Walsh and Brian in the borrowed helicopter, albeit with reduced communication facilities, allowed organised movement to recommence.
Along the entire assault line, soldiers moved forwards continuously killing every ZANLA in their path. With so much ground to cover and with so many CTs in hiding, the fighting went on all day. Independently, K-Cars took on allcomers within and beyond the primary target.
The incoming and outgoing flow of communications to and from the command helicopter was relentless but rewarding. Norman ordered many Hunter and Canberra strikes against tough points to ensure that the roll-up action kept momentum. The gridded photographs of Chimoio allowed him to pass each target point to the striking pilots with pinpoint accuracy. Once his orders were issued, he could get on with other matters without having to oversee the strikes. At times there were as many as four targets lined up for near-simultaneous attention.
Brian Robinson had over sixty callsigns to deal with, a mind-boggling situation that he managed with incredible skill. His numerous actions as the Army commander in Fireforce actions had certainly prepared him well for this high-pressure situation.
Back at the Admin Base, with so much going on around me all at once over such a large area, I experienced moments of helplessness, even panic, when I felt I was not managing to do all that was expected of me. Fortunately our pilots and technicians got on with their work in typically efficient fashion, offering help or simply taking action without my having to ask them to do so. The RLI ‘protection troops’ were outstanding, having developed and maintained a smooth and cheerful routine.
A little after midday one SAS soldier who had been killed in action, Frans Nel, and a couple of casualties were delivered to me. I had been expecting many casualties throughout the day but these were the only ones that came to the Admin Base. This was incredible considering the very high number of dead ZANLA the K-Car pilots reported seeing in their own target areas and in the ground through which the assault troops had passed.
One of the Vampires was crippled by ground fire. Air Lieutenant Phil Haigh was flying the FB9 that sustained damage as it crossed over Vanduzi crossroads on return to base. This caused his engine to fail some way short of the border. Rather than attempt the notoriously dangerous act of abandoning an FB 9, Phil chose to glide across the border and make a forced landing in Rhodesia. This might have worked had the aircraft not run into the deep
When Norman Walsh called me forward to inspect air weapons’ effects, it was rapidly approaching the time for recovery to Rhodesia; in fact helicopters from Lake Alexander were already airborne en route to uplift troops. It was only in the air on the short leg to Chimoio that I realised just how late it was. With so much noisy activity and so much to do, eight hours appeared to have compressed into mere minutes.
There was too little time to inspect more that a portion of an Alpha bomb strike and one site struck by Golf bombs. Nevertheless this was more than enough to let me see what I needed to see. In fact I saw more than I bargained for and the experience shook me to the very core of my being.
The four-man SAS callsign assigned to protect and assist me were clearly amused by my discomfort at being on the ground. The real fighting was over and for these men Chimoio had become a quiet environment. Not so for one who felt safest in the air. I dropped to ground as bullets cracked overhead then raised myself sheepishly when I realised no one else had taken cover. The next time a flurry of cracks sounded around us, I remained standing when all four SAS had dropped to the ground. “Never mind, sir,” said the nearest soldier, “it’s the ones you don’t hear that you need to worry about.”
The air strike effects were very troubling. Analysing weapons efficiency and counting holes in dummy targets out on a prepared site at Kutanga Range was one thing. To see the same weapons’ effects on human beings was quite another. I had seen many dead Rhodesians and CT killed in Fireforce actions and had witnessed the appalling carnage on civilians blown up by ZANLA landmines; but here I was seeing something more horrifying. Those who had been killed by the troops were greater in number, but somehow their wounds appeared to me to be so much more acceptable than those taken out by bombs.
The SAS men escorting me were used to seeing bodies mutilated by grenades, landmines and even heavy airstrikes. For me it was different. An airman’s war tends to be detached. Even seeing CTs running and going down under air fire seemed remote. Never again did I accept airstrike casualty numbers as the means by which to judge our air successes without remembering the horror of what I saw at Chimoio.
It was a relief to lift off for the return flight to the Admin Base and thence back to Rhodesia.
The sun set as we crossed the border. In darkness we followed a long line of red rotating beacons as the largest-ever gathering of helicopters flew into Grand Reef. No cold beer ever tasted so good!
The Chimoio phase of Op Dingo was almost closed. In one day, ZANLA had lost in excess of 1,200 combatants dead with a much larger number missing or wounded. This had cost Rhodesia two servicemen killed, about six wounded (none seriously) and one Vampire.
The SAS stay-behind forces remained in ambush positions for the night and accounted for more CTs who thought all the Rhodesians had gone home. Early next morning, these men destroyed whatever buildings and equipment remained before helicopters recovered them along with selected equipment, and piles of captured documents.
Chimoio Base lay littered with bodies, burned-out structures and destroyed equipment. Hundreds of wounded ZANLA were pouring into FRELIMO’s provincial town of Chimoio. The two ZANLA commanders we had hoped to take out, Josiah Tongogara and Rex Nhongo, were not in base and escaped as they had done before and would do time and time again.
We knew that, when they gathered courage to do so, ZANLA’s leadership would visit the battle-site to ensure that all evidence of ZANLA’s arms was removed. They must do this before calling international observers to witness the burial of ‘Zimbabwean refugees’ because ZANLA had registered Chimoio Base, along with all other military establishments, as a refugee camp.
We knew that particular attention would be given to showing the UN High Commission for Refugees the bodies of a number of teenagers killed at Chimoio. These were the school children that had been forced, or enticed, to leave schools in Rhodesia to undergo military training in Mozambique. No doubt the chalk boards and timetables the SAS soldiers had seen in two classrooms would have been cleared of their Marxist slogans and instructions on weapons-handling. They were sure to have been adorned with make-believe items ‘to prove their good works in teenager education’.
Phase One of Op Dingo was over. The countdown for Phase Two had already started as emergency repairs to the helicopters were hurried through with little time to spare.
Tembue attack
THE EASTERN SKY HAD ONLY just begun to light up on Friday, 25 November, as twenty-two helicopters lifted out of Mtoko and Mount Darwin on the first leg of the 320-kilometre journey to Tembue. The reserve force of ten helicopters was to follow one hour later with spares.
Squadron Leader Rex Taylor, with a small team of Air Force VR and RLI troops, awaited the arrival of the helicopters at a ‘staging base’. This base was sited at the eastern end of a long, flat, high feature known as ‘the Train’ lying between the Rhodesian border and Lake Cabora Bassa in Tete Province. The mountain was so named
