by Ian Pringle
The mystery of the empty parade square
Norman Walsh again ordered Petter-Bowyer to go forward to inspect the effects of the air weapons, in particular the flechettes. ‘The entire parade ground was crowded with the darts’ partially embedded pink tail fins, which had separated from the steel shafts, now buried below the surface. Nobody, but nobody, would have survived the daily parade had it been held at the routine time,’ said PB.
Later, during the interrogation process, it became abundantly clear why the resistance was less than expected and why the parade square at Camp C had been empty when Wightman’s Whites had dropped their flechettes. Most of the trained guerrillas, 1 500 of them, had moved out the previous night. About 1 000 had gone to a new camp further north, and 500 to Bene on the first leg of being deployed into Rhodesia. A captured guerrilla knew exactly where the new camp was, pointing on the map to a place called Usata, quite close to Tembue Town. The new complex had huts and other structures, recently built around a neat parade square. This information was quickly relayed to the command helicopter.
Brian Robinson and Norman Walsh knew that everyone for miles around would have heard the explosions and seen the attacking Rhodesian aircraft, virtually guaranteeing that the guerrillas would long since have legged it into the bush and into the nearby hills. This likelihood, and the late hour, meant an infantry attack was not feasible, so Walsh asked General Walls for permission to attack Usata with Hunters and Canberras. ‘Delta Zero, you have permission,’ said the general.
Later that afternoon, Blythe-Wood’s Blues put rockets into the new complex to mark the target for the Green Section Canberras. The attack was successful, setting more than half the new huts on fire. Intelligence received later surprisingly revealed that ZANLA had suffered many casualties at Usata – one would have expected them to have fled after the Tembue raid. Nevertheless, the casualty rate would have been much higher had the occupants remained in Camp B.
It was a huge disappointment for the Rhodesians that 1 500 ZANLA guerrillas had slipped through the net. Had the attack been launched 24 hours earlier, the outcome of Zulu 2 would have been very different. The feeling among the Rhodesians was that news of the Chimoio attack had prompted the evacuation. That may have been so, yet the fact that the camp at Usata had just been completed points more to luck more than a deliberate plan.
Ron Reid-Daly added an element of controversy to Zulu 2. He believed the attack should have been aborted. ‘Lieutenant Schulenburg of the Selous Scouts was actually close to Tembue at the time, observing the place with, I think, Martin Chikondo. Schulie had come through the night before on Morse code, advising he was not convinced that the numbers expected were actually in the camp. I relayed this to ComOps, but the attack still went ahead.’ Reid-Daly felt that the SAS had deliberately avoided communicating with Schulenburg directly, as they ‘did not want the Scouts to be involved’.
Back at Camps B and C, the K-cars were still trying to flush out what few guerrillas remained, and sometimes the pilots became frustrated with the process and lack of targets. Mark McLean, flying his K-car near Camp B, was told to go and check out an area that he had already checked:
I got a message relayed by another helicopter pilot to go back and check this place, so I said that I had already checked it and nothing was happening. In fact, I started arguing over the air with the guy, when, suddenly, a clear voice came over the air saying, ‘Kilo 6, just do it.’ It was Peter Walls talking from the command Dak. I whispered into my mike: ‘It’s the voice of the Lord.’ After that, I didn’t argue any more. When the general spoke, you jumped.
The rain started falling in the late afternoon in Tembue, disrupting the process of lifting men and equipment out. It soon became apparent to Robinson and Walsh that they would have to ask Peter Walls once again for permission to leave men in the camp for the night.
News of the overnighter did not surprise Captain Bob MacKenzie: ‘First in, last out is what I do,’ the American observed wryly. Arms and ammunition caches were dotted all over the camps, so the SAS teams were kept busy until dusk, and again at dawn, blowing up what could not be airlifted out.
A huge line of storms on the escarpment acted like a dark curtain covering the late-afternoon sun and bringing early twilight. The helicopters evacuating troops from Tembue to the Train would have to hurry up. Neill Jackson’s Stop 2 was one of the first to be lifted out. Jackson and three of his men boarded their Alouette. As the six helicopters were crossing Lake Cahora Bassa, Norman Walsh got a call: ‘Pink 4, red light on, I need to land.’ Walsh told the pilot, Dave Rowe, to land on one of the larger islands in the lake and wait for fuel.
Neill Jackson was not wearing headphones, so he remained blissfully unaware that there was a serious problem, made worse because they were over water. ‘As we were crossing the wide expanse of Cahora Bassa,’ recalls Jackson, ‘our pilot indicated that he was flying on red light, meaning that our fuel was running dangerously low. Once again, our adrenalin levels were raised as we wondered what was going to happen next. The pilot spotted a tiny island ahead of us, and landed safely on its highest point, while the rest of the helicopters continued on their way back to safety.’
Tony Merber, the helicopter’s technician, recalls: ‘We had gone on the raid as a gunship, but for the extraction of the equipment and troops, some of the K-cars, including myself, had removed our 20-mm cannons on the first ferry trip out and had then returned lighter and with more space to help the G-cars ferry the rest of the guys out. I guess we cut back on fuel load to have more capacity on the ferry trip out.’
As soon as the Alouette landed, Jackson’s stick clambered out of the chopper and spread out into all-round defence, searching the watery horizon for any signs of the approaching FRELIMO navy. Jackson recalled:
We didn’t have long to wait, as we soon heard the drone of approaching aircraft engines and were delighted to see Jack Malloch’s DC-7 approaching our little island at low level. Fuel drums were thrown out of the open rear door, and descended slowly under their parachutes to land perfectly on the small drop zone. We retrieved the drums and helped Tony Merber refuel; we then took to the air again and continued with our journey southwards.
But there was more excitement in store for Jackson and his men. The delay on the island had pushed them well into the premature twilight. They were joined by the last gaggle of helicopters bringing troops out of Tembue. Jackson remembered:
As the darkness began to creep over the bush, we started climbing gradually up the steep sides of a huge mountain range. It became darker as we climbed, and, at one stage, with the helicopter’s landing light illuminating the thick bush on the mountainside, I could clearly see the long grass waving in the rotor wash. For all the world, it looked and felt as if we were hovering for ages in one spot. This, however, was an illusion, and we soon reached the mountain’s plateau. We had landed on top of the legendary ‘Train’ in Mozambique.
Jackson and his men deplaned and, in typical fashion, took up defensive positions around the helicopter. And then something unfamiliar happened:
Our chopper then lifted off into the hover, only a couple of metres off the ground, the landing light illuminating the ground ahead and below. It remained in that position as the other helicopters came in to land and disgorge their troops. Then those helicopters too pulled up into the formation hover alongside the others.
This procedure appeared to take an absolute age, while we cowered, totally confused, in the long grass, being blasted by the gusts of wind and debris from the whirling rotors, and not daring to venture out of the lit area into the forbidding blackness beyond.
Eventually, all the aircraft landed together and shut down, and a semblance of normality returned, as the techs jumped out of their aircraft, and the familiar faces of Major Simon Haarhoff and his 2 Commando men welcomed us to their admin base and directed us to our sleeping places.
Why the strange procedure of hovering in the dark?
‘One of the pilots later
explained,’ said Jackson, ‘that the procedure they had followed was standard practice for a number of helicopters landing together in a confined LZ at night, and was designed to prevent damage to aircraft that had shut down on the ground, by the rotor wash of the incoming choppers. All very frightening and confusing, especially after all we had been through during that long and stressful day!’
Quite a few helicopters managed to leave for Mount Darwin before darkness overwhelmed the Train. The biggest problem the pilots now faced was not simply the fading light, but the storm starting to break along the escarpment. Norman Walsh decided that for safety reasons, the helicopters should fly back independently. The pilots, at least those who had arrived early enough, managed to pick their way through gaps in the storm line; others were less fortunate, including Walsh.
PB was on one of the earlier helicopters and reached Mount Darwin after dodging the storm under low cloud: ‘I became really concerned when a fair number of the helicopters, including the command helicopter, were well overdue.’
Some pilots made it to Centenary, where there would be hot water and cold beer, but others were less fortunate, and had to land in the bush for an uncomfortable night.
Norman Walsh could have got back sooner, but he first wanted to ensure that the stranded, fuelless Alouette was safely off the island. In the storm and the darkness, Walsh managed to find Chiswiti, where he and Brian Robinson allegedly drank the army pub dry.
Back at Tembue, a few contacts erupted during the night, particularly along the Bene–Tembue road, which guerrillas were drawn to as they tried to find their way in the dark. Other than that, it was a quiet night until Bob MacKenzie’s Stop 4 moved into Camp A at first light. A group of ZANLA guerrillas had formed into a defensive position, putting down heavy fire as the SAS men advanced. After a brief but intense firefight, the few survivors surrendered or bolted. MacKenzie reported that the Hunters and Vampires had done an excellent job the previous day – at least three-quarters of the camp infrastructure had been destroyed by the aircraft.
The scattered helicopters started arriving at Chiswiti after first light, ready to fly back to Tembue via the Train to pick up the overnighters. Hunters and Vampires covered the withdrawal from above.
Just after noon, Stop Group 4 were lifted out, completing the evacuation. Captain Bob MacKenzie was the last Rhodesian soldier on Operation Dingo to step from Mozambican soil into an Alouette helicopter.
At 12:55 on Sunday 27 November 1977, Major Brian Robinson effectively closed Operation Dingo by transmitting ‘Broken Nose’ to General Peter Walls – the signal that all Rhodesian forces were back safely on home soil. The general recalled: ‘The thing that stands out from Operation Dingo was the magnificent cooperation between ground and air, and the planning, execution and direction from Robinson and Walsh. It was just great.’
The men of the SAS, RLI and RhAF had indeed inflicted a most painful broken nose on Robert Mugabe’s ZANU forces in one of the biggest battles in Rhodesian history.
Epilogue
Rhodesia Herald
SALISBURY, TUESDAY NOVEMBER 29 1977
Rhodesians’ big raids deep into Mozambique
1 200 TERRORISTS KILLED
Forces smash two camps
Security forces have killed more than 1 200 terrorists in what are acknowledged as their biggest and most successful raids to date against terrorist bases inside Mozambique.
The Rhodesian forces have struck at two camps well inside Mozambique in separate operations which started last Wednesday. The first attack was against the main ZANLA operational headquarters and terrorist holding camp – 90 kilometres inside Mozambique and 17 kilometres north of Chimoio, which used to be called Vila Pery.
The second attack started on Saturday and was directed at the Tembue terrorist base 220 kilometres from the Rhodesian border and north-east of the Cabora Bassa Dam.
Operation Dingo did not end the war. It was not expected to, and many more battles lay ahead. Yet it was pivotal. The raid caused considerable damage to ZANU and its leadership, wiping out 20 per cent of its guerrilla forces and seriously injuring another 10 per cent. The very same spot where Robert Mugabe proudly stood, just three months before Dingo, to acknowledge his election as supreme leader was a pile of rubble. The Rhodesian attack also very nearly cost Mugabe his muchcherished leadership. He was castigated for being complacent about the defences at Chimoio. His detractors once again criticised his total lack of military expertise, the reason why they believed he should never have been elected in the first place.
Operation Dingo came at a time when there was a growing assumption that Rhodesia was fast losing the capability to sustain war, and that almost any settlement could be imposed on the Rhodesian government – not really surprising after Kissinger’s meat-cleaver intervention a year earlier. Operation Dingo put the record straight by delivering a strong message to the world: the Rhodesian forces were not down and out; there was plenty of fight left in them. The British foreign secretary, Dr David Owen, said as much – to the intense irritation of Robert Mugabe. The fact that Rhodesia could mount an attack on this scale surprised many; some even claimed that South Africa must have been directly involved in the raid.
The UN secretary general, Kurt Waldheim, said the raid had ‘greatly impaired peace efforts’. These were tacit admissions that any plans to bypass Ian Smith’s government in the settlement process were doomed. The American ambassador to the UN, Andrew Young, summed up the position succinctly: ‘If you want to stop the fighting you have to talk to the people with the guns.’ And that is exactly what happened two years later at the Lancaster House negotiations.
Mugabe, the most reluctant signatory to the Lancaster House Agreement, achieved victory with a resounding majority in the elections of 1980, thanks in no small way to the strategic foresight of his general-in-chief, Josiah Tongogara. And yet Tongogara, known to some as the Che Guevara of Africa, would not live to see the election results. He died in a road accident on a dark Christmas night in 1979, en route from Maputo to Chimoio to sell the Lancaster House Agreement to his guerrilla forces. With Tongogara’s death, any hope disappeared of unifying the two rival guerrilla political parties, ZANU and ZAPU.
In the aftermath of the Dingo attacks, Robert Mugabe and his spin doctors went into high gear to save face, declaring that New Farm was simply a refugee camp. This is the line much of the international media took.
It is true that there were support staff, hangers-on, family members and their children in the complex. Edgar Tekere’s wife, Ruvimbo, was the best-known example (she hid in a pit latrine for two days and survived). But there is no doubt that the camp’s primary purpose was military. Mugabe, Tongogara, Tekere and others had their own quarters within the complex; it was naive to the extreme to believe that New Farm would never be attacked.
The Harare government’s museums department avoided the spin and properly honoured the fallen; many of them had put up a brave and spirited fight. It built a fitting war memorial, designed by architect Peter Jackson, at the battle site adjacent to the preserved Antonio family farmhouse, now a museum that still bears the huge holes in the floor where Rich Brand’s opening shots tore into the building on that Wednesday morning. The large perimeter sign, written in Portuguese and English, reads:
Chimoio – Zimbabwe Liberation War Shrine
Here lie the remains of freedom fighters who fell during Zimbabwe’s liberation war. These brave men and women were killed in a Rhodesian air and ground attack on Thursday [sic] 23 November 1977.
National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe
Resembling a small version of the Vietnam War memorial in Washington, the sign has nearly 1 100 names inscribed on rows of polished stone panels. Had the Dare reChimurenga not switched its meeting to Maputo on that fateful day in November 1977, there would certainly have been some well-known names on those panels.
Don’t light a fire
The outcome of the Lancaster House Agreement in late 1979 was signif
icantly better for the Rhodesians as a result of Operation Dingo and subsequent external operations. Mugabe’s original standpoint was that there would be no settlement unless his army replaced the Rhodesian forces in their entirety. He also made it clear that the white farmers would have no protection of land tenure, and key industries would be nationalised.
As it turned out, the guerrilla forces were contained in assembly points for a very long time, tenure of white land was secured for at least a decade and no major nationalisation took place. Good examples of just how far Mugabe compromised were the appointment of Lieutenant General Peter Walls as his top military commander and the reservation of 20 per cent of the parliamentary seats for white people, which allowed Ian Smith and some of his key lieutenants to remain in Parliament.
In many ways, the Lancaster House Agreement was a defeat for Mugabe, and probably explained why, despite his massive election victory, he was never comfortable with its outcome. It denied him the total control he craved from a military victory, whereby he could have dismantled the Rhodesian state on his terms and replaced it with a ZANU-Marxist model. Mugabe’s frustration would become more and more apparent as time passed. The dark cloud of unfinished business would hang over Zimbabwe for decades, with serious consequences.
At the time of the 1980 elections, the Rhodesian forces did in fact have a highly secret contingency plan to attack the guerrilla assembly points and wipe out the ZANU leadership, in effect a coup d’état. General Walls had approved the plan; it would be triggered if the Lancaster House Agreement broke down and Mugabe carried out his threat of ‘going back to the bush’.
Intimidation of voters was a big issue, and the British governor, Lord Soames, had the power to annul the elections if he deemed that intimidation was materially affecting the outcome. The Lancaster House Agreement came close to falling apart a few times. Then, at the 11th hour, after reports of serious intimidation in Mashonaland and Manicaland, Peter Walls asked British prime minister Margaret Thatcher to annul the election results because of intimidation. But the electoral process had gone too far, and the British government ignored his appeal. Walls was furious: ‘I totally lost it, effing and blinding and cursing the British government and their prime minister.’