dead. When Captain Brian Robinson had recovered from the surprise of the incident, he sent a signal to the Quartermaster General offering SAS congratulations for his unit’s first confirmed kill. The QMG was not amused!
Everything was going RLI’s way until, on 18 March 1968, contact was made at the Mwaura River with a large group led by Hedebe himself. Under Lieutenant Dumpy Pearce, troops of 3 Commando RLI were pinned down on the north bank by intensive fire coming down on them from heavy bush on the higher south bank. John Barnes with Senior Technician Monty Maughan arrived in their helicopter and put down 600 rounds of MAG fire into the position of the unseen enemy. Their intention was to draw attention to themselves and give the ground commander a chance to move his troops to a safer position. Since this had no effect whatsoever, and the troops remained pinned down, John called for heavy airstrike.
Meanwhile Mark McLean with Corporal Brian Warren came in at lower level to draw terrorist gunfire, which was returned in short measured bursts. Though the helicopter expended only 150 rounds of 7.62mm MAG ammunition, Mark’s actions gave Dumpy Pearce the break he needed to move his men to safer ground. Then, under Mark McLean’s directions, a pair of Vampires put in accurate strikes with 60-pound squash-head rockets and 20mm cannon fire before a Canberra checked-in preparatory to making an attack with ninety-six 28-pound Frag bombs.
Newly appointed OC of 5 Squadron, Squadron Leader John Rogers, had elected to fly the air task, much to the annoyance of his experienced Canberra crews. When he called one minute out, Mark passed low over the target to place down a phosphorus grenade as a visual marker. The marker was on the terrorists’ position but wind carried its white cloud away from target. The bomb-aimer concentrated his aim on this cloud with the consequence that bombs were released off target, some to explode near ground troops waiting in the ‘safer ground’. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt.
When the somewhat annoyed troops moved forward, no fire came down on them because the terrorists had pulled out. By the time they had swept through the abandoned area and established the direction of flight, it had become too dark to follow tracks. The following day the tracker-combat callsign was moving on a trail heading straight for the escarpment.
At the same time, a smaller callsign was following frothy pink splatters of blood from a single terrorist who obviously had a serious lung wound. By late afternoon they had not closed on this man but reported that spoor of two hyenas overlaid the tracks of the wounded terrorist. Believing the terrorist would not survive the night, the follow-up troops were uplifted for re-deployment to more important task.
It was probably five years later when I was asked by Special Branch if I remembered the Op Cauldron terrorist we had given up for dead because hyenas were following him; I certainly did. “Would you like to meet the man?” I was asked. It seemed unbelievable but I met the recently captured terrorist whose beaming face showed he was pleased to be alive following his second brush with our security forces. His story was amazing. No white man would have survived the ordeal he described.
He had been wounded in the attack made by Vampires. He panicked and ran off even before the main group under Hedebe left the contact site. All night and the next day, he struggled for breath as he made his way to the foot of the escarpment. In the late afternoon his attention was drawn to a helicopter coming from behind him. Only then did he see, for the first time, the two hyenas as the helicopter frightened them off. When the aircraft landed it was so close that he could see the rotor blades whirling above low scrub. He tried to get back to it for help but moved too slowly. As the helicopter rose into full view he waved madly trying to attract attention but he was not seen before the helicopter turned and disappeared.
The two hyenas then reappeared and stayed about thirty metres behind him as he commenced his breathless ascent of the steep escarpment. By then it was almost dark and he was too tired and breathless to continue. So he sat down and faced the hyenas as they moved left and right in short runs, each time coming closer. When they were no more than ten metres away he shot one but missed the other and chased it with a long burst from his AK-47 rifle. Overwhelmed by tiredness, he lay down to sleep; surely to die.
He was amazed when he awoke at dawn, wheezing and frothing with his clothing covered in freezing-cold, caked blood. But he was still alive! All day he struggled slowly up the steep escarpment until evening when he lay exhausted and wanting to die. Again he was amazed at the dawning of the third day. Still wheezing and frothing he struggled to his feet and wobbled on ever higher. By nightfall he had reached the high ground and was about to lie down when he noticed a light shining some way off. He noted its position by reference to a tree and went to sleep; again not believing he would survive the night. But, yet again, he awoke on the fourth day.
Taking a line on the tree and noting the relative position of the sun he plodded off. At around 10 o’clock he came to a farm store that sold goods to the local African people. He was recognised for what he was but told the superstitious storekeeper how he had been unharmed by hyenas; an omen the keeper should know was deadly to anyone reporting his presence.
Using his Rhodesian money he bought a large bottle of Dettol for his wound as well as something to eat and drink. He repeated his warnings of doom to anyone reporting him and returned to the bush. Under shade in good cover he cut a long thin stick and stripped the bark away. He then inserted the stick into the wound in his chest and manoeuvred the stick until it came through the exit hole on his left shoulder blade. Then, moving the stick in and out slowly in long strokes, he poured the undiluted Dettol into the entry point and down his shoulder into the large exit hole of his terrible wound. Having emptied the bottle and removed the stick he knew in his mind that he would heal. He settled down to eat and drink before falling into a deep sleep that lasted for at least two days.
The Special Branch man asked the terrorist to remove his shirt so that I could see his scars. The shiny black puckered scars and the dent caused by the loss of a section of shoulder blade showed how large the chunk of shrapnel from a Vampire rocket must have been. I asked the man, “Was it not very painful when you pushed the stick through your body? Didn’t the Dettol burn like crazy?” He said that these were not a problem. “I was choking on neat Dettol blowing out of both holes and into my throat. It was the choking that nearly killed me!”
Returning to Op Cauldron itself. On 26 March 1968 three young Rhodesian Light Infantry soldiers were killed in two separate actions; all three happened to be under the age of eighteen. This caused such an outcry throughout the country that every soldier under eighteen years of age had to be withdrawn from operations. Most were in the field at the time and had to be gathered in by helicopters. Almost without exception they objected strongly and tried to lie their way out of having to return to base.
In the meantime Hedebe’s group was already well south and closing with the farming area on the high ground above the escarpment. So a second forward HQ manned mainly by police reservists was established at Doma Police Station. This was called Red Base. When I arrived there my first tasks were in support of small teams of PATU (Police Anti-TerroristUnit) who, using African game-trackers, were cross-graining for Hedebe’s group along the northern most farms fence lines. Quite by accident I learned of shotgun traps set for wild pigs in maize fields where they did great damage to crops. Through the Police I arranged for the farmers to disarm all the gun- traps to safeguard PATU cross-graining patrols as well as the RLI tracker-combat group following Hedebe’s trail.
Red Base was well organised by PATU who were all local farmers. With wives roped in, they provided excellent meals and a good bar service. Toilets and showers were pretty basic but they proved to be an absolute luxury for Norman Walsh and his technician when they flew up from the discomforts at Dean’s Camp. Following a hot shower and a good meal, Norman prepared to return to flies and dust whilst grumbling at me for being “a sporny blighter with all the comforts”.
On 2 April, I flew from Red Base to the tracker-combat group, now on lush high ground some five kilometres north of the east-west fence line running next to the maize fields from which gun-traps had been removed. I found the callsign of about 15 RLI men moving in shallow echelon formation across an open grass vlei with clumps of trees and small rock strewn hills ahead. As soon as I saw the lead trackers I also saw the well- defined trail that the terrorists had made through lush green grass. I followed this trail without difficulty to where it turned east just short of the fence line.
