colonel John Hickman, the Officer Commanding the RLI, was visiting and I learned that it was he who had persuaded Rob Southey to let me try the first move. Though this had been successful and had brought the RLI two days closer to the terrorists, Rob seemed reluctant to move trackers to ‘the tall tree’. One could hardly blame him, because it must have seemed improbable that the terrorists would have seenthings the way I did. However, he changed his mind when Colonel Hickman said, “You have nothing to lose Rob!”

  I returned to Dumpy, picked up his trackers and put them down close to the yellow tree. They were more surprised than I to find that a man had climbed the tree to scan the route ahead whilst the rest of the group had waited close by. Dumpy’s men were brought forward onto tracks, now estimated to be thirty-six-hours old. Again I pressed my luck and, dealing only with Dumpy, moved trackers forward about six kilometres to where the trees gave way to open ground along the dry Mwanzamtanda River. Here the trackers had to cast 200 metres before locating tracks that were under twenty-four-hours old. I had just sufficient fuel to bring the whole callsign forward before returning to base feeling well pleased with myself. We had closed from seven days to one day in less than three hours. Had Colonel Hickman not been at the Tac HQ, this would certainly not have occurred and a new method of gaining ground might have been lost.

  It was late afternoon and with my enthusiasm at a peak I searched forward. I dared not proceed at low level with terrorists so close and climbed to 1,500 feet. Almost immediately I saw dark-green trees ahead and sensed this was the actual position of the terrorists. Alan Aird had been with me the whole time and he also saw the water in the heavily treed tributary that flowed into the Mwanzamtanda. This otherwise dry rivulet ran northwards along the edge of a rocky outcrop, then looped southward around a moderately high rocky feature. In this bend lay surface water with the dark-green trees lining the banks. Alan agreed with me that the terrorists were under those big shady trees and said he was certain he had seen bundles of something or other under the northernmost trees.

  Back at base it was agreed that Dumpy Pearce should continue his follow-up and that fresh troops would be lifted into the suspected terrorist base early next morning. I do not remember the reason for this, but I only carried Alan, his MAG and a full fuel tank when I flew ahead of the three helicopters carrying Jerry Strong and his troops. I passed over the suspect point where both Alan and I saw what we believed were shell-scrapes at the edge of the tree line. We did not change direction until the other helicopters had passed over the site to drop troops behind a small ridge just 100 metres away. The helicopters lifted immediately to return for more troops as Jerry led his men directly to the suspect site. As he entered the trees, he called, “Terrs left about one minute ago—in a hurry. There is abandoned equipment—no time to collect—moving east on tracks.”

  Poor Dumpy Pearce who had followed these terrorists so far was not at all happy that Jerry was right on the tail of the terrorists his callsign had been mentally prepared to contact in less than two hours. Major Southey refused to let Dumpy’s force join Jerry’s fresh troops, even though helicopters could have moved them forward in less than five minutes. Nevertheless this turned out to be a good decision.

  Being under-strength, Jerry was moving cautiously in rough country. Soon enough the rest of his troops arrived and, though able to move faster for a while, patches of heavy bush in rough terrain well suited to ambush slowed Jerry down. His trackers reported following less than twenty men, which was way below the number Dumpy Pearce had given. In the meanwhile Dumpy had reached the terrorist base by the water where he found that a big force of about forty men had broken south. The only other tracks were those that Jerry was following.

  Before Jerry’s troops reached one particular spot, I asked for 37mm Sneb rockets to be fired into a patch of bush on the lip of a ravine through which Jerry and his men would be passing. To assist Flying Officer Chris Weinmann, who was flying a Provost, identify the correct position, I asked him to follow my helicopter’s shadow until I called, “Now” to pinpoint his position of strike. So far as I know, this was the first time that one pilot guided another by using his aircraft’s shadow; but it worked perfectly and Chris placed the strike exactly where I wanted it. When Jerry reached the point a few minutes later, he reported that the tracks went through the point of strike but the terrorists had passed there some time earlier.

  By late afternoon Jerry’s callsign had slowed to the extent that they were over one hour behind the terrorists when tracks crossed the north-south road leading to Kanyemba. Because the terrorists were heading directly for Mozambique, diplomatic clearances were needed to enter that country in ‘hot pursuit’. When it was too dark to track the troops settled for the night at the borderline. The road crossing had allowed trackers to get an accurate count of the number of men they were pursuing. This confirmed that, with only fifteen sets of prints, Dumpy was following the greater portion of the original group.

  During the night authority was given to cross into Mozambique. At first light Jerry’s men received water and Mozambican maps before continuing the follow-up into flat, dry mopani country where the temperature would rise to thirty-eight degrees by midday. No aircraft came near Jerry until he said he was close to contact. As I approached his area, a radio transmission from Jerry was so heavily overlaid by the sound of automatic gunfire that I could not hear what he was saying. That he was in contact was obvious.

  Jerry had heard voices ahead and opened out his callsign for a sweep through moderately open bush towards the voices. The terrorists saw the troops emerging from the bush line on the other side of a dry riverbed and opened fire, wounding one RLI trooper. Jerry called on the terrorists to surrender, whereupon they responded with vile language and anti-white slogans before resuming fire that kept Jerry’s troops pinned down for a short while.

  The terrorist position was under trees on slightly higher ground on the other side of the dry riverbed. The RLI threw phosphorus grenades into the river line to give smoke cover to Jerry’s left echelon as it rushed over the riverbed and positioned itself on the terrorists’ right flank. With pressure on them from front and side, the terrorists’ action abated and Jerry crossed the river under covering fire to
sweep through the camp where he found seven dead terrorists and one wounded. This meant there were still seven others close by.

  Alan Aird and I searched forward and saw two terrorists lying against the bank of a small gully with their weapons pointing towards the advancing troops. Alan opened fire, forcing them to run in a crouch along the gully in the direction of Jerry’s flanking callsign. One fell then rose as Alan’s fire struck the second man who went head over heels. He rose again just where the gully seemed to end next to a clump of trees. Here both injured men disappeared from view. A gully line beyond helped us understand that a tunnel existed were the roots of the trees bound surface soil to form a natural bridge. The two terrorists were obviously in hiding under this bridge.

  Then from above we witnessed a very strange action when two soldiers, one wearing a bright green item of headgear, moved to where we had lost sight of the terrorists. These two men were bending over the bridge and gesticulating wildly before both dropped on their stomachs moments before a grenade detonated in the gully next to them. They rose and did what they had done before, again dropping facedown as another explosion occurred. The act was repeated but, this time, the two wounded terrorists emerged and were taken prisoner.

  Later we were to learn that Lance Corporal Lahee was the wearer of the green headgear, a tea cosy, which was the lucky charm he had used during Op Griffin to attract enemy fire. During the action in which he had been pinned down with Jerry Strong, he had lifted the tea cosy on a stick into terrorist view to confirm their continued presence and position. In so doing the cosy collected a number of holes. I knew the man had to be a bit crazy to be wearing such a bright article because it made finding him from the air so much easier than any other RLI soldier.

  Lahee had watched the dust from our helicopter’s gunfire, which drew him to the terrorists under the earth bridge. Here he shouted to them to surrender. They refused, so he threw a grenade into the tunnel. The terrorists were just around a bend in the tunnel that protected them from the two detonating grenades that they had thrown back out into the gully. Lahee told them the next grenade would detonate as it reached them and this is what had brought them out of hiding at the very moment another terrorist was seen and killed by other troops.

  A little past the point where the gully entered the dry river, I spotted a terrorist as he ran under a tangle of roots overhanging the bank of the main river. Alan had not seen this, and the terrorist was no longer visible to me. With Alan holding the MAG steady, I manoeuvred the helicopter and told him when to pull the trigger. With a touch of rudder I brought strikes to the correct spot for Alan to identify. We then made three passes down the river putting in accurate strikes on the spot before running out of ammunition.

  The terrorist had not fallen into view so Flying Officer Tudor Thomas and his gunner, Senior Technician Butch Phillips, put in a pass into the same spot were troops immediately found the bullet-riddled body of a terrorist lodged in tangled roots that had been exposed by erosion. This brought the tally to twelve with three remaining.

  I landed to relieve Jerry’s men of the three captured terrorists and flew off to hand them over to the Special Branch at Kanyemba. I can still picture the combination of arrogance and fear etched on their faces when they looked at Alan and his MAG machine-gun, but they dared not move because Alan had them covered with his FN rifle. Two of the terrorists had long deep furrow-like wounds to arms and legs that typified those received from steeply inclined helicopter gunfire. Though these looked pretty frightful at the time, medical attention at Kanyemba and later in Salisbury prison resulted in their full recovery.

  An RLI callsign of five men under Fanie Coetzee had been put down ahead of Jerry’s callsign to cross-grain along the Angwa River. With contact having been made, Tac HQ asked me to get Fanie’s callsign over to Jerry to assist in the follow-up on the three missing individuals who had become separated from each other.

  With the burly Alan Aird and 400 pounds of fuel I knew a lift of six men and equipment would be difficult. I had not seen Fanie before and groaned inwardly when I realised just how big and heavy he was as he lumbered across the soft river sand with his men. Lift-off necessitated the use of emergency power, but I was able to reduce this within the gearbox time limit once in forward flight. On return to the contact area my landing in a small hole between high trees with such a heavy load was difficult enough, but seeing a terrorist go to ground directly ahead of the aircraft made my hair stand on end because it was too late to abort the landing.

  I shouted to Fanie, “Terrorist directly ahead,” just before touch-down then I lifted smartly as the troops cleared. Fanie’s attention was drawn to firing over to his left so he did not get to clearing the area I had indicated to him. Two days later an uninjured terrorist, captured by Mozambican villagers, was brought to Tac HQ. He recognised me immediately and told his interrogators that I was the pilot he aimed to kill if he thought we had seen him hiding in an antbear hole. The reason he recognised me was because, instead of wearing a helmet and mask, I wore earphones with a throat microphone. Thank goodness he did not fire. It would have spelled disaster for eight men and a helicopter.

  The two remaining terrorists were killed in separate actions and the focus of Op Excess swung over to the larger terrorist group. Their tracks had not been found by either of two cross-graining callsigns patrolling the main dirt road on the line of Dumpy’s follow-up. The reason for this became clear when Dumpy reached the road. The terrorists had applied effective anti-tracking procedures over long stretches, moving singly in a widespread line-abreast formation. When they reached the road they grouped and laid clothing, like stepping-stones across a river, which all the men followed, leaving no boot prints on the roadway.

  Unexpectedly, locals well to the south in the Dande Tribal Trust Land reported the terrorists’ presence. Following this, a series of contacts occurred but each firefight had ended before helicopters arrived. During the first and largest of these, Fanie Coetzee’s leading scout and part of his callsign came under heavy fire from a high ridge towards which the trackers were moving. Fanie manoeuvred elements around the flank and from their rear gave the terrorists a serious walloping.

  Shooting had just ended when I arrived and the troops were sweeping through the contact site. I landed and switched off close to big Fanie who nonchalantly handed me an RPD machine-gun, barrel forward. I took hold of it but dropped it immediately when the hot barrel burned the palm and fingers of my right hand. The weapon fell to the ground still smoking where some of my skin was stuck to it. For over a week flying, eating and every other activity involving the use of the right hand, was absolute agony.

  As with most operations there occur amusing incidents that remain clear in ones memory. The first of my Op Excess memories involved a toilet. A concrete plinth set over a deep hole had once been the road-camp latrine. It was on the high bank of the Angwa River and now, with a ‘thunder box’ in place, served as the officers’ loo. A hessian screen surrounded three sides of the toilet with the open end overlooking pools in the river below. In the heat of the valley this facility started to smell and its stench invaded the operations room tent and the officers dining table set under trees. I was present at the lunch table for the first time when Major Rob Southey asked Sergeant-Major ‘Bangstick’ Turle to attend to the problem.

  The sergeant-major ordered two RLI troopies to get rid of the smell, fully expecting the youngsters to do the usual thing of pouring lime into the pit. But he had not spelled this out to them. Obviously the soldiers did not know the standard procedure because they set out to deal with their task in their own way. One poured a gallon of petrol down the hole and turned to his mate asking for matches. His mate did not have any and ran off to find some. By the time he returned, the heat had turned the petrol into concentrated vapour so, as a match was struck, the vapour ignited instantly setting off a powerful explosion that sent everyone in camp diving for cover believing the base was under attack.

  Only when
a shower of indescribable, stinking muck rained down, did someone shout, “Some silly bugger has blown the shithouse down!” The force of the explosion threw both young troopies down the bank, one having lost most of his hair to flame. They both recovered, but the concrete plinth and the thunderbox were totally destroyed.

  The second incident involved Tudor Thomas who was still airborne one evening and became disoriented in the haze and blackness of the night. I got airborne immediately to orbit over our base with my landing light on to assist him. It took a long while before Tudor picked up my landing light because he was miles away. On the ground some troopies knew a helicopter was having difficulty in locating the base and, seeing me orbiting above, one asked another, “Why doesn’t that stupid Blue Job just look down? There is plenty of light in this camp.”

  Concern for Tete Province

  ZANU HAD FAILED AGAIN BY losing all but two of its men in Operation Excess. However the operation showed us that ZANU had at last come to realise that they must find the shortest route to the African population if they were to avoid being mauled again and again by Rhodesian forces. The Mozambican pedicle of Tete Province provided them the only viable option to achieving this and FRELIMO (the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique) had already established its secondfront in this region. Rhodesian fears were that FRELIMO would eventually gain control of those areas where tribal clans overlapped the international borders of Mozambique and Rhodesia. To be in a position to take advantage of this, ZANU had to be accepted by FRELIMO who also depended on Zambia as its rear base for second front operations.