 The whole raid was led by the SAS and it just became like a bloodbath in trying to get these guys out the huts because in the huts as well, we're all the civilians. All our parrots listening will be getting envious. We got a fairly high kill rate that day. Chris Howey brother. I'm well, I'm well. Nice to see you. Yeah, and you too. Which which part of the world are you in at the moment? I'm in Scotland. Oh, OK, so a bit closer to home or my home, I should say. As I was saying to you earlier, I worked in Mozambique for six months at a street children's school. I should say post war Mozambique because it was the place was pretty badly messed up and the infrastructure was bar buildings. And the water when it did run, if you didn't have to get it from a well, that is. So it was it was pretty few and far between. And the my abiding memory was there were no toilets anywhere because when the Portuguese had pulled out, they filled the sewers with concrete. If anyone's wondering why it was because they were. Gutted to leave their beautiful colony of Mozambique, and it really was like you know, a paradise away away from home, you know, putting putting the malaria to one side. But when I did that, Chris, I did a brief course on Africa's colonial history. And you'll have to forgive me if I get stuff wrong. I do have a genuine interest. But I understood that. So it was Ian Smith, wasn't it? Was the prime minister of of Rhodesia. And he declared independence from from Britain. And I remember him in a speech saying. That he didn't have anything against. Black Africans, he just reckoned if they came into rural Rhodesia, it would all go to to a mess. And then, of course, we got we got Mugabe, which kind of. Proved his point. Am I sort of in the right ballpark here? Yeah, yes and no. Smith, yeah, I mean, if the Blacks had come into power in 65, they were not prepared for it. And Harold Wilson, the British Prime Minister, in his negotiations with Smith in 66, had offered Rhodesia as the colonial part, offered Rhodesia 15 years, a transition period of 15 years to get blacks into government and onto a franchise of basically one man, one vote. So it would have been a staggered scenario. Smith declined, turned it down. And so, hence, stalemate and the nationalists, Mugabe and Encomo, with the two primary ones, were basically opted for the for an armed struggle, as they called it. Yeah, yeah. So they set up the excuse me, guerrilla bases in Mozambique, sorry, in in Zambia initially, and then laterally in Mozambique as the Portuguese were starting to pull out of Mozambique. What was it like for you, Chris, growing up in Africa? I would think that would be quite quite the boys life, quite exciting. You know, probably chasing a few snakes around and stuff like this. Yeah, it was it was idyllic in many respects. Growing up a white in a colonial country. Yeah, it was absolutely delightful. I mean, we really had a fine upbringing in the bush the whole time, that kind of stuff. It obviously didn't last. Yeah. And what was the sort of connection to to, let's say, the UK or England? Were you was the culture very similar? Yeah, very similar. Yeah, I mean, we regarded the the Queen as our Queen. We were British, basically, with a with a lot of South African influence. But yeah, we were all in terms of purpose British. I mean, our army, for what it's worth, was totally based on the British system. Training was British. Yeah. And at what point did you decide you wanted to join the army? Conscription was compulsory for all white males and Indians and what they call colored what what we called colored eye people of mixed race. It wasn't compulsory for blacks simply because there was not the infrastructure to handle any large number of recruits. So just before I turned 18 in 1975, November 75, I received my call up papers in the in the sort of classic little manila brand envelope telling me to report to Cranbourne barracks in in Salisbury or Harare, as it is now on the 6th of January, I think, 76. So I'd been forced to to to being conscripted, basically, kind of a year into my conscription. It was initially it was initially a one year national service period, which was then very soon increased to 18 months, very soon increased to two years. When they increased it to 18 months, I decided to sign on for a three year contract, a regular contract, which took me through to early 79. And how does this time coincide with the sort of what do we call them the rebels that they were they Soviet rebels? Um, yeah, I mean, it was it was obviously sort of during the height of the Cold War. There were two revolutionary parties, as I call them. There was Zarpu, which was Zimbabwe and African Peoples Union, which was Josh and Koma, essentially based in Zambia, which were all Soviet supplied Russian instructors, Cuban instructors as well, all Soviet armament. Then you had Robert Magaabi and his Zanu or Zanla, the military wing based in, ultimately, Mozambique. They split, there was a fair amount of strife between Zanu and Zarpu, they didn't get on. Zarpu was essentially a materbili tribal base, whereas Zanu or Zanla, the military and Magaabi's locked were essentially Mishona based. They were the largest tribe in in Rhodesia. They were mainly read Chinese supported and they had Chinese military instructors. Also Cuban, I mean, they took their their supply from anywhere. I mean, they had a lot of East German uniforms, obviously all communist weaponry. So, yeah, they were they came across as kind of communist, but they weren't, they were more nationalists, you know, and they called each other Comrade and that kind of stuff. But they were essentially nationalist based, yeah. Gosh, so, so there's Ian Smith, he's declared independence. And now he's up against all these, let's just call them the Red Forces, people such as Mugabe fighting out of Mozambique, getting heavily supplied by these quite powerful nations. Or at least, what Cuba was some Cuba back then was sort of a. What can we say, a good example of how communism worked? Is it fair to say? Yeah, I'd say that, yeah. Yeah, almost like a bit of a sort of paradise thing going on now. I've been I've been in Cuba. It's obviously very different now after Castro's reign for so long. Castro's reign for so many years. And when when did the attack start happening? How did the conflict initiate? It started in 65 as soon as, in fact, it started earlier in 65, when Ian Smith declared what was called UDI unilateral declaration of independence from from from Britain. The Nationalists, I'll call them the Revolutionary, started sending cartas to the Eastern Bloc countries, Algeria, Tanzania, various countries for military training. A lot, most of them went to to the USSR. And they they came back 66 and started armed infiltrations of small groups of guerrillas crossing the Zambezi River from Zambia into Rhodesia with the aim of attacking white infrastructure, basically white farmers, economic targets. But they were very disorganized. They also operated with the South African African National Congress, who were trying to get down to South Africa. So they operated together. And that all came to head these incursions in 1968 with what the religions called Operation Cauldron in the Zambezi Valley, which was the guerrillas had a fairly large infiltration. I say large at the time was probably two, three hundred guerrillas across the Zambezi River. And the Radijans, many, many with assistance from from the Air Force with the helicopters, pretty well wiped them out in Operation Cauldron. The problem for the guerrillas at that time was that the Zambezi River and the territories either side of the river were pretty well uninhabited. It was wild bush. So there was there were no sort of local population to provide food or sugar or water or women or whatever the guerrillas needed to survive. So they had to cross this fairly. Especially in winter, where the water was sparse apart from the river itself, they had a torrid time. So at the end of 68, 69, they basically withdrew and there were no sort of major incursions until kind of 1970. There were bits and pieces during which time Mugabe had been he'd been fighting with in kind of like a civil war, almost in Lusaka, which didn't please President Kaunda very much. Basically, Zoni got kicked out of Zambia and moved to Mozambique, which was still Portuguese. But they were operating out of the tech province, which is the adjacent to Zambia and on the northeastern border of Rhodesia, fairly large piece of real estate. And by this time, the Portuguese that they were restricted to their base camps along the Zambezi River. So the country, the bush became effectively Frilema. That was the Mozambican liberation movement fighting Portuguese and Zana. Zana set up a lot of external camps in Mozambique. The big, that's the real start of what I call the war proper. It'll be very low key, low intensive up until that stage. You know, there'd been several farmers murdered. You know, they'd been apart from a cauldron. There'd be a lot of minor operations. And generally, the guerrillas had seen the short end of the stick. But in 1972, Zana opened. I'm not sure what they called the operation, but they flooded the country with this time several hundred, if not thousands of guerrillas. It caught the Rhodesians completely off guard along the northeastern border. They flooded into the country and started fairly aggressively attacking white farmers. There were a lot of casualties. And this time, they did not withdraw. And from here until 1976, which was when I went in, they were slowly building up their strength. And the Rhodesians are still on top of the situation. Working in conjunction with the Portuguese, they were starting to operate externally into the Tete province in Mozambique, dealing with Frelima and Zana. But it was in 1976 that things got interesting. 1974 was a kind of watershed year for Southern Africa, because that's when the so-called Carnation Revolution took place in Portugal. And overnight, literally the Portuguese pulled out of their African colonies. That was Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, which left a massive vacuum for the Rhodesians because suddenly, and suddenly, Frelima, Samora Michelle, also a communist-backed, found themselves with the country the size of Mozambique, a massive country, with no expertise whatsoever in running a country. And as you say, the Portuguese pretty well sabotaged, destroyed everything they could when they pulled out. And I think at the time, there were probably only two graduates in the Hall of Mozambique. They'd left a massive vacuum. And of course, the Russians and the Chinese jumped in there in a big way. But what it did for Rhodesia, apart from cutting off Rhodesia's supply, all Rhodesia's fuel, for example, came through Bayra, the port of Bayra, which is the sort of middle of Mozambique. And there was a Royal Navy blockade outside Bayra to stop ships coming into Bayra to supply fuel and oil to the Rhodesians, all tied up with sanctions, international sanctions. But it suddenly opened up, so apart from losing that sort of fairly critical supply line, it opened up something like 1200 kilometers of hostile border from down the eastern border of Rhodesia, all the way down to South Africa. And how the Rhodesians tried to counter this, which they had been doing in the northeastern segment, was building, constructing what they called a cordon sanitaire minefield that ran the whole way down the border. But it was impossible, because it was fairly mountainous rugged terrain on the eastern side. Yeah, so that changed the whole complexion of the war in 1976. That's when the final phase of what they called the guerrilla war started. And several thousand guerrillas flooded into the country. And that was coincided when I went in, yeah. Yeah, when did Rosie... What do we say? Do we say it fell? When did it fall into rebel hands sort of completely? 1980, April was independence. The British Lord Carrington and Thatcher managed to get Rhodesia to negotiate a settlement with the so-called free and fair elections. Mugabe pulled all his guerrillas back. They all went into assembly points, which were monitored by the British Monitoring Force. They were sent in a few dozen troops and policemen, actually. Bobbies to monitor these camps. And yeah, the elections were held in, I think early 1980. Mugabe won a landslide and he came to power in April 1980 when it became Zimbabwe. Yeah. God, there's so much to unpack here. So just going back to when you're getting these insurgents, that must have been terrifying. I mean, essentially you're surrounded, at least on three sides by rebels who are coming like this. And if you're a farmer who's got a farmstead on the edge here, you're going to be one of the first to come under attack. And I've said this in my other podcasts. It wouldn't have been nice at all. We're talking a massacre, are we not? Well, yeah, but it happened slowly. I mean, Motoko, which was a white farming area, when I say white, I mean commercial farming area, big farms growing massive crops, was a fairly prosperous farming area up in the northeast of the country. That was one of the first to go. And by 1976, 77, that whole area had been liberated. The Redesions could only really travel the on the roads in convoy to the various base camps in the area. But that was completely taken over by the Gurus. Same with various, you're right, various farming areas along the commercial farming areas along the eastern border. I'm thinking about the Burma Valley, which was just south of Natali. That was also completely taken over by the Gurus. When I said taken over, they didn't have their own civil infrastructure, but they controlled the area. So, yeah, all those sort of peripheral farming areas were taken over. And they were slowly starting to penetrate into the hinterland, right into the center of the country. And I mean so much so that in 1978, Zandler commandos, for want of a better word, the Redesions called them terrorists. They call themselves guerrillas, penetrated Salisbury, the capital, Nahari, and managed to blow up a few department stores. But the biggest coup was when they took out the whole Salisbury's oil supply. There was a massive oil depot in Salisbury. And they took it out. It was a fairly spectacular coup, so much so that Redesion was left with two weeks supply of fuel. And if it wasn't for the South Africans and that tiny little section of border at the bottom at Byte Bridge, they basically kept Redesion alive. But they used it as a, the South Africans used Redesion as a pawn in their negotiations with what were called the Black Frontline States. That was Zambia, Mozambique, Angola. All the countries that had gained independence, Tanzania, and they were on the front line, as they called it, of the fight against apartheid and white dominated regimes, yeah. Gosh. And I'm supposed to be able to get to your story, Chris. When you were called up, did you say 76? 76. 76, so that's right, sort of right in the thick of it. Yeah. What was the sort of feeling then of people called up? Were they patriotic? Did they want to go and fight? Or were they thinking, oh my god, this could turn bad? I think it was a combination of all sorts. I mean, we were 18, so I mean, we were pretty well naive. You know, we didn't really know what was going on. I personally knew it was bad. I knew that things were going to turn bad. And that so long as Smith and Mugabe were the main protagonists, there was never going to be any kind of settlement. So there was no end in sight, as far as I could see. I was totally anti-Smith and his redhesion front. I saw them as ultra-right wing dinosaurs. They just didn't see that Black majority rule was inevitable and negotiated around that, which they could have done. And I mean, the terms that Harold Wilson offered in 1966 were pretty generous. It was like a 15-year transition, as I've mentioned. As it turned out, it ended up as a 15-year conflict. With the same result, or worse result, because Mugabe came in. I mean, politically, I was pretty naive. I did it because it was my duty. You know, I got called up. Not happy about it, but I did it. And to give us an idea, and obviously this percentage would change as the rebels grew. But what sort of percentage of Black Africans around you were rising up to join this rebel movement? Probably a very small percentage. But in classics of a Communist guerrilla style, the way they recruited was forced recruitment. They would go in and take a whole school of several hundred kids, abduct them, and take them across the border into the base camps in Zambia and Mozambique. That was one way, forced conscription, basically. But there were a lot of volunteers in the Black areas. So it was a little bit of an anomaly for them, because the Redesion security forces were predominantly Black. For example, I mean, you'll know the Salute Scouts started sort of 75, 76. They were the largest regiment in the Redesion army. They had a strength of about 2,000. Of that, about 16, I might be wrong, but about 16, 1700 of those 2,000 were Black. They were professionals. They were doing it for a job, they were being paid. There were two Black infantry regiments who were excellent, the Redesion African Rifles. I mean, their history went back to the Great War, they fought in World War II in Burma, and they fought in Malaya. I mean, they had a fine history. They were the largest infantry regiment in the country. And then there was the Redesion Light Infantry, Maqrad, which was a small regiment, White's only. There was the SAS, C Squadron, SAS were there. Again, White's only, very small. I don't think their strength ever got to more than a couple of hundred. And then the bulk of the security forces were what we call territorial, essentially reservists. So what had happened, the White's would go in and do their national service, and then they became eligible for reserve service, territorial. They joined the Territorial Army, which had 10 regiments, varying sizes, and the regiments were all based in an area. So for example, the 1st Battalion was in Salisbury, 10th Battalion was in Guero, that sort of thing. Often they were commanded by regular troops, the Territorials, but they were essentially civilians being forced into sort of call-ups. They would do, I mean, by the end of the war, they were later on in the war, they were doing six weeks in and six weeks out, as they called it. So they would do six-week service and then six weeks in civilian life working. It just was not workable. And that started a fairly large exodus of White's from the country, from 76 onwards. Yeah. Was there a sort of fear that the Black regiments or the Black African soldiers would turn? There was, yeah, there was, I don't think there was a fear, but there was an awareness. Not with so much the RAR, the Redesion African Rifles, the Infantry Regiments, but more in the Salis Scouts, because most, well, not most, but a lot of the Black operators in the Salis Scouts would turn guerrillas, turn turs, TTs, as they were called, who had been captured and persuaded to change sides. Generally, there were the odd occasions where a Salis Scout operation was compromised and the former TTs in the patrol turned on there and shot everyone on the patrol, but that was rare. Yeah, it did happen, but not very much. Yes, it was the, how do I pronounce it? Salus? Salu. Salu. Yeah, French name, originally. Salu, yeah. I see, Silent S. Yeah, yeah. It was the Salus Scouts that put me in contact with you, I mean, not literally, obviously, but because the New Ranger Regiment in the British Army has a very similar cat badge, and it's caused some control. Yeah, it's like it's an Osprey. Yeah, our rangers, it's a Peregrine Falcon. Yeah, yeah. Based on the, was it, was the Osprey the original, was it? Yeah, yeah. Now, I saw there was some, a little bit of nonsense about that quite recently. Yeah. Yeah, it's, well, there's a lot of nonsense with our forces anyway, Chris, because what they're hiding from everyone is it's all about a European army now. Yeah. With the aim of protecting commerce between Europe and China. And all the military, it's quite funny really, all the military's just going along with it. They have no idea that, you know, what their future wrote, they're all a bit naive to it, I could say. I think, yeah, there's still sort of flag waving and it's, we're long past sort of nation states. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this is absolutely fascinating. I just want to ask you, so you've been called up. What sort of training does that involve? And would you say that your colleagues, to your fellow soldiers, do they come from like a good crop to make soldiers? I mean, are they Bushmen? I don't know, maybe ranchers, they're dealing with animals and stuff. So they're kind of like macho guys or is it sort of take all sorts? It was all sorts, but I mean, I would think because Rhodesian society was very outdoor based, a lot of emphasis on sport. And yeah, I'd say that they were a good crop, I'd say, as far as soldiers went or potential soldiers went. Our training was almost identical to British Army training. I think it was 21 weeks in total, of which the first six weeks is basic training, which I think the Yanks called boot camp. I think that's what it is, six weeks of basically fitness. And at the end of six weeks, you supposedly had a choice of which branch you'd like to go into of the service. I mean, we lost a few guys went into medics or armored cars or not many, 99%. We had no choice really, we stayed on as infantry. And then the second six week or seven week period of training was what we call the classical warfare stage, which was as it sounded. And then the third stage of our training was counterinsurgency, the counterinsurgency phase, which was seven weeks. And that took you up to when you passed out to when you qualified. And we moved into the commandos of the battalion. But you are very much British based, everything was British based. I mean, identical, almost the same bayonet training with our 303 rifles, exactly the same. A lot of our instructors had done staff courses at Camberley and in the UK. And I mean, for example, the OC of our training troop, as we called it, was a guy called Captain Cooper, who was a Guardsman. Yeah, so they came from all walks, but a lot of British instructors. Have you been to the commando memorial? Sorry? Have you been to the commando memorial? Not in the UK. I mean, I obviously saw it when it was in Rhodesia. And I was instrumental on, I had quite a lot to do with getting it to where it is now. I was on the Rhodesian Light and Free Regimental Association. I was there on that body for quite a long time. So I was fairly instrumental in getting it set up where it is now. So, Chris, when you're doing your training, are you getting sort of let's just call them horror stories or action stories from the front? Yeah, all the time. Bear in mind that it was sort of January, February, 76, and the main infiltrations were starting then, but they hadn't really had time to take effect. Yeah, I mean, we had stories from what we called the old soldiers, the veterans who'd been around, and a lot of our instructors were veterans themselves who'd seen action. It was as time progressed through our training, we started appreciating that this was actually starting to get a little bit serious and that there were some fairly large infiltrations. I mean, when we passed out in May, 76, I think the total strength, guerrilla strength in Operation Thrasher, the Rhodesians, had this funny system where they divided areas and called them operations, Operation Hurricane, which opened in 72 with that infiltration prior to the Portuguese pulling out. That covered the northeast of the country. Op Thrasher was the whole eastern border down to Op Repulse, which was the southeastern corner of the country. And then you had various operations covering Botswana, the center of the country, they even had Operation Salisbury, by the time the oil depot got taken out. At the time when we passed out in May, 76, it was estimated that there were about in Op Thrasher, the one operational area, that there were probably about 1,000 guerrillas resident in Op Thrasher, with more and more infiltrating all the time. So the way the guerrillas would work, they would get set up in camps within the country with a gang of perhaps 40 to 50 guerrillas running an area, a smallish area, and they would then facilitate further infiltration of guerrillas through their area to carry on into the center of the country. And it was a massive operation for them. It was ongoing all the time and growing all the time exponentially. So that by 78, 79, there were certainly maybe 10,000. I don't know, I don't think they ever had the numbers, but guerrillas grew rapidly from 1,000 up to multiples of within a short space of time. And this was being replicated all across the country as well. And then you had Zaapu, Koma, the Zambian-based Soviet-supplied crowd. They were more of a, although they had guerrillas in the country, they were only there primarily to counter Zanler guerrillas. They didn't want Zanler guerrillas getting into their heartland of Bulawar, which was the Matabele who were effectively a Zulu area of the country. They were predominantly classically trained by the Soviets. So yeah, I mean, they had tanks. They had the whole trip. They were a proper army. And the plan was that when Rhodesia started collapsing, they were going to invade. But the problem was there was only one place through which to invade, and that was across the Victoria Falls Bridge. To get an army across there was slightly problematic, but that never really happened until after independence. And when you had a full on civil war between Zanler and Zipra, yeah. Yeah, and Zipra, I mean, that's the irony of the whole thing was effectively, and all the armored columns were taken out by what had been the Rhodesian Air Force. So all the pilots were all Rhodesian Air Force pilots fighting for Mugabe now taking army. Yeah, it was a miss. Wow. Yeah. And how were they getting supplied with ammunition and food? What in the country? Yeah. I mean, I'm guessing that they would ransack farms and stuff and steal whatever they wanted. Yeah. So that wouldn't last too long, I'm guessing. Yeah. They were supplied food and by the locals, the local population. The mass of the masses basically as they were called the peasants in the country, in the countryside. Ammunition, arms and ammunition were all cashed. They had some fairly substantial arms caches in the country. Yeah, which we came across nine again. Or if you captured one of them of some importance, they would show you where they were. Yeah, that's hard work, yeah. And how were the Soviets getting the arms in? Were they coming in by ship? Yeah, ship aircraft anyway. I mean, totally porous. It was a bit of a bizarre situation because I mean, the British were in Zambia. And I mean, the British Air Force, the Royal Air Force, they were training the Zambian Air Force. So they were working probably alongside the Soviets in training the Zambians. I mean, it got to in 66, or just after Udi, Wilson deployed the parachute regiment into Zambia with talk of a British army invasion of Rhodesia, which would have been horrendous. I mean, you know, there we are, our Kith and kin as they like to call us. But that never came to fruition, fortunately. It didn't need to. I mean, sanctions were killing Rhodesia. Yeah. Yeah. And let's talk about your equipment because even when I joined up, which was 88, the kit we had then, we were on the cusp of a sort of like a bit of a tsunami of technology came in because you got things like Gore-Tex and walking boots that were just really well thought out in high tech rather than the old what was it? The plastic sold boots. I can't remember the DMS or something, direct molded soul, I think they called them. Yeah. But we still, all our webbing and stuff was from the Second World War. We slept under a poncho, not you didn't have such things as bivy bags and cuckoo. We cooked with hexamine, whereas now you'd have, well, not always, but you have rations that heat themselves and this kind of stuff. So how was it? How was your equipment and where was it getting commissioned from? Same as like you in the early days. It was totally a lot of it. X Second World War stuff. I mean, all our webbing with Second World War stuff. We're adhesions try to make, copy it and make their own, which was rubbish. I mean, it was really rubbish. I mean, so much so that we had to plunder gorilla webbing, which we did. And but, you know, for example, a lot of the territorial regiments still use the Albrengon. We use British mortars, British land mines, you know, all that kind of stuff. And we moved on to the, what you guys call the SLR, we called the FN in the late 60s. We managed to get a few thousand FNs into the country. And the MAG, which you guys call the GPMG, yeah, same thing, yeah. So those were our principal weapons, FN and MAG, plus various mortars and rifle grenades and grenades and etc. But our actual kit was the Rhodesian issued kit was absolutely rubbish, fell apart, rotted easily, frayed. It was not strong enough. So we essentially kind of made our own out of what we could scrounge. For example, all my kit was either my webbing was either East German or Chinese. I mean, I even had a Soviet hat that I worn painted Rhodesian camouflage. And then what what really took off and which developed into what became, I think like you guys called a combat jacket. I never liked that idea. But a lot of guys did. It started off with captured chess magazines from Communist chess magazines, which guys took over and adapted to fit an FN magazine. And then from there, that developed into like a jacket, like a combat jacket, where you had all your patches and magazines and things like that. I never went for that. I just had the standard wedding with a yoke and patches. And that sort of thing. And did you struggle at all in this training? I mean, you went on to become a commando. Can you explain the sort of transition there? Well, yeah, that whole thing about I mean, the RLI was originally formed as a conventional infantry battalion with ABC companies and a support. It wasn't a company with support group, you know, standard British company company structure. They changed that and it became in the late 70s, it became they changed all the companies became commandos and it became a commando battalion. But to me, I mean, I never and support group became a commando in its own right. So we had the commandos change from A, B and C to one, two, three commando and support commando. But I never really quite understood what the difference was between the commando battalion and an ordinary infantry battalion. When it's commando, I mean, we all eventually became parachute trained, became a large part of our operations was para. But we didn't do anything special in terms of training. We got specialist training, obviously, later on, but from passing out from our recruits course into the commandos, it was nothing particularly difficult. I mean, I say difficult, different from what ordinary infantry troops did. Yeah. So I still don't get it why we were so called commandos, other than it sounds cool. Yes. It's another French word, isn't it commando? I'm not sure. But we were always told it meant see without being seen, kill without being killed. No, I've no doubt that's a load of horse shit. But yeah, it's actually commando is what was actually from the is Afrikaans. It's from the the Boer war. You know, the Boers were all arranged in commandos. So the old term when you went on commando, you got dragged out of your farm with your own horse, your own rifle, and sent on commando to go and trouble the Brits. They were tough old boys, weren't they? Funny enough, the majority, we always, the Redesion Light infantry always had a problem with recruitment, which is why they opened up to National Service in 1974, I think. But initially, 90% of the Redesion Light infantry were made up of South Africans who were who had come up to do three or five year contracts, earn some money and then go back. And at the same time, the South African numbers in the battalion sort of slowly diminished as the own South African war escalated in Namibia as it became and Angola. I mean, that was that was a proper war, not like our little war. I mean, you talk in there of some 50,000 Cubans fighting for the Angolans. And I mean, the battle of Kuwaita-Kanawali in Southern Angola was being the largest tank battle in Africa since El Alamein. It was massive. South African tanks against Soviet, what were there, were there 56, T-56? I can't remember what they were, but yeah, it was huge. And Cubans were flying Angolan Air Force planes, South Africans are flying Mirages. Yeah, it was a full on conventional war taking place there. We didn't even know about it. We were so bogged down in our little insurgency that this stuff was going on in Angola. Josh, yeah, it's funny. I was on a train once to, I think I was on a train to Moscow and it was a night train and the guy came in, the other guy that would be sleeping in my carriage and he was Russian and he said to me, do you speak Russian? And I said, no, no, no. I said, do you speak English? He said, no, no, no. And then we looked at each other and he went, Portuguese? Sing! And because we'd both worked in Mozambique. So really? Yeah, we spoke Portuguese for the... Okay, yeah, yeah. Quite funny. So can you tell us some war stories then? I mean, it just sounds like you're in the thick of it. This is all very real suddenly and then we'll come on to how did it all end? Yeah. Well, yeah, as I say, May, past out on May 76 and was immediately dispatched and the commander was on what they call far-force operations, which was a sort of development or a tactic that the Rhodesian supposedly developed with. Very simple. I mean, it was like a quick reaction force based out of a jock and they had various jocks around the country in the operational areas. So Operation Hurricane, the jock was based at Mount Darlin, which was the main operational center. And there was an airfield there and the far-force three commander at the time we went up there May, June 76, was based at the airfield. We had the far-force operation, which was really a vertical envelopment of the enemy. So that was our first posting. We did six, a bush trip as I called it, was six weeks in an area. You then go back to Salisbury for R&R for 10 days. And then six weeks later, for the next six weeks, you get posted to another area. So we were operating out of jock, Mount Darlin, which was a far-force operation. At the time, there were what we call G-cars, which are three allahuets, troop carrying allahuets, all armed with twin brownings. And then the K-car, which was the command allahuet and had a 20-mile Hispanic cannon. And that the commander of the air-force aspect of the operation flew that chopper and the commander OC directed the battle in that chopper. So that would happen. There'd be a sighting, for example, or a call-out, generally initiated by the Salisguards who were operating clandestinely in the area. And they would give us a good reference and call and far-force. And we'd jump in the helicopters and go racing off. We had, in support, we had what we called the Lynx, which was a Ream Cessna, which was a ground attack aircraft armed with napalm, sned-rockets, and phosphorus. He would go in first with his weapons, probably napalm, and hit the gorillas. And then the helicopters would come in and try and surround the gorillas. It was quite difficult with only three helicopters, and each helicopter only took four troops. So in the first wave, as I call it, there were only like 12 troops in trying to surround sometimes 50 gorillas or 100 or whatever. But obviously we had air support. And the KKR and the 20-mil, they did a serious amount of damage. And we would then sweep through the area and contact the gorillas and hopefully kill them. And that was it. And then get uplifted, go back to base, and wait for the next call-out, which was by that stage happening on a pretty well a daily basis. So every day, you knew if you were on first wave, in the far force, you were in the choppers, and you knew that you would effectively be called out sometime in the day. So you just sort of hung around and just waited until you heard the siren and where you went. As the war intensified and the gorillas were becoming more and more, were saturating the country more and more, there were so many call-outs that the far force actually couldn't keep up with the number of call-outs that were taking place. So they would have to prioritise, which was important or which was the particular call-out that we would be more successful with. And the others would just have to ignore. So it was obviously very frustrating for the ground troops who had contacted the gorillas or found them because the gorilla tactics was not too confront the security forces. It was to mix with the masses like the fish, as our Chairman Ma said. But when they were cornered, they put up a pretty good fight generally. I mean, the first tactic was when the far force arrived and they could hear these helicopters buzzing out of the head was to bombshell, basically to flee and to hook up later. And they were quite good at that. They were trained in how to do that when you heard a helicopter arriving. What's your sort of instant action drill? So yeah, but often they were boxed in enough that they had to stay in fight and they fought well. I mean, they shot down a few choppers. We took casualties. And in our first six weeks bush trip, all us sort of greenhorns, all our recruits who thought we were now heavy commandos, we took a lot of casualties through an experience in that first six weeks. We're not saying a lot. I mean, we probably had about 10 of us out of 50 recruits who'd passed out into three commander were casualties in that first bush trip. Yeah, not all dead, but there were a couple of deaths, but many wounded. And a lot of the all soldiers, as I called them, the veterans had been there. Bless you. That took out a lot. You know, that took casualties as well. It was simply the volume of gorillas coming into the country. So much so that, you know, they soon worked out that sending in three helicopters of four troops each 12 men to deal with 50 to 100 gorillas at a time just wasn't working. And we were taking casualties and the gorillas were basically escaping or fighting back. And so they there weren't enough helicopters in the country. I think the Rhodesian Air Force probably had a total at any one time of 30. And the wets of which quite a lot of them were South African Air Force on loan with South African Air Force helicopters. So they resorted to being there six months when they said, No, we're going to make the RLI my battalion. We're going to make you all we're going to train you all up as paratroopers. I started doing that and I was on the second paracourse in January 77 in New Serum, which was the Air Force base, the main Air Force base in Salisbury. We went and did our paracourse, but they couldn't keep up with the volume of troops because at the same time, the Rhodesian African rifles and the Salis Scots were also all becoming paracualified. So the South Africans stepped in with the Air Force down in in Blomfontein in South Africa. And they started training a lot of our guys up as well. So and we were trained exactly the same training as with the the British army. In fact, most of our instructors were were the British couple of Aussies, the Yankees too, you know, so we were trained. And then we became so the fire force now could supply a fire force. When I say a fire force, there were probably three or four fire forces in operation at any one time in the country. Not all operated by our mostly couple operated by the Rhodesian African rifles. One even operated occasionally by the SAS, but their role was more external in Mozambique and Zambia. And so they up the fire force strength from three helicopters to three helicopters and a Dakota DC three converted, which could take 16 to 20 paras at a time. So what had happened is the fire force did not take off the three helicopters and the three G cars and the and the and the K car that got tuttling off to the contact area with the links hovering around and then standing off, because the the Dakota is a lot faster than the helicopters out of air shot or out of range would be the Dakota. So the fire force commander would drop his troops in the G cars. Those helicopters incidentally would go back and try and pick up a second wave of troops if they could. And then depending on how the contact developed, he would then utilize his paras. And they would essentially he would drop 16 to 20 troops. They would become the sweep line through the area and and the the helicopter troops would become the stop groups. Yeah, that's hard work. So I mean, straight away, they almost they more than double the fire force capacity by using Dakotas. And so I mean, I had my first operational jump, I think was in a belly qualified. I got my wings and on my first operational jump was a week later in February 77. And yeah, so it was I mean, jumping in those conditions was it was fairly primitive. And you know, we jumped from never, never higher than 500 feet operationally, sometimes 400 feet or lower. So you didn't have a reserve then? Yeah, we did. We all had reserves. But you know, at that height, you don't have time to to use it. So there were casualties. I mean, one one jump with the RAR, I think it was recorded at about 300 feet. There was a death and they were half the stick were out with broken bones and that sort of thing. Yeah, so it was pretty primitive. And obviously that they try to find a reasonable drop zone, but not always easy. And the fields, you know, those rural fields in the countryside was small, you know, they're all hand plowed and things like that. So there was no nice DZ. So invariably, it was into trees on rocks, you know, whatever. So we always sustained casualties in a jump. Always one or two out of 16 broken ankle or broken something, which was a fairly high attrition rate, because, you know, we were meant to be 120 people in a common training troops and commander, but inevitably, you know, invariably with with casualties and people on training course and things like that, we really had more than 70 or 80 troops at any one time in on operations in the commander. So that's why you were you were on call out pretty well all the time. And I mean, you know, there've been war stories about, you know, some RLR guys jumping into three contacts in a day. That was rare, but it did happen. Two contacts in a day, however, it was more contact, it was more common. So I mean, I think, I think that the world record of the number of operational jumps is held by a adhesion, a guy from one commander, same same training course as me. And I think yet he had something like 78 79 operational jumps to his name. So it was just intense the whole time. Yeah, so when you are on far forth duties as the war intensified. So did the context and and the number of operational jumps he did. Yeah, gosh, all the all our parents listening will be getting envious because, of course, they haven't really jumped since the Second World War, I believe into combat apologies, friends, if there's the odd one that I'm missing, no disrespect men, but I've had this conversation on the podcast a couple of times about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Funny enough, we had a lot of Brit Paris in three commander and in fact, three commander, my my company or commander was called the the foreigners commander. A lot of Brits. In fact, we had more more foreigners than Radiesians. Always was the case. In fact, in my troop, which was a platoon, at one stage, I was the only Radiesian in that platoon. The rest were Brits, Irish, New Zealanders, Aussies, Americans, Canadians, you name it, South Africans, we had all of them. And at one stage, I think the CEO counted 18 different nationalities in the battalion. Yeah. Yeah. Were there any sort of mercenary outfits in this conflict? No, no. The Americans particularly considered themselves mercs. But they weren't. They were just foreign volunteers and they were paid exactly the same rates of pay as the Radiesians. I guess technically, I suppose they could be considered mercenaries, but they were just foreigners fighting. I mean, the Radiesians actively recruited overseas, America, UK, that sort of thing. But no, they weren't mercenaries per se. It can't have been pleasant jumping into conflict. And I mean, that makes you vulnerable enough, especially if you're in small sticks and you don't know how many enemy you're in the midst of your landing. But then, of course, if you break an ankle, that's frightening. I mean, you could just be overrun immediately. Yeah. That was more of a worry in the external camp attacks. That's when the RLI and the Salute Scouts or the SAS with the Radiesian Air Force attacked the big base camps in Mozambique or Zambia, which became pretty well the standard MO of the Radiesians from about 1978 onwards. The first major camp attack was in 1976, which was done by the Salute Scouts, who took out probably about 2000 Zandler recruits, mainly, in a place called Nyadzonia. And that sort of set the template for foreign raids or external raids, pre-emptive strikes, as we call them, against enemy camps into Mozambique and Zambia. And the next biggest one was in November 77, which was Op Dingo, which was the raid on Chimoa in Mozambique, when I was actually on leave at the time, so I missed it, but it was 184 troops, Redesion troops, plus the Radiesian Air Force, attacked a camp of about 7,000 to 8,000. The 184 troops were made up of three Commando, two Commando, and SAS. The whole raid was led by the SAS, and of that, a large contingent of that was Parra. So they would use scrimp and scrap every single decoach in the country they could to get these Parras into a raid. So what would happen is the Parras would close off perhaps two sides of a box. The helicopter-borne troops would close up the third side, and the Air Force with the gunships would try and cover the fourth side of the box. That's how they did it, yeah. And then the Parras would advance. Obviously what happened was we have Parras advancing on one side, Parras advancing on the next side, and you got friendly fire taking place. So quite a lot, there were quite a lot of friendly fire incidents in those raids. But yes, that was always a problem on those external raids when you, if you had an injury. I mean, I remember my last op-jump was in October 78 when we attacked a camp in Zambia. It coincided with three major raids, one on Lusaka, one the SAS did in the north of Zambia called Makushi, and the RLI, the whole battalion attacked a camp in the south of Zambia called CGT-2, which was Communist guerrilla training camp number two, of which there were about, probably about five or six thousand guerrillas in residence. A lot of them were unarmed, recruits, but a lot of them were armed, and they were, the camps were well protected with bunkers, anti-aircraft emplacements, all sort of done by the Soviets, the Soviet advisors. So if you had a problem then on an op-jump, it could be a problem in that a lot of the guerrillas might be fleeing your way, and it did happen, but generally we were lucky, it doesn't happen too often. Are you able to give us an idea of your sort of bloodiest contact? I'm just trying to picture a young man, you know, in the heart of Africa, up against it, and I just would imagine it just all got a bit dark and frightening. Yeah, I did, you know, there's only so much of it you could do, and by 78, I mean during, in the middle 78, I was, I was 19, I think, 77, yeah, I was 19, and by that stage because we'd suffered a fairly large sort of casualty rate, I mean, I was a lance corporal by then, but I was leading, I was running the whole platoon, the troop. We had no sergeants, the officers, there were no officers that either been killed or wounded, or there weren't enough coming through the system. Our senior NCOs were all wounded. We took a lot of casualties at Chimoa in November 1977. So I find myself as a 19-year-old lancejack leading a troop, which was quite interesting, but a fantastic experience in terms of leadership, but it was 78 and early 79, that were what I call my dark, dark days when it was just absolutely intense, the number of call-outs and contacts you were having, and they all tended to just a blur into the next, but probably the one contact I remember was in January 79. I had about a month or less before my three years was up and I demobbed, and I decided that I would take over the MAG to let the younger guys take over the stick leader duties. So I became an MAG gunner, and I carried the MAG in 77 when I was still a trooper, and I liked it. I liked the MAG, and our stick leader was an American. The other two riflemen, one was a Rhodesian and one was also an American, and we landed this crawl, which is a sort of rural village, and it looked reasonably prosperous. There were good crops in the field, and it was a big crawl, and the stick leader, he was a sergeant by then, Hugh McCall, who killed an action a few months later, and a guy called the American Bob Smith from Georgia. The helicopter dropped us to the side of the crawl. We got off the helicopters, went into all ground defense, and the stick leader said, right across you and Kevin, the Rhodesian who was with me, you go around the left side of the crawl, they'll go around right side of the crawl and see if we can flush anything out. Kevin and I, the crawl was essentially two long lines of huts, and in the middle was a sort of communal area where they did their cooking, and that sort of thing, and as we came into the sort of mouth of the two lines of huts from about 40, 50 yards away, they opened up on us, me and Kevin, and it was terrifying, absolutely. Well at the time, I mean you knew you were being shot at, but it was like bees, all around, and I thought this can't be happening, and I was just waiting because I could feel them there and there, I mean close, you know when a bullet's close to you, it's like, wow. I thought I gotta be hit, I'm gonna be hit, and I shot at Kevin who didn't know what was happening, he was sort of 10 meters to my left, and we always spread out a lot if we could, and we dived for cover behind this grain storage bin, which was a mud structure, a stick in mud, pollen dagae, we call it, stick in mud structure on posts, on pillars, and the pillars were tree trunks, but thin ones, like maybe six inches at the most, and that was our cover, groveling behind these little posts in the dust, and it's a real war story, but the ground was just being torn up, they're sort of following us, and I really don't know how we were hit, and then suddenly, I mean it must have been within a minute, I guess it all happened, the silent, absolute silence, not a thing, and they stopped, and they're probably running away, and sort of picking ourselves up, check that the gun was the right cover, and dust, and crap, and things like that, and huge, the American, he's around the other side of the crawl, he doesn't know what's going on, so he's shouting, Chris, okay, okay, what's happening? And then the K-Cog knows that something's happening, so he starts pulling and overhead, but he's also confused, doesn't know what's happening, and then to the right of the crawl, which was common, was a mango tree, little plantation, so they grew their own mangoes and things like that, about 15, 20 trees, a little orchard almost, and I suddenly see these four figures dashing through the, so through the smoke and everything, I see these four figures trying to exit the crawl, running through this mango plantation, and I thought that's them, those are these, these bastards have been trying to shoot me, I actually got quite angry, and but I was sitting on my on my butt, and I had the MAG on its bipods between my legs, and I, there was no time to get into a proper firing position, you know, I couldn't get prone, or I couldn't stand up and put the gun on my hip, there was no time, so I literally kind of grabbed the, grabbed the trigger, put my left hand down on the butt of the MAG, and fired, and I had a hundred round belt on the MAG, then I always had a hundred round belt, 50 round belts in all my patches, and I had a couple of 200 round bandolias across my chest, and I saw these guys running, and I gave a short burst to see if I could see a full shot or anything, and it was short, I could see, because there were a lot of dry leaves in the in the mango plantation, I could see my strikes following them, so I slightly elevated the gun, and let, let rip, and all four of them went tumbling down, I think, I mean it all happened so fast, but I know I got four of them, and then McCall, Hugh McCall came around and said, what's happening, what's happening, I said, I got them, I got four, there, near where you are, and you know, I built you, you didn't, anyway, we got up and went and swept, swept through the area, we found two, two bodies dead, and then we couldn't find the other two, and I said, I know I got four, Hugh, and they had fallen into an ant-bear hole, which is a fairly large hole, and the one on, the guy who was, the guy who was on top was dead, but the one underneath wasn't, he was only wounded, and so we hauled the body out, and then managed to get this other guy to his wounded, he was pulled out, and dare I say, I mean, to, to, to our shame, the American shot him, shot him in the back of the head, and we then went back to sweep through the crawl and blow me down, there were, there were still several of them hiding in various huts, and, and it just became like a bloodbath in trying to get these, these guys out the huts, because in the huts as well were all the civilians, that was just awful, absolutely awful, I mean, Bob Smith the American kicked up in one hut and was met with an AK kind of, almost, you know, blew, blew, blew, almost blew him away from point blank, and so they, I'm now the MAG gunner, I don't have to get involved in all this hut clearing, I'm there to cover, and, and, and the rest of the stick were just taking these guys out of the huts one by one, but just chucking in grenades and, and all sorts of things, and it was just, I looked in the one hut afterwards, and it was just, just blood, and, and bodies, and it was just, just too awful. Anyway, we finished with the village, we cleared the village, cleared all the huts, and then, meanwhile, the, the Kaikon has said, no, they've, they've gapped it, which they'd run away into the river line, which they always did, because that was the, the heaviest cover, the bush, by the river. So we went and we started sweeping along one side of the river, the four of us, hooked up with another stick who were on the other side of the river, they, they were sweeping, so we were eight, eight of us, sweeping, and we got another two, all sort of point blank, and I stuck my, stuck the gun in the shoulder, because you fired up now, and your adrenaline is just pumping, and, you know, so we blew them away from kind of point blank range, so we, we got a fairly high kill rate that day, but, you know, that, that sticks in my, my mind, especially the civilians in there, and at the end of the day, we were ordered to burn the crawl, and there were these women and kids just sitting there outside, you know, we just destroyed their, their homes, their lives, half of them are dead inside the huts, and we got on the helicopters and went home, got drunk, you know, that's hard work, just too awful, too awful, and, and the, the civilians had no choice in the matter, they had to supply the gorillas, they had to provide sugar, food, women, water, otherwise they were, they were executed, they were taken out, so they were in a, in a no win situation, and then we came along, and I mean, we just, you know, cross, court and crossfire was a common thing on the sort of security forces communicate every day, on the radio, they said, you know, yesterday, 52 gorillas killed, the, the Redesion had begun to the body come thing, two Redesion security forces killed in action and 13 civilians killed in crossfire, it was a daily thing on the radio, you know, so, yeah, that was, that was, and then two days later after that, I'd been put onto dispatcher duties, I was also an assistant parachute dispatcher, so I'd stand in the, in the DAC Dakota and throw the, the, the parrots out, and we, our troop that day suffered six casualties, I think two dead and four wounded, it was against a big group of like 60, you know, the Eastern border, and they were what we called hardcore, they fought, they would, they would fight to the end, especially the women gorillas, there were a lot of them, not a lot, but you know, there were quite a few, and they were, they were, they were fairly hardcore, you know, so now I remember that day when I was at Grand Reef, which was our fire force base, where the fire force took off from, and had a proper tarmac runway, which could accommodate our jets, our Canberras, and our antiquated Canberras, and Hawker Hurricanes, and vampires even, and a, one of the GCOS, the, the, the Allouette 3s was coming in with casualties, our casualties, and I went to, because I was also a train medic, I'm sorry, I went to the runway to see if I could help, and there were, excuse me, three of our guys sitting on the back seat, the back bench of the Allouette 3, a body on the floor, Brad Little, he was a Brit, he'd been killed, and he had a little hole right through there, he was dead, and the 3 sitting in the back, one had been shot through the guts, and bannered of all things, another Brit, a guy called Neil Hooley, and bannered it in the leg by an AK bannered, I mean really in that, you know, that's how close it, and it was his third time of being wounded, so he was moaning, but he was okay, I mean I could see he would live, the guy in the middle, Ray Wilkins, he was a gunner, he'd been shot in the legs, but he would be alright, and the other guy, Mark Pulbium, on the other side, was sitting straight as a ramrod, and his whole head was bandaged, like that, and he'd been shot, and an AK round had gone, taking his eyes out, so he was blind, he would become blind to this day, and I'm in touch with him now and again, but one amazing guy, I mean, his whole career, and he's been blind, and I was pretty horrendous, and I thought no, things are getting pretty serious here, and not only that, but they were still taking casualties back at the contact zone, and I don't know what the figures were that day, but Bob Smith, the American guy, he got shot in the guts that day, went back to Georgia a few months later, when he'd finished his three years, in Georgia, and he was actually mowing his lawn, I mean, how's this for, shit for luck, mowing his lawn and a massive 18-wheeler truck, lost control, came hurtling around the bend into his garden and killed him, smashed him, I mean, bizarre, yeah, so, yeah, weird, and yeah, so that kind of, I was scared by that time, not scared, but I just had this awful, awful feeling that I knew that my time was coming, and that if I did this for very much longer, it was just a matter of time before I got it, and you know, I mean, to carry on from that war story when we killed eight or nine that day in that one crawl, when I got back to camp that night, and I took off my webbing, I had probably about four or five rounds in my webbing, either side, I mean, one had gone through a water bottle, one had hit my spare radio battery, one had hit my first field dressing patch, one had smashed a magazine, a belt of rounds, I didn't even know at the time, and I just thought, no, you know, some up there is watching me, but it got to the stage when I just knew that I couldn't do this forever, you know, no, there's a war story. Yeah, and I just thank you, Chris, for being so candid, you know, we live in a bit of a delusional world, don't we, with respect to our heroizing war, and now, of course, the generation coming up, they've all played call of duty since they were, you know, maybe eight years old, and they think that this is all heroic, and you know, it won't happen to me, and of course, it's also bloody futile, you know, futile, and so damaging to the individual. Yeah, yeah. On that point, has it given you trauma? Have you had, you know, stuff to deal with or you seem very well adjusted? Yeah, I've had my share of PTSD, funny enough, years and years after the event, and they say that PTSD can strike up to like 30 years later. Yeah, I've had, you know, normal stuff, but not very nice, I've had a lot of counselling and sort of dealt with it, but it's always there, you know, lurking, lurking in the back of your mind, and I mean, there are a few specific incidents that just haunt me, especially kids, you know, I've seen kids taken out by napalm and that kind of stuff, you know, you're just tough to deal with, but yeah, as I said, it is what it is, and you live with it, but you try and not let it take over your life, yeah. Yes, of course, as far as I'm concerned, the past is the past, I don't even connect, I literally don't even connect with it in my brain, it's only because no good can come of living in the past, you know. Exactly. Learning lessons maybe, but you learn and move on and we can all, we'd all get so weighed down if we analysed everything that we'd ever been able to do, wouldn't we, you know. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, you try and put it into, I mean, there's a massive disconnect between a civilian life, what you've become and what happened then, you know, and stuff that I like to think good people doing bad things, you know, that's what it is, and I think I'm essentially a good person, I think, and I mean, some other things I did, it was forced to do, it's not me, but that's what happened, yeah. You're probably in a different scenario to me slightly because you had to join up, you were conscripted, whereas I did it voluntarily, I wanted to go and prove myself, and I think I was probably sociopathic at that time in my life, as in you tell me to kill that person, yeah, if that's going to make me a man, I'll kill him, but you know, and it was that black and white to me, and back now and think, Jesus Christ, I have a really different view on everything now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I think it's the same in all conflicts that in any war that you read about, it's the young men to start with, they're all absolutely gung-ho to join the army and go and see action, and it's only after a while that that turns to not such a happy event, you know. Yeah, when did you leave Rhodesia? I stayed on in Zimbabwe till for another 15, 16 years, 15 years after independence, till 1996, and I could see then that the rioting was on the wall, and that the, I mean, after independence, the place went through some, a little bit of a boom, and Mugabe was pragmatic, that changed as time went on, and by the mid-90s, you know, you could see that the rioting was on the wall economically, and so I moved to South Africa, which had only recently had their first democratic elections when Mandela came to power, so they were going through their own kind of post-conflict agonising, and I was in South Africa for nearly 20 years, and I moved to UK in 2015. Yeah, I've been here since then. Gosh, it's a far cry from the motherland though, isn't it? It's Mother Africa. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, it's kind of in your blood, but... Do you like it here? I mean, it's cold in, it's cold in the UK. Yeah, it's not so much the weather, okay, obviously the rain, it kind of gets you done. It rains all the time, but it's not so much the weather, and in fact, I think back to the last place I was living in South Africa, where in summer it was 40 degrees plus every day, and I struggled with the heat as much as I do with the cold, and I think the cold is generally easier, because you can generally get warm, whereas the heat, yeah, you get struggled to keep cool. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, South Africa became like the wild west. I mean, the crime there was just unbelievable, was still is. I mean, out of the South Africa, the most violent cities in the world, South Africa has six cities in the top 20, you know, from number three, which was Pretoria, through to number 16 or something. So, yeah, I mean, everyone in South Africa, black or white, knows somebody, knows people who've been killed, hijackings, home invasions. I mean, I've had several friends killed, murdered. Yeah, it is a violent place. Chris, how was it then for, I don't want to use the word die hard, because it's not fair. But if you're, I think what a lot of our audience would be surprised to hear is that you have white Africans, you know, this is colonisation for you. Yeah, so you get a young boy who, you know, a boy who's grown up in Africa, he's African. Yeah. In Mozambique, you really see this because you meet some of the old Portuguese that stayed after the liberation. Yeah. They're European, but the mannerisms are all African. Exactly. It's very bizarre. Yeah. But what I wanted to ask was, I'm guessing there were people that they would not call it Zimbabwe probably until they died. Yeah, those types generally all lift. They've gone. Most went to Australia. Some went to South Africa, but the real die hards are in Australia. Yeah. The actual white Zimbabweans who stayed on, I mean, they're fully integrated into Zimbabwean society. I mean, my daughter and her family are still there. I've got lots of friends and family still in Zimbabwe. And they're doing okay under some fairly tough conditions, but race is not an issue in Zimbabwe. And it hasn't been for 20 years or more, more, maybe 30 years. More so a case in South Africa, I think because of the history of the country. And as you say, in the X colonies of Mozambique and Angola, not at all. Even during their war, it wasn't really so much of an issue. The problem was with Mozambique, as I say, was the exodus overnight exodus of white Mozambicans slash Portuguese out of the country. I must say that the half a million Mozambican Portuguese in South Africa, mainly all in Johannesburg. But you're right. I mean, the ones who've stayed in Mozambique are Mozambican first. I mean, like you, I spent a lot of time in Mozambique on business mainly in the late 80s, early 90s, as the war was sort of coming to an end. So I can identify exactly what you experienced there. But you're, I mean, you know, beautiful country, but did you ever go to Nicaragua, Nicaraporto? No, I never, I never went up that far. No. Yeah, that's where I was in a small village there. It was really incredible, incredible experience. Yeah. Yeah, beautiful, beautiful. Yeah. I mean, they still had beaches that were 20 miles long. That's far and not a single person on them. Yeah, absolutely amazing. No beach bars. No, no, nothing, just just miles and miles of raw ocean. It was incredible. Yeah. Chris, let's promote you a bit because you do some speaking and you're a fairly prolific author from what I can see. Or more prolific than I am, I think. I've done a couple of books. Yeah, I've done my memoirs in a book called Far Force. And then there was a follow-up to that, which I called Survival Course, which is my, the last year of the war when I wasn't in RLI and I was in what was called the Police Reserve. And then that covers the sort of adjustment or not to civilian life thereafter. Yeah, so that was the follow-up. And then I've done a CD novel set in Mozambique. I'm a senior copy. Thank you. Yes. Well, I'll buy one, certainly. I'll tell you what, I'd like to get a copy of your book. Absolutely. If you send me your address, I don't know which one you want. My wife is an ultra-runner. So she wants that one. Oh, it's good you'll be said that, otherwise she'd have got one of my druggy books. You'd be like, what? No, I mean, my Survival Course, the sequel to Far Force, is a lot of that. I mean, I can identify there what you went through. Yes, thank you. We'll put all your links below, Chris. So anybody listening, I strongly encourage you to get Chris and come and speak for you because this has just been an absolutely unbelievable chat. It's been so special, Chris. Thank you. Well, I don't hope I'm sure everybody watching will appreciate it as much as I do. So thank you ever so much. Thank you, Chris, and very nice. How did you find me, by the way? I did a little video on the Cat Badge thing about the Rangers and the Scouts. It's more because it ties into the new European army, which everyone's in denial about. And from not a political point, but from a way the world is going, I think people need to start waking up that we're losing everything, even our freedom now. And so back to the video I did. As you can tell, I've got a rudimentary idea of decolonisation, which is way more advanced than most English blokes would even begin to. I mean, a lot of people I have no doubt in this country don't even know where Africa is. Is it on the East or is it on the West? In fact, for people that are going, yeah, yeah, I had a Swedish girlfriend for seven years. The first time she came to England with me, I said, look, listen, just be prepared when I introduce you to my friends, they're going to say to you, oh, Sweden, oh, chocolate and cuckoo clocks. And she just looked at me as, oh, what? Because obviously Swedes think they're the epicentre of the planet. And let's give them the credit, they're quite happening, girls and guys up there, they're on the leading edge of technology and fashion and et cetera, et cetera. And she just looked at me in disbelief. And then, of course, when I brought her here to Devon, so this is my friend, so this is my girlfriend, she's from Sweden. And then, oh, cuckoo clocks, chocolate. And it was, I don't know for other, in England, we really have no, you know, we're not as bad as our American brothers and sisters, but we're pretty bad geographically. But going back to the video, so I said a couple of things in it. And I said the these salute scouts would have been quite bad bastards. And what I meant by that is they are facing a hardened enemy that don't muck around. There's not, you're not going to find Queensby rules in a bush, right? Yeah, this is what I was trying to say. And a couple of people picked up on it. And I also mentioned that I said that Rodisha was under apartheid. But what I meant is it was under white, white rule is I is probably what I was speaking for, which technically is a form of apartheid. Absolutely. It's just a word. I mean, it was segregationist. The apartheid's an Afrikaans word. Rodisha was just the same. Maybe not quite as hardcore as the South Africans, but it was apartheid. Yes. Well, thank you for clearing up. I don't feel so guilty upset so many people now, but yes. Chris, just stay on the line so I can thank you properly, but massive thank you again to all our friends at home. Massive love to you all. Please look after yourselves. Turn that bloody television off because none of it's true, and we'll create a better world where we don't have all this conflict. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, Chris.