by Al Venter
Nobody was under any illusions of what was expected of Dave McGrady while he remained in Rhodesia.
Danger apart, the average bounty hunter needed to be as good as, or superior to, those he was after, while also having a healthy dollop of guile and luck. It was obvious that he needed to be superbly fit. In the bush, it was his legs that would do most of the work and, when the time came, they would also get him out of trouble. At his peak, Dave McGrady was one of the few infantrymen that I knew of who could stay on a track in the bush for four or five hours at a steady jog.
As he commented, it could be an extremely tough regimen because everybody was aware that the average insurgent was also in superb physical shape. Also, he could survive on very little while out in the bush, sleep rough for months at a time, survive on his own in this primitive land and call on the locals when there was need to. When targeted, he would often enough survive wounds that would kill the average white man.
One member of Colonel Ron Reid-Daly’s Selous Scouts who was doing a little freelance bounty hunting was caught on his own in a forward position by a squad of about a dozen insurgents. In the end, he had to spend more than a day dodging them. It was only because he was in such fine physical shape himself that he was eventually able to elude them and get away.
The Scouts, apparently, got paid extra for this kind of effort, which usually took place while they were on leave. It annoyed some of the other units who weren’t offered the option. Brian Robinson, the penultimate commanding colonel of the Rhodesian SAS, got himself kicked out of the office of General Peter Walls when he protested. It was none of his business what the Scouts did when they were back home – or where they did it – he was peremptorily told by the irate Supremo, Brian told me many years later.
While McGrady enjoyed no tactical support from the authorities, he did enjoy a small measure of input from local security forces. As he explained, if he were to enter an area that had been ‘frozen’ without disclosing his intentions to the right people, he could be targeted by both sides. Also, apart from possibly of being killed by the Rhodesian Security Forces, he could just as easily end up getting Rhodesian soldiers in his sights.
Which begs the question: how did the Rhodesians regard the majority of bounty hunters? To most, McGrady concedes, ‘we were superfluous. We might have been necessary under some circumstances, but generally, we were regarded as more of a hindrance than a help. Too many of them regarded us as a bunch of misfits, and obviously they were partly right… there were some mercs that were so way out that they simply didn’t fit the bill.’
From my own observations, there were also precious few McGradys, because only a tiny handful matched up to the kind of demands that Dave took in his stride.
The American had the last word. ‘Let’s not underestimate what this job entailed. It was hard. Also, it could be totally unforgiving. One mistake and you were a dead man.’ Which was probably why the average American who arrived in Rhodesia intent on making his fortune lasted only three months, he added. Some held on a bit longer, but then disillusion would set in and they’d go on home.
Later, following his stint with the South Lebanese Army in the Levant, McGrady spent a while in Nicaragua.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
On the Ground in Rhodesia’s Bush War
‘It’s easy to fight when everything’s right It’s a different song when everything’s wrong…’
Comment in an e-mail from Colonel Lionel Dyck discussing the Rhodesian war
BOB BROWN WAS TWO HOURS into his flight back to New York from Southern Africa in the summer of 1985 when he was given a message from the cockpit by one of the flight attendants. I’d persuaded an official at South African Airways to pass on by radio the news that Arthur Cumming, a Rhodesian with whom we’d been hunting a few days before, had been murdered.
Dapper, brave and a veteran of this bush war, Arthur had been dubbed ‘Gentleman Jim’ by some of the members of his unit, the Rhodesian Light Infantry or, as we knew it, the RLI. Whether in civvies or in the distinctive mottled green cammo gear worn by Prime Minister Ian Smith’s ‘rebel’ army, he was always impeccably turned out.
First details of his murder, which took place at the Cumming hunting concession not far from Wankie in Rhodesia’s north-west region, were sketchy. However, since we’d got to know the Cumming family quite well – we’d been hosted by Arthur and his wife, Sandy, in their home in a region that had had its share of hostilities in the ongoing guerrilla struggle – we were able to relate to what little we’d been told. With another American adventurer of repute, Big John Donovan, as part of our group, Bob had even managed to bag a decent sized kudu bull and, to the chagrin of us all, a sable antelope.
The routine at the old Cumming ranch – it had been in the family for a couple of generations – was the same for each of the five or six mornings that we had hunted. We’d go out in Arthur’s Land Rover before dawn each day. While we’d have to travel across dirt roads to get to our destination, which was troubling, we weren’t deterred: Arthur had been using those roads just about forever and he was fine, so far anyway.
It was worrying that there had been landmines laid in many of the surrounding hunting areas during the previous couple of years, but so far none on the Cumming’s concession. In several cases nearby, insurgent mines had been triggered by vehicles and some of the occupants, children included, had been killed. We were also aware that a few weeks before we’d arrived, insurgents active in the region had used a couple of TM-46s to boost an explosive charge that they’d use to drop a bridge across the nearby Matetsi River.
Our tracker on this leg of our Rhodesian adventure was Tickey, a senior member of the Matabele tribe who’d been with the Cumming family for more than 30 years. Small and wiry, with a pinched face, Tickey could read the bush like you or I might scan a newspaper. He’d follow a trail through thorn and scrub brush and tell you how many animals had used it, exactly what they were, how they were moving, in haste or passively, and when last they’d passed that way.
Tickey could spot a lioness in the long grass even before she knew he was there. As Arthur said, he was the best in his league and the man was justifiably proud of his ability. He was very much ‘part of the family’ he told us.
When asked about his loyalties, considering that so many of the other African folk in that area had been subverted by insurgents, Arthur was unequivocal: ‘I’ve grown up among his people. So did my dad and his dad. I speak his language like his own children. Consequently his people are my people.’
He went on to say something about a bond of understanding between the folk on his ranch that he’d seen demonstrated over and over again. In fact, the family was on such good terms with its ‘native’ staff that Arthur actually declined a government offer to erect a security fence around the homestead.
So who were we to argue when Tickey rode shotgun on board the four-by-four while we hunted the big stuff?
What we didn’t know – and which was only to emerge afterwards – was that Tickey was already a fully paid-up member of the guerrilla force active in the region. Had he been a bit smarter, he could probably have led us into an ambush. That would have been a jackpot all-round: a handful of Americans and a journalist to boot.
He could certainly have done so had he wished: subsequent reports spoke of a squad of ZIPRA guerrillas some 30 or 40 strong that had entered the region from Zambia a short while before we’d arrived. Furthermore, they were armed with some of the best squad weapons in the Soviet armoury, including RPG-7s.
In the end, Tickey waited until we’d left the farm to head home before he led his group of terrorists into the Cumming home. That happened shortly after Arthur’s brother Lawrence had gone off to Bulawayo earlier in the day.
At about nine that evening, according to Sandra Cumming, Arthur got up to lock the outside doors, much as he always did about that time of night. Moments later, she recalled, three black men wearing the uniforms of the Rhodesian Army – complete with camou
flage cloth caps – entered the room. They’d come in from the kitchen, which meant that somebody had opened the outside door for them.
Sandy’s first words to her husband were ‘Arthur, what’s the army doing in the house?’ All that Arthur could do was shout: ‘Run Sandy! Run for your life!’ Then all three intruders opened up on him with their AKs and this Rhodesian farmer crumpled in a heap on the cement floor.
Sandy, almost nine months pregnant, had meanwhile slipped out of the house through one of the side doors. Roughly 30 seconds later she heard more shots, some of them ricocheting off the concrete. The terrorists had delivered the coup de grace and she knew that her Arthur was dead.
By slipping into a low clump of foliage at the bottom of her garden, Sandy Cumming managed to survive the onslaught, even though her husband’s killers spent a good while searching for her. Finally, even though the insurgents were still in the house, all of them gathered together in the sitting room and plundering the booze cabinet, she was able to sneak back into the house and activate the recently installed Agriculture-Alert system – we used the term Agric-Alert.
While Sandra Cumming played hide-and-seek with her husband’s murderers, a nearby army patrol rushed to her rescue. But even that took time.
The favourite insurgent ploy in that war, immediately prior to an attack on a farmhouse – as with Malaya while its guerrilla emergency lasted – was to lay a pattern of mines, usually an anti-tank mine surrounded by a cluster of anti-personnel mines (APs) in the approach road to the farm. If nobody had been able to check beforehand, one or more of these bombs might be detonated by the vehicles heading in.
Arthur Cumming, though critically wounded, didn’t die immediately. And because the entire farming community of the north-west – for a radius of more than 100 miles – was connected to the same radio-based security system, they could follow the drama in real time. They’d all heard Sandy’s first call for help once she’d emerged from hiding, the killers having returned to the house after their fruitless search outside. Finally, after the attackers left, she came onto the link again: ‘Arthur’s dead’ were her words.
Bob Brown was to learn all of this after he returned to the United States. He communicated with both Lawrence as well as Sandy Cumming. Not long afterwards, he was to get news about her newborn.
Reports that subsequently filtered through from Rhodesia indicated that Tickey, who had often hauled young Arthur about on his back while still a child, had been arrested. He was tried in court and executed by the authorities a short while later.
I covered the Rhodesian war almost from the start of hostilities. I was to go north of the border from South Africa – based as I was in Johannesburg at the time – scores of times in a dozen years. Sometimes I’d fly or sometimes I’d go by road, which I did often enough, occasionally with my wife. We’d travel the lonely road between Bulawayo and Beit Bridge, just praying that we didn’t run into the guerrillas.
The Rhodesian Light Infantry’s Fire Force was brought in by Alouette helicopter gunships to try to follow up on the Cumming murder, but the attackers had already fled back to Zambia. (Author’s collection)
Along the way there would be ready evidence of the low-key insurrection that then gripped the country, including burnt-out vehicles abandoned in the bush and others that had obviously been raked by gunfire. Occasionally, we’d spot a car or a truck that had tripped a landmine, some of them blasted by mines that had been laid on tarred roads. The guerrillas would drill out a small section of tar, lay their mine and then with great care, make it look like a pothole that had been filled with gravel.
On one occasion, Madelon and I travelled about 100 miles across a dirt road to Gulu to visit a friend; her husband was then serving in the army and he was based there. It was mid-afternoon when we set out from Fort Victoria and halfway there, I realized that what we were doing was possibly a mistake. We could be ambushed at any time, never mind the mines. The road was in bad shape and huge swathes of bush partly covered it in places. All we had for protection was her little .38-Special snubbie and my Colt .45 ACP: no match for even a single AK-47.
However, we got through, spent a few days in the officers’ quarters, and then headed back on the Sunday morning, this time with an escort for part of the distance. We did that kind of thing in Southern Africa in those days because we were young and in love and fate took good care of us.
It was on the trip back to civilization that we had a serious run-in with a bunch of insurgents on the main road between Francistown and Ramatlabama. They were all ZIPRA guerrillas and they used their weapons to stop us along a lonely stretch of road. All they wanted from us – about six or eight of them – was a lift to the next town. I said we’d take two.
No they countermanded – we were to take them all. It was clearly an impossible situation, which was when I told their leader to get fucked and drove off. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t gun us down in a country that was already playing the role of an uneasy host to their forces. Fortunately, I was proved right.
Asked to do that sort of thing today, I’d probably offer to take the lot and buy them their meals and beers as well.
War or no war, the 1970s were magic times in Africa. I was working for Republican Press, the largest magazine group in Africa that published magazines like Scope and Farmers Weekly, both of which had substantial circulations in Rhodesia and it helped a lot that the company had had almost all its foreign assets frozen in Rhodesia. Republican Press couldn’t take its money out of the embattled country at war, but that didn’t prevent me spending bundles of it each time I was assigned to go north. Following a phone call to the local representative of Republican Press, we’d make contact each time on my first morning in Salisbury and she’d hand me rolls of Rhodesian dollar bills, usually thousands of dollars at a time. I would always make very good use of it.
Location expenses it was called, but the trouble was, I couldn’t take any of it out of the country, which suited me fine. For the best part of a decade, I was able to cover Rhodesia’s war almost continuously and in the process gained an astonishing amount of experience in military matters. I was also able to feed a host of publications abroad and earn the kind of extra money that eventually allowed me to build a rather beautiful home in Noordhoek, one of Cape Town’s better suburbs.
Using company money with no restrictions whatsoever, I’d hire cars, stay in the five-star Monomatapa Hotel (which the army had dubbed ‘The Claymore’ because it had the curiously rounded shape of one), eat like an epicure at Meikles and move about the country as and when I pleased. If Bob Brown didn’t arrive to do the same thing himself, he was constantly sending over Americans to experience Rhodesia’s war and I played host to many of them, courtesy of Republican Press.
‘Brown’s Reprobates’ – as local and foreign media dubbed our exclusive little entourage – ended up a familiar sight in town. Each one of these Americans toted at least one large-calibre ‘piece’ and most eventually became members of the only recognized media centre in the country. The Quill Club was as much a hangout for local and foreign journalists and spooks as the inevitable ‘Guns for Hire’.
By then there were already quite a few Americans in the Rhodesian Army. Among the best known was Bob MacKenzie, who served with distinction in the Rhodesian SAS. Once that was over, Bob went on to become second-in-charge to former Selous Scouts founder-commander Colonel Ron Reid-Daly in the Transkei Army.
There was also Major L.H. ‘Mike’ Williams. Following some unconventional stints in Asia, Mike served as the tactical commander of the Grey Scouts, the country’s famed mounted infantry. Others included Chris Johnson from Houston, Texas, who’d originally served two tours with a Marine Recon Battalion, as well as Airborne/Ranger qualified Bob Nicholson from Fortune, California, both of whom eventually found a home in the RLI.
The 1st Battalion, The Rhodesian Light Infantry (nicknamed ‘The Saints’ or ‘Incredibles’) was a regular airborne commando regiment in the Rhodesian Army that
became a parachute battalion in 1977. Regarded in its day as one of the world's foremost proponents of counter-insurgency warfare, its regular duties included both internal operations and external pre-emptive strikes against guerrillas based in the neighbouring territories of Mozambique and Zambia.
Organized into four company-sized sub-units called commandos, with an average fighting strength of about 70 men, their characteristic deployment was the Fire Force, a reaction operation called out by radio whenever enemy units were spotted, usually in remote locations in the bush.
RLI ‘troopies’ soon became the country’s most effective rapid deployment helicopter shock force. Small combat elements would consist of four-man ‘sticks’, each consisting of an NCO stick leader, a machine-gunner, a trooper, and a combatant-medic. Basic weapons were the 7.62mm FN rifle and belt-fed MAGs.
The RLI Fire Force concept emerged after a few hard lessons in 1974. Using French-built helicopters, some obtained legally and still more bought ‘under the counter’, as well as antiquated C-47 Dakotas or ‘Gooney birds’, back-up vehicles and support troops, this was a tactic, though expensive, that worked from the start. Operations in the bush that involved Fire Force always yielded results, some of them inordinately impressive in terms of kills.
What was notable about the RLI was its strength. At best it never numbered more than a few hundred combatants. As long as these men remained active, they were able to counter large numbers of insurgents, with RLI ‘troopies’ sometimes going out on two consecutive missions a day, three on rare occasions. There were operations when they were dropped virtually onto the heads of those they sought from 200 feet.