Though he and his technician were lucky to escape alive, Eddie was annoyed with himself when he learned that the soldiers had only been waving in friendly manner at the passing helicopter.
Then in December 1975, SAAF Lieutenant van Rensburg was the only survivor of the Vumba cable incident in which General John Shaw and Colonel Dave Parker died. In March 1977, Mike Mulligan suffered head injuries in a crash following collision with power-lines near Mrewa. According to fellow pilots this brought about a substantial change to Mike’s character. This was because he had ended up inverted and, as would happen later to Mark Dawson, choked on his armour vest.
Returning to Op Miracle. Two days later, in the early hours of 29 September 1979, the Scouts fighting column commenced the difficult task of crossing the Honde River border into Mozambique. This constituted the only major obstruction between Rhodesia and the ZANLA base. The mobile force of Selous Scouts, Armoured Car Regiment and Rhodesian Artillery comprising one command vehicle nicknamed “the Pig”, nine Eland armoured cars, twelve infantry vehicles carrying 320 infantrymen, and six 25-pounder artillery guns.
In the absence of suitable bridging equipment, crossing the Honde River proved more difficult than expected. A bulldozer had to be used to pull every one of the vehicles through deep water and heavy mud resulting in a delay of almost seven hours. Whereas the column should have reached target to coincide with the first airstrikes at 07:00, they did not get there until mid-afternoon.
Ron Reid-Daly in his elevated command post on the border was no less frustrated by the delay than Air Commodore Norman Walsh and Lieutenant-Colonel Brian Robinson in the high-flying Command Dakota. They need not have worried! ZANLA did not budge in the face of air attacks and were well prepared for the first ground actions that occurred too late in the day to produce any meaningful results.
The jets revisited target a few times before the vehicle column eventually reached the western outskirts of the huge base. Extremely heavy and accurate fire greeted every striking aircraft, though miraculously none was hit. In the meanwhile, RLI paratroopers had been dropped well to the east of target and had walked in to set up a series of ambushes to cut off any CTs breaking eastward. Because breakout was expected to be westwards, the RLI was very thin on the ground. Events were to show that this was a major tactical cock-up because, whilst the mobile column was digging-in for the night in the face of a fair deal of enemy attention, the RLI was actively killing many CTs breaking their way.
From the outset it had been clear that the high mountain features overlooking the bases would be key to the outcome of Op Miracle. At the northernmost end of the range lay a prominent domed granite mountain stronghold the Scouts nicknamed ‘Monte Casino’ after the famous, strategically important defences on the Italian mountaintop monastery that the Germans defended so aggressively during WWII.
Monte Casino not only gave the defenders an excellent view of the Rhodesians below, it contained the majority of heavy guns and mortars defending the entire area of bases that swept in an arc from west through north to east. Within the area of bases there were many other anti-aircraft guns, all well sited and widely dispersed.
Just to the northeast of Monte Casino was a small isolated hill feature lying between two of the bases. This was nicknamed ‘Ack-Ack Hill’ because it contained a cluster of concentrated anti-aircraft gun positions. Then, to Casino’s south, a high ridge running southward gave a number of other anti-aircraft gunners and mortar teams superb visual command of all ground approaches to the base and to Monte Casino itself.
Early on the morning of Day Two the troops came under heavy and accurate fire from Monte Casino, making progress very slow. Low cloud disallowed air support; but then the same cloud lowered and blinded the defenders. This allowed the Elands to move closer to provide assault troops support from their incredibly accurate 90mm guns.
It was past midday before the Hunters could return to target, by which time a good assessment had been made and troublesome positions were pinpointed for their attention.
By mid-afternoon one particularly troublesome promontory (photo grid 070050) near the western CT base had been overrun by Scouts, but not before it had been hurriedly vacated, weapons and all. Nevertheless this vantage point gave improved observation of Monte Casino (photo grid 085065), allowing accurate direction to be passed to Hunter pilots, the mortars and Elands firing against enemy emplacements that had survived earlier attention.
Following one concentrated bombardment of Monte Casino, an attempt to overrun its heights was thwarted by intense fire from Ack-Ack Hill (photo grid 095110), together with hand-grenades lobbed down from the unseen defenders above. Meanwhile, widespread fighting continued all day as troops laboriously worked through two large bases lying closest to Monte Casino (centred on photo grids 065098 and 060115).
By nightfall of Day Two, Rhodesian forces had established themselves for a renewed attempt against the main defences the next day. Otherwise a situation of stalemate appeared to exist in the target areas with both sides settling to wait out the long night. Meanwhile the RLI had another busy night shooting an increased number of CTs fleeing east. To the west, the Scouts pseudo teams waited patiently, but nothing came their way.
Captain Peter Stanton, having transferred from the Special Branch to the Selous Scouts, spent the night interrogating a captured CT who turned out to be the man responsible for ZANLA’s base defences. Again the Rhodesians had managed to secure a key man at a critical time. From him, Peter Stanton acquired all the details of the ZANLA defences, which were then passed to unit commanders before they launched into action on Day Three. The first of these involved clearing all the defences of a long ridge south of Casino (commencing at 072039 and extending well off the photograph through 077028).
Also revealed by the captured CT was the fact that Rex Nhongo had been at the base when the first airstrikes went in on Day One. He had crashed his Land Cruiser (around photo grid 050110) in his hurry to get away. He had then taken another vehicle and departed for Chimoio. The Selous Scouts found the crashed vehicle exactly where Peter Stanton said it would be and, following temporary repairs, it was brought back to Rhodesia at the conclusion of the operation.
Hunter strikes were placed on each defended position before Scouts moved in to secure them. In a series of surprisingly smooth-flowing actions, the entire ridge was cleared. Ack-Ack Hill was all but neutralised by Hunters delivering Golf bombs before troops overran it. These actions made it possible to mount a second attempt on Monte Casino.
When the assault took place, however, the troops were amazed to find the mountaintop deserted. Survivors had left behind many of their dead in trenches and crevasses. Wrecked guns lay strewn about the pulverised ground, which had been totally denuded of vegetation. The fact that the trees immediately outside of the anti-aircraft gun sites were still standing bore testimony to the accuracy of ground and airstrikes.
Incredibly, the soldiers came upon Jamie and Amie off to one side of the devastated area. The two baboons immediately settled down when the Scouts took them into their care. Also taken into care were a few surviving anti-aircraft guns that had been moved but then abandoned.
Following sharp actions that neutralised odd pockets of resistance, all the bases had been overrun by the end of Day Three. As they progressed through the bases burning and destroying all structures, the troops could see how well the defences and bunker systems had been prepared. Huge quantities of cooked food, found uneaten in the large kitchens, confirmed the estimated occupancy on Day One to be somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 male and female CTs.
The great majority of ZANLA had left the area in what appeared to be an ordered easterly withdrawal. Had this been anticipated, more troops would have been positioned east of the base. As it was, the gaps between the RLI ambush locations were too wide to prevent the outflow, though many CTs had fallen to the sharp-shooting soldiers.
Thought was immediately given to mounting a new operation as it seemed certain there would be many
