By the time he was uplifted back to Rhodesia, Schulie had set a record by being in hostile territory for two weeks without resupply. He reported that there were over two hundred men in camp who did not seem to have any concerns following the attacks on FC Camp, Mkushi and CGT 2 because they were so well dug in. Because of this, it was decided not to pursue the joint-force approach again, as we were likely to suffer unacceptably high casualties. Instead a Canberra formation attack was launched at the same moment that the Hunters were striking Mboroma on 22 December 1978. Results were pleasing.
Moatize hangar
EVER SINCE BUSH COVER STARTED receding in July the success rate of Fireforce actions had been mounting. It was in one of these in late November 1978 that a CT was captured by RLI troopies of the Mtoko Fireforce. Those who nabbed him did not know that ZANLA’s High Command had made a big error in sending their high-ranking Secretary for the Tete Province on a staff visit to the Takawira Sector in Rhodesia.
SB was delighted to have this man alive considering that most of the CTs in the contact had been killed. Included in the wealth of information gleaned from him, SB learned of huge ZANLA weapons and explosives holdings in an aircraft hangar at the Moatize Airfield near Tete town. The information was passed to the SAS who came to the conclusion this was a job best suited to Air Force.
Five Hunters piloted by Squadron Leader Vic Wightman, Ginger Baldwin, Jim Stagman, Tony Oakley and Dave Bourhill were tasked to take this and other targets out in a single sortie. Though ZANLA’s primary weapons holdings constituted the main target, a long ZANLA barrack building in Tete town was assigned for attention by Golf bombs after which vehicles and AA gun sites were to be destroyed.
On 8 December, four Golf bombs flattened the barrack block completely. Firing at the hangar had to be conducted from long range to avoid the chaos that tons of explosives detonating spontaneously would spew into the path of an attacking jet. It was the second pilot to fire at this target who had the satisfaction of seeing it mushroom in a truly massive explosion that necessitated a maximum ‘G’ turn to avoid flying through the cone of rising debris. When they had taken out assigned targets and had run out of ammunition, the aircraft climbed to 30,000. There the pilots looked back with satisfaction at the vertical pillar of smoke and dust rising more than 10,000 feet above Moatize Airfield where the hangar’s shattered girders and cladding lay widely scattered.
Following this, the SAS moved in to blow up the Mecito bridge to ensure that ZANLA would not easily replenish their lost stocks or continue to move men to Tete by rail. This they timed to occur as a train passed over it on 15 December. Only five days later, with the railway line now out of action, ZANLA attempted to move ammunition up to Tete along their alternate route which was the main road running northwards from Chimoio along the low ground fairly close to the Rhodesian border. News of this impending movement was intercepted on the FRELIMO radio network.
An SAS ambush party struck the lead vehicles, forcing following ones to high-tail back the way they had come. Two pairs of Hunters flown by Vic Wightman, Jim Stagman, Ginger Baldwin and Brian Gordon destroyed the vehicles found hidden in an orchard by Cocky Benecke who had called for and directed their strikes. Following these, Cocky conducted a post-strike recce and confirmed that six vehicles, including a petrol bowser, had been destroyed, thus accounting for the entire resupply column.
Chapter
9
Posting to COMOPS
IN LATE NOVEMBER 1978, I was promoted to the rank group captain and replaced Norman Walsh as Director of Operations at COMOPS Headquarters. Of all the postings I might have been given, this was the only one I dreaded. Almost every man in the field thoroughly disliked this command unit and I did not relish the idea of serving under Bertie Barnard, now a major-general and still Director-General of Operations at COMOPS.
Lieutenant-General Peter Walls and his deputy, Air Marshal Mick McLaren, called me to their respective offices to welcome me but neither one gave me any specific direction other than to say I must start off by familiarising myself with COMOPS routines. At the time, General Barnard was away on long leave.
Unfortunately Wing Commander Dag Jones had also been posted out of COMOPS, leaving his replacement Squadron Leader Terence Murphy and me as new boys. We anchored on SAS Lieutenant-Colonel Brian Robinson who helped us settle in. Major Peter Burford, son of my old boss when I was an apprentice in Umtali back in 1956, was very helpful in running us through COMOPS procedures.
SAS Lieutenant-Colonel Brian Robinson with Ian Smith.
The tempo of external operations was increasing and occupied much of our attention, though Terence and I were little more than observers during lead-up planning for the Mulungushi and Mboroma actions. My first authoritative input came with the Moatize hangar strike. However, whenever time permitted Terence Murphy and I focused our attention on the internal scene.
For some months a force of auxiliaries (armed militiamen) had been building up as a counter to ZANLA and to provide protection for civilians in the rural areas. The black politicians, Bishop Muzorewa and Reverend Sithole both claimed that they had huge support amongst ZANLA personnel who would willingly come over in support of the new Zimbabwe-Rhodesia Government. Their claims proved to be little more than wishful thinking, because only a handful of genuine CTs responded to their much-publicised calls to ‘come in from the bush’.
In an attempt to save face, both Muzorewa and Sithole gathered in many out-of-work loafers and crooks, claiming them to be ZANLA men. They fooled nobody but had succeeded in persuading COMOPS to arrange for the rabble to be given rudimentary training in arms. The task initially fell to Ron Reid-Daly’s Selous Scouts who were horrified by the whole affair. Nevertheless they commenced training hundreds of undisciplined ruffians using old farmsteads as training bases.
Many dangerous situations were faced by the men assigned to training the auxiliaries, known as Pfumo re Vanhu (Spear of the People), because of a belligerent attitude induced in them by the few genuine CTs in their midst and by the black politicians who were, as always, vying for power. On one occasion a life-threatening situation developed necessitating the full Fireforce action that destroyed one fully armed group of the Sithole faction.
Listed here are only those whose names appear in this book. Seated: (from left) Mike Edden SB, Colonel Mac Willar (3), Major-General Bert Barnard (4), Lieutenant-General Peter Walls (6), Air Marshal Mick McLaren (7), Major-General Sandy McLean (8), PB (10). Standing middle row: (from left) Squadron Leader Terence Murphy, Squadron Leader Dag Jones (4) Squadron Leader Jock McGregor (8). Not present in this line was Lieutenant-Colonel Brian Robinson. Back row: Major Peter Burford (8th from left), Mrs Anne Webb (extreme right).
By the time I entered COMOPS, there were Pfumo re Vanhu auxiliary forces in many of the collective villages and responsibility for training new auxiliaries had passed to Army and Police units, releasing Selous Scouts for to their rightful duties.
Some groups worked well whereas others treated the tribesmen in the same manner as CT thugs. On the whole, however, Pfumo re Vanhu succeeded in achieving many of their objectives. Only when our war was over did we learn of the very real threat they had posed to ZANLA.
Squadron Leader Terence Murphy, an ex-British Marine helicopter pilot, came to COMOPS fresh from Fireforce operations. With no specific task given to us, he and I conducted a joint study of internal operations and this led us to focusing on the auxiliaries.
Knowing the force levels already deployed and those in the pipeline, we worked out what we considered to be the optimum distribution of Pfumo re Vanhu forces to create maximum disruption and hindrance to ZANLA. Having done this, we put our thoughts and plans to an assembly of Army officers and SB men. Also attending was Squadron Leader Jock McGregor. All agreed there was good sense and merit in our proposals. We had only just done this when General Barnard returned from leave.
Nobody seemed to have missed him whilst he was away but Bert Barnard had no time to listen to
our plan claiming he had more important matters to attend. When eventually he did find time, he made continuity of our presentation almost impossible by interjecting after every statement we, the ignorant Blue jobs, made.
At one point a very irritated Terence Murphy, referring to his own Army training and experience, but without actually being rude, made it known that he had never known such arrogant interference from any senior officer during any of many staff presentations he had attended. Though surprised and somewhat taken aback by Terence’s clever wording, I was pleased that he had made it possible for us to pick up on our thoughts and continue the briefing without further interruption.
At the conclusion General Barnard thanked us for what we had done but said our plan would not work. So it came as a surprise to learn from Squadron Leader Jock McGregor, who was one of two secretaries who attended all NATJOC meetings, that General Barnard had presented NATJOC with his personal plan for the deployment of Auxiliaries. Jock said it was identical to the presentation he had attended when Terry and I put our plan to him and other Officers. I realised immediately that we should be pleased that the ‘Barnard Plan’ had been adopted rather than become thoroughly fed up with the whole affair. Nevertheless Barnard’s underhandedness was galling.
ZANLA infiltration continued unabated and many CT groups were operating in depth in southern Matabeleland and the central Midlands. In one particular follow-up close to Ian Smith’s farm at Gwenora, there was a contact with CT’s that led to a serious air accident.
Flight Lieutenant Ray Bolton had been conducting helicopter conversions for non-Air Force pilots with a view to establishing if this was a viable way of bolstering operational helicopter pilot numbers. One of Ray’s students was game-ranger Kerry Fynn who had been trained by the Air Force some years earlier. Ray and Kerry were at Thornhill when news of the contact came through and both flew troops to the scene and placed them down under direction of the unseen callsign on the ground.
Ray then saw the callsign but he could not see any CTs. Feeling certain that game-ranger Kerry stood a better chance of spotting them, he called Kerry over to look around. It so happened that the ground callsign then started giving a helicopter direction to turn ‘right’ to position over the terrorist group, but each pilot thought the direction was for him and both responded. Almost immediately Kerry spotted terrorists, rolled sharply to port to bring his gunner Corporal Turner into position to open fire, but collided with Ray’s helicopter, which was crossing his path.
Both helicopters were crippled and crashed. Kerry and his technician died instantly, as did Corporal Cutmore, who was flying with Ray. Miraculously Ray survived the inverted crash because of the protection given his head and body by his armoured seat.
It was at about this time that we received a visitation in COMOPS from ex-RLI Major Alan Lindner, long-serving intelligence officer to Selous Scouts and now attached to Military Intelligence. He came to make a preliminary presentation of a detailed study he had undertaken. Alan made this presentation to General Barnard, Brian Robinson, Peter Burford, Terence Murphy, the COMOPS SB representative Chief Superintendent Mike Edden and me. Quite a bit of what he had to say involved the same matters Terence and I had considered in formulating our Auxiliaries plan. However, Alan’s presentation went much deeper and moved through many steps before unfolding into a clearly defined strategy.
On his own and drawing from his experience with Selous Scouts, Alan had worked out the very military strategy that COMOPS should have produced many months earlier. His maps with well-defined overlays built up a picture that, because of its un-embroidered simplicity, unscrambled the multiplicity of problems facing us. It specifically revealed the most fundamental flaw in COMOPS operational management. Put simply, it showed that, in attempting to secure all internal ground and conducting external operations, our forces had been spread too thinly to prevent the cancer of CT encroachment into economically important areas that Alan called ‘The Vital Ground’.
Vital Ground encompassed all commercial areas including white farms, isolated mines, main roads and rail routes. From those areas in which the CTs were strongest, the tribal areas, Alan’s plan advocated almost total withdrawal of forces to make them fully available for external operations and to secure the Vital Ground in strength. Only then would Selous Scouts and high-density operations be mounted to progressively reoccupy adjoining TTLs with the odd probe into hot spots to keep abreast of developments and, more especially, to take out key CT groups.
External operations would obviously have to be stepped up and sustained to ensure that the CT presence in the semiabandoned areas, some of which ZANLA had already claimed to be ‘liberated areas’, did not become too strong. Robert Mugabe had named 1979 Gore re Gukurahundi (Year of the Peoples’ Storm) because his intention was to push in as many trained CTs as possible. We knew ZANLA had more men than they had weapons to arm them with but, at that time, we were unaware of just how serious this problem was.
Alan Lindner’s plan was so convincing to those of us who heard it that an instruction was issued to all main players to attend a repeat presentation to the National JOC where Alan’s proposals were accepted and put into immediate effect.
The virtual abandonment of the Tribal Trust Lands by the security forces did not affect the Sub-JOC locations as all of these lay in Vital Ground. However, many police stations remained in the unattended areas because, to its credit, PGHQ was determined to retain every single one of its many stations, no matter the dangers. This placed a few stations, particularly those close to the Mozambican border, in a very hostile environment often necessitating Dakotas to run the gauntlet to para-drop critical provisions to hard-pressed policemen and, occasionally, helicopters to change over personnel and undertake the evacuation of casualties. Nyamapanda, right on the border with Mozambique next to the main road to Malawi, was the most harassed and dangerous of all the police positions.
Protective villages continued to be manned by Guard Force with Pfumo re Vanhu auxiliaries in the consolidated villages. They could call upon Fireforce during daylight hours. Inevitably, however, ZANLA’s many relatively ineffective stand-off attacks occurred at night.
One huge problem in leaving many hapless tribesmen to their own devices was that it caused streams of refugees to move out of the countryside to the safety of cities and towns. In consequence, shantytowns sprang up in untidy knots around many built-up areas.
Mozambican National Resistance
PRIOR TO HIS POSTING TO COMOPS, former Commander of SAS Lieutenant-Colonel Brian Robinson had been attached to an establishment specifically created to handle Special Operations. This Special Operations HQ had been under OCC control until COMOPS took over and brought special operations under its wing. Initially Brian was horrified at the prospect of working with Bert Barnard but he was able to conduct most of his work with Group Captain Norman Walsh with whom he had a good personal working relationship, as witnessed before and during Operation Dingo.
Although Brian enjoyed initial planning and tasking work, all of which was conducted in an operations room expressly reserved for top-secret operations, he sorely missed the nittygritty planning that SAS and Selous Scouts did back in their respective headquarters. Consequently, Brian spent much of his day prowling the corridors of COMOPS like a caged lion.
Having been so involved with Norman Walsh, Brian had a very high regard for Air Force opinion in all aspects of SAS and other specialist ground-force work. Having also been involved with me in earlier times, and whenever Norman had asked me to join in on special ops planning, Brian came to me first whenever he needed to bounce ideas off someone in COMOPS. We got on well, and were privy to every aspect of Special Forces operations other than Selous Scouts and CIO external undercover work. Whenever such detail as we needed was given, we kept it strictly to ourselves. One such undercover operation was revealed when the SAS and Air Force had to become directly involved in its development.
In late December 1978, I visited an isolated far
m in the Odzi farming area east of Umtali. Here, at a top-secret Central Intelligence Organisation base, training was being conducted for a resistance movement that was intent on ousting FRELIMO from power. This organisation was variously known as MRM (Mozambican Resistance Movement), MNR (Mozambican National Resistance) and RENAMO. MNR was the term we preferred.
Milling around the helicopter I had flown myself on this visit was a scruffy but happy group of Mozambicans with huge smiles. A fair-sized force of these men was already operating in Mozambique and scoring spectacular successes against FRELIMO.
SAS were about to deploy with the resistance force to give them the training and direction that only the SAS could provide. Air Force would be needed for resupply and other supporting roles. Surprisingly, when the time came for the first para-supply by Dakotas, it was to deliver maize and vegetable seeds with only small amounts of ammunition and troop comforts included. The reason for this was that the MNR had little need for weapons or ammunition because they were capturing most of what they required from FRELIMO.
The willing support being given MNR by the local people bore testimony to the tribesmen’s utter dislike of FRELIMO. However, willing as they were, these poor folk could not hope to provide all the food needs of the fast-growing resistance force. So, in response to SAS direction, MNR needed seed to grow its own crops for self-sufficiency within its safe havens in the forests and valleys surrounding Gorongoza mountain.
Winds of Destruction: The Autobiography of a Rhodesian Combat Pilot Page 84