following contact with many terrorists in ambush but did not know what had happened to Nick Smith or Timitiya.
John Rogers and Hoffy lifted Mac Willar with troops and spare ammunition forward to link up with these men. By the time he arrived the rest of Nick Smith’s troops, drawn by the earlier noise of Ian’s helicopter, were also there. Mac moved off with the troops to the site of the ambush where he found the bodies of Nick Smith and Sergeant Major Timitiya. In the meanwhile, I had collected the one and only terrorist captured thus far. He was an SAANC man who had panicked during the firefight and had been found and arrested by locals living in a small tribal village about eight kilometres away.
Hoffy and I landed at the ambush site when trackers confirmed the area safe and terrorists well clear. They had left this position in the direction that should have taken them directly to the ambush positions Ken Pierson had prepared. I joined in on an inspection of the contact site that showed the terrorists had moved across open ground, which they had obviously selected as ideal killing ground for a prepared ambush. They then orbited in a wide left-hand circuit and setup a crescent-shaped ambush along the edge of a line of scrub overlooking the selected killing ground. Here they dug shallow shell-scrapes to await the arrival of troops they knew must be close by, because they had heard Hoffy’s helicopter deploying Nick’s callsign at the fence.
The terrorists may have been forced to initiate the ambush early when troops of the left echelon were about to bump the right side of their ambush line. By this time, however, Nick and Timitiya were abreast of the RPD machine-guns clustered at the centre of the ambush line. Nick was totally exposed with no cover at all whereas Timitiya was next to a lone tree. The firefight that ensued was intense and it was clear that Nick and Timitiya had used deliberately aimed conservative fire, whereas the other troops had expended their limited issue of ammunition. In retrospect the standard issue of two full magazines and only twenty rounds of reserve ammunition was way too little for situations such as this. It was a hard-learned lesson!
Clearly the eight dead terrorists, five with RPD machineguns, in the centre of the ambush line had been taken out by deadly accurate fire from Nick and Timitiya. The tree that Timitiya had used to steady himself whilst firing his MAG machine-gun from the hip was riddled with bullet strikes high above his head with just one single graze mark from the round that struck him in the head. Most bullet strikes to his body had occurred after death. Judging from his line of spent cartridges, Nick had run directly towards the ambush line before he went down because, without any cover, outright aggression must have been his only option.
Of greatest concern was that Nick’s VHF radio had been taken by the terrorists. Also taken was Nick’s FN rifle, Timitiya’s MAG and a number of packs which had been thrown off when the firing started. The capture of SF clothing by the terrorists posed a greater problem than the radio, because all spare batteries were still in the possession of one of the RAR survivors.
Only when the loss of the radio became known was Hoffy able to make sense of a VHF call he had received from an African male asking him to come and pick up wounded men. The caller had used the word ‘helicopter’ instead of the usual ‘Cyclone 7’ when a caller did not know a helicopter pilot’s personal callsign. Hoffy had tried to get this caller to give him a locstat (grid reference) of his position. There was no reply so Hoffy got on with what he was doing.
There was plenty of evidence to show that a number of wounded terrorists had left the ambush site with the main body. Along the trail an RAR tracker detected drag marks leading to a clump of scrub off to one side of tracks that showed the group had been walking in single file. Here the bodies of two more terrorists were found. I popped in to take a photograph of these bodies on my way back to Point 222.
A sudden change in course by the terrorists, who had been heading directly for the RAR ambush sites on the Nata River, must have been induced by the sound of the gunfire that killed Ken Pierson. A tracker-combat group under Lieutenant Bill Winall picked up on the tracks from the Nata River at around 10 o’clock.
The SAP helicopter arrived at Point 222 where the pilot indicated he was keen to become involved. However, we could not task him until we were given instructions on how he, his technician and his aircraft were to be employed and what restrictions, if any, applied. Nevertheless, both pilot and technician were able to assist with the interrogation of the SAANC prisoner who could only speak Afrikaans and Xhosa. They established that an SAANC man was leading the group and that he would respond to radio calls in Afrikaans.
John Rogers piloted the SAP helicopter whilst the two South African men held the SAANC prisoner and monitored his VHF transmission as he attempted to get a response from the terrorist leader. John kept an eye on the Becker Homer hoping to get a direction, but no reply was made. In hopes that the terrorist leader was listening in on the radio, the prisoner transmitted a prepared message in Afrikaans and, using his own pseudonym, recommended that the leader should surrender because there was no chance of anyone surviving as he could see the Rhodesian security forces were determined to kill him and all his followers. We never did find out if those calls were received.
When I flew over to check on his progress at around 11:00, I noticed that Bill Winall had two police handlers with their dogs. His callsign was moving in single file through high dry scrub with the dogs following the trail, now heading east for the first time. Flying high so as not to give terrorists any specific indication of the follow-up, I did a survey of the ground ahead. On the line of movement, about six kilometres ahead of the troops, thick scrub gave way to open, treed savannah where ground rose gently to a flat crest before descending more steeply to the banks of the Tegwani River. On a section of this river bright-green trees lining both banks contrasted strongly with the otherwise drab brown countryside. Here I found surface water in the riverbed, the only water for miles around.
Having seen this, I flew off northeastward well away from the area before heading back across the line of the followup group. When I passed over Bill Winall’s callsign, I was surprised to see how little progress had been made in the twenty minutes since I had plotted his last position. The line of men was moving very slowly in terrific heat and most noticeable was that the dogs were no longer leading but were trailing behind the troops.
At Point 222 I liaised with John Rogers and Major Mac Willar who had been gathering in new troops for deployment ahead of the terrorists. I told them of Bill Winall’s last position and of the water in the Tegwani River. We agreed the terrorists must have reached the high ground from which they would certainly have seen the green trees along the Tegwani River. This would undoubtedly attract them, having been without water since leaving Leasha Pan. I suggested we try jet-strikes along the south bank of the river and this was agreed.
An Airstrike Request was processed through Flight Lieutenant Doug Butler’s FASOC at Shapi Pans. We asked for a Hunter strike at 15:00 to be followed by a Canberra strike at 18:00. The reason for two strikes was that, if the terrorists had been caught in a Hunter strike, survivors would return to water and any kit they might have abandoned after about two hours believing that no further strike would occur. If on the other hand they had not yet reached the water when the Hunters struck, thirst would make them move to the inviting green trees feeling confident that no further air action would follow.
At 14:50 I passed high over Bill Winall and in veiled language told him that, “Cyclone One (Hunters) will be making a speculative strike, I repeat speculative, on a location ahead of you.” It was necessary to use veiled speech knowing that the terrorists might be listening to me on the captured radio. Ten minutes later, on a different frequency, I talked the Hunters onto the stretch of green trees on the south bank of the Tegwani. Four Hunters struck with 68mm rockets and 30mm guns exactly as instructed.
John Rogers’ helicopter was without fuel so he commandeered the SAP half-full helicopter to control the Canberra strike. At 18:00 he talked two Canberras, each with ninety-six 28-pound fragmentation bombs, onto the target. On his way back to Point 222 he switched from the airstrike frequency and immediately received a frantic call from Bill Winall. Bill’s callsign had been attacked by the terrorists and had suffered serious casualties. He had fought them off but did not know how far they were from his position.
John Rogers was too low on fuel to go to Bill’s immediate assistance. At Point 222 all fuel drums lay empty and it was getting dark. The SAP helicopter as well as John’s and mine were empty and it would be ages before Hoffy, Chris and Ian returned with fuel from Shapi Pans. In any event, any thought of going into Bill’s location that night was discarded as any helicopter with its landing light on would be a sitting duck to the terrorists whose
