Winds of Destruction

by Peter John Hornby Petter-Bowyer

  The terrorist had not fallen into view so Flying Officer Tudor Thomas and his gunner, Senior Technician Butch Phillips, put in a pass into the same spot were troops immediately found the bullet-riddled body of a terrorist lodged in tangled roots that had been exposed by erosion. This brought the tally to twelve with three remaining.

  I landed to relieve Jerry’s men of the three captured terrorists and flew off to hand them over to the Special Branch at Kanyemba. I can still picture the combination of arrogance and fear etched on their faces when they looked at Alan and his MAG machine-gun, but they dared not move because Alan had them covered with his FN rifle. Two of the terrorists had long deep furrow-like wounds to arms and legs that typified those received from steeply inclined helicopter gunfire. Though these looked pretty frightful at the time, medical attention at Kanyemba and later in Salisbury prison resulted in their full recovery.

  An RLI callsign of five men under Fanie Coetzee had been put down ahead of Jerry’s callsign to cross-grain along the Angwa River. With contact having been made, Tac HQ asked me to get Fanie’s callsign over to Jerry to assist in the follow-up on the three missing individuals who had become separated from each other.

  With the burly Alan Aird and 400 pounds of fuel I knew a lift of six men and equipment would be difficult. I had not seen Fanie before and groaned inwardly when I realised just how big and heavy he was as he lumbered across the soft river sand with his men. Lift-off necessitated the use of emergency power, but I was able to reduce this within the gearbox time limit once in forward flight. On return to the contact area my landing in a small hole between high trees with such a heavy load was difficult enough, but seeing a terrorist go to ground directly ahead of the aircraft made my hair stand on end because it was too late to abort the landing.

  I shouted to Fanie, “Terrorist directly ahead,” just before touch-down then I lifted smartly as the troops cleared. Fanie’s attention was drawn to firing over to his left so he did not get to clearing the area I had indicated to him. Two days later an uninjured terrorist, captured by Mozambican villagers, was brought to Tac HQ. He recognised me immediately and told his interrogators that I was the pilot he aimed to kill if he thought we had seen him hiding in an antbear hole. The reason he recognised me was because, instead of wearing a helmet and mask, I wore earphones with a throat microphone. Thank goodness he did not fire. It would have spelled disaster for eight men and a helicopter.

  The two remaining terrorists were killed in separate actions and the focus of Op Excess swung over to the larger terrorist group. Their tracks had not been found by either of two cross-graining callsigns patrolling the main dirt road on the line of Dumpy’s follow-up. The reason for this became clear when Dumpy reached the road. The terrorists had applied effective anti-tracking procedures over long stretches, moving singly in a widespread line-abreast formation. When they reached the road they grouped and laid clothing, like stepping-stones across a river, which all the men followed, leaving no boot prints on the roadway.

  Unexpectedly, locals well to the south in the Dande Tribal Trust Land reported the terrorists’ presence. Following this, a series of contacts occurred but each firefight had ended before helicopters arrived. During the first and largest of these, Fanie Coetzee’s leading scout and part of his callsign came under heavy fire from a high ridge towards which the trackers were moving. Fanie manoeuvred elements around the flank and from their rear gave the terrorists a serious walloping.

  Shooting had just ended when I arrived and the troops were sweeping through the contact site. I landed and switched off close to big Fanie who nonchalantly handed me an RPD machine-gun, barrel forward. I took hold of it but dropped it immediately when the hot barrel burned the palm and fingers of my right hand. The weapon fell to the ground still smoking where some of my skin was stuck to it. For over a week flying, eating and every other activity involving the use of the right hand, was absolute agony.

  As with most operations there occur amusing incidents that remain clear in ones memory. The first of my Op Excess memories involved a toilet. A concrete plinth set over a deep hole had once been the road-camp latrine. It was on the high bank of the Angwa River and now, with a ‘thunder box’ in place, served as the officers’ loo. A hessian screen surrounded three sides of the toilet with the open end overlooking pools in the river below. In the heat of the valley this facility started to smell and its stench invaded the operations room tent and the officers dining table set under trees. I was present at the lunch table for the first time when Major Rob Southey asked Sergeant-Major ‘Bangstick’ Turle to attend to the problem.

  The sergeant-major ordered two RLI troopies to get rid of the smell, fully expecting the youngsters to do the usual thing of pouring lime into the pit. But he had not spelled this out to them. Obviously the soldiers did not know the standard procedure because they set out to deal with their task in their own way. One poured a gallon of petrol down the hole and turned to his mate asking for matches. His mate did not have any and ran off to find some. By the time he returned, the heat had turned the petrol into concentrated vapour so, as a match was struck, the vapour ignited instantly setting off a powerful explosion that sent everyone in camp diving for cover believing the base was under attack.

  Only when a shower of indescribable, stinking muck rained down, did someone shout, “Some silly bugger has blown the shithouse down!” The force of the explosion threw both young troopies down the bank, one having lost most of his hair to flame. They both recovered, but the concrete plinth and the thunderbox were totally destroyed.

  The second incident involved Tudor Thomas who was still airborne one evening and became disoriented in the haze and blackness of the night. I got airborne immediately to orbit over our base with my landing light on to assist him. It took a long while before Tudor picked up my landing light because he was miles away. On the ground some troopies knew a helicopter was having difficulty in locating the base and, seeing me orbiting above, one asked another, “Why doesn’t that stupid Blue Job just look down? There is plenty of light in this camp.”

  Concern for Tete Province

  ZANU HAD FAILED AGAIN BY losing all but two of its men in Operation Excess. However the operation showed us that ZANU had at last come to realise that they must find the shortest route to the African population if they were to avoid being mauled again and again by Rhodesian forces. The Mozambican pedicle of Tete Province provided them the only viable option to achieving this and FRELIMO (the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique) had already established its secondfront in this region. Rhodesian fears were that FRELIMO would eventually gain control of those areas where tribal clans overlapped the international borders of Mozambique and Rhodesia. To be in a position to take advantage of this, ZANU had to be accepted by FRELIMO who also depended on Zambia as its rear base for second front operations.

  Jacklin Trophy awarded to No 7 Squadron, 1968. Back row: Cpl Tech K. Smithdorff; Cpl Tech A. Aird; Snr Tech J. Norman; Snr Tech W. Armitage; Snr Tech M. Maughan; Cpl Tech J. Ness; Snr Tech J. Green; Snr Tech G. Carmichael; Cpl Tech B. Collocott; Jnr Tech B. Daykin; Snr Tech B. York. Front row: WO1 H.Marshall; Flt Lt P. Nicholls; Fg Of M. McLean; Flt Lt J. Barnes; Flt Lt M. Grier; Sqn Ldr N. Walsh (OC—holding trophy); Flt Lt PB; Flt Lt M. Hofmeyr; Flt Lt I. Harvey; Fg Of H. Slatter; Fg Of T. Jones; Chf Tech D. Theobald. Not present: Fg Off C.Dixon; Snr Tech M.Philips; Cpl Tech R Whyte.

  Rhodesians were most concerned about the Portuguese ability to contain FRELIMO in Tete. Should they fail, which we guessed they would, we would lose our two greatest military advantages. These were having the Zambezi River as abarrier along which to detect crossings and the wide stretches of difficult terrain between the river and the inhabited areas.

  Portugal was already facing major financial and morale problems in her wars against communist-backed liberation movements operating in all three of her African territories. These were Portuguese Guinea, Angola and Mozambique where most men under arms were conscripts from metropolitan Portug
al. They showed little interest in fighting for territories that neither interested nor concerned them, which gave us the distinct impression that their whole approach to service in Africa was to take as little risk as possible and get home in one piece. One could hardly blame them! Nevertheless we hoped that the Portuguese would play a leading role in preventing Russia from achieving her goal of establishing a communist bridge across central Africa from which to drive south. Angola constituted the most important target in Russia’s plans but Rhodesians saw the Tete Province as the immediate threat.

  Unlike the Portuguese, Rhodesian forces, though small in numbers, were fighting on home soil and would not shy away from taking risks. To protect her interests, South Africa was providing much-needed manpower along the strategically important Zambezi River, intent on beating Russian supported terrorism in depth. An extension of this strategic defence line was in the offing because, unbeknown to us at squadron level, plans were in their final stages for Rhodesians to participate with Portuguese forces in Tete.

  This happened to be a quiet time when operations within Rhodesia had returned to routine border-control operations and 7 Squadron had been awarded the Jacklin Trophy. For my part I completed helicopter conversions for Randy du Rand and Barry Roberts and was involved in a Police ATOPS (anti-terrorist operations) exercise codenamed Mannix. Norman Walsh and I flew two of the three helicopters assigned to this large exercise conducted close to Umtali.

  Casevac of gored ranger

  EXERCISE MANNIX INVOLVED TWO GROUPS of police—the ‘Rats’ and the ‘Terriers’. The Rats were small teams acting the part of terror gangs. Terriers, the good guys, were policemen whose job it was to eliminate the Rats. We were amazed that war games conducted in the mountainous eastern districts were almost as exciting as the real thing, but with no danger to ourselves.

  Within the pine forests and thick bush of the area I was having the usual problem of picking up men wearing camouflage. Remembering how easy it had been to find Lance-Corporal Lahee during Op Excess and the way we kept track of our radio tracker dogs, I asked for small red day-glo patches to be affixed to the top of Terrier caps. This worked very wellfor the helicopter and Police Reserve Air Wing crews and thereafter red and orange day-glo patches were used from time to time during offensive operations.

  One evening my father visited me at Grand Reef, the airfield we used for Exercise Mannix. We were having a few drinks together at the end of the day when I was called to the Ops Room. Air HQ required me to fly to Buffalo Bend immediately to casevac a wounded game ranger to Chiredzi Hospital; an elephant had gored him.

  Having had three beers, I approached Norman Walsh who had also been drinking. We agreed it would be much safer to fly together, one piloting whilst the other navigated. Big Alan Aird was our technician. Norman piloted the 370-kilometre leg to the distinctive loop on the Nuanetsi River, named Buffalo Bend in Gona re Zhou (Place of the Elephants) Reserve. Thanks to half-moon and clear-sky conditions I was able to direct Norman along the precise track. From a long way out we could see the huge bonfire at our landing place. When we landed the injured man’s girlfriend and three game-rangers, all with loaded rifles, were watching out for the angry cow elephant that had gored the ranger. She was lurking about close by and trumpeted once just to make life interesting. I was most disappointed that my pilot training coursemate Ron Thompson, then the Senior Warden at Gona re Zhou, was not present because he was away from his base at the time.

  I cannot recall the injured ranger’s name but can still picture him lying on his back exactly where he had been downed. In the late afternoon he had been out on foot with his little dog and another ranger. They were watching elephants browsing when the dog became excited and started barking. This made one cow angry. She charged, knocked over the ranger and quick as a flash drove one long tusk through his pelvis then kneeled on his body to extract it. The other ranger managed to drive the cow off by firing a shot over her head. Once the cow was clear, he fired three shots in quick succession—the recognised SOS signal to anyone in earshot.

  The injured ranger gave us instructions on how to manoeuvre him ever so slowly onto the helicopter stretcher because he was in too much pain to be handled in any other manner. When, however, we got him into the helicopter his six foot, seven inch-length was greater than the helicopter’s width. There was no option but to subject him to excruciating pain by bending his legs to close the rear doors. We had just enough fuel to get to Chiredzi and the moon was about to disappear below the western horizon, so I elected to navigate again whilst Norman Walsh piloted the helicopter. We landed at Chiredzi Police Station with five minutes of fuel to spare. Having seen our casualty safely into a waiting ambulance we refuelled for the dark leg back to Grand Reef. Since they could be of no assistance to me on the return flight, Norman and Alan accepted cold beers whilst I drank strong black coffee.

  The flight to Grand Reef in pitch-blackness had to be made entirely on instruments using heading and time alone because there were no visible features to assist navigation along the route. I climbed high and was quite settled. Beside me I could see that Norman had fallen asleep as had Alan Aird who was sprawled out in his rearward-facing seat. We were about halfway home when, without warning, Norman grabbed the cyclic control and pulled it back sharply. I shouted andNorman let go, instantly realising he had responded to a bad dream. Although normal flight was regained immediately, I was unsettled by the incident and remained tense for the rest of the route, expecting Norman to react to another dream. Fortunately this did not happen.

  When eventually I picked up the lights of Umtali and then Grand Reef it was almost 03:00. I was really tired and could not bring myself to do a simple straightforward descent onto the lights of the base. It took me an age to let down in a series of orbits over the unlit runway despite the fact that I knew we were well clear of the high mountains to the north of the airfield. Even in real emergency situations I had never suffered such uncertainty as on this particular descent. Norman Walsh was awake and, even though he must have been fully aware of my predicament, he did not say a word; such was the nature of my boss.

  Having had less than two hours’ sleep, I was awakened early for a deployment of Police Terriers at sunrise. Just as I was about to place them down in a vlei my technician John Ness shouted, “Lines, lines,” but it was too late. The rotor blades severed the thin telephone wires whose posts, both left and right, where hidden by clumps of trees. Many farms were without telephone communications for the day and I received one hell of a ribbing from the Police Reservists in the Odzi Sports Club that evening.

  Tripper operations

  ON 7 DECEMBER 1968 WE learned that four helicopters would be deploying into Mozambique the following day. Great secrecy surrounded the Portuguese-Rhodesian inter-service co-operative deployment. This and other Tete operations to come were codenamed Operation Natal whereas, for internal purposes, our Air Force used the codename Tripper. The first of these was an experiment in inter-force co-operation and lasted for only ten days. Our task was to assist Portuguese to combat FRELIMO so as to render it incapable of providing ZANU or ZAPU safe passage to Rhodesia through Tete.

  Not knowing what to expect we set of early next morning for a Portuguese Brigade HQ at a hamlet called Bene. Only Wing Commander Ken Edwards, the Air HQ representative and detachment commander, had received a briefing; such wasthe importance given to secrecy.

  Tete had become the most important front for FRELIMO because their operations in far-of northeast Mozambique, though tying down most of the Portuguese military effort, had not attained the depth of penetration they sought. So, under guidance from their Chinese communist advisors, FRELIMO moved to strike at Mozambique’s soft underbelly via Tete Province.

  Malawi would have been a much better country from which to launch this offensive but Doctor Kamuzu Banda had no wish to involve his country in any conflict with the Portuguese Government, upon which he was heavily dependent. This meant that FRELIMO had to use the longer rout
e through Zambia, which already hosted a number of liberation movements operating against Angola, Rhodesia and South Africa.

  FRELIMO’s Tete offensive might have started earlier had a proper accommodation been struck with Zambia. When eventually this was achieved, FRELIMO progressed to its first goal, the Zambezi River, easily and rapidly. It was all too clear that the Mozambican authorities did not view Tete in the same light as Rhodesians did. For the Portuguese there was little commercial value in that vast chunk of undeveloped territory other than at Cabora Bassa. Here in the deep gorge through which the Zambezi River flowed was the vital hydroelectric scheme that had already reached an advanced stage in its construction. Its purpose was to provide Mozambique’s electrical power needs and earn much-needed foreign currency through the sale of excess power to South Africa.

  Pathetically low force levels were deployed in a manner that confirmed the Portuguese were only really interested in keeping FRELIMO away from the tortuous terrain surrounding their Cabora Bassa project. In this deep gorge construction work on the dam wall and its associated electrical generating rooms was well advanced. Beyond this site and the main road leading to it, the Portuguese placed heavy reliance on aldeamentos. Guarded by local militiamen, these were enclosed and defended village forts housing tribesmen dragged in from miles around. The military objective was to deny FRELIMO access to the tribesmen and food in the manner Britain employed so successfully during the Malayan Campaign.