Rhodesian COIN (consolidated thread, inc original RLI)

[davidbfpo]

Thanks for the update. I met him once (long story) and he gave his all. In Rhodesia he served past the end, yes he had his critics, few questioned his determination and more. Will be interesting to see how the obituary columns report on him now.

[JMA]

Lieutenant-General G. Peter Walls GLM, DCD, MBE

Served as Commanding Officer of 1RLI from 1 December 1964 to 18 June 1967

Peter Walls was born and educated in Rhodesia. He first served in the military with the Black Watch at the end of World War Two. He returned to Rhodesia after the war and served in the Staff Corps, before being commissioned into the Northern Rhodesia Regiment (NRR). In 1951, he was selected to take an all-white unit, The Malayan Scouts, to Malaya to assist with that Emergency. He was promoted to captain as 2IC of the unit with an experienced British officer as OC. On reaching Malaya it was decided that, as it was an all-Rhodesian unit, it should be commanded by a Rhodesian - he was thus promoted to major and became OC. The unit stayed in Malaya for two years, becoming C (Rhodesia) Squadron SAS.

On return to Rhodesia in March 1953 the unit was disbanded. For his services in Malaya he was awarded an MBE. After various staff appointments he attended Staff College at Camberley in the UK, before assuming command of RLI in 1964 and transforming the battalion into a commando unit.

He was responsible for introducing the regiment’s green beret, which subsequently distinguished it from all other regiments on parade. On relinquishing command he became Commander 2 Brigade. He later became Chief of Staff as a major-general, before becoming Army Commander in 1972.

He was appointed Commander of Combined Operations (ComOps) in 1977, an appointment he held until he retired to South Africa in late 1980 after Zimbabwean independence.

General GP (Peter) Walls and Eunice were about to board an aircraft yesterday morning (20 July 2010) bound from George to Johannesburg. The General succumbed to a heart attack prior to boarding the aircraft.

He was a man of great integrity and grit and led the armed forces of Rhodesia well in the toughest of wartimes.

General Walls will be sadly missed by all the members of the 1RLIRA and we extend our deepest sympathies to Mrs. Eunice Walls, the family and Peter’s friends.

"How sleep the brave, who sink to rest,
By all their country's wishes blest!
By fairy hands their knell is rung,
By forms unseen their dirge is sung.

God and a soldier all people adore
In time of war, but not before;
And when war is over and all things are righted,
God is neglected and an old soldier slighted.

Enough of merit has each honoured name
To shine untarnished on the rolls of fame,
And add new lustre to the historic page."

Chairman
1RLIRA-SA
(1 Rhodesian Light Infantry Regimental Association - South Africa)

[JMA]

Peter Walls, General in Zimbabwe, Dies at 83

New York Times
By ALAN COWELL
Published: July 22, 2010

PARIS — Lt. Gen. Peter Walls, the last commander of white Rhodesian forces in what is now Zimbabwe, who played a central and sometimes ambiguous role in the first days of his country’s transition to majority rule only to fall out bitterly with its first black leader, died on Tuesday in South Africa, where he lived in exile. He was 83.



A son-in-law, Patrick Armstrong, said Wednesday that General Walls had collapsed at an airport in George, on the Indian Ocean coastline. The cause of death was not immediately known.

As the overall commander of Rhodesian forces from 1977 onward, General Walls oversaw an ultimately doomed campaign to halt a shifting bush war conducted by guerrillas loyal to Joshua Nkomo, a nationalist patriarch, and Robert Mugabe, who went on to become the increasingly autocratic president of Zimbabwe after the country achieved independence in 1980.

As the fighting unfolded, Rhodesia, named for the British archcolonialist Cecil John Rhodes, was an international pariah, shunned by most countries with the exception of apartheid-ruled South Africa, its neighbor.

The Rhodesian forces were far superior to the sometimes ill-equipped guerrillas, displaying their military might with cross-border strikes against insurgent rear bases in Mozambique and Zambia, even as General Walls spoke of winning the “hearts and minds” of the black majority inside the country.

By 1980 the options open to Rhodesia’s white minority had narrowed, whittled away by international economic sanctions, the withdrawal of unconditional South African support and the growing recognition that a deal with the guerrilla leaders was inevitable.

The prospect of black rule sent tremors of concern through many whites, and as elections — brokered by Britain, the former colonial power — approached in early 1980, the country seemed on a knife edge, balanced between the expectations of the black majority and fears that white soldiers under General Walls might resist the new order and even stage a coup.

In a memoir published in 1987, Ken Flower, the intelligence chief of both the last white government and the first black one, said General Walls himself had helped deepen fears of a coup among the British officials overseeing the transition to majority rule. But, Mr. Flower said, the idea of a coup was never seriously debated by the military and security elite.

White apprehensions sharpened on March 4, 1980, when the election results were announced and the clear victor was Mr. Mugabe, seen by many whites as a Marxist rabble-rouser who would hound them out of the country.

But instead of staging a coup, General Walls publicly appealed to the white minority “for calm, for peace,” Mr. Flower recalled.

Mr. Mugabe also went out of his way to assure whites. In what seemed a political masterstroke, he appointed General Walls to oversee the planned fusion of the former white-led army with the two guerrilla armies.

Deep down, though, profound mistrusts lingered from the war years, and Mr. Mugabe began to pay heed to reports circulating at the time that General Walls had indeed plotted against him.

In one widely reported exchange after several attempts on his life, Mr. Mugabe was said to have asked why the general’s soldiers were trying to kill him. General Walls reportedly replied that if his men had been involved in the attempts, Mr. Mugabe would be dead.

General Walls also acknowledged in a BBC interview that he had asked Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister at the time, to annul the results of the election that brought Mr. Mugabe to power because vast numbers of voters had been intimidated. Mrs. Thatcher refused, British officials said.

Increasingly estranged from Mr. Mugabe, General Walls offered his resignation within months of independence and later moved to South Africa’s Eastern Cape region, where he lived for many years in relative obscurity.

Born in Rhodesia in 1927, General Walls had a long military career, training at the British military academy in Sandhurst and the staff college at Camberley. As a commander of a special forces unit, he also fought insurgents in colonial-era Malaysia.

He is survived by his wife, Eunice, three daughters and a son, said Mr. Armstrong, his son-in-law.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

---------------------------------------
Correction: July 23, 2010

An obituary on Thursday about Lt. Gen. Peter Walls, the last commander of white Rhodesian forces in what is now Zimbabwe, erroneously credited the country’s president, Robert Mugabe, with a distinction. Mr. Mugabe is the second — not the only — president since the country achieved independence in 1980. (The Rev. Canaan Banana was president and Mr. Mugabe was prime minister from 1980 to 1987.)

[Rhodesian]

Deep down, though, profound mistrusts lingered from the war years, and Mr. Mugabe began to pay heed to reports circulating at the time that General Walls had indeed plotted against him.

And not without good reason:
http://www.rhodesia.nl/quartz.htm

I remember many of us on the ground were annoyed when Quartz was cancelled, but we were young and we didnt really give any thought to what would happen in the long term - Pointless? Perhaps, but then again seeing what has happened since, perhaps not, hind-sight is a perfect science.

I.R.

[JMA]

And not without good reason:
http://www.rhodesia.nl/quartz.htm

I remember many of us on the ground were annoyed when Quartz was cancelled, but we were young and we didnt really give any thought to what would happen in the long term - Pointless? Perhaps, but then again seeing what has happened since, perhaps not, hind-sight is a perfect science.

I.R.

As a young staff officer at one of the brigades I did much of the drafting of the Op Order for Op Quartz in that area. It was quite simple, take out the Assembly Points where the insurgents had been grouped and place troops at all the vital installations on the brigade area. The Op would be triggered once the elections results were announced and showed that Mugabe had lost and carried out before his forces could drift back into the bush to continue the war as they had threatened to do if they did not win the election. It was a simple contingency plan which did involve the South Africans. Of course everyone knew but the Brits refused to acknowledge that the assembly points were full of men and kids from the villages while the main insurgent groups remained in the villages to make sure the people voted correctly. So they wanted Walls out and went after him on this. Again the Rhodesians were proved naive in that they actually believed the Brits were going to insist upon a free and fair election being held. But the Brits just went through the motions having already decided that they were going to hand the country over to Mugabe.

[davidbfpo]

From the UK's Daily Telegraph:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obit...ter-Walls.html

Added 29th:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010...walls-obituary

[Rhodesian]

Howzit - Apologies if the following webpage has been highlighted elsewhere, I missed it. This is a blog containing the notes etc for a book no longer being written, called Choppertech.

http://choppertech.blogspot.com/

It contains some fascinating insights into Fire Force as seen from the Tech/Gunners point of view, and includes many operational notes/logs of both internal operations and the strikes inside Mozambique etc.

Cheers
I.R.

[H3nnys]

Hi Guys

I would like to know if anyone knows the name of the Documentery that was shot in 1974 of the RLI

I saw it once many years ago and one of the chapters or scenes was shot with my fathers troop at mount darwin in 1974 and I think it was in Afrikaans although I can not remember as I was still a young boy when I saw it

I am desperately looking for the movie again and was hoping that someone here might know what it was called

Thank you