elephant escaping the slaughter would certainly induce panic in neighbouring herds.
Two baby jumbos that had been orphaned by ivory poachers roamed around the camp at Shapi Pans. They loved people and were a bit of a nuisance. Though small in elephant terms, they were amazingly powerful and would push one around seeking to be fed and scratched. Their interest in helicopters was a bit of a worry, but apart from leaving snotty marks on the vision panels they did no damage. Years later, in 1982, I saw these same two elephants. By then they were almost full grown at Ozzie Bristow’s Lion and Cheetah Park near Harare (new name for Salisbury).
I had known and feared Willie de Beer from school cadet camp days at Inkomo Barracks where he was Regimental Sergeant-Major. Now retired from the Army and serving as a ranger with National Parks, Willie offered to take me on a buffalo-culling operation that, because of Op Nickel, was being done by day. Buffalo were normally culled at night using powerful searchlights in specially designed vehicles. The one we used had 40mm holes in its metal sides, showing how dangerous a buffalo bull’s horns could be.
A young ranger aged about thirty by the name of van Heeden drove the vehicle, with Willie and me sharing the front seat. Four black game-ranger-trackers were standing behind us holding a rail that ran around the rear section of the open vehicle. We were a long way southeast of Shapi Pans searching the sandy road for fresh buffalo spoor when one of the trackers pointed to the road and said there were boot tracks of someone moving in the opposite direction to ourselves. We stopped and without hesitation the tracker said that these had been made no more than two minutes earlier.
I recognised the sole pattern immediately. It was the wellknown figure 8 pattern of boots issued to terrorists. Sand was still trickling at the edge of the spoor. Realising that we had passed close to a terrorist who was obviously trying to make his way back to Zambia, I warned the rangers there was the possibility that other terrorists were with him walking off the line of road. We turned around and had only gone a short distance following the spoor when it moved left off the road into the bush.
Willie, ignoring my advice to keep moving, climbed out of the vehicle and followed the tracks a short distance armed only with a dart gun that was intended to anaesthetise buffalo. He shouted out to the unseen terrorist to surrender. Nothing happened so Willie returned to the vehicle. I recommended that I drive the vehicle and drop off the young ranger with one of the trackers in an ambush position once we were down the road and out of sight. This was agreed. When we had gone about 150 metres and had thick bush on our left, I moved the gear lever to neutral whilst maintained engine revs and applied gentle hand-braking. The two men dismounted and we continued on to Shapi to collect troops.
When we returned after sunset a dead terrorist lay on the road. He had appeared as soon as we left and had run across the road, waited a while, then run diagonally across to the other side. His next crossing would be straight towards the hidden ranger who stood up and called to the terrorist to surrender. The unfortunate terrorist raised his weapon but knew nothing of the .375 magnum bullet that removed one vertebra from his neck. Van Heeden said he had aimed for the neck because he understood it was important for identification purposes not to damage a face.
The young ranger was deeply concerned that he might be placed on a murder charge and was feeling guilty because the SKS rifle this man was armed with had only one round of ammunition in it. When studies of papers and a notebook in the terrorist’s possession proved that he had been at Inyatue, the ranger accepted the legal situation but he remained shaken and depressed for having killed a human being.
On this same day, tracks of the five survivors from Ian Wardle’s contact were found and followed into thick bush close to the National Parks southeastern border game fence. A call to the terrorists to surrender was answered with automatic fire. Under covering fire, the RAR officer crawled forward and lobbed in a phosphorus grenade. This single grenade spewed phosphorus over all five terrorists whose smouldering bodies were found close together during a sweep through the site.
Earlier in the day, an RAR patrol spotted two terrorists collecting water from Leasha Pan. Long-range fire was initiated too early when these two men spotted the troops. One broke north and the other south. The man who ran north was ignored by the troops but was killed later that day by the game ranger. Tracks of the second moved south and led RAR trackers to a resting place from which about sixty terrorists had departed in a hurry.
Disastrous twenty-four hours
TRACKERS MOVED FAST ALONG THE trail that showed the terrorists had moved at a run for a considerable distance through open scrubland. When the trackers reached the point where the terrorists had broken through the game fence, Lieutenant Nick Smith arrived to take command of the follow-up along with extra troops flown in by Hoffy.
Two helicopters from Shapi Pans (I was still out with Willie de Beer) joined Hoffy in deploying other troops under command of Lieutenant Ken Pierson. Ken’s orders were to set up ambushes on the Nata River directly in line with Leasha Pan and the point the terrorists had crossed the game fence. It was dark when helicopters, flown by John Rogers and Ian Harvey, returned to Shapi Pans where Chris Dixon, who had recently arrived, joined them and me in a helicopter forwardlift of fuel for the following day.
All night long under a brilliant full moon we lifted fuel to a location just beyond the game fence close to a Botswanan border beacon known as Point 222. This was a frustrating job because we could only lift two drums of Avtur in our underslung cargo nets to Point 222 but then had to use one of these to get back to Shapi Pans for the next load. The net result of four helicopters flying throughout the night was that only twelve full drums of Avtur were available at the remote forward logistics base at dawn.
At the commencement of the fuel lift, Prop Geldenhuys flying a Provost at height provided communication between soldiers on the ground, Tac HQ and Brigade. The first sign of trouble came when Sergeant-Major Timitiya told Prop that Nick Smith had been shot and that he was under heavy fire. Nothing more was heard. Nick Smith failed to come up on the HF radio at the scheduled reporting time of 18.00 and there was no response to any call from Prop, the two companies or Brigade HQs. When Ken Pierson checked in on schedule, he reported having heard heavy firing from Nick Smith’s area and said he could not raise Nick on VHF. Deep concern had already set in as Prop continued trying, unsuccessfully, to raise Nick. I remember how impressed I was by Prop’s cool manner and efficiency in conveying what needed to be said.
Prop was then a PAI (Pilot Armament Instructor) on 4 Squadron, which amazed me because, as a past student of mine, he seemed too young to be doing such a responsible job. It took some time before it dawned on me that I had been just as young in similar circumstances.
More anguish was added to the night when Prop relayed the appalling news that Ken Pierson was dead. Ken had been shot by one of his own men when he moved from one ambush position to another. As dawn broke I flew from Point 222 to the Company HQ were Hoffy gave Bob Whyte and me a very welcome cup of coffee whilst we refuelled from his diminishing stock of Avtur. All he had in the way of food was tinned pilchards in tomato sauce. Having eaten nothing since breakfast the previous day, I was able to face the cold fish and hard ration biscuits in preparation for what promised to be a long day.
At some time during the night John Rogers had flown Major Mac Willar from Shapi Pans to the Company HQ. Mac was still in discussion with the company commanders Ray Howden and Taffy Marchant when Ian Harvey called the ops room to say he had been attracted to the game fence by smoke rising from a small fire. Here he found some of Nick Smith’s troops in a state of despair. They reported that they had run out of ammunition
