Soldiering On…

March 26, 2022 / stidyatkusane / 21 Comments

For most of my life, I have lived with uncertainty although I have not always been consciously aware of it.

Indeed, as a child, growing up in a remote part of Rhodesia’s the Eastern Highlands my world seemed as secure as the mountains that surrounded our farm. With a sweat-stained hat on my head, veld skoens on my feet and wearing the regulation khaki shirts and shorts that had got too worn from continual use to take back to school, I would set out in the early morning, a gun cradled in the crook of my arm. In front of me, the farm dogs would range freely back and forth, panting happily. They were not trained to hunt but were still good at flushing out the birds, sending them clattering into the skies, a trail of feathers and bitching noise drifting behind them.

Often I forgot that I had come to shoot, striding cheerfully across the bush through waist-high grass and leaping over rocks and feeling my life ahead of me while all the worlds ‘birds seemed to be calling. Sometimes I would disturb a duiker or startle a small herd of kudu or see a klipspringer peering down at me from some tall pillar of rock but I felt too exulted by their presence to want to put an end to their lives.

I always found the bush a good place to go to when I was upset or needed to sort out my feelings about the world.

Our local radio station and the occasional newspaper we bought did, of course, give us some inkling of the ferment and tensions created by new ideas and awakened hopes but, at that stage, these “troubles” seemed to be confined mainly to the cities and urban areas. Walking on my own across the farm I never felt a moment’s uneasiness.

The fact that I would shortly be witness to the last days of White Rhodesia did not occur to me. Nor did I realise how beleaguered the farming community would soon become, with farmhouses turned into mini-fortresses, equipped with Agric-alerts and surrounded by security fences, while their owners rode around heavily armed over dirt roads that frequently had land-mines buried in them.

The reality of what lay in store would, however, hit home when I received my call-up papers.

My drafting into the Rhodesian Territorial Army on the 3^rd January 1972, came at an auspicious moment in the country’s history.

A fortnight earlier, ZANLA forces had launched what would become known as the second chimurenga war (the first being the 1896 Shona uprising against white colonial rule) with an attack on Marc de Borchgrave’s d’Altena farm in the Centenary district during the course of which his nine-year-old daughter, Jane, received a slight wound in the foot.

Although there had been several military incursions in the 1960s from neighbouring Zambia these had been easily dealt with by the Rhodesian Security Forces leading most whites to believe that the country’s small defence force could defeat any conventional invasion or guerilla infiltration.

While hardly a resounding military success in itself, the attack on de Borchgrave’s farm signalled a new phase in the war of liberation, one that saw both a change in direction and a gradual intensification of the conflict. The liberation army had obviously learnt from their previous mistakes. Avoiding direct confrontation with the enemy they now employed classic hit-and-run tactics, attacking white farms, mining dirt roads and going all out to undermine the government’s authority and hold over the tribes’ people.

The growing fears about the country’s security led, in turn, to an increasing militarization of civilian life.

It was my bad luck, too, to be called up for the army (Intake 129) just as the government decided to increase the initial period of service from nine months to one year in response to the growing threat. For me, that extra three months was destined to seem like an eternity.

*Waking up in the bush. National Service 1973*.

This was only the beginning. Between 1974 and 1975, the years after I completed my National Service, worked for the District Commissioner’s Office in Wedza and then went to England for a year’s holiday, attacks on whites other than farmers still remained relatively rare. This all changed, however, with the overthrow of the government of Portugal by a junta of disillusioned officers which led, in turn, to a rapid transfer of power in Mozambique, where independence was recognised in 1975. This had the immediate effect of opening up the entire Eastern border of Rhodesia to guerilla infiltration.

Most of this area was mountainous and wild making it extremely difficult to monitor and patrol. As someone who had grown up in the area, I knew only too well, just how difficult it would be to police or stop any groups of heavily-armed soldiers from slipping undetected into the country. Because of its extreme isolation and close proximity to the border, my family made the decision to get my mother off our cattle ranch in Inyanga North, which she was then running all on her own. Although my mother was understandably reluctant to leave, it turned out to be a wise precaution because our only two neighbours were subsequently killed.

*Mountainous terrain. Nyanga, Eastern Highlands*.

Over the following months and years, thousands of insurgents would come pouring over the border in an escalating conflict that saw minds and bodies shattered, and many left dead. I was to discover just how much the situation had changed when I returned home from an extended holiday to England and found myself back in uniform within days of stepping off the plane.

For the purposes of this particular call-up, we were deployed to the Sipolilo (now Guruve) district, a fairly remote farming area that stretched up to the edge of the Zambezi escarpment and which was known to have been heavily infiltrated by ZANLA guerrillas. Arriving at our base camp – an old farmhouse that had been recently abandoned by its occupants after they had been subjected to several attacks – our major wasted little time in sending us into action. At 10 o’clock that night we clambered aboard the waiting convoy of trucks and headed off, under the cover of darkness, into the white commercial farmland. To keep the element of surprise on our side we were dropped off at another deserted farm homestead and then proceeded to march, in single file and as silently as we could, along an old footpath that led us deep into the adjacent Tribal Trust Land.

The track wound up through great blocks of granite fringed with trees and across the dusty stubble of ancient mielie fields. As I walked I tried to empty my mind of everything except what I could see and hear around me. I had no desire to be caught with my defences down. Despite growing fatigue, I was aware of the adrenaline coursing through my body.

Every now and again a breeze would spring up and I would smell the smoke drifting across the veld from countless wood fires. There was something both eerie and beautiful about the night. The moon was vanishing behind the distant hills but everywhere the dogs were barking. High up on a ridge ahead of us we could make out the dim shapes of a group of conical-shaped huts. As we got closer the phantom dogs, picking up our scent, grew more hysterical, breaking into a series of short, angry yelps.

Drawing alongside the hut line, a dark figure suddenly emerged from the central brick building, paused, looked carefully about and then stepped quietly and purposefully towards where we had all ground to a stop. To our collective astonishment, he then proceeded to call out the archaic challenge: “Halt! Who goes there?”

In a different, more chivalrous, age this might have been an appropriate response. In this war, it was signing your own death warrant. Not needing any further prompting we all dived for cover. There was a moment’s silence and then all hell broke loose as the fire of thirty rifles was bought to bear on the sentry who had called our bluff.

As the mass of lead buzzed towards them, a group of dimly lit figures came spilling out of the huts and darted for cover from whence they began to return fire at us. Lying low on the ground I fired off several volleys of my own even though I had nothing clear to aim at.

And then there was silence once more. I gripped my rifle and lifted my head carefully above the grassy verge, on the side of the path, behind which I had tried to conceal myself. I could see no sign of movement. At the platoon commander’s say so we rose and moved forward cautiously, in extended line, through the settlement but it soon became obvious that the enemy had fled. We decided to clear out of the area as quickly as we could and find a good defensive position in case they returned with retribution on their mind.

Floundering around in the impenetrable darkness our stick somehow managed to get detached from the remainder of the group. Realising it would be dangerous to keep moving blindly around we opted to stay put and hide as best we could in the surrounding bush.

Lying half concealed in a grove of trees, my ears tuned to any sounds that might indicate what was out there waiting for us, the cold reality of my situation began to sink in. It was a strange sensation – as if time had suddenly stopped and the past had become as irrelevant as the future. I found it hard to believe that only a week before I had been sitting in the dim-lit, cosy Red Barn pub near South Godstone sipping pints of English bitter, reflecting on how good life was while listening to rock music.

Hoping to provoke a reaction, the guerillas fired off a few mortars in our general direction. After what seemed like an eternity – actually only a few seconds – I heard the flat blap! blap! of their explosions as they landed harmlessly, some distance from where I lay huddled in a ball. Shortly afterwards a machine began to traverse but again it seemed they had no real idea where we were. Not wanting to give away our position, for fear of attracting a more accurate barrage, we refrained from returning fire.

This was to be but the first of several contacts we had over the next six weeks of intense patrolling through this remote, chequerboard landscape of hills and fields and villages. What I saw was enough to convince me that the war had become a whole different ball game from what I had previously experienced and that the insurgents had established a big foothold in the country. I also realised that this was but a warm-up for what lay ahead as we desperately tried to hold the front line. This war was not going to be over any time soon and I knew many similar call-ups and a lot of intense fighting lay ahead…

And so it proved to be.

On the 21^st December 1979, the seventh anniversary of the attack on Altena Farm, the end finally came into sight with the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement by all parties. In terms of the agreed-to cease-fire, the Rhodesia security forces were to be confined to their bases while the Patriotic Front was supposed to bring all their forces into the proposed sixteen Assembly Points which would be administered by the British Monitoring Force.

Edgy and distrustful, the guerilla forces, initially at least, showed little inclination to enter their designated AP’s fearing, no doubt, that if they did they would be providing a perfect target for the Rhodesian Air force. For a while it looked like the whole operation might be doomed to failure. Despite the supposed ceasefire attacks on civilian targets also continued.

It was also becoming increasingly obvious that many of those entering the APs were not genuine guerrillas but ‘mujibhas’ (collaborators) and that their more experienced troops had been instructed to remain at large in the countryside

At this crucial point, the British Monitoring Force who had been tasked with ensuring an orderly and peaceful transfer of power suddenly got cold feet and decided to pull their troops out of the Assembly Points. As members of the Rhodesian Territorial Army, we were ordered to step into the breach. In a sense, we were being called upon to supervise our own defeat.

And so, in a final ironic twist, I found myself back at Mary Mount Mission (Assembly Point Charlie) in the extreme North-East corner of Rhodesia, the very place where I had had my first real encounter with the enemy back in 1973– although we had barely got there when we were given orders to redeploy to Assembly Point Alpha at Hoya in the Zambezi Valley.

Close to the Mozambique border, it was an area of intense heat and thick bush. The ZANLA forces already at the Assembly Point had taken good advantage of this, spreading themselves out, no doubt with an eye for both attack and defence, over a wide area. A few of their commanders did set up camp near us but the rest of their troops remained hidden well out of sight. Knowing they were out there somewhere, probably very suspicious and trigger-happy and with their weapons pointed towards us, was not a comforting feeling. To say we were both outnumbered and outgunned would be an understatement – there were over 1 600 ZANLA guerillas and only 26 of us, living under tents supplied by the US Army.

Although on the surface, we were able to establish a sort of peace between us there was no escaping a deeper atmosphere of distrust and hostility. This was hardly surprising considering how long we had fought as bitter enemies. This would lead to several scary incidents – including one when I had an AK47 barrel shoved up against my head by a drug and alcohol-crazed guerilla who threatened to blow my brains out as another soldier and I were escorting him and a group of his unruly comrades down the infamous Alpha Trail. Fortunately, he toppled over backwards and passed out before he could carry out his threat

Meeting of opposing armies, Assembly Point Alpha

I can’t say I was sorry when it all came to an end with Robert Mugabe’s victory in the election or that, in spite of winning so many little battles, I had wound up on the losing side. Most soldiers like clarity and in the end it had become increasingly difficult to work out just what we were fighting for or hoping to achieve. I had long ago realised that we just did not have the resources or manpower to contain the conflict. Certainly, the situation on the ground wasn’t improving, in fact, it was getting worse. Nor was it possible for me to convince myself that we held the moral high ground.

I was just glad it was all over and that I had got out of it alive and in one piece. I did not have a coherent plan of what I was going to do with my future. Mostly this was because I had been so deep in the war I had closed my eyes to everything else.

All I knew was that, in the interim, I wanted to go somewhere quiet, a place where the eyes of the world might overlook me. More than anything I wanted a little peace. Bowmont – the small farm near Kadoma where my parents had recently retired to – seemed the ideal fit. For the next four years, I holed up there although my stay would be steeped in sadness because my father would finally succumb to the form of bone cancer that had ravaged his body.

Much as I loved Bowmont I came to realise it was time to close this chapter of my life. And so I joined the general exodus to South Africa, knowing full well that country was also in political turmoil and that I faced an equally uncertain future down there (if I had any sense I would have left the continent but Africa has this way of gnawing itself into your soul). Driving. on my own, down that familiar road through an empty landscape where only a few years before I would have run the risk of being ambushed I found my mind drifting back to the war.

From the very outset, I had had my doubts as to the justness of our cause. Although I could never be sure whether my decision to ignore these niggling feelings was just another form of moral cowardice I had done what was expected of me.

I had stayed on through basic training, I had sweated it out in the “sharp-end”, I had resisted the temptation to stay put in England when I went over on holiday, I had remained (sort of) cool under fire. I had lost a few friends and found a few more. I had discovered how much I could take and still carry on.

I had both endured and survived.

Bush Happy Amongst the Baobabs

February 5, 2022 / stidyatkusane / 16 Comments

‘No soldier ever really survives a war’.

Audie Murphy

That morning, I was woken by the alarm of bird calls; the sky was turquoise, becoming lighter close to the pencil-line horizon. I levered myself upright and began putting on my boots. Motionless, the land lay stretched out below me.

Charged with the army’s acrid coffee, I was sitting up against a large boulder enjoying the cool, morning air when the quiet was punctured by the dry snapping of rifle fire on the valley floor below. It didn’t take me long to grasp what had happened. One of our patrols had got caught up in what sounded like a very serious firefight.

Almost immediately our radio crackled into life. ZANLA forces had been encountered in large numbers. Our orders were to sweep down from our OP (Observation Point) in the foothills of the Mavuradonha Mountains and attempt to engage them from the rear (they had fled by the time we got there but they came back later and found us).

As I grabbed my rifle and webbing and slung on my backpack I found myself thinking, once again, about the weird unreality of it all. How in the hell had I, a pacifist by nature, managed to get myself mixed up in this vicious bush war? Landed in this strange situation where the unfamiliar had suddenly become familiar?

It was not a war of my choosing, nor one I particularly wanted to be part of. Even today I still cannot adequately explain why I stuck it out until the bitter end of the conflict and carried on fighting long after many of those who had believed far more passionately in the cause than I had decided to call it quits – “gapped it” to use the slang of the day – and left the country. It is also no use pretending I was anything else but an extremely reluctant soldier or that I showed any real aptitude or talent for military life. Indeed, for the most part, I never felt I was anything more than a resentful, inadequate, half-trained civilian.

Looking back across the years I sometimes have difficulty recognising that man in the grubby camouflaged kit as myself; there is an abiding strangeness about it all. It is as if I am looking into a broken mirror and all those experiences happened to someone who looked like me but was in fact an impostor. For me, the past is, indeed, another country.

*An abiding strangeness. At Marymount Mission, in the extreme North-East of the* *country, near where the Mazowe River crosses into Mozambique*. *This was on my last call-up*.

And yet, now that I reflect back on it, I realise the army was not all bad. It had some value. Firstly, it tested me in ways I would never have otherwise known. I learnt about physical and mental hardship, about dealing with extremes and staring into the abyss. I discovered what it was like being stripped down to my most basic self. At various stages, I was the hottest, coldest, most tired, thirstiest, hungriest, terrified, angry and miserable (but not the happiest) I have ever been in my life.

The fact that I survived these in extremis tribulations and emerged from it frayed, disenchanted and proud afterwards was, I suppose, an achievement of sorts.

Secondly, the army took me into areas I would have not otherwise seen and in so doing heightened my appreciation and love of the African landscape. In some perverse way, all the discomfort, fatigue and fear I experienced during those war days became a form of mini catharsis; it made me feel more part of the bush. We even had a term for it, one that suggested a temporarily disarranged self – one became “bush happy”.

The landscape affected me in other ways. Not sure whether my role was that of the hunter or the hunted I found my senses becoming sharpened to the sounds and smells of the bush. Far from the comforting normality of civilian life, I became increasingly feral in my habits, always watching and listening for anything that might threaten my chances of getting out alive.

For much of my initial national service – and in the subsequent seven years of military call-ups – the regiment I was with operated in the extreme North-East of the country, an area where civil administration, outside a few sandbagged strong points, had all but broken down. Not too far from the border with Mozambique, it was among the harshest and most rugged landscapes in all of the then Rhodesia and, along the escarpment itself, virtually uninhabited.

*Assembly Point Alpha, Hoya, near Mozambique border, 1980. Mavuradonha is in the background*. It was here my war came to an end…

What always struck me most about this landscape – apart from the heat and general sense of discomfort – was the feeling of immensity it evoked. Behind us, the Mavuradonha Mountains rose in a steep pitch from the Zambezi valley floor while ahead of us a vast plain stretched out almost without undulation. And beyond that lay more of the same, hundreds and hundreds of kilometres of raw, unspoilt, and untrammelled country leading up through Mozambique and then into the rest of Africa.

*Mavuradonha, near Mzaribani. I took this pic on a return trip several years after the war ended.*

The more time I spent in it the more I began to see the beauty in the timelessness and silence and hugeness of the land. The sheer vastness of it seemed to be immeasurably increased by the dryness. Then there was the silence, broken only by the occasional bird song or jackal howl at night or a sudden gust of wind blowing in waves of warm air. It is a kind of silence you just don’t get in the normal, urban world with its bustle and false pleasures.

This, in turn, brought with it a vague feeling of loneliness, a sense of being cast off from familiar moorings, an awareness that there was no one else within easy reach. Strangely enough, this only added to its appeal.

Operating in this sort of country was never easy. In summer the heat could be stupefying. Weighed down by my heavy pack and ammo I could feel the sweat trickling down my back and soaking my shirt. It chafed between my thighs.

*On patrol.* *The bicycle we found abandoned in the middle of nowhere*…

Thirst could plague us like a nagging toothache. We had to develop the will to endure it. Because we only carried a couple of bottles each, I was forced to restrict it to little sips. On several occasions, I suffered from severe leg cramps. Most awful of all was the time I collapsed from heat exhaustion and complete dehydration. My legs refused to function, my tongue became dry and swollen, like an old piece of leather while my throat felt like it was coated with fur.

If it wasn’t for a spotter plane that picked up our distress call and later returned to drop water, I often wonder if I might ever have got out…

The heat was not the only thing we had to contend with. The Shona word Mavuradonha roughly translates as Land of Falling Water and as the season progressed you could understand how it got its name. After months of nothing but sun and dust, the weather would begin to change. It would grow more unsettled and windy, moving smells around. Tall, purple-bottomed clouds would build-up to the north.

Once the rains broke we were put through the whole gamut: heavy rains, moist, intermittent rains, a half-hour sprinkle, a thundershower, drizzle. Our clothes and equipment became cold, damp, smelly. At night we had to endure all the discomforts as it poured down on us. Now and again, especially in the early stages of the storm, the darkness would be torn away for a second by a dazzling flash of lightning which would bathe the surrounding bush in a strange, otherworldly light. Then the thunder would roll, like the sound of cannon fire, and we would lie there dazed and stupefied and shivering in our sopping wet sleeping bags while the rain came pelting down around us.

Usually, the storm would pass as quickly as it came, the wind would die down and we would do our best to get back to sleep. In the morning the sun would shine through the wet leaves to where we lay sodden and miserable. Once we had dried out our gear and re-oiled our rifles we would continue on our patrol.

We couldn’t drop our guard. Such is the nature of guerilla warfare that we never really knew who we could trust – if, indeed, we could trust anyone – amongst the local civilian population. In most villages we visited the response was usually muted – neither friendly nor unfriendly. It was difficult to know, too, who the locals were more scared of offending – us or the other side. Many, accused of being “sell-outs”, had been arbitrarily killed by the guerillas as a warning of what would happen to those who chose to betray them. Others had been caught in cross-fire between the opposing forces and died that way.

While the more cautious hedged their bets, I am sure many did want to see a more representative government, one not made up solely of whites. For all we knew they could be in direct contact with the ZANLA forces, maybe even feeding them and passing on information about our movements.

In this sense, the war had already begun to highlight something of considerable political significance – it provided the ultimate test of the black “povos” ( English translation: the masses, the common people) real feelings. Although it helped, of course, to be armed we could never quite escape this sense of hidden danger or that, outside of our fellow soldiers, there was no one we could rely on.

*Mavuradonha, view from the infamous Alpha Trail*, *scene of many ambushes and – before it was tarred – landmines*.

For the most part, we operated in five-man ‘sticks’ sometimes linking up with another stick at night for added security. Patrolling in such small groups through a potentially hostile country, where the loyalty of the locals could not be relied on, I did my best to keep my eyes open, my mind alert to my surroundings or any movement in my peripheral vision. Alone like that, it was easy to feel eyes watching us, indeed the suspicions of being followed and watched became a constant companion. The uncertainty weighed on our minds.

Towards evening we would usually stop for one last brew-up before moving into our final position for the night. It was the time of day I liked most. There is something about the dissipating violet light as the sun sinks which makes everything seem, holy, natural and familiar. It is a time when earth, rock and sky seem to marry, a time when surrounded by the great wall of the mountain the landscape seemed to acquire an uplifting, transcendental quality. I could feel its beauty penetrating my soul. It made me feel grateful for being alive, grateful for having survived another day, grateful that I would shortly be able to sleep.

Far from the big city lights or man-made pollution, the night swarmed with stars while the sky above us seemed bigger than any I had ever seen before. Sitting in the middle of nowhere, staring into the enormity of space and feeling, in the most animal sense, my infinite littleness it was often hard to make sense of all. Perhaps that was the point of it. To make us feel very small, to remind us that we are just a speck and that our time on earth is short and fleeting.

Of what importance was I, caught up in this forgotten, war, in the grand scheme of things? Like many a soldier before me, I was forced to acknowledge the helplessness and insignificance of my lot – while at the same time cursing the old folk who had got us into this jam.

Not that these moments of philosophical introspection lasted long. Where, the night before, the world had seemed ethereal, dream-like, in the morning light I was only too aware of its hard contours, its physicality and my sense of discomfort.

One experience, in particular, still haunts my memory. It was our first major cross-border excursion into Mozambique, an exhausting march not made easier by the fact I was suffering from severe diarrhoea during the high summer heat and only had a limited amount of water to drink. There was something strange and spellbinding about crossing into an enemy country. It was like we had been passed through more than just a physical boundary. We had entered another dimension, reached the very edge of the known world. Civilisation, as I knew it, seemed a very long way away.

The further we penetrated, the more cracked, bleached, and wild the country became. The heat left me breathless. After days of tramping through the dry, Mopani-dominated scenery the vegetation suddenly began to green up and thicken and in the distance, we could make out the unmistakable sound of flowing water. We had reached the Zambezi.

The broadening river was full of cigar-shaped islands covered with reeds. Tall vegetable ivory palm trees, massive Ana trees and Natal Mahogany’s dotted the far shore under which grew a mass of riotous vegetation. Fed by several additional large tributaries the river had grown even wider and more powerful and imposing than the one I was familiar with, stretching out before us like a rumpled sheet of blue vinyl and measuring a good kilometre or two from side to side.

The emptiness of the country we had passed through was reflected in the emptiness of the river and its banks. There were no signs of human activity: no men polling along in dugouts, no fishermen, no women washing, no children playing on the water’s edge and no domestic animals. Indeed, the scene before us had probably changed little since David Livingstone and his mutinous crew came steaming up the river in the Lady Nyassa all those years ago.

The landscape itself – aside from the river – was similarly devoid of feature. No cliffs nor distant mountains were framing the river valley. There were few roads or paths to follow and the odd villages we passed through had long since been deserted. It all seemed strangely peaceful. For all intents and purposes, it appeared to be uninhabited although we knew were not alone. Somewhere out there was not only ZANLA but the Mozambique resistance movement, Frelimo, as well.

That thought kept us on our toes.

Reluctant to leave the cooling shade of the river we lingered as long as we could before turning around and heading back to our extraction point where we were due to be picked up and choppered back to our military base in Musengezi, just across the Rhodesian border. We could see no sign of life from the air either as we flew over the baked, engulfing landscape; just trees and more trees stretching from horizon line to horizon line.

*Helicopter pick-up in typical dry season Zambezi Valley bush*.

So undifferentiated was the landscape that if not for the occasional baobab, I would have lost all sense of perspective. Looking like prehistoric animals with enormous bodies and a multitude of limbs spreading out laterally, as if they wanted to pluck us from the sky, they towered above the surrounding trees.

As we skimmed over their outstretched branches, I remember thinking to myself that winning a war in this sort of country would be virtually impossible. All the enemy had to do was stage hit and run attacks and then allow themselves to be swallowed up by the empty space where no one was likely to notice them because there were so few people to notice anything and those that there were would be unlikely to be in any hurry to trek to the nearest Security Force outpost to report what they had seen.

Time, the Great Revealer, would prove me correct on this point…