these, Cocky conducted a post-strike recce and confirmed that six vehicles, including a petrol bowser, had been destroyed, thus accounting for the entire resupply column.
Chapter 9
Posting to COMOPS
IN LATE NOVEMBER 1978, I was promoted to the rank group captain and replaced Norman Walsh as Director of Operations at COMOPS Headquarters. Of all the postings I might have been given, this was the only one I dreaded. Almost every man in the field thoroughly disliked this command unit and I did not relish the idea of serving under Bertie Barnard, now a major-general and still Director-General of Operations at COMOPS.
Lieutenant-General Peter Walls and his deputy, Air Marshal Mick McLaren, called me to their respective offices to welcome me but neither one gave me any specific direction other than to say I must start off by familiarising myself with COMOPS routines. At the time, General Barnard was away on long leave.
Unfortunately Wing Commander Dag Jones had also been posted out of COMOPS, leaving his replacement Squadron Leader Terence Murphy and me as new boys. We anchored on SAS Lieutenant-Colonel Brian Robinson who helped us settle in. Major Peter Burford, son of my old boss when I was an apprentice in Umtali back in 1956, was very helpful in running us through COMOPS procedures.
The tempo of external operations was increasing and occupied much of our attention, though Terence and I were little more than observers during lead-up planning for the Mulungushi and Mboroma actions. My first authoritative input came with the Moatize hangar strike. However, whenever time permitted Terence Murphy and I focused our attention on the internal scene.
For some months a force of auxiliaries (armed militiamen) had been building up as a counter to ZANLA and to provide protection for civilians in the rural areas. The black politicians, Bishop Muzorewa and Reverend Sithole both claimed that they had huge support amongst ZANLA personnel who would willingly come over in support of the new Zimbabwe-Rhodesia Government. Their claims proved to be little more than wishful thinking, because only a handful of genuine CTs responded to their much-publicised calls to ‘come in from the bush’.
In an attempt to save face, both Muzorewa and Sithole gathered in many out-of-work loafers and crooks, claiming them to be ZANLA men. They fooled nobody but had succeeded in persuading COMOPS to arrange for the rabble to be given rudimentary training in arms. The task initially fell to Ron Reid-Daly’s Selous Scouts who were horrified by the whole affair. Nevertheless they commenced training hundreds of undisciplined ruffians using old farmsteads as training bases.
Many dangerous situations were faced by the men assigned to training the auxiliaries, known as Pfumo re Vanhu (Spear of the People), because of a belligerent attitude induced in them by the few genuine CTs in their midst and by the black politicians who were, as always, vying for power. On one occasion a life-threatening situation developed necessitating the full Fireforce action that destroyed one fully armed group of the Sithole faction.
By the time I entered COMOPS, there were Pfumo re Vanhu auxiliary forces in many of the collective villages and responsibility for training new auxiliaries had passed to Army and Police units, releasing Selous Scouts for to their rightful duties.
Some groups worked well whereas others treated the tribesmen in the same manner as CT thugs. On the whole, however, Pfumo re Vanhu succeeded in achieving many of their objectives. Only when our war was over did we learn of the very real threat they had posed to ZANLA.
Squadron Leader Terence Murphy, an ex-British Marine helicopter pilot, came to COMOPS fresh from Fireforce operations. With no specific task given to us, he and I conducted a joint study of internal operations and this led us to focusing on the auxiliaries.
Knowing the force levels already deployed and those in the pipeline, we worked out what we considered to be the optimum distribution of Pfumo re Vanhu forces to create maximum disruption and hindrance to ZANLA. Having done this, we put our thoughts and plans to an assembly of Army officers and SB men. Also attending was Squadron Leader Jock McGregor. All agreed there was good sense and merit in our proposals. We had only just done this when General Barnard returned from leave.
Nobody seemed to have missed him whilst he was away but Bert Barnard had no time to listen to our plan claiming he had more important matters to attend. When eventually he did find time, he made continuity of our presentation almost impossible by interjecting after every statement we, the ignorant Blue jobs, made.
At one point a very irritated Terence Murphy, referring to his own Army training and experience, but without actually being rude, made it known that he had never known such arrogant interference from any senior officer during any of many staff presentations he had attended. Though surprised and somewhat taken aback by Terence’s clever wording, I was pleased that he had made it possible for us to pick up on our thoughts and continue the briefing without further interruption.
At the conclusion General Barnard thanked us for what we had done but said our plan would not work. So it came as a surprise to learn from Squadron Leader Jock McGregor, who was one of two secretaries who attended all NATJOC meetings, that General Barnard had presented NATJOC with his personal plan for the deployment of Auxiliaries. Jock said it was identical to the presentation he had attended when Terry and I put our plan to him and other Officers. I realised immediately that we should be pleased that the ‘Barnard Plan’ had been adopted rather than become thoroughly fed up with the whole affair. Nevertheless Barnard’s underhandedness was galling.
ZANLA infiltration continued unabated and many CT groups were operating in depth in southern Matabeleland and the central Midlands. In one particular follow-up close to Ian Smith’s farm at Gwenora, there was a contact with CT’s that led to a serious air accident.
Flight Lieutenant Ray Bolton had been conducting helicopter conversions for non-Air Force pilots with a view to establishing if this was a viable way of bolstering operational helicopter pilot numbers. One of Ray’s students was game-ranger Kerry Fynn who had been trained by the Air Force some years earlier. Ray and Kerry were at Thornhill when news of the contact came through and both flew troops to the scene and placed them down under direction of the unseen callsign on the ground.
Ray then saw the callsign but he could not see any CTs. Feeling certain that game-ranger Kerry stood a better chance of spotting them, he called Kerry over to look around. It so happened that the ground callsign then started giving a helicopter direction to turn ‘right’ to position over the terrorist group, but each pilot thought the direction was for him and both responded. Almost immediately Kerry spotted terrorists, rolled sharply to port to bring his gunner Corporal Turner into position to open fire, but collided with Ray’s helicopter, which was crossing his path.
Both helicopters were crippled and crashed. Kerry and his technician died instantly, as did Corporal Cutmore, who was flying with Ray. Miraculously Ray survived the inverted crash because of the protection given his head and body by his armoured seat.
