Rhodesian Light Infantry
I served with the RLI, Support Commando Recce troop from April 1979-to Sept-1980. The RLI was one of the professional soldiers I have served with in Africa along with the 44 Para Bde Pathfinder CO SADF.
As a Vietnam combat paratrooper it was a great to be a soldier and be able to to our job.....engage & destroy the enemy. If the Army was not betrayed the country would have continued to be a diamond in Africa.
Primary source info on RLI "boots on the ground"
I had the occasion to correspond with an RLI veteran (who shall remain anonymous), and asked him a few questions to round out my fairly broad understanding of Fire Force Ops in Rhodesia.
I'm always curious as to how the various Rhodesian security forces performed on the ground, as some of their lessons may be important as the Marine Corps looks to refine its Distributed Operations concept.
My questions, and the very in-depth reply, are posted below in 2 parts:
As a "troopie", you definitely operated at the level I am interested in. I understand the flushing fire used in Drake shoots, and I've never been able to find any good references to how you guys did it. I mean, geometry of fires is an important thing to consider in any offensive action, and the current military tactic is to use a 90 degree offset as much as possible between the covering force and maneuvering force.
You gentlemen had stop groups all over the place, blocking likely avenues of escape once the terrs went to ground. I can only imagine that deconflicting the location of the stops and sweep line must have been difficult.
Did most of the deconfliction come from amongst the NCOs leading the sticks, from the FF commander in the K-car, or a combination of both? I imagine each contact was different and you were sometimes undermanned, but with even three stops on the ground and a sweep line, I'm thinking crossfire!
How much did the NCO's appreciation of the terrain come into play, and did stop groups attempt to find cover behind a decent piece of terrain? Or did you often find yourselves simply going prone and waiting to see what appeared?
As for your stick radios, what sort of range did you get with them, and did you ever find it lacking on a FF op? I'm assuming that with the K-car aloft, or a ParaDak overhead as a radio relay, the various elements could communicate, even it took some time.
A final question for now...What did you think of the anti-aircraft threat against the Alouettes when you were inbound to the contact zone? Were RPGs, SAMs, and ground fire just a routine part of the fight, or not often encountered? I ask because I am a firm believer that we are not employing our helicopter assests in Iraq to the fullest extent, because we fear the threat is too high. In a way, I feel it is almost shameful, because we are fighting the insurgents on their terms. the Rhodesian air force certainly had fewer airframes and precious spares, but had the helos on top of the bad guys all the time.I joined the RLI at the beginning of 1980, and so I am no expert on Fire Force. However to answer your questions I can add the following, with an apology for making statements that you have already covered, and repeating the obvious:
Other than Fire Force ops, RLI also carried out the usual patrol, ambush, O.P. operations expected of infantry units. Our use of fire and movement, snap and drake shooting etc, was basically the same regardless of the operation type, the difference being the immediate helicopter assistance available in Fire Force. As far as 90 degree offsets for covering sweep lines are concerned, we generally didn`t use them, although they were certainly part of anti-vehicular ambush drills, and L-shaped ambushes etc.
Obviously, when sweeping, everyone moved forward (reasonably slowly), keeping the line as straight as feasible (a wry smile as I write this). When contact is made the action would depend largely on the distance of the terrs from the troops, immediate action drills dictating the response - together with the nature of the terrain and bush (I don`t actually think you can ever train enough to cover all the possibilities) A very close contact would result in an immediate run through (the thickness of the bush could prevent that), while longer distances would result in drake shooting - emptying 2 magazines each as quickly as accuracy makes possible into likely cover, together with K-car shells etc etc. We would not waste time trying to identify the exact position of the individual terrs (ie looking for muzzle flash etc), although obvious targets would be dispatched immediately. Observation of the target was generally carried out while drake shooting. At some appropriate point the sweep became a skirmish line, ie splitting the sweep into two, the left section (called a flank) goes forward say 20 feet, while the right flank covers. When the left flank goes down, the right flank then moves forward while the left now covers, each troopie Drake shooting when he is part of the covering flank, or firing from the shoulder on the run if he is part of the flank moving forward. At some point both flanks combine to finally run through the terrs position firing from the shoulder. The other skirmish option was called a Pepper-pot, where individuals moved forward in random, each troopie on the ground covering those going forward - NCO`s or junior officers decided the skirmish method, while coordinating with the FFC for the timing of the assault. Pepper-pot (or something that resembled it) was the usual for 4 man sticks.
The overall point of the exercise was for the sweep line to locate the position of hidden terrs, at which point the K-car or Lynx gave them their attention. If an air strike was called for, then our job was to keep their heads down until the strike craft ordered us to stop firing just at the end of his run in (so we didn`t hit him!) The stops, or Stop Groups, were set in place to ambush points of escape, usually dry river beds, obvious paths through thick bush, the saddles in small hills etc, but their overall position was dictated by the FFC, while how the stops ambush was laid out, by their NCO. Stops would not be placed in the immediate front of any sweep line (!) and could often be quite far from the center of attention - A man can run a kilometer in a few minutes when he is frightened. At some point, decided by the FF commander, the stop groups could then be picked up and set elsewhere, or be required to sweep down said saddle, dry river bed etc etc to locate stragglers. When terrs were sited by either sweep or stops groups, or the shooting simply started, a call to the K-car would bring him over, or one or more of the G-cars. When a definite sighting in close proximity was made by troops, we would snap-shoot the target (double tap, or single tap, or a controlled 2-3 round squeeze on fully auto), and then drake shoot as normal. To again state the obvious, the idea was for the sweeps never to walk into each other, or into the stop groups, and all overall movement on the ground is dictated to by the Fire Force Commander. To move around unbidden in the overall combat zone was a definite no no, and would invite unwelcome attention from above - I am aware of at least one occasion when a stick from 1 Commando was attacked by a K-car. Unfortunately I never listened in on the chit chat between FFC and NCO, so cant comment further.
The A76 radios were ok at line of site communication, but they really went to hell in hilly terrain. For example while I had no problem speaking with a helicopter some kilometers away (5-7 km in this instance), the chopper couldn`t raise the other half of my callsign at the foot of the hill I was on - I was a few hundred feet up the side. The Allouette I was talking in onto their location was flying down a river valley at roughly the same altitude as my stick.
Part 2
This exchange reminded me of an important fact, and that was the degree of independent action expected from the troops on the ground. Because Fire Force operations required a very detailed synchronized ballet of air assault support, close air support, observations posts, paratroopers, and sweep and stop groups, independent action was not expected. In fact, it was more likely frowned upon. Much of the coordination was accomplished through the Mk. 1 eyeball, and restricting movement was a simple means of deconflicting the ever so dangerous geometry of fires.The A76 ate batteries, and they had no means of indicating the power level left in the battery, other than a terse "change your battery you are breaking up," or something ruder, you were never sure if it was fully ok other than a radio check with friends etc. They were also large by todays standards, for what they did - but we are talking about seventies technology. They worked just fine with overhead callsigns, although sometimes they received "flutter" from the helicopters as they turned. I should add that A76`s came with an attachment to plug into the aerial socket called a Sputnik (it looked like one). This basically consisted of a coax cable connected to a small hub with 3 or 4 inverted and flexible aerial blades screwed into it. The idea was to fix the sputnik up a tree, and this increased our comms range by quite a bit. I remember sending sitreps to a relay stick sat on top a large hill about 15 KM`s from my position, where the terrain between us was very hilly and broken up. The relay was placed there to allow a number of sticks to communicate with our base camp some 30 km`s away.
For much longer distance comms we had another beast of a machine that would fill a back pack by our usual light weight standards. I think this was called a B52, if memory serves me correct, and I don`t think any pun on the bomber was intended. I can only remember our stick carrying one of these on one occasion, and that after the war while our Commando was exercising in the Inyanga Mountains by doing the SAS selection course for a laugh (!) The B52 had an elaborate aerial arrangement that had to be laid out in a certain pattern, and were really meant for a base site, rather than a patrol. They were great at picking up Radio 5 in South Africa though, a popular music channel (strictly forbidden of course, just mentioned in passing
Rhodesian Allouettes were all modified to try combat Strelas (SAM7). Basically the airforce engineers designed a shroud that directed the hot air leaving the turbine up into the blades of the chopper, instead of straight out the back as was standard. If you look at pics of Rhodesian Allouettes you will see the mod. For reasons unknown the South Africans didn`t take the design up and it was absent on their Allouettes. Thankfully troopies were generally unaware of the strela threat, but of course we were aware of the danger from RPG7 rockets (etc). Our training had us out of the choppers pretty smartly after the wheels contacted the earth - bump and go. G-cars hugged the tree tops especially on run in, and they used ground features to good effect. I was frequently surprised by Allouettes suddenly appearing as they rose from over behind a small hill very near to our position, and their overall "quietness" when watched on approach was frankly astonishing. The Bells on the other hand could be heard many miles away when inbound, and of course they deafened the hell out of us by the time we got out of them. While they carried 8 troops instead of 4, the noise would have made them awful in the "surprise" department. Dont underestimate the effect of the comparative quietness of the Allouettes on approach, this will have played a huge part in Fire Force`s success.
Why didn`t more K-Cars, Daks, or Lynxs get shot down by Strelas given their relatively higher flying altitude? I have absolutely no idea. It seems to me the terrs could have caused mayhem with our FF if they had applied a few clever traps with those things. They certainly knocked a few Trojans down, and a Canberra went down in Mozambique apparently shot down, and of course we lost two civilian airliners, but to my knowledge we never lost a chopper to a strela. Strange, perhaps they kept the fact quiet? We certainly had choppers shot down by ground fire, a few of which crash landed and were recovered, and we had a South African Puma helicopter and a Dak take RPG7 hits in Mozambique, the former causing the greatest single loss of RLI troops.
As an aside, I always found pictures of the troops on FF ops interesting. Certainly by the end of 1979/1980, the use of short trousers was no longer, and we all wore normal camo long trousers, or one piece camo jumpsuits. This was because a number of troops had taken hits in the legs, so a dress change was instituted, but I don`t know what year this occurred - sounds all rather casual I know, but the use of shorts and light running shoes was originally designed to help increase speed and mobility. People are sometimes surprised by our dress in the bush, however while spit and polish and identical kit was expected in the barracks, out in the bush we were free to make our own choice in webbing, light weight boots or running shoes, etc etc. We wore face veils as bandanas to keep the sweat out of our eyes (who the hell is Rambo anyway?), and no helmets (unless jumping from a Dak) because of their weight (I`m sure you know this anyway). I used to wear a pair of shoes called Veld Skoens, a popular, soft, tan coloured leather shoe sported by officers, but not allowed as normal dress when in barracks for the other ranks (boots only for us). I modified my "Vellies" (pronounced Fellies, or Felt Skoons, an Afrikaans word) by having our cobbler replace the sole with car tyre tread, as car tyres were used by the locals out in the villages to make sandles. It made the shoe a bit heavier, but the tread spoor blended in well when in a TTL. And those vellies gave me 30 000 miles . . .
Thanks for posting the Q&A! Very interesting. I need to dust off my old books, I got the Elite and the first version of the Selous Scouts book but have not got the revised edition. I better get back on my old book seller and start ordering from them again. They have a better selection than amazon.com when it comes to Rhodesian and SADF books.
I have both of those as well, and Assignment Selous Scouts by Jim Branch (Special Branch) in the mail from SA right now.Originally Posted by bismark17
It's an interesting coincidence that NPR discussed Mugabe's birthday party this am, and contrasted it against the fact that the "average" Zimbabwean can't buy a loaf of bread. Sensationalistic for sure, but the truth is still bad.
Rhodesian Fire Force
How "independent" is independent? Yes the Fire Force battle field was generally well choreographed by the Fire Force Commander (FF Cmd). When contact was made it was often at very close ranges where even the use of the 20mm canon from the K-Car would have been potentially dangerous to that particular stick (4-man callsign). These short range contacts were also normally short and sharp. In this 'corporals war' it was the stick commander's skill and aggression which was the critical success factor. By the time he had a chance to call in on the radio the local contact was all but over. Quite often an adjacent or nearby stick would report the contact to the FF Cmd who would then come overhead and at 800 ft and could see what was happening on the ground subject of course to the local tree cover. Over time we got better and better at what and how we did things on Fire Force and integral to the overall success was the ability of the generally 19-20 year old L/Cpls to deal with their local contact situations together with the aggression and skill of the gunner in the stick (armed with a FN- MAG).
JMA,
First off, welcome to the Council. I'm am keenly looking forward to whatever contribution you might make.
On the point of indepedent operations, I was referring to my understanding that once dropped off in a stop, stick ldrs were not expected to maneuver around at the slightest indication of an adjacent contact, or unverified report of a fleeing terr. I admit that it may have seemed I thought sticks never moved, but I realize that there always had to be some degree of initiave and thought applied. It would have, I imagine, sharply contrasted with current team and squad-level operations seen today.
I have heard that contact recording, and it is very interesting.
Throughout me read of FF operations materials, i have always focused on anything that indicated the thought that went into deconfliction of the geometry of fires, especially when sticks could not see each other. Did the FF Cmd ever give compass directions, or even azimuths, and direct sticks to restrict their fires to those directions? I'm familiar with the "show map" radio call, mentioned in the Venter book, so I believed at least small sketch maps were used. Thank you for the insight there.
Would you mind answering a series of questions about your equipment and fighting load?
The recording I'm talking about is this one: http://kiwi6.com/file?id=5i20a1ox5m It is the first part of 6 and is in MP3 format.
That recording was from mid 1976. You will hear stick being warned that a stick was in the "village' to their North and to watch out for them or that a stick (say Stop 3) was approaching them along the river-line from the East. The lie of the land was never as flat as a board so there was normally some protection provided against stray fire into a particular direction. In the event of a particular stick having a contact other sticks in the general line of fire would take cover if necessary. The "crack and thump" and the sound of that fire (which weapon) would indicate what action should be taken. New men would tend to over react to any firing and it was only with experience that they learned to differentiate between "stray" rounds passing over head and those aimed at them. There is specific training needed in this aspect in my opinion. I note much talk of the "Drake Shoot" as a training aid. Yes it really helps and can be repeated in modified form to make sure that troops are applying the lesson. However, there were not to many times where we swept through an area using continuous prophylactic fire into likely cover. In contact yes, troops would (or should have) fired into their arcs but if no fire is being returned it is rather pointless to just keep on firing.
The best instructions for direction were when given in reference to the position of the K-Car (as in "walk towards me.... Now"). But yes often sticks were told to move North, or East etc but never by degrees in my experience. Often the direction of movement was corrected by the FF Cmd either again by reference to his position or by a feature on the ground ("can you see the village ahead of you? OK, then on the right of that village (in relation to the stick) is some thick bush, I want you to move in that direction and clear that bush.")
Of course I will answer questions. The 30 years may have dulled my memory a bit but I'll give it my best shot.
PS: I'm using our terminology in the main so if you need clarity just ask. Like the word "deconfliction" is one I'm not familiar with.
Last edited by JMA; 03-29-2010 at 03:31 AM.
Happy to be here, thank you.
When dropped off there was always some degree of movement required to move into position. If the FF Cmd wanted a line of flight 'blocked' he would direct a stick to a position where he wanted them and they would take up a position, mark that position and wait there. These sticks would have a good idea of where the other sticks were in relation to them and had a good idea of the limits of their movement was. Positions of stop groups may be adjusted from time to time according to how the action developed. There was no hard and fast rule as the ground and situation dictated the plan. With experience Fire Force Cmds got better at 'reading' the ground and knowing where to put sticks/stops where/when to sweep when to keep certain sticks static etc. It was always a very fluid situation. The action may take a few hours or take all day and extend overnight. If the call-out was based on a sighting of say 10 terrs and they were all accounted for then we would move on. If not we would keep searching the area to find the rest. The OP would remain in place so sometimes it would be a plan to withdraw the FF and let the OP call us back when the survivors came out of hiding. The average kill rate was 80% so as the war got hotter and call outs came virtually every day maybe the FF did not spend the time on searching for the last one or two terrs as we used to do in the early days.
Initialy we wore shorts, T shirts and clandestine footwear (Black joggers with a plain sole) during our operations, including our para jumps. In 1978 the late Brigadeer Parker who was also a former CO of the RLI visited us at Mtoko where we were based as fire force. (1 Commando) He decided that he would like to do a training para jump with us wearing the standard dress as stated above. There was a fairly strong breeze blowing during the jump and he got a bit banged up hitting the ground. He then gave the instructions that we will not be allowed to jump in the same attire ever again. This was an order that we could not disobey. The camoflage jump suit was then issued to all para troopers.
During the earlier part of Fire Force we very seldom took cover, but preferred to walk or run straight at the enemy whilst firing at any target that presented itself. This worked well against the Zanu terrorists as they were not as aggressive as the Zapu terrorists. The Zapu were recruited mainly from the Matabele tribe which were of Zulu descent. During these attacks we were fortunate to have the K-Car armed with a 20mm cannon firing explosive rounds as air cover. Sometimes we also had prop driven earoplanes (Similar to the Vampire jet, I forgot the name) who dropped Frantan bombs (Rhodesian equavelent of Napalm bombs) and 37mm Sneb rockets.
The K-Car commander would orchestrate and co-ordinate the complete attack from the air. The sweep line would be informed if they were near any stop group. The stop groups were normally dropped off by helicopter, and would try and get into the best defensive and protected position they could without decreasing there fighting ability.
For any members who served in the RLI, I have a nagging question, and it's about the quality of the maps that were used.
I haven't been able to put my hands on a map from that era, but considering the degree of dismounted movement that had to be choreographed from the K-Car, I imagine accurate maps must have been critical.
I actually have a second question as well. How frequently did sticks use map grid references to control movement? Was it for those occasions when a pace count and a compass came into play, with the rest of the time spent utilizing terrain association? I've read several accounts of movements across the borders that required long legs which I assume were accomplished through dead-reckoning.
Mr. Charles (Chuck) Melson just informed me that he will be in attendance at the unveiling of the new RLI book, The Saints next month.
I'm going to stop by his office (he is the Chief Historian for the Marine Corps) and see if I can get him to carry a copy of Fireforce and get a signature from Chris Cocks, or at least pass on an invitation to Cocks to visit the SWC and share some of his thoughts on the business of prosecuting the nastier end of COIN.
Maps
The Rhodesian military issued restricted maps of excellent quality, although my own stick often came across “recently” erected fences which farmers had put up, and which weren't marked on them. I don`t think the maps were updated that regularly, and in my experience at the end of the war, they were at least a few years out of date. While on a few night patrols my stick occasionally came across unmarked fences which shouldn`t have been there. We used to take the red filter off a pen-light torch and inspected the age of the barbed-wire etc, and they were all obviously only a few years old or less, and so probably not a problem.
My stick only genuinely got lost once, in a very hilly region at night where we had no horizon to work with. We eventually saw a light and walked in on it, and it turned out to be a hotel we all knew of. “Unfortunately” we "just had to" spend the rest of the night there, in front of a fire-place with a pile of logs, and a full blown steak supper and a few free beers.
Actually it was very funny when we first arrived and went straight into the Cocktail Bar, camo`d top to bottom, stinking from a few days patrol, and armed to the teeth. The bar was fully of Ladies and Gents in their best evening finery, and the conversation in the room completely died as we walked in with our FN`s pointing at the ceiling. We smiled our bestest smiles, and I said, "Good evening, mine`s a Lion" (a type of beer), and we promptly fled to go find the manager. Although we apparently scared the hell out of everyone
, they all seemed quite glad to have 4 RLI "troopies" on the premises, as long as we stayed out of their bar and didn`t stink the place up any further! It certainly beat freezing our butts off out in the middle of an African winter when the temperatures can drop easily below freezing, especially in that mountainous area. We never did tell our Troop (Platoon) Officer where we were that night, and the other two sticks of our Troop basically slept in the mountains and froze. Ag man what a shame.
My father also had an interesting experience while on patrol with PATU (Police Anti-Terrorist Unit), when in the middle of the night his “sixth-sense for trouble” kicked in and he told his stick leader to leave a fence crossing for 10 minutes or so. Sure enough a terrorist gang of some 20 guerrillas came marching down the fence line, using it to walk in on the farmhouse they intended to attack. The terrs had a bad day.
On night marches it was usual to take a bearing every 20 minutes or so, pick a star on that bearing and then walk on it until running into expected objects like fences, windmills, roads etc. I can`t honestly remember using “paces” as a means of measure, but it was decades ago now. I do remember my stick frequently used maps for grid references, but the savanna allows a lot of “general” position fixing using “gomos” or hills, river bends etc. If in need of chopper support, all our Alouette IIIs had Direction Finding equipment fitted and all that was required was for us to key the mic for 15 seconds with a hand over the mouth-piece when commanded to. They would then fly in on that bearing and we would call when they flew over head. Alternatively a smoke grenade is useful too. Our Troop Officer also insisted that all the soldiers within the call-sign be aware of the sticks position on a map, just in case, and we generally stopped every hour for five to ten minute breaks and checked the position. Sticks on a “follow up” however generally did so “on the run,” and there wasnt a lot of time for those sort of niceties, which is why the DF kit on the Allo`s was so useful.
As for Mozambique, I am lead to believe those maps were pretty good too, largely due to the fact that there was a lot of cooperation between the Portuguese and Rhodesians prior to 1975. I can`t speak on Zambia, no idea. For more detail on “external” maps you would need to speak the Stick Leaders who used them.
Some time ago I found the following web page which shows some maps of border regions with Mozambique, some dated 1975. The scale is far larger than those normally used by us, but at least these give a general idea.
http://eusoils.jrc.it/esdb_archive/E.../lists/czw.htm
And while I think of it, farmers sometimes also put up power lines and telephone cables which were a hazard to low flying choppers, especially in valleys. These weren`t marked either, and a few choppers hit them and went in, killing all on board, including one with a lot of high ranking officers.
Sorry not really much info for you
I.R
Oh yes, it was a considerable amount indeed! Thanks.Sorry not really much info for you.
We (ground troops) used no maps during Fire Force (only the pilots did). When dropped the sticks were in the main instructed to move in bounds by the Fire Force Commander (FF Cmd). For example the FF Cmd would say something like. "Can you see the K-Car? OK, walk to wards the K-Car.... now, and in 150m you will come across a road, when you do stop, mark your position and call me." The FF Cmd would say 'now' when the K-Car was in the correct position to indicate the direction the stick was to move. The position when static was marked by putting a map sized piece of white plastic sheeting on the ground. When on the move this would normally be stuffed down the front of the stick cdm's shirt. If one was left overnight in the area the orders and instructions were normally verbal and movement limited due to the proximity of other sticks in the area. On occasion when a map was needed a chopper would drop a marked map to the stick cmd in need.
Why no maps, well first the logistics of having all those maps (for the large operational area) ready for all sticks did not warrant the effort. Secondly the distances were tight. The idea was to close off the area as tight as possible as we did not have enough troops to throw a wide cordon. Yes we lost some kills that way to be sure but with a kill rate of some 80% of gooks contacted we could live with that. The trick for the FF Cmd was to make sure that the sticks did not walk into each other or fire into each other as the distances were a couple of hundred meters here and a couple more there and very often much closer. You should listen to the tape of the 1976 Fire Force contact to get the idea.
Last edited by JMA; 03-28-2010 at 04:45 PM.
Errata
It appears that a few points of clarification are in order regarding published works mentioned in this thread.
Alexandre Binda is the author of The Saints, and Chris Cocks is the compiler/editor. There may have been confusion with so much mention of Cocks, who most certainly penned an excellent work with his Fireforce.
As for Assignment Selous Scouts by Jim Parker, it appears that it is not endorsed by the Selous Scouts Association. Although I am just realizing that there is indeed a S. Scouts Assoc. in existence, and I am enjoying my read of Parker's book, I offer this information up for folks to digest as they see fit.
Copies of The Saints are for sale from Amazon.co.uk, and I just picked up mine for a modest $111.00
Last edited by jcustis; 07-17-2007 at 12:55 PM.
Chris is also one of the owners/partners in the publishers of the book, 30 degrees South Publishing http://www.30degreessouth.co.za/
All the best
John
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