I Am Soldier of Fortune

by Brown, Robert, Spencer, Vann

  Movement about the farm was unrestricted. The only signs of a security presence were armed patrols along the railway line checking each day for landmines, which might have been placed on bridges and culverts during the night. Nothing was found while we were in the area, though the terrorists had blown a span of the Metesi River Bridge a few weeks earlier.

  We were on the lion spoor but they were always two or three hours ahead of us. One amusing incident occurred while tracking the lions, but John Donovan would not think so. Venter, ever the prankster and who was always trying to impress J.D. and me with his machismo, grabbed the tail of a six foot King Cobra that was slithering across our path and was intent on retreating into its hole.

  Now there is a myth or legend or whatever, that if you grab a snake’s tail and whip it over you head, you can break its neck. Venter attempted such folly but didn’t have the technique down pat. He did have six feet of now very angry Cobra hissing and spitting. He finally let it fly and it bounced off the chest of Donovan who became as angry as the cobra. The cobra fled to its hole and we all had a good laugh with the exception of J.D. who threatened to do a number of unprintable things to Venter.

  Venter, bless his black heart, had a great gift for bullshitting. He arranged for me to go hunting with Gregorio Grasselli, then owner of Central African Safaris. I was to get three days of big game hunting in exchange for a Ruger Mini-14, half a dozen banana magazines and 500 rounds of 5.56 ammo, which I had smuggled out of the U.S. Grasselli had a small but beautiful facility consisting of a lodge and half a dozen roundavals which lodged his client hunters. The first day, Donovan and I had puzzled over the fact that his facility was not fenced and that he exhibited no concern about mines or ambushes on the 30 some clicks of dirt road that lead from the tarmac to his camp.

  That night, over sundowners, I asked Grasselli, “Aren’t you vulnerable driving on that dirt road all that distance and having no security fencing?”

  He blew us off, saying, “We don’t have a problem here. I’m not wor-ried.” J.D. and I felt uneasy about this and kept our guns next to our beds. But, we reasoned, he was the local and should know what the situation was. The lion hunt was unsuccessful and our party settled for a fair-sized sable and a near record kudu. Days later, the attack which rocked northwest Rhodesia took place: Arthur Cumming’s wife was widowed, soon to give birth to a child who would never know its father.

  Details of the actual attack were sparse, a tight security blanket being thrown over the area by members of the security forces who engaged in follow-up operations directly after Arthur Cumming had been killed.

  A JUDAS IN THE CAMP

  Arthur and Sandy were alone on the farm that fateful night. Lawrence, his younger brother, had left earlier in the day for Bulowayo, where their mother, one of the earliest pioneers in the northwest, had been spending a few days.

  At about nine in the evening, according to Sandy Cumming, Arthur got up from his easy chair in the lounge to lock the outside doors. Moments later, she recalled with horror, three black men in the uniforms of the Rhodesian Army—complete with camouflage cloth caps—entered the room from the kitchen. Sandy’s first words were: “Arthur, what is the Army doing in the house?”

  A moment later, Arthur shouted a warning. “Run, Sandy. Run for your life, out of the house.” A fusillade of shots rang out in the close confines of the house and Arthur Cumming staggered backward into the lounge. He crumpled in a heap on the concrete floor. That was the last that Sandy saw of the attack, for she had already slipped out through one of the side doors. Moments later, she heard another burst of AK-47 fire. Sandy could hear bullets ricocheting off the concrete and she knew the terrorists had again shot her wounded husband.

  It was clear from the start that the terrorist band of three, who apparently had come across from Zambia, were aware that Sandy Cumming had escaped. They also knew that she was almost nine months pregnant and could not go very far.

  Crouching in a low clump of bushes at the end of the garden, Sandy could hear one of the men, obviously the leader of the killer band, give an order. One of the terrs immediately began to search for her around the house while the other two set about raiding the farm store, about 30 meters from the homestead. Sandy remained hidden for what she termed “about 10 or 15 minutes, I can’t remember exactly how long.” All the while, she was desperate to know the fate of Arthur, for no sound came from the house. Meanwhile, the one terrorist searched through the house for her.

  Eventually, Sandy could restrain herself no longer. She waited until the searching terrorist had gone around the corner of the house and then quickly scrambled towards the building, slipping into the house once again by the same door she had exited from. Like a phantom in the dark, she made her way to Arthur who lay in a pool of blood where he had fallen. He was not yet dead. Trembling, but with cool calculation, Sandy moved slowly towards the Agri-alert system which had been installed in their home only a few weeks earlier. She knew that she would have instant contact with a distant police station, but she was also aware that if she tripped the alarm switch, the noise would bring the terrorists running.

  Sandy carefully moved the switch marked “Talk” over to the “On” position. Lifting the telephone receiver to her ear she whispered a few words. “Can anyone hear me?” she said softly.

  The firing had already alerted an Army patrol near the railway station, but they were several kilometers away. They had, however, contacted base and reported the shooting, and thus the command and control center was on the alert.

  Yes, they could hear her. What had happened, they asked. In as few words as possible, Sandy recounted the story in a low voice. “Arthur is dying,” she said. “Please send help.”

  Once again, she slipped to where Arthur was lying. She returned to the Agri-alert to tell them that Arthur’s condition was critical. Having spent much of her adult life as a nursing sister in Salisbury, Sandy Cumming knew a serious case when she saw one and she did not mince words.

  Several more times, Sandy went to her dying husband and each time she returned to the Agri-alert phone to report his condition. On one occasion, a terrorist banged at one of the doors as he passed and she froze. But he moved on. Eventually the inevitable report came through. “Arthur is dead,” she called over the intercom. By then the terrorists had gone, having set fire to the farm store while a military patrol was fast approaching the house.

  Ten days after we had been with Gentleman Jim, he was murdered in cold blood.

  Unbeknown to Sandy Cumming, the entire drama, as it unfolded, was being followed by the entire farming community of northwest Rhodesia; at least that portion that was linked by Agri-alert to Victoria Falls Police Station. Each one of the sets installed on the farms was in contact with the other, so that when one farmer speaks, every other link can follow the conversation. In this way, if the alarm is sounded on a farm, it goes off simultaneously on every other farm. In all the farms with the Agri-alert system, weapons as well as the system were next to the farmer’s bed once the security gates had been shut for the night.

  For a radius of more than 100 kilometers, families were horrified by the drama as it unfolded. “Gentleman Jim” Cumming, as young as he was, was already a well-known figure within the community. George Grasselli, our guide who lived about 50 kilometers from the Cumming farm, expressed the helplessness:”There we were, listening to this terrible story and there was absolutely nothing that we could do about it,” he said. “Nothing!”

  BETRAYAL

  Rhodesian security forces were quick to follow up the attack, but first, questions were asked among those Africans working and living on the farm. Shockingly, the tracker, Tickey, who had been with the family for three decades and had helped during our hunt for lion, had led the terrorists to the Cumming home on the night of the attack. Apparently, he had been feeding and hiding the group for a week, in spite of the fact that Tickey had often looked after young Cumming when he was a child.

  “He carried him on his
back as a little boy and helped to kill him once he had become a man,” one of the security officers said during the investigation. Tickey was taken into custody in Victoria Falls. For helping terrorists in a terminal attack, he probably received the death penalty.

  Arthur Cumming had mentioned another farmhand, “Boss Boy,” when he explained why he believed the homestead would never be attacked. “Boss Boy” was a senior card carrying member of the ZAPU faction of the Rhodesian African National Council (ANC). He had told Arthur that the farm was safe. He was told that everyone knew that he paid his labor well and was kind and good to their families. There was no reason, the African told Arthur, why the insurgents should want to attack the Cumming home. So relying on such authority, Arthur Cumming never had his home enclosed with cyclone fencing. This ANC member was in Wasalso being held in close custody by the Rhodesian police. His role in the murder was not detailed.

  When we heard of the Cumming murders, we all reflected on a strange situation that had occurred on the third day of our hunt. About 0530 hours, we were traveling toward the Cumming farm in Grasselli’s land mine-proofed Land Rover. Roll bars had been installed along with steel plating in front of the firewall under and behind the front seats. We were crossing the railway near the Metesi bridge as dawn was sneaking over the African bush, when one of our party observed three Africans 150 meters down the track.

  “They are armed and in uniform,” someone whispered. Grasselli halted the vehicle; we bailed out and began uncasing our Zeiss-scoped .375 H&H magnums.

  We had been hoping to get a shot at some terrorists and it looked as if it was time.

  Grasselli glassed the suspects as we moved into the prone position. “I can’t make out their weapons but they’re wearing Rhodesian cammies,” he said. We shrugged our shoulders and reluctantly went back to looking for lions.

  When we heard that Cumming had seen terrorists, we zeroed in with 20-20 hindsight and determined we should have confronted the suspects—especially since when we had first observed them, they were moving toward the railway and when they saw the Land Rover, they walked the other way.

  While we were in Rhodesia the war continued unabated, except that Ian Smith’s security forces appeared to have achieved a major breakthrough. On our trip to Salisbury by road the previous October, we passed numerous operational centers along the main southeast highway from Beit Bridge. A month later, when we returned once again by vehicle, the entire operational front had moved further towards the east and the Mozambique border, the back of the insurgent offensive having apparently been broken by cross-border raids into the neighboring Marxist state.

  The extent and impact of these raids is not fully known. While some critics maintain that they came too late and were not on a large enough scale, unofficial but reliable Salisbury contacts indicated that the three cross-border operations stymied the full force of the terrorist summer offensive. Government sources in Salisbury speak of “several hundred terrorists killed.” Other reliable sources indicated that the true figure was nearer 2,000 terrorists killed, in three separate operations.

  The daring, imagination and effectiveness of these raids can be compared with the Israeli raid on Entebbe and the U.S. raid on Son Tay. According to one of our contacts, on August 8th a Rhodesian force of 72 men—both blacks and whites—drove into a terrorist training camp in Frelimo vehicles, dressed in Frelimo uniforms, singing Frelimo songs and armed with AK-47’s. Their operational plan had them driving onto the camp’s parade ground as the terrs and Frelimo troops were holding reveille about 20 minutes before dawn. When in position, the Rhodesian force opened up, killing approximately 300 terrorists and 30 Frelimo.

  Days after the first raid the Mozambique government broke silence with a brief announcement that 618 had been killed. The broadcast alleged that the attack had been made on defenseless refugees at “ Nyagomia village, 40 kms inside Mozambique.” A British newspaper, under the headline, RHODESIA IS ACCUSED, repeated the Mozambique accusation that “hundreds of women and children” were killed in an attack on a “refugee camp” and quoted the Mozambique government’s publication of photographs of “massed graves of women and children refugees.”

  The British government further stated that it preferred to believe the United Nations’ account to that of the Rhodesians’. On August 29th, the Rhodesian government released a fairly full and documented account of the raid, including a captured map of Nyadzonya camp. In addition, captured documents included a “master roll” of more than 2,000 names of camp inmates, listing their real names, their chimurenga (“‘war of revolu-tion”) names and details of their village of origin, district, educational standard, occupation and marital status.

  Words on the map clearly indicated the military nature of the camp: words such as “security section,” “security guards,” “commander’s residence” and places for “Red guards.” Other documents showed there were three battalions based at the camp at the time of the raid. On August 5th—three days before the raid—the A Battalion had a register of 1,128 of which 1,070 were on parade. Some were sick and 3 6 were “missing.” Each battalion was broken down into three detachments and with each detachment were a commander, a political commissar, a medical officer, a deputy commander and a person responsible for logistics.

  A further document included a list of SKS rifles and rocket launchers—curious equipment for a refugee camp.

  As an editorial in the Rhodesian Sunday Mail (Aug. 29) stated, “No one who sees the documentary evidence can question that the Nyadzonya camp . . . was in fact a terrorist camp. To suggest, as has been done outside our borders, that it was a refugee camp has been proved absolute nonsense by the documents. They are packed with references to the military structure of the camp, its battalion formations, their chain of command (including political commissars), lists of revolutionary names, records of weapons and instructions on them, lecture notes with the thoughts of communist chairman Mao Tse-tung, records of punishments inflicted on dissident revolutionaries (including women), and personal testaments of recruits.

  “It is all there for the world to see—and to nail the refugee camp lie. Refugees do not have military battalions, terrorist indoctrination, communist commissars and weapons of war.

  “Obviously efforts were made in Mozambique to cover up the true nature and purpose of Nyadzonya—sufficient to fool a representative of the United Nations, not that that body would require much convincing of anything anti-Rhodesian.

  “There have been suggestions that after the Rhodesian raid, Frelimo took the opportunity to do some eliminating of its own. Likely or not, it is interesting to note that the camp Rhodesia attacked was at Nyadzonya, 50 km inside Mozambique, while the United Nations’ representative admitted the settlement he saw was called Margonha and was near the Rho-desian border.”

  During one raid, a massive arms dump was destroyed in the Tete region of Mozambique involving almost 100 tons of Soviet and Chinese ordnance. The explosion lit up the sky for 50 kilometers, and there were a number of “foreign advisers,” including Eastern Europeans, killed in the blast.

  One of the results of cross-border raids was that Rhodesian army morale was at a zenith. This was reflected in the activities of those terrorists (estimated to number about 2,000, about a fifth in the northeast), still in the beleaguered country. Terrorists captured by Rhodesian security forces in late November indicated that they were well aware of Rhodesian raids into Mozambique and the effect they were having on supplies and logistics. There was also serious doubt in insurgent circles about the security of their home bases—an essential aspect of insurgency or guerrilla warfare.

  For this, and other reasons, bands of terrorists in Rhodesia were running for the border and trying to get back to Mozambique. It was these groups that were decimated the most, simply because they no longer effected caution and became easy targets while on the move.

  Further problems faced them once they entered Mozambique, since strict instructions were given by Frelimo authoritie
s not to allow terrorists active in Rhodesia to return to bases behind the lines. In some cases returnees were shot out-of-hand by Frelimo forces for disobeying these orders.

  In a desperate bid to prop up the offensive, the Mozambique command—directed by regular army officers from Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique and Botswana, together with a sprinkling of Cubans, Russians, Chinese, East Germans and North Vietnamese—were sending into Rhodesia half-trained combatants.

  It became a challenge for the Rhodesians themselves, with their small population, to neutralize them.

  10

  RHODESIA: THE LAND OF

  MERCS AND HIRED GUNS

  When I heard about how the terrorist leader Robert Mugabe threatened to steal the elections in Rhodesia in 1980, I was outraged, although not one bit surprised. I had almost given up on getting to fight some terrs after six visits to Rhodesia from 1974—80, each time itching for a firefight but leaving without having found one. The only excitement I had found was on my first trip, in May 1974, before I launched SOF, when I linked up with McNair. We careened about on dirt roads in terr-infested northwest Rhodesia for a few days, but the only excitement was provided by the driving of the merc.

  Finally, unexpectedly, in March 1980 I found my firefight when I decided that we had to be in Rhodesia for the elections, which were bound to be bloody. Though I and a few of my staff of editors had made several trips to the Rhodesian war zones, it wasn’t until that year that SOF had the funds to send a team to cover the upcoming elections, which would determine if the small, besieged country would elect a moderate black— white government or a terrorist dictator.