7 SQUADRON AFILLIATION

7 Squadron was afilliated to Fort Victoria -my hometown

This is an early photograph of the afilliation June 1964.

I was 9 years old when this was taken!!

Photograph extracted from Eddie Norris ORAFS website-thanks Eddie

7 SQUADRON COLOURS PARADE

I have added a picture of the whole of 7 Squadron together for the Colours Presentation parade at New Sarum Airbase in Salisbury Rhodesia, May 1979 kindly sent to me by Nick Goodman. This was a very rare and probably one of the only times the Squadron was together in its entirety at least from 1976-1980.

I have added a newspaper clipping of Mike Upton recieving the colours.

I recieved my Aircrew brevet together with other members of the Squadron at this parade. Mike and Dot Faint stood in for my parents as my father was involved in dealing with a Foot and mouth outbreak in the South East Lowveld.

I guess these colours do not exist anymore?

Does anyone have a photograph or picture of both a pilot and techs brevet for me to place on the web site?

JRT WOOD EUOLOGY IAN SMITH

This is an excellent Euology which I think everyone who has anything to say about Ian Smith should read-I would have done anything for the man -We Rhodesians respected him to the utmost -through thick and thin

A Eulogy by Professor JRT Wood in respect of the late Ian Douglas Smith -1919-2007

Although always staunchly true to his beliefs, Ian Smith attracted controversy and more than his fair share of misunderstanding.His son, Robert Smith said on Wednesday that he expected as much vitriol from the press as praise for his late father. And, rightly, he refused to say more, arguing whatever he said would be misconstrued.Nevertheless, barely had he spoken than the headlines, commentators and obituaries were dismissing his father as a bigotted, unthinking racist.This fate was shared by his predecessors as prime minister - Lord Malvern, Sir Roy Welensky, Sir Garfield Todd, Sir Edgar Whitehead and Winston Field - most of whom disliked him and some of whom despised him. All were accused at some stage as being racist.They and Ian Smith were, of course, victims of history, caught in a straitjacket.They had inherited a country freshly implanted into a late iron-age culture in the middle of Africa. They all sought in their varying ways to bring to Rhodesia the benefits of the Western concept of democracy, unknown to the people they were living amongst. They all intended to foster non-racial political evolution which would achieve rule by the majority in the fullness of time.None were able to do so because the British and the West, mired in the Cold War and economic consequences of the Second World War, wanted to appease the African nationalists and rid themselves of their imperial responsibilities.The result is the current state of Africa. Need I say more?Although I knew Ian Smith for 27 years I will not pretend to understand his essential being. He was immensely generous and helpful to me in many ways with my project but he was a private man.We discussed the issues which I was studying but, although both Carole and I worked on his book, The Great Betrayal. I was not a confidant, nor did I presume to be.He paid me the great compliment of giving me sole access to his official papers on which I have based my two books So Far and No Further! (his words on declaring UDI) and my about-to-be published A Matter of Weeks rather than Months (Harold Wilson's boast when imposing sanctions), and a third book, as yet untitled and half-written.I was not, however, offered access to his private papers or his diaries on which he based The Great Betrayal. And I respect his decision.Thus I would find it difficult to write a biography because I lack the crucial insight.What I can declare is that Ian Smith was one of great men who left an indelible footprint on the march of time.His detractors only betray their ignorance and misunderstanding of the man and the world he was born into.He came from a family and a society which understood that duty was part of your being. He was at heart a farmer and, like his father, Jock Smith, before him, a great cattleman. Indeed, he was happiest walking among his cattle.A quiet, shy man, he had qualities which his detractors never recognised.His leadership was unspoken but led him to captain sports teams at school and university, to command his RAF flight and to become the Chairman of the Students Representative Council of Rhodes University before being asked to represent Selukwe in the Southern Rhodesian Parliament.Professor Hobart Houghton, the distinguished Professor of Economics, urged him to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship and go on to Oxford University to further his studies but Ian Smith wanted to go farming. All he ever yearned for was to be on his beloved Farm Gwenora with his cattle.A measure of the man was that he retained life-long friendships of men such as Jack Howman, Sam Whaley, Ken Mackenzie, P.K. van der Byl and so many more.He came from what my son, Andrew, calls the 'Warrior Generation'. He faced the terrors of war and suffered grievously. A lesser man would have taken the offer to return to Rhodesia as an instructor after his Hurricane crash in 1943.Instead he returned to 237 Squadron and fought on. His resourcefulness came to the fore when he fought with the partisans in northern Italy after being shot down in 1944. His leadership and his tough response to any challenge came when he led a party of escapees over the Maritime Alps in his bare feet in the hard winter of 1944-1945.Again he did not go home but went back to fight in Northern Germany. His war left him with pain for the rest of his life and that impassive face which misled so many of his detractors.If I cannot share with you any particular personal insights into the man, I can debunk many of the accusations laid against him.For example, he did not declare war on African nationalism. Quite the reverse.In 1962, during the premiership of Whitehead, ZAPU chose the 'Armed Struggle' in accordance with the Marxist prescription for the acquisition of power. Arms caches and armed men began to be found and picked up. Winston Field and Ian Smith inherited this and all Governments have to act or abdicate.He was not, as depicted by his enemies, and Harold Wilson and the British press in particular, a weak, indecisive puppet of his right wing. He was his own man.He was not an appeaser like Macmillan, Butler, Sandys, Wilson, Carrington and the host of others who presided over the decline of Britain's world status.He was also not overawed by any of these men.The right wing did not force his hand on UDI. The British did this by refusing to negotiate with him and then, at the last minute, offering him impossible conditions including the loss of powers gained in 1923.The right wing within the Cabinet did not persuade him to turn down the Tiger deal as Harold Wilson and his ilk liked to believe.He arrived on the deck of HMS Tiger warning Wilson that he could not accept the British prescription for Rhodesia's return to legality - rule by a Governor and Whitehall for an albeit short period. He knew it would be fatal for Rhodesia and Lord Soames would prove him right in early 1980. As Cabinets work by consensus, he agreed to table the Tiger package before his, but he warned Wilson again that he could not accept the method of the return to legality.We men are all rightly influenced by our wives but he was not a puppet of Janet whatever his critics liked to believe. Without doubt he valued her opinion but he was his own man.He was not the devious tricky liar his opponents liked to depict him as. He was obstinate and he refused to fall for the guile of the British, unlike Bishop Muzorewa.Indeed, Ian Smith's ability to out-manoeuvre and outlast his opponents, led Sir Roy Welensky to tell me one day in 1977 in his office in Old Lonrho Building that he wished he could draw.If he could draw, he said, he would draw a cartoon of Ian Smith as the Great Chief Sitting Bull seated outside his tepee next to his totem pole on which were hung all the scalps of those who had negotiated with him and failed.They included Lord Butler, Duncan Sandys, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Arthur Bottomley, Lord Gardiner, Harold Wilson, Michael Stewart, George Thomas, George Thompson, B.J. Vorster, Hilgard Muller, Henry Kissinger, David Owen, Andrew Young and more.Ian Smith is accused of being a racist by almost all the obituaries you will read. Yet he abhorred apartheid and the Afrikaner Nationalists.I had many discussions with him on this subject. He expressed admiration for many of the Africans we discussed including Nelson Mandela.It is true that he called Mugabe a Marxist gangster but was he wrong?I would say that he was realist and from the outset recognised that it would be impossible and indeed suicidal to settle with Mugabe and his ilk.Ian Smith made the mistake of saying in public 'Never in a thousand years' and that mistake still reverberates.Nevertheless, he warned the British from the outset that a premature transfer to majority rule would be disastrous but they disagreed, saying he was blinded by his own bigotry.He was also not the barely literate Rhodesian Front farmer many liked to think he was. He surprised Bill Deedes by speaking Italian.He could surprise one by quoting whole passages of Shakespeare (another legacy of his time in Italy).When Carole, Andrew and I saw him in January of this year, one of us (I fear it was me) mentioned something about being true to oneself.We were treated to the whole second half of the passage from Hamlet'This above all: to thine own self be true.And it must follow, as night the day.Thou canst not then be falseto any man.'He was to himself true.

Books relating to Rhodesian Fireforce

Winds of Destruction -I highly recommend this book to those doing research on the Rhodesian Air Force. Boss PB was an excellent Recce pilot and did an excellent job on developing weapons for the Rhodesian Air Force. A must have in your book collection.

Masodja -A lot of research and a good book about the RAR -MANY EXCELLENT Fireforce actions recorded.
A Pride of Eagles -Some good information on Fireforce and general Rhodesian Air Force activities throughout its history but there are many errors with regard to stories relating to fireforce-I have attempted to straighten some of the issues relating to myself in my own book Choppertech.

Britains Rebel Air Force
Stick Leader RLI -Tough and rugged what can I say!!! Written with feeling /Charlie does not hide his feelings and says things how he thinks. Ek se!!!

The War Diaries of Andre Dennison -a glimpse into daily life on Fireforce with the RAR -Andre Dennison was a highly competent but controversial soldier -one of the best -I personally flew many K Car missiond with the Major who took a liking to me and my skills as a gunner.

The Saints -An excellent book about the RLI -And to those who operated on Fireforce many photographs down memory lane.

Rhodesian Air Force Operations -I highly recommend this book for those doing research as Prop Geldenhuys has done an excellent job of recording Air strikes and general matters pertaining to Rh Af operations in the Bush War

Fireforce -An excellent story and a must read straight from a troopies point of view. One of the firsts written about the Chimurenga war

The Bush War in Rhodesia was first published as Only my Friends call me Crouks -A must read, excellent book and gives the story of "The Russian Front"

These books have excellent stories and information for anyone interested in the Chimurenga war in Rhodesia. I have used them in my own research on the Rhodesian war for Choppertech and have quoted from them on occasions. We need to remember those who died and why the west and Britain washed thier hands of us.(their own kith and kin)

I also recommend that you read the following books and publications:-

The Elite -the story of the Rhodesian Special Air Service -Barbara Cole

The Selous Scouts Top Secret War -Ron Reid Daly/ Beryl Salt

Pamwe Chete The Legend of the Selous Scouts -Ron Reid Daly

Under the Skin Death of White Rhodesia -David Caute

Rhodesian Air Force -Winston Brent

The Chopper Boys -Al Venter

Assignment Selous Scouts- Jim Parker

One Commando -Dick Gledhill

A Short Thousand Years -Paul Moorcraft

Chimurenga -Paul Moorcraft

A Lifetime of Struggle -Edgar Tekere

I also highly recommend reading any publications by Professor JRT Wood, his work is exceptional.

I will also be constantly updating this page for any info available on fireforce -if you have any recommendations please advise through the comments on the blog or e mail me at shawzie@hotmail.com

I would also like to let you know that I have attempted to give photo credits to those who I am aware of. If you see any photographs which require credits or have any objection of them being on the blog please advise and I will take the appropriate action. The intention of the blog is to give a true and historical rememberance of those heady days of Helicopter warfare in Rhodesia.

GINGE MORRIS

I have a request from Ginge Morris's family for him to get in touch with Doug and Irene at irdohicks@optusnet.com.au If any blues out there know of his e mail address please pass this message on to him
Thanks

FEEDBACK

Alan Shaw and Reg Brandt at a dip tank with "Tame Gooks" from PFUMO RE VHANU.
Alan and Reg were working for the Rhodesian Veterinary Department at the time, Alan was the Senior Animal Health Inspector for Victoria Province and Reg was the Chief AHI for the Province where they worked tirelessley under very dangerous circumstances in the South East of Rhodesia ensuring the well being of livestock in the Province. They would often travel alone in the Tribal Trust Lands with absolutley no escorts or back up.
They were friends for life and spent some of thier retirement together at Mopani Bay near Kariba. True blue Rhodies !!!
Mike Clark (who was also with Alan and Reg) has kindly written a brief of "Alan's story" which is to be published in my book as my father played a huge part in my life in Rhodesia.


This reference is to my father Alan Shaw:-

I have been reading bits of your book, and it looks good, I find it close to home, It triggered memories, I remember some of the names and remember the smell of the war on people, something I had forgotten. The names of the troopies who died and the funerals I went to. I remember the smell of Pa's Landy, do you remember the big bright green balaclava he used to wear when he drove it in winter, the dash was covered in Kensington smokes and his SLR that he loved poking out of the door. What about those green safari suits long socks and brown shoes (One of the few Rhodies who hated Vellies) That would make a great drawing hey! I have a pic of him and Reg not sure if I sent it to u Cheers Grant

WE WANT OUR COUNTRY

I wonder how the result of all this would have been if we could have had a mirror into the future?

WE WANT OUR COUNTRY
Article from Time Magazine 5th November 1965
The Prime Minister of Rhodesia stood tall and thin in the cavernous banquet hall of the Meikles Hotel. Before him sat the leaders of Salisbury society, formally attired. They had raised glasses in a toast to their Queen, but nodded approvingly when he warned that they might soon be leaving her realm. Now they listened silently as Ian Smith, in the flat, nasal accent of the settler, read from the eve-of battle speech of Henry V: "That he which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart. He today that sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother, and gentlemen in England, now abed, shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here." When he finished, the Salisbury Municipal Orchestra played God Save the Queen.
Another throng of the Queen's subjects poured onto the tarmac of Salisbury Airport last week, but there were no leaders of society among them. For they were black, and had straggled in from the African townships of Harare and Highfield outside the city. They crowded onto balconies, perched in jacaranda trees, and clung to flagpoles around the airport building. More than 6,000 of them were squeezed in alight mass, hemmed in on one side by a 12-ft. wire fence, on the other by a cordon of police and their dogs. When the R.A.F. Comet whistled to a stop and the chubby, unsmiling man appeared at the cabin door, they loosed a thundering cheer. "Mambokadzi tinoda nyi-ka yehu!" roared the black Rhodesians who had come to greet Harold Wilson last week. "Your Majesty the Queen, we want our country!"
The British Prime Minister had come to Rhodesia to try, somehow, to prevent the white-supremacist colonial regime of Ian Smith from seizing independence. It was as critical a mission as Wilson had ever undertaken. The United Nations had urged sanctions to starve the settlers out. Some African states were talking of leaving the Commonwealth. And Wilson himself had talked grimly of the "bloodbath" that might follow a unilateral declaration of independence. At home, where many Britons had blood ties with the settlers, he was under heavy fire to salvage some sort of solution, if only a delay that would prove that Britain had done its best.
Wilson's chances seemed slight. In his talks with Smith last month in London, it had become painfully clear that neither side would make any meaningful compromise on the fundamental issue. The British would give Rhodesia its freedom only on condition that the nation's 4,000,000 blacks be guaranteed control of the government within the foreseeable future. To most of the 220,000 whites, however, that would be suicide. They offered only two meaningless gestures: allowing more blacks to vote for the 15 African seats in parliament, and the creation of an almost powerless senate composed of twelve African chiefs (who depend for their livelihood on the government). Any further freedoms for the blacks were absolutely refused.
The Rhodesians are determined that the blacks will never rule. Deep in their hearts, they believe that the first African government would murder them in their beds and drive them off the land. As Africa's former colonies have been granted their freedom, the settlers have shaken their heads in dismay. They talk of the violence of the Congo, of the autocracy of Ghana, of Communist penetration everywhere, and of the fate of their cousins in Kenya. If the blacks get more freedom in Rhodesia, says one leading supporter of Smith, "there will be a Mau Mau here."
The white man's fate in the new black African nations has not been all that bad. Kenya's Mau Mau terrorism stopped at the first signs that independence would be granted, and the brutal slaughters of the Congo are so far the exception in Africa rather than the rule. The initial period of white panic and black exultation is past --a period that saw wholesale departures of colonial civil servants who took their "lumpers" (severance pay) when their jobs were "Africanized," or the thousands of European farmers who pulled up stakes and fled, out of some misbegotten sense of guilt and impending bloodshed.
The fact is that the whites who have remained are still working and raising their families in every one of Africa's 29 new black states--if for no other reason than that they are needed. For all his anticolonialist bluster, Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah depends heavily on the 5,000 Britons (and scores of Americans) who live in his country, engineering dams and power projects, running factories and keeping trade channels open. Despite the horrors of the past, there are now 60,000 Belgians spread throughout the Congo (which once had 90,000), and the nation's industries, commerce and transport systems could not work without them. Last week the Congo's President Joseph Ka-savubu went out of his way to assure "all foreigners living in the Congo" that "this is their country; they have their investments here."
Throughout Africa, many departed whites have returned, or else have been replaced by newcomers from Europe. British railway workers, fired by the Kenya government at the demand of its labor unions, were back on their jobs a year later at much higher pay; too many trains had been going off the tracks. In the Congo's fertile Kivu region, deserted Belgian farmlands have been snapped up by eager Italians who are now making money hand over fist. Attracted by high salaries and a booming, open economy, the French population of the Ivory Coast has doubled in the past five years.
Throughout West Africa--and elsewhere as well--the relations between white and black are easier than they ever were under the colonial regimes. "Today we can say things to Africans that they would never have accepted before, simply because it is no longer the master talking," says a French Africa veteran. Adds a black waiter in Abidjan: "There is no racial discrimination here, only social differences."
Actually, individual whites have never held much land in West Africa, hence that region has been spared the embittered struggles between black and white that have cropped up in the cooler, more habitable reaches of the east. Even in the bloody Congo, Belgians blame themselves for much of the chaos and exonerate the Congolese for the slaughters that followed independence on the grounds that it was nothing more than tribal ebullience--long restrained by Belgian rule--expressing itself at the agitation of Communists.
Whites who have remained in Africa have stayed on in a less vocal but surprisingly more active role. The large white trading companies in former British West Africa are busier today than ever, and there is no sign of their withdrawal now or in the foreseeable future. Living standards for whites have inevitably progressed with the jet and transistor age: fresh newspapers and delicacies from Europe abound in African cities; Belgian pleasure craft swarm on the Congo River of a weekend; a few theaters in each capital allow whites to keep at least some touch with European culture.
Some countries have been tougher on whites than others. Prime examples: Tanzania, which as Tanganyika once had 22,700 whites, now has 17,000. Last year Julius Nyerere's oft-muddled government confiscated 34,000 acres of rich white-owned farmlands merely to assuage African resentments (and perhaps to undercut Communist pressures from within the government). But even at that, Tanzania's Agriculture Minister is a moderate ex-colonial, Derek Bryceson, who was overwhelmingly re-elected last month as a Government Party stalwart. Salaam is as benign and friendly a city as a European could hope to visit.
After Uhuru, What? Of all the newly independent black nations, Kenya provides the closest parallel to what Rhodesia might face if "one man, one vote" came true. It had a large population of white settlers (60,000 v. Rhodesia's 220,000), many of whom owned vast tracts in the "white highlands" northwest of Nairobi. Soon after uhuru, the government of Jomo Kenyatta bought up thousands of acres in the white highlands--at fair prices but with no refusal--and turned the land over to land-hungry Kikuyu families as part of Kenyatta's political debt to the tribe. Down came the trim hedges and the lofty stands of trees that the English farmers had so cherished; up went ramshackle huts and fields of maize.
Many whites bugged out in despair; others sold their farms but took jobs flying bush planes, running tourist camps, still staying in the grand, gaudy country they loved. Today, there are And Dares-41,000 whites in Kenya, and they are by their own testimony happier than they were before uhuru. From the four Kenya races--African, Asian, European and Arab--Jomo Kenyatta has forged the closest thing to a united nation that can be found in black Africa. More important, the four African ethnic groups --Bantu, Nilotic, Nilot-Hamitic and the Hamites--are in greater harmony now than ever before, much to the relief of whites and Asians who might otherwise feel their random wrath.
Sir Michael Blundell, a busky-cheeked pioneer who came out to Kenya 40 years ago with only a shotgun on his back, was ready to retire to England just a year ago. After a disappointing political comedown following uhuru, he felt the country did not need him. Now he plans to stay on in his fieldstone farmhouse above Nakuru as a brewery director. Says Blundell, who was in charge of putting down the Mau Mau insurrection: "I know now that there is no relationship between the African's outlook today and what it was before. He is much happier and more contented. It is stupid to embark on a policy which must fundamentally turn the African into your enemy. You would then have to control him ad infinitum, and that isn't bloody possible."
Curious and moving testimony on black Africa's behalf was delivered fortnight ago when Lord Delamere, the very symbol of the colonial era in Kenya, tried to bring a delegation of white highlanders to Rhodesia to convince Rhodesians that rule by Africans is not so hideous as they might think. The Smith government denied them visas, but it could not shut them up. In a statement published by the Rhodesian press, Delamere said: "Some of us have known in the past what it is to stand up for our rights as settlers. Most of us had perfectly sincere reservations about the speed with which independence was granted to Kenya. Today, however, we must admit that a great many of our fears have so far proved totally unfounded."
Such words are lost on the Rhodesians, who can see nothing north of the Zambezi but Communism, horror and corruption. They prefer to turn their eyes southward to the Limpopo, Kipling's great grey-green, greasy river where the Elephant Child got his nose stretched out by the crocodile. Across the Limpopo lies the shining example of apartheid in South Africa.
In the Afrikaner nation of Hendrik Verwoerd, there is no nonsense about who is baas. Apartheid (pronounced apart-ite) means just what it says--apartness--and the regime has gone to amazing lengths to keep the blacks apart. They must educate their children primarily in the Bantu language. They may live in urban areas only on government permission, and even then they are confined to the sprawling African townships that surround every city. They have no political rights and must carry passes wherever they go. They may be hauled off to jail without pretext or shipped off to one of the eight "Bantustan republics," in which Verwoerd has decided that most blacks should live. Over the past 17 years, the regime has handed down 55 major laws to restrict the African in everything he does.
Though aimed at blacks, the authoritarian state's decrees slowly move in on whites as well. Enemies of the regime have been confined to their homes, or even jailed without trial, but the restrictions are more often maddening than menacing. Fairly typical is the plight of Diamond Heiress Mary Oppenheimer, whose wedding this week was to be followed by a formal champagne reception for both black and white guests. Clearly illegal, stormed the government: it would violate the laws against serving alcohol to nonwhites at a "racially mixed gathering."
Apartheid has turned South Africa into a villain in the eyes of the world, but the effect is hardly noticeable. Not even the black African nations pay much attention to the U.N.'s call for an embargo on South African products. Zambia, for example, still buys nearly a third of its consumer goods from South Africa, and radical Mali's government-owned airline serves its passengers Outspan oranges from South African groves. South Africa is by far the greatest industrial power of the continent. At the moment, it is going through a mild recession after four furious years of boom, but under Johannesburg's growing Manhattan-like skyline the city races along at a Manhattan pace.
Rhodesia has not yet matched the brutality or scope of apartheid, but the inclination of most of its settlers is obviously in that direction. They point out that the country would never be what it is without the energy, hard work and ingenuity of 75 years of white domination. And they have no intention of giving it away. "There will be no black rule in my lifetime," promises Prime Minister Ian Smith.
For the Rhodesian, there is much at stake. Few communities in the world can match the sun-drenched affluence that Rhodesia's hardy settlers have achieved for themselves. Lions still command the distant escarpments, and elephants, baboons and rhinos forage in the valleys of rivers bulging with hippos. But on rolling high veld, brushed with elephant grass and flowering jacaranda trees, the whites have carved out a tidy empire of modern tobacco farms and cattle ranches that has brought modest prosperity to the land. Taxes are low and so are prices; and, for whites, wages are high enough to permit all but the most menial workers their own cars, homes and servants. Salisbury, with a white population of 88,000 spread out over 30 square miles, claims more swimming pools than any U.S. city of its size.
Despite their good life, Rhodesia's whites still consider themselves frontiersmen in the mold of Cecil Rhodes, the free-swinging colossus who led Britain's last grasps of empire. Announcing that "I prefer land to niggers," he marched into the territory, developed it with his own money, policed it with his own troops and, on the basis of a royal charter granted his British South Africa Co., gave it a government traditionally free of direct London rule.
Most blacks now prefer to call their nation Zimbabwe, after the thousand-year-old ruins of a civilization of master artisans who apparently traded with places as far away as China. To Rhodes, however, it was Zambesia, realm of King Lobengula of the Matabeles, and coveted by the colossus as a link in his dream of an "allred route" of British colonies from Cape Town to Cairo. Rhodes's interest was not exclusively imperial: Explorer David Livingstone had returned from the area some 30 years before with tales of gold nuggets "as big as grains of wheat."
Lobengula was a curious combination of statesman and savage. To demonstrate his ability to keep up to date, he had built a Victorian brick house among the wattle huts of his royal compound at Bulawayo. The brick pile was only ceremonial; he lived in a covered wagon given him by a passing trader and used its driver's seat as his throne. He loved to show bug-eyed visitors the royal treasury: two rusty biscuit tins filled with diamonds. A crafty giant of a man who stood 6 ft. 6 in. and weighed 300 Ibs., the Matabele king was a skillful diplomat with a well-trained army constantly patrolling for trespassers. He had successfully parried the white man's advances for nearly 20 years.
Rhodes got to him in 1888. In return for a promise to keep all other white marauders out of Zambesia, the King affixed his official elephant seal to a document awarding Rhodes's British South Africa Co. the right to dig for gold. Rhodes rushed off to London, passed off the agreement as authority to take possession of the land, and wangled a charter to administer it in the name of the Crown.
For the first expedition, Rhodes hired an army of 500 whites for the British South Africa Co.'s uniformed "police," 200 trusty blacks for servants. The heart of the column, however, was 200 hardy settlers, hand-picked to form a balanced community of professional skills and promised 15 gold claims and 3,000 acres of farmland apiece. By 1890, all was ready. Crossing the Limpopo, the pioneer column marched 400 miles northward, formally took possession of King Lobengula's vassal state of Mashonaland, and began staking out their plots. The old King was dismayed. "I thought you came to dig gold," he wrote the British South Africa Co.'s board of directors, "but it seems you have come to rob me of my people and my country as well."
It did not take long. When Lobengula's armies finally rose in 1893, company police cut them down with machine guns, burned his capital to the ground, and made off with half a million cattle. Lobengula, forced to flee for his life, died in flight. The company took over his throne.
Under hardheaded commercial management, Rhodesia quickly flourished. Cheap labor was provided by a hut tax, which forced the penniless natives to go to work for the settlers to pay it. But the settlers worked beside them in the fields and gradually adopted a paternal feeling toward them. New settlers poured in, built themselves Victorian towns and sturdy houses, and planted mealies (corn) and tobacco on the veld. When more land was needed, the natives were moved off, until in 1928 the officials decided something had to be done to protect them. The result was the Land Apportionment Act, which set aside roughly half of the countryside as "native reserves"--but also prohibited the blacks from owning or even leasing land in white areas.
The company's charter had expired in 1914, and rather than go to the expense of setting up a full colonial regime, London offered the settlers their choice between joining South Africa or forming their own "responsible government." For a hardy people accustomed to freedom, the choice was obvious. In 1923, Rhodesia became Britain's first self-governing colony.
All went well until after World War II, when the blacks of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland--also founded by Rhodes--began to demand their freedom. The white populations of the two colonies, too badly outnumbered to maintain control, began calling for help. In British eyes, the only solution was to weld them into a federation with Southern Rhodesia, whose large white police force and greater degree of self-government might quell the cries for kwacha, or independence. It was a scheme worthy of Rhodes, but not even federation could stem the tide. It lasted exactly ten years.
First Voice. In the meantime, strange things had been happening in Salisbury. Into office as territorial Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia came Reginald Stephen Garfield Todd, a strapping, handsome ex-missionary. To the shock of his own United Party, he began to speak softly to the Africans. He managed to ram through a bill giving Southern Rhodesian blacks their first tiny voice in the territory's government--a separate ballot under which they could elect five of the 35 members of parliament. It was not much, but to the settlers it seemed a step toward their worst fear: that their servants would some day rule.
A wave of public reaction forced the Party to scuttle Todd, and his place was taken by Sir Edgar Whitehead, a conservative farmer from Umtali. To restore his party's shattered image, Whitehead took up the settlers' ever-present demands for full independence from Britain. Britain's prerequisite was a constitutional conference to which all political groups--black and white--would be invited. The conference was held in 1961, and out of it emerged a new constitution that gave the blacks even greater strength in the legislature--15 seats out of 65--and set out conditions by which they might eventually compete for the 50 white seats as well. The conditions: full voting rights for anyone with a high school diploma or a salary of $739 a year.
Supremacy or Death. That was not what the settlers had wanted at all, and the constitution turned out to be a death blow to the government. Under a barrage of charges that it was soft on Africans, the United Party was swept out of office in elections the following year. A new party, built on a hard core of cattlemen, tobacco men and right-wing labor leaders, was on the rise; its platform was white supremacy or death, and its founder was Ian Smith.
Ian Douglas Smith, 46, is Rhodesia's first native-born Prime Minister. His father came to the land from Scotland in 1898, settled down to make his fortune as a gold miner, cattle farmer and butcher in the town of Selukwe, 180 miles southwest of Salisbury. "My father rubbed shoulders with Cecil Rhodes," Smith says proudly. "He was one of the fairest men I have ever met, and that is the way he brought me up. He always told me that we're entitled to our half of the country and the blacks are entitled to theirs."
At Selukwe high school, young Ian paid little attention to his studies, but was a champion sprinter and captain of his cricket, tennis and rugby teams. (Noted his school magazine: "Good on attack, but does not always time his passes well.") An R.A.F. fighter pilot during the war, he was shot down on a strafing mission over North Africa, escaped with a broken leg and a badly mutilated face. After plastic surgery in Cairo, he emerged with a drooping right eyelid, an immobile expression, and a brand-new face that the surgeon might almost have copied from pictures of Gary Cooper.
At war's end Smith went to South Africa to take a business course at Rhodes University, then returned home to Selukwe, where he fell in love with an attractive young schoolteacher named Janet Watt. They were married in 1948, and Smith decided that he would enter politics. "I thought he was crackers," recalls his wife, "but no one can influence my husband once he has made up his mind." The Rhodesia Smith inherited was not conciliatory either. When the United Party decided to accept the 1961 constitution, Smith resigned in a rage--and immediately received a telegram of congratulations from archconservative Tobacco Tycoon Douglas Collard Lilford. "Ian Smith, and Ian Smith alone, was the one to get up and say no," recalls "Boss" Lilford. "He was the only blessed one to resign. This man has steel in him." Smith drove out to Lilford's estate near Salisbury, talked the tobacco man into helping him found the Rhodesian Front to preserve "Rhodesia for the Rhodesians."
With Lilford paying most of the bills and Smith in charge of organization, the Rhodesian Front sprouted like mealies on the veld at Gatooma. All the rightist fringe groups, including the Dominion Party of Contractor William John Harper (now Internal Affairs Minister), got into the act, as did such present powers as South Africa-born Lawyer Desmond Lardner-Burke (Justice Minister) and Cattle Farmer James Angus Graham, the seventh Duke of Montrose (Agriculture Minister). For all its potent figures, the Front was hardly a respectable organization--until it won the 1962 election. "They used to look at us at the Salisbury Club as if we'd come out of bad cheese," says Lilford. "They called us everything--cowboys, Nazis, the lot. They don't any longer."
In the interests of prestige, Smith chose a respected tobacco farmer named Winston Field, the best-known of all his candidates, as the Rhodesian Front's first Prime Minister. But Field was not radical enough to suit the party hierarchy. He approved of the Front's demands for independence, but opposed U.D.I. Finally, Smith himself moved into the Dutch-gabled house at 8 Chancellor Avenue, which is the official residence of the Prime Minister.
That was 18 months ago, and Smith has done little but prepare for U.D.I, ever since. He seldom entertains, usually eats a sparse lunch at home with his wife, and spends as much time as possible inside guarded gates of No. 8's jacaranda-lined grounds. No major legislation has emerged from his tour as Prime Minister, but to promote independence he has flown to London twice, held a national referendum, an indaba (meeting) of African chiefs (all government-paid) and a full-scale parliamentary election (in which the Front won all 50 white seats but did not even contest the 15 black ones).
Smith makes every effort to dress up Rhodesia's brand of white supremacy in respectable terms. He claims he is governing in the interests of the Africans, who could obviously not govern themselves. He points proudly to the fact that their living standard is higher in Rhodesia than in any of the black nations to the north. He boasts that 85% of all school-age children are actually in school and that there are modern hospitals for the blacks in Bulawayo and Salisbury. Blacks and whites get along just fine, he says; Rhodesia is a sort of "racial partnership." And what does that mean? "When my cook and I put on a dinner and it's a failure, both of us are at fault," explains Boss Lilford's wife Doris. "When my cook and I put on a dinner and it's a success, both of us deserve the credit. That is partnership."
And the Africans do all the cooking. The overwhelming majority of blacks are allowed to go only as far as grammar school--"a waiter's education," as one African puts it. The nation has only three African lawyers, a dozen African doctors and not a single African in a key civil-service post. The few blacks allowed to sit in the legislature are powerless and afraid, for police-state laws allow the regime to confine any suspected troublemaker indefinitely and without explanation. The African congressmen, moreover, were all nominated by essentially white parties: the two major African political organizations have long ago been banned. One is the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), whose burly leader, former Methodist Minister Joshua Nkomo, 48, has been held since April of last year at the steaming Gonakudzingwa "restriction center" near the Mozambique border. At another restriction camp at Wha Wha is the Rev. Ndabaningi ("A Lot of Trouble") Sithole, 45, 'a U.S.-educated Congregationalist minister who broke away from Nkomo in 1963 to form the rival Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU).
By law, white workers must be given preference over black; the average black income is $200 a year, the average white income $2,000. A white telephone repairman is accompanied on his calls by his black assistant, who carries his six-pound tool kit, hands the baas his screwdrivers with operating-room efficiency, earns bare subsistence wages, and, at day's end, rides seven miles by bicycle or overcrowded bus to Highfield, one of the outlying African townships into which Salisbury's 300,000 blacks are crowded.
The townships are neat and well planned, and although few of their houses are equipped with electricity or running water, they compare favorably with the festering shantytowns of Latin America, Asia and other African countries. That point is lost on the Rhodesian black, who knows only that they are a far cry from the well-kept white suburbs through which he must ride. But he accepts his second-class citizenship impassively, a lack of education, ingrained docility and the state's efficient police leave him no choice.
But his life is getting worse. The government has recently tightened enforcement of the old Land Apportionment Act whereby blacks can no longer own or lease either stores or offices in downtown Salisbury. It is also trying to force private interracial schools to drop their African students. In the countryside, the government refuses to accept Africans' bids to buy unclaimed land supposedly open to them, and has set up controls to discourage Africans still living in tribal areas from moving to the cities. The motive is all too obvious: "If there is black rule in our lifetime," says Smith, "it will be our fault for allowing them to progress too rapidly."
It was Harold Wilson's task last week to determine just how much play there was in this rigid position. Not only had he to deal with Smith's "not in my lifetime" intransigence but also with the equally rigid demands of Rhodesia's black nationalist leaders for immediate "one-man-one-vote" equality. His task was made no easier by the ill-timed comment of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who asked the British government to use force to prevent U.D.I. Griped one Whitehaller, "This is a fine time to sing 'Onward Christian soldiers, shoot your kith and kin.' "
Wilson's strategy in Salisbury was to reach a "multilateralization" of discussion. "He wants to get so many people involved in the discussions, arguing about various approaches, that there will be a great number of confusing second thoughts," explained an aide. "He wants to move the negotiations away from the monolithic 'yes' and 'no' point where they have been."
The pace was wild and wearying: in his first 48 hours in Salisbury, Wilson met with 71 persons, ranging from members of Smith's "cowboy cabinet" through African chieftains in blue and purple robes to the leaders of ZANU and ZAPU. Among the deep carpets and mustachioed portraiture of Salisbury's Government House, the rambling, pillared seat of Britain's governor, Wilson resembled an Indian raja holding court. When Law and Order Minister Lardner Burke insisted that Wilson see ZAPU's "detained" Leader Joshua Nkomo at the airport rather than Government House--a move aimed at underscoring the "illegality" of Nkomo's party--Wilson snapped that he would see Nkomo and everyone else only at Government House.
From the outset, Wilson found that Smith could not be budged from his bedrock position: Rhodesian independence, based on the 1961 constitution and sanctified by a "sacred treaty." At their first meeting, Wilson handed Smith a letter from the Queen, expressing hopes for "a solution to the current difficulties"; Smith stuffed it in his pocket to read later. He thus made it clear there was no room in the treaty for the principle of majority rule in the foreseeable future. With that, Wilson turned to another tack: subtle (and not-so-subtle) hints of the dangers of U.D.I. If Rhodesians felt they could break with Britain and escape hardships, they were wrong. Wilson pointed out that 48 countries had already subscribed to sanctions against Rhodesia in the event of U.D.I., and that it would be a simple matter to cut off the nation's oil by embargo. Even though Portugal would probably keep some oil flowing into Rhodesia through Angola or Mozambique, it would be a scant and stopgap measure at best. As to Rhodesia's capability of making life tough for landlocked, black-ruled Zambia to the north, which relies on Rhodesian rails to carry its copper to market, Wilson raised the prospects of a joint U.S.-British Berlin-style airlift. That was faintly ludicrous, since expensive, airborne copper could hardly compete for long, but it was meant to demonstrate that Britain was not about to be bullied by threats of Rhodesian countermoves.
As the stalemate wore on, the voices of Rhodesia's blacks poured in with rising volume. "Listen," said one white Rhodesian, "the savages are singing." They were indeed. Under black umbrellas and dazzling docks (headdresses), the African masses chanted "We want our country," and sang "Zimbabwe shall be free." But the sheer inertia of the positions--the safety, however momentary, that is inherent in stalemate--slowly took effect.
In a sudden series of face-saving shifts, Smith rejected a Wilson proposal for a royal commission to draw up a new constitution for independence, countered smartly with a plan for a "joint" commission (three Rhodesians and two Britons) to decide only if the principles of the 1961 Constitution, with some adjustments, could be adapted to become the basis of Rhodesian independence. To Wilson, it was as unexpected as it was downright "ingenious." It meant that Wilson and Smith could continue talking without either side backing down on principle.
Still, Wilson has no illusions about ultimate agreement. He left Salisbury with the impression that there was only one chance in a hundred of the joint commission actually coming up with a constitutional formula. But the immediate threat of U.D.I, and all its ugly ramifications had--for the moment--been averted. It remained to be seen if Rhodesia's blacks would be as patient as Wilson was willing to be. As he boarded his R.A.F. Comet in the bright sunlight of Salisbury Airport Saturday morning, Wilson left behind a frozen silence. But frost, in the Rhodesian context, is better than fire.

Ironing the lawn in Salisbury

The ending of this is so true -that wonderful British soap -it cleans the blood very nicely!!!
Ironing the lawn in Salisbury, Rhodesia

From Simon Hoggart
guardian.co.uk,
Saturday February 9, 1980
Article history
Government House in Salisbury is decorated and furnished in a manner which makes Versailles seem, well, middle-class. Amid the silken splendour of the chairs and the carpets which are so thick you could lose a cat in them, there are life-size portraits of the last few British monarchs. The Governor has added a homely touch with framed snaps of family and friends - in his case people like the Queen Mother and Winston Churchill.
The servants are immaculately dressed in white, with fitments - sashes, cummerbunds and for some reason fezzes - in bright green. This greenery is trimmed with gold according to the servant's rank, so that the head waiter looks like a gift- wrapped present from Neiman- Marcus, with a gold tassel on top of his head. The Governor has laid in a plentiful supply of champagne and Havana cigars (the wife of a visiting American congress-man, thinking these were set out for the guests, tried to take one away as a present for Tip O'Neill, Speaker of the House of Representatives. Just as she took it, Lord Soames spotted her. "Put it back!" he roared.)
Obviously this magnificence is meant to impress somebody, to demonstrate the sheer power and the awesome prestige of colonial Britain (and, for the present month, Zimbabwe, or the British Dependency of Southern Rhodesia as it is officially known, is one of our very few colonies. The others include Belize, Tristan da Cunha, and one or two acres in the Caribbean). This wealth cannot be to impress the Africans, who, apart from the shimmering servants, barely get a look in. Joshua Nkomo is one who did, and got on very well with the Governor. This is not surprising. Nkomo also has a taste for the high life, and is the Lord Soames of Africa.
After a while, you realise exactly who the trappings are designed to impress: the Lost Race of Africa, the Tribe That Lost Its Head, the whites of Southern Rhodesia.
If you listen to the British officials who arrived in December on the great silver bird, you realise that they do see themselves as dealing with a backward and primitive people. They swap amusing stories about the childlike white folk they come across; a woman who thought Soames could cancel her parking ticket, another who complained because she did not have two votes in the election. One British official talks about the "Cheryl and Vomit" society, composed of women who wear their name on gold necklets, and young men on leave from military service who spend their weekends getting drunk in Salisbury and then throwing up in the street.
Even the British squaddies look with faint contempt on the Rhodesians (or "Rhodies" as they sometimes call them; military slang mushrooms overnight). One private explained to me his alleged success with the local women. "You see these Rhodies think they can snap their fingers and some bird'll come running. But us Brits give 'em a few cuddles and talk nice to them, and they've never had anything like that."
No wonder the white Rhodesians resent us. A woman who had, for that part of the world, very moderate views, asked what I thought of Soames. I said he had a reputation for arrogance. "But all you British are arrogant," she said, in genuine puzzlement, rather as if I had said he spoke English or had two legs. It was this wish to give the whites a whiff of the old colonial past which probably led to Soames's appointment. Another Foreign Office official explained that his deputy, Sir Anthony Duff, could have done the job standing on his head. "But he isn't Churchill's son-in-law.'
The corollary of this is that the British are highly impressed by the blacks - possibly in some cases too much so. Many of the Patriotic Front commanders are men of high intelligence and expertise, their education started in mission schools in Rhodesia and frequently finished off in Moscow. This has helped them to run a highly successful guerrilla war and - for the present anyway - follow through politically. But to hear some of the British talking, you'd imagine that the entire physics faculty of MIT had just walked out of the bush.
One British officer in close touch with PF leaders on Nkomo's side blamed the press. "I thought this lot were all golliwogs with machine guns, but they are very, very different." And indeed they are, to an extent which would astonish and perhaps appal some white Rhodesians.
A more bluntly phrased view came from a British private who was talking to a PF commander at one of the assembly points. He asked what he had done to pass the time in the bush, and the African said that he had read - Marx, Lenin, that kind of thing. "I prefer a good western myself," the squaddie said, adding when the PF man had gone: "Here, he's pretty clever, innee, for a nig-nog."
Rhodesian women, black and white, tend to be remarkably good looking. The Shona women have high cheekbones and fine features which make them exceedingly pretty, to European eyes at any rate. The whites have golden hair, lovely toast-coloured skin, and because of the weather, few clothes. There is something particularly disconcerting about hearing those famous racist views expressed in that shrill mounting whine, coming from someone whose rounded figure is straining out of a thin nylon dress.
One such accosted us in a restaurant. "I heard you were journalists, and I've come over to tell you that Ian Smith is the greatest politician in the western world. He's so honest and straight. If the blacks could vote for him, they all would. He's the only reason we've had 14 years of civilisation."
Weren't there some people who disagreed with her, who thought on the contrary that Smith had misled them into a worse predicament than ever before?
"They're all turncoats and bastards and fools. You don't understand what savages these black people are. You've never lived here. Answer this, how many blacks are there in the British Parliament? They are all murderers, they just want to kill us. You wouldn't believe the disgusting things they've done." Surely, though, the whites had mounted some pretty fierce reprisals? "Yes, but that was in self-defence, that was justified."
She turned out to be a teacher of English Literature, a fact which might give pause for thought to those who believe in the humanising effect of great works. Education was exempt from sanctions, and all O and A levels were set and marked in London. "Now they are being provocative and controversial just to spite us.
"Last year we had Persuasion and King Lear. Now they've given us Alan Paton, The Comedians, which is full of nasty blacks, and Othello. I've got a big black buck sitting at the front of my class and I've got to teach him about Desdemona's murder, thanks to you British." A Rhodesian magazine recently prepared its readers for what they might expect with an end to sanctions: wall-to-wall carpets, blenders and digital watches; in fact when the starship Rhodesia is beamed back into the planet Earth, they can expect something much more worrying - exposure to the ideas and the received wisdom of the western world over the past 14 years. They may learn, for instance, that it is perfectly possible to believe that black people deserve the vote without actually endorsing the invasion of Afghanistan.
Because they see the war as invented and run by Communists, they tend to believe that their blacks were happy and content in a white-dominated society. The briefest chat with an African reveals this to be untrue, but then most Rhodesian whites don't have conversations with Africans, except to give them orders.
However, it is easy to see how they have got hold of this idea. Rhodesian blacks are startlingly docile and even courtly. This gentility can be surprising. There is possibly nobody in Rhodesia - black or white - who has not lost somebody in the fighting, the blacks rather more than the whites. Irish people in Ulster tend to relish these deaths, to recount the horrors with something near satisfaction, to draw comfort from each hideous detail. Rhodesian blacks are the opposite, and speak in a deadpan and fatalistic way about the loss of friends and family.
I met General Debengwa, who is Nkomo's senior military leader in Rhodesia itself. Was he going back to his home town, Bulawayo? No, he said, there was no real point since he had no family there. His mother had lived there until a few years ago, but the Selous Scouts had discovered that she had fed a ZIPRA military column which was passing through. They had shot her immediately.
Debengwa described this incident without emotion, as if she had died from a heart attack - something sad but perhaps inevitable. I thought that, like Camus's outsider, he had found coldness his only defence against despair, or that being responsible for many deaths himself, had inured himself against the one which affected him. But later I found that nearly all blacks talk like this; they describe death as we discuss illness or a broken love affair, intolerable only if you let it prey upon your mind.
In a horrible way it matches the whites' unconcern with black mortality; among soldiers prestige can be measured by the number of dead "terrs" (or "floppies" - a description of how they fall when shot). "He and his brother have taken out 58 gooks between them," one troopie told me in admiration of a friend.
Curiously, it is hard not to be a little optimistic about the future for Zimbabwe (as nobody at all calls it yet, except in political speeches). The fear is not that there will be mass slaughter of the whites, followed by their flight to South Africa and the collapse of the economy, but that the need to retain white confidence may mean that the blacks are badly disappointed.
Certainly all the election manifestoes promise the earth (quite literally the earth - all imply that the land will return to the blacks without saying how, when or to whom). They promise new housing, better homes, real social security, secondary schooling for everybody. Yet even if all whites were expelled and their property divided among the blacks (whites are less than 3 per cent of the population) this wealth would be slow in coming.
Meanwhile the whites continue to live in a style unimaginable here, but all too familiar to the shop assistants, garage hands and dissatisfied bourgeoisie who have made Rhodesia their home. Around the average Salisbury bungalow are three or four acres of rich land, thick with shrubbery, flower beds, rolling lawns, arboretums: so much greenery you feel you need a platoon of Gurkhas to hack your way through to the front door. A team of servants irons the grass each morning as the sun rises over the sparkling pool. Later vast dragonflies zoom over the blue water like helicopter gunships as the host and his guests enjoy perhaps a "wine race" - swimming a length backwards while drinking a glass of wine (Rhodesian wine probably, which is awful. It is the only alcoholic drink to give you bilharzia) - or just pushing each other into the water. Then maybe a few glasses of "hooligan juice", a large slug of brandy mixed to a slush with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
This is what they call civilisation, and it is easy for us to mock: after all, they work hard and they have fought hard. It is impossible not to admire the way they have coped with sanctions, the way they have manufactured almost everything from tomato ketchup to armoured cars. Though the cause was perhaps not worth fighting - indeed did not need to be fought - we need not grudge them their mindless pleasures, pleasures we would hugely enjoy if we could. I recall one faintly pathetic note being struck 150 miles or so north of Salisbury. A young man, just out of the army, asked if there was any chance that the British would stay behind to help the white Rhodesians fight if the settlement went horribly wrong.
I said (fairly) that there was no chance at all, and added - unfairly - that they could expect to see Lord Soames mount the aircraft steps on March 1, write the name of the new prime minister on a scratch pad, throw it on to the tarmac, slam the door and take off for England with a screech of engines. "Ah, what style" said the young man. "When the British wash their hands, they use only the finest soap."

LORD RICHARD VALENTINE-GASCOYNE CECIL

Richard Cecil was a war correspondent who was one of the only war correspondents to be allowed to go with Rhodesian troops on Fireforce actions and record them. He used his family connections and his friendship with PK Van Der Byl to get permission to operate in the field as an independant journalist. He provided material for various publications including TIME and The Times, he also contributed reports to the UK ITN television network. Nick Downie later did a documentary called Frontline Rhodesia on Thames network in the UK. Quote from Nick on this:- Until Thames TV bought the UK broadcast rights, it was an entirely self-financed operation. In the event, neither I nor anyone else made money out of it - I simply covered my and Richard’s expenses for what turned out to be ten months’ work (he was killed within a month of the project starting).

While operating on fireforce with us (from Mtoko) Richard would be armed with an FN rifle at the insistence of the RAR, and his job was to watch Nick Downey's back, encumbered as he was was with a 16mm film camera to his eye, headphones over my ears, and a tape recorder, plus a pack containing spare batteries, camera mags and film, etc. Bear in mind that we were filming contacts shoulder to shoulder with the RAR combatants, and only a few metres from the terrorists.
On fireforce operations with 2 RAR Richard actually fired on terrorists with his weapon. Richard was part of a group of 20 journalists who operated in Rhodesia who were known as the Bang Gang because they went about thier trade armed. (This info from an article I read and Nick Downie disputes this saying he never did fire his weapon at anyone -so it appears that the article in Time Magazine was incorrect in it's report )

Richard was killed in a Fireforce action by a terrorist who shot he was shot first in the thigh, and then a second bullet traversed his chest from left to right from a distance of 5 meters in the Mtoko area while filming a contact in which troops from Major Andre Dennison's 2 RAR were in action.

His death was reported by the Rhodesian Ministry of Defence as being "Killed in Action" and his body returned to England for burial where his funeral service was held at the Parish Church of St Mary and St Bartholomew on the 27 April. A memorial service was also held for Richard Cecil at the Guards Chapel in Wellington Barracks which was attended by Lord Mountbatten.

Nick Downie his associate continued with his work in Rhodesia.

THE BANG GANG
EXTRACTED FROM AN ARTICLE BY TIME MAGAZINE
Winston Churchill packed a pistol when he covered the Boer War for London's Morning Post, and it was hardly a farewell to arms when Gun Fancier Ernest Hemingway went off to report the Spanish Civil War for the North American Newspaper Alliance. But to most front-line journalists nowadays, carrying a weapon while on assignment is a grievous offense against professional ethics. It also means forfeiture of a journalist's status under international law as a neutral noncombatant, and it encourages troops to consider all journalists as fair targets.
In the guerrilla war now raging in Rhodesia, however, that convention has been shattered. Many of the 40 or so foreign correspondents who regularly cover the country carry weapons on the job at least some of the time. The journalists are so often armed that visiting colleagues have disdainfully nicknamed them the "Bang Gang."
Rhodesia's journalistic arms race first came to international attention last year after Freelancer J. Ross Baughman won a Pulitzer Prize for his Associated Press photograph of a suspected Rhodesian guerrilla; it turned out that the photo had earlier been rejected for an Overseas Press Club a Ward, in part because the judges learned that Baughman was armed and wearing a Rhodesian cavalry uniform. Then Richard Valentine Cecil, a British television correspondent and TIME stringer, was killed last April by guerrillas, reportedly while carrying a rifle and accompanying an army detachment. A check by TIME turned up an arsenal of reportorial aids that includes revolvers, small-caliber automatic pistols, automatic rifles and Rhodesian-made submachine guns.(Disputed by Nick Downie who was with the RAR Fireforce on even more callouts than Richard Cecil)
Journalists who have covered other mid-century conflicts might argue that a side arm is not much protection in a rocket attack. But reporters in Rhodesia counter that their war is different: there are no battle lines, no secure areas and every white man is a guerrilla target. "There is no such thing as a neutral here," says one freelancer. "If you've got a white face, you are the enemy. This is a race war."
Most Rhodesian-based correspondents have either been forbidden by their editors to carry guns, or would be if the home office found out they were doing so. Some reporters prefer to remain unarmed. "If you're captured, having a gun is a death warrant," says the Los Angeles Times's Jack Foisie. But the armed correspondents maintain that such ethical hairsplitting is irrelevant to their workaday peril. Says one: "Anyone who can sit in an editorial chair and demand that reporters ride around the Rhodesian countryside unarmed should come here and try it for himself." —

I was involved in this contact and my side of the story is recorded in Choppertech.

MABALAHUTA BLUES CAMP

This photograph is taken of our Air Force camp at Mabalahuta airstrip in 1978 while operating with the SAS. The SAS camp was completely hidden from view and was fortified!

SAS into The Russian Front

The photographs depicted here were snapped by me using an instamatic camera while deploying SAS troops into "The Russian Front" near Mapai in Mocambique in 1978. I was flying with Roger Thomas and the other helicopter seen in the photographs was crewed by Mike Lange-Smith with Pete Caborn as his technician/gunner. These missions were exteremely dangerous as the area was crawling with FRELIMO and ZANLA. On many occasions the call-sign would be mortared by the enemy just after we had deployed them. The gooks would drop thier mortars into the "Msimbiti" or ironwood thickets (which can be seen in the photographs) which could have potentially devastating effect on the call-sign as the wood was very hard and the shrapnel from the splinters was similar to steel.

The LZs in this area were also very limited and we carried Pegasus hot extraction kits in case of emergencies.

To those aviation buffs the G Car is fitted with a Mark 2 Anti Strela shroud over the engine.

The Pegasus Hot extraction kit can be seen fitted under the belly of the G Car in the first picture. The SAS gunner in view is armed with an RPD machine gun.

CHRISTMAS 1977

A Copy of a Christmas card I sent to my parents from "the bush" in 1977

CIVILLIAN WORLD CHOPPERTECH

Here are some pictures of me post Rhodesian Air Force continuing working as a Choppertech

The Paradak in Fireforce operations

This is a sequence of events in a typical Fireforce call out when there was a requirement for the Para dak to be used. The Paras would be normally dropped from a height of 300 feet and it was not unusual for the same Paras to be uplifted from one contact to be kitted out and flown into another during the same day. An extra two or three Paras would be dropped into the contact area to recover parachutes used in the drops and it was not unusual for them to run into terrorists snivelling away from the contact area and have thier own contact.

While downloading the pictures I can still recall the tension and hole in my stomach feeling together with the rush of adrenalin when the call-out hooter went off and I saw the Paras kitting up as I ran over to my K Car Gunship.................................