Barrel of a Gun

by Al Venter

  Overnight, Kampala was faced with a new and revitalized enemy who was not only well-disciplined, but used the same kind of weapons that they had issued their soldiers with. Also, LRA guerrillas had been taught how to ambush and they used these tactics to good effect along many of the major roads of the north, as far west as Pakwach and east to Lira.

  Kony’s guerrilla force bore some distinctive hallmarks. The LRA then, as now, was divided into brigades. These, in turn, were split into smaller groups of 15 to 50 men at a time, depending on the nature and size of the task ahead. Each unit had its own political ‘commissar’ and the men in this formerly staunchly Christian force were now allowed to adopt the faith of Islam; more of Khartoum’s meddling.

  In other respects, not much else has changed over the years. Children in the ranks of the LRA – kids of 10 or 12 years of age – are known to be responsible for some of the worst atrocities, often laying waste to entire villages. The stacking of human skulls alongside roads was always a hallmark of the LRA, largely to intimidate those who tried to bring them to book.

  As in other parts of Africa, the LRA revolt has some ugly tribal undertones. Kony, an Acholi from Northern Uganda, believed in the resurgence of the warlike Acholi nation as a dominant force throughout the country. This, in turn, resulted in the slaughter of other tribal groups, though that seems always to have been a problem in Central Africa. Anyone within the ranks of the LRA who was even vaguely suspected of disloyalty was murdered.

  For many years, conditions were so bad that no Western correspondent dared accompany the LRA on its forays and for once, I wasn’t going to push that envelope, not this time anyway…

  My connection to both the rebels and the Ugandan Army took place in the small town of Gulu south of the Sudanese border, a tough five- or six-hour drive north of Kampala.

  At that time Gulu was at the frontline of Uganda’s war against the LRA, who would sneak over the border from the Sudan to stage attacks. The main crossing point between the two nations, then and now, was Nimule, about 150 clicks north of Gulu, a route that has been closed to ordinary travellers for years.

  Gulu had once been one of my favorite stops. Before 1986, when I made a television documentary on the region and the town represented a tiny oasis of sanity in the crazy turmoil that had overtaken Uganda, I’d go there from time to time.

  The main watering hole for us hacks – and a very good one at that – was the Acholi Inn; it offered reasonable food and ice-cold Tusker beers. There was even a hospital worthy of the name, complete with permanent staff, many of them expatriate. Moreover, Gulu’s children were all at school thanks to the local Roman Catholic Mission, some of whose Holy Fathers were later murdered by Kony’s people.

  Other attributes included a foreign-aid contingent drilling for water in some of the surrounding villages and, most spectacular for those of us who travelled up by road, a requisite stopover at the Murchison National Park, in its day one of Africa’s finest. All that ended when the first cadres of the LRA arrived on the outskirts of Gulu.

  A few years passed before I returned to the town, this time with a French film crew from Antenna 2. By now, unfortunately, Gulu existed in name only. Curiously, not all was bleak. As it lies on one of the major routes linking other parts of Africa, some transients had returned. Also, there were aid specialists trying to make a go of it, but all felt the effects of the war. The Acholi Inn still stood and offered me a bed without a mattress for $25 a night. The food was inedible and the alcohol was suspect.

  Because of the nearby LRA presence, the Ugandan Army was in control and foreigners and locals alike ignored military orders at their peril. On arriving in Gulu, we all reported to the local field commander and he gave us the usual claptrap. The war against the LRA was in its final stages – or so we were told. Also, the last dissidents had been driven into Southern Sudan. What we were seeing, said the colonel, was a ‘mopping-up’ operation. Then he got unpleasant.

  ‘No pictures’, he warned pointing a finger at each one of us in turn. ‘Not even one!’ If we were caught filming, the man continued, we would be arrested and charged with ‘sedition’ (a favourite word in some of Britain’s former colonies in Africa).

  We were told to wait at the Acholi Inn. Meanwhile, a couple of surveillance men kept tabs on our movements. By the third day, we decided that we had to do something. Each night there was firing about town and on the outskirts, but we were not even allowed to ask questions, let alone investigate.

  Our French producer, an equally devious schemer as the dreaded colonel, had a plan. We invited our two ‘minders’ for a beer shortly after breakfast and we could all see immediately that they enjoyed the break. Then a bottle of whisky appeared. An hour later they were drunk and we were off to town.

  By noon, we had filmed the centre of Gulu, snatched a sequence of the military camp while driving past and ended up in the railroad yards where half-a-dozen trains stood abandoned. The LRA had sabotaged the line some miles distance of town, which meant that the region no longer had a rail link with the south.

  It was there that a Ugandan Army officer caught up with us and demanded we accompany him back to the army camp, a very bad place for a uncooperative foreigner to find himself, he assured us.

  When we refused, he went off for reinforcements. We hot-footed it out of town in the direction of Kampala, several hundred miles to the south, our two cars keeping pace with each other.

  It was a calculated risk, abetted by the fact that while the Ugandan Army at Gulu had radio contact with military headquarters in the capital, they were having trouble transmitting. This much we were told by a British expatriate whom we met at the hotel and who had come to Gulu to service the equipment.

  However, we all knew there was also the LRA. At that stage, we’d been assured by the British expatriate that Gulu was completely surrounded. Cars moving through the region were being shot up, though most ambushes took place in the late afternoon. It was still lunchtime and we were prepared to chance it. All these factors had been carefully discussed the night before.

  The author with the French television crew on the road to Gulu and the war with the Lord’s Resistance Army in Northern Uganda. This crew helped me with filming when my own team refused to budge from Kampala because of ‘danger’. (Author’s collection)

  Barely ten minutes out of Gulu – with the two vehicles moving one behind the other, about 300 feet apart – we suddenly became targets. Automatic fire sprayed both sides of the road. Neither car was hit in that first salvo, but it was close enough to see that the LRA were using green tracers. A short distance on there was more firing.

  By now I was lying flat on the floor of the car directly behind the driver and being the hero I am, I urged him to put his foot down even harder.

  We covered the 12 miles to the next town in about eight minutes: the longest journey of my life. All of the villagers, almost as a kind of welcoming group, were gathered on the edge of town to greet us. They could follow our progress along the undulating low hills through which the road twisted, and there was no missing the shots. A great roar went up once we reached the outskirts and for the moment we were safe.

  Once we had reached Kampala we split up. I wasted no time and went overland by bus and taxi directly to the Kenyan border and crossed at Malaba early the next day, on foot.

  The French crew managed to persuade a charter pilot to take them to the Kenyan capital the same evening. At least we got our film out…

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Bounty Hunt in Rhodesia

  One of my crazier ventures was to accompany Dave McGrady, an American mercenary from Michigan, on what he would have liked to think was a ‘bounty hunt’ in the wilds of Rhodesia while that bush war raged. In theory, he would have been paid good money for every ‘terrorist’ scalp. In reality, the adventure almost got us all killed.

  MCGRADY WOKE ME AFTER MIDNIGHT. The American grunted softly and nodded in the direction of the river. ‘Gunter and the Greek are aslee
p’, he said quietly.

  ‘So much for those fuckers guarding our butts…’

  From my sleeping bag tucked next to a couple of large boulders, the night seemed less oppressive after the rains. From dawn onwards, it had been a tough slog. Much of the hike had taken us across difficult thorn and mopani country speckled by giant outcrops of granite, some as high as multi-storeyed buildings. Gomos, they called them up Mount Darwin way and probably still do: it’s a Shona word.

  There’d been a few stops, usually to brush tsetse flies from our backs and catch a breath, but nothing long enough even for a brew: always tea, because you can smell coffee for miles in the African bush. When we found a temporary camp site we opened a few canteens and drank some of the water we’d taken earlier from one of the few streams we’d crossed. One of the guys tried to filter some of it through his bush hat and while it tasted muddy, the filtering got rid of some of the grit.

  Too risky to start a fire, McGrady ventured. I agreed, in part because of the goats we’d heard a few miles back. In that kind of backwater, a single goat equates to human presence. Also, we weren’t quite sure how these people would view a quartet of strange whites spending time on their turf; we were all in camouflage and shouldered an assortment of weapons. News of strangers in remote areas travels fast, especially in the African bush, so we kept out of sight and never crossed open ground if we could help it.

  Domestic animals might also signify a gook camp. McGrady had mentioned as much earlier out of earshot of the other two, because they were already on tenterhooks. We two should take extra care, he suggested. I couldn’t argue, especially since these were unknown factors in a land that was being disputed both by the guerrillas and the government.

  Now that we’d moved in, McGrady was hoping for a kill or two of his own… if they didn’t get us first…

  The insurgents in that area, north-west of Wankie, were a tough, seasoned bunch of fighters, or so we’d heard back at the Quill Club in Salisbury – Harare today. This was the land of the Matabele, distant cousins of their belligerent Zulu forebears; the majority of rebels operational in that region were loyal to the portly Joshua Nkomo. Many, we knew, had been trained abroad, some in Iron Curtain countries. Also, we took it for granted that they’d have been issued with some heavy-duty hardware.

  While the four of us were adequately armed for any normal kind of contact – between us we had two FN-FAL rifles, McGrady’s converted AR-15 and my own Mini-Ruger (the last two in .223 calibre) – we really weren’t properly equipped as a hunting party in a war zone. Even with our clutch or two of grenades, we’d never have matched anything sophisticated like the guerrillas used. McGrady had read some of the intelligence reports that passed through his hands from time to time: all emphasized the sophistication of the weapons being lugged by this guerrilla force. Among hardware regularly brought back from bush forays were a profusion of AK-47s, as well as RPDs, RPG-7s and POMZs, never mind the usual batch of anti-personnel and TM-46 anti-tank mines. McGrady had been warned by some of the Rhodesian regulars that the guerrillas knew how to lay them too.

  The mines were always a consideration, which was why we moved as cautiously as we did. We slept uneasily as well, because in doing his customary hourly rounds, McGrady discovered the Greek slumped fast asleep over his rifle on his two-hour watch on the first night out.

  With McGrady creating a dark shadow at my side – he lay on his sleeping bag rather than in it – I peered into the darkness in an effort to see what it was that had caused him to rouse me. It couldn’t have been all that serious because my slumber had been pretty intermittent anyway.

  I leaned over towards him: ‘You hear anything?’

  ‘Negative’, he whispered.

  ‘Had a bunch of something come through… must have been wildebeest… moved on towards where they are’, he said, pointing at a position perhaps 500 feet away ‘… probably spooked when they smelt the Greek’s aftershave… galloped off quickly. That’s what got me on my elbows’, he added.

  McGrady wasn’t enamoured of the Greek. Within a day or so the sentiment was reciprocated and from then on the two hardly exchanged a word. The European didn’t like being told what to do, which was one of the reasons why the American felt he could have managed better without him.

  Just then some heavy cloud moved in and covered what little moon was left over this stretch of Matabeleland. It would rain again, probably soon, he’d told me earlier. If it did, the people we were looking for wouldn’t find yesterday’s spoor. Trouble was, if they’d left tracks in the direction we were headed, we wouldn’t spot theirs either.

  David G. McGrady, a private American citizen with no military background, had originally arrived in Africa by way of Soldier of Fortune, that Colorado-based magazine that catered to what it liked to term ‘Modern-Day Adventurers’. These were mostly former military veterans, most of them gung-ho and who had done a tour or three in Vietnam. Almost to man they sought action, legal or otherwise, preferably under a foreign flag.

  By McGrady’s time, the magazine had published several features on the ground war in Rhodesia and McGrady, always the iconoclast, got hold of a copy of one of my early books on guerrilla warfare in Africa, titled The Zambezi Salient. 1 A bit of a pace-setter for its time – it highlighted several wars then creeping inexorably southwards – the book covered some of the hostilities in Rhodesia as well as Portugal’s military campaigns then ongoing.

  McGrady obviously liked what he read, and through my publishers he was given my address and dropped me a line. His first question was: are there any military opportunities in which I can get involved in Southern Africa?

  I replied that there were plenty, but that he’d not only have to get himself across the Atlantic, but he’d also have to consider carefully whether this was something he’d really like to do, especially since he had no military background. I suggested that he arrive reasonably well equipped: ‘you’re going to need your own kit and the kind of heavy stuff that might be useful for fighting in the bush’, was my suggestion.

  American mercenary Dave McGrady on the improvised raft that took us across the river into Injun Country, as he put it, ‘to hunt gooks’. They almost got to hunting us… (Author’s collection)

  Perhaps two months later, a youthful Dave McGrady arrived in Johannesburg, where he met three other American adventurers, all with solid military experience under their belts: Drenkowski, Cunningham and Bolen. All three ended up doing freelance military work in Rhodesia.

  Dana Drenkowski was a USAF pilot who’d flown more than 200 combat missions over South-East Asia in Phantom F-4s and B-52 bombers and had then gone on to work briefly as a hired gun for Libya’s Colonel Muammar Gadaffi.2 Tom Cunningham and Jim Bolen, by contrast, were both former members of US Army Special Forces units. Jim was a member of a CIA/ Studies and Observation Group (SOG) Team in Vietnam and Tom had left one of his legs behind in South-East Asia following a rather serious contact with the Viet Cong.

  With this group on my doorstep, I had to do something to assist them in their quest for a bit of action. Since I was working for a local magazine at the time and spotted the opportunity of something possibly happening with these guys in Rhodesia, I suggested to my editor, Jack Shepherd-Smith, that we perhaps had the makings of a story here. That was when I was given one of the company cars and McGrady and I set out for Salisbury. The others had already gone ahead.

  Once in Salisbury, McGrady tried to join the army. He’d hoped to get himself posted to the Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI) but was dissuaded from doing so by the recruiting officer who suggested, in part, that because the American was a married man with children, and had neither combat skills nor a military background, he might possibly be better suited to some kind of rural protection work instead. This was when he was pointed in the direction of the Rhodesian Department of Health.

  There he was given the job of riding shotgun with his 30-round AR-15 carbine and a Colt Commander .45 ACP in a shoulder holster. In typical Y
ankee fashion, he’d sport a Gerber Mark 2 survival knife, usually suspended from his webbing. Later, he acquired a clutch of grenades, which he liked to keep strung within easy reach on his Vietnam-era nylon webbing.

  ‘Reckon I’ll save one of them for the terr who rolls me over to see if I’m dead or not.’ An unlikely situation, because McGrady always carried magazines loaded with nearly 900 rounds, enough to keep a minor gook army at bay, he reckoned.

  While working for the Department of Health, it was his job to offer protection to some of the department’s units required to enter Tribal Trust Lands in specific areas. It was the only way they could work, which was essential if tabs were to be kept on immunizations, outbreaks of cholera and even an anthrax epidemic in cattle at one stage, which also ended up affecting some humans.

  ‘It was actually pretty interesting stuff’, was one of his asides. ‘But we didn’t see much action. The gooks were there all right. I expected them to react, but there wasn’t a helluva lot of risk.’ At that stage, he explained, the insurgents preferred soft targets; they were probably intimidated by his arsenal, he would joke.

  It wasn’t long, therefore, before McGrady, by now a blooded American mercenary and bounty hunter, became typical of some of the freelances we might encounter in Rhodesia’s bush war during the 1980s. Though never attached to any regular ‘Rhodie’ force, he saw enough action in the former rebel state to qualify eventually for a job with Sa’ad Haddad’s South Lebanese Army.

  Once in the wilderness, Dave McGrady missed little of what went on while he was in the bush. He was prone to quoting what one of his Selous Scout buddies once told him: ‘Develop a knack for looking beyond the obvious… try to spot anything thing out of place… look for the unusual…’

  Also, in this kind of work, he knew that if you were slack, didn’t pay attention to the small things that mattered and do the necessary when required, you ended up dead. It was as simple as that, he’d say, because this kind of conflict conflict was unforgiving.