When (Group Captain) Norman Walsh called me forward to inspect the air weapons effects, it was rapidly approaching the time for recovery to Rhodesia; in fact helicopters from Lake Alexander were already airborne enroute to uplift troops. It was only in the air on the short leg to Chimoio that I realized just how late it was. With so much noisy activity and so much to do, eight hours appeared to have compressed into mere minutes.
There was too little time to inspect more than a portion of an Alpha bomb strike and one site struck by Golf bombs. Nevertheless this was more than enough to let me see what I needed to see. In fact I saw more than I bargained for and the experience shook me to the very core of my being.
The four-man SAS callsign assigned to protect and assist me were clearly amused by my discomfort at being on the ground. The real fighting was over and for these men Chimoio had become a quiet environment. Not so for one who felt safest in the air. I dropped to the ground as bullets cracked overhead then raised myself sheepishly when I realized no one else had taken cover. The next time a flurry of cracks sounded around us, I remained standing when all four SAS had dropped to the ground. “Never mind sir”, said the nearest soldier “it’s the ones you don’t hear that you need to worry about.”
The airstrike effects were very troubling. Analysing weapons efficiency and counting holes in dummy targets out on a prepared site at Katanga Range was one thing. To see the same weapons’ effects on human beings was quite another. I had seen many dead Rhodesians and CT killed in Fire Force actions and had witnessed the appalling carnage on civilians blown-up by ZANLA land mines; but here I was seeing something more horrifying. Those who had been killed by the troops were greater in number, but somehow their wounds appeared to me to be so much more acceptable than those taken out by bombs.
The SAS men escorting me were used to seeing bodies mutilated by grenades, land mines and even heavy air strikes. For me it was different. An airman’s war tends to be detached. Even seeing CTs running and going down under fire seemed remote. Never again did I accept airstrike casualty numbers as a means by which to judge our air successes without remembering the horrors of what I saw at Chimoio.
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It was a relief to lift off for the return flight to the Admin base and thence back to Rhodesia.