Quote Originally Posted by Rhodesian View Post
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.