Africa's Commandos - new book on the RLI

[JMA]

.. except for the farmer and his wife, Trooper Jim Buckley and the gooks that is.

Notes:
K-Car = Alouette III helicopter gunship - armed with 20mm cannon
G-Car = Alouette III trooping helicopter - carrying stick of 4 men.
Radio relay station = manned station on high feature to relay VHF radio comms
kopje = small hill (normally isolated)
"culling" = what the RLI did to the CTs contacted by the Fire Force

Extract from the book:

The perfect contact

1 Commando (1Cdo) were on Fire Force duties at Grand Reef in January 1978. This trip had been busy, starting off with the attack on Grand Reef by a large concentration of communist terrorists (CTs) during the first night in camp.

On the morning of 18 January 1978, a radio relay station was positioned by helicopter in the white farming area just to the south of Grand Reef. At about 1700hrs, the commando had just finished its daily PT session when the siren sounded. Amidst the normal groans and mumbling about it being “too late” to be called out, we assembled in the ops room and were told that the relay station deployed that morning had just witnessed a gang of ten CTs ambush a farmer’s vehicle directly below their position. The gang were now sauntering down the road toward the nearby tribal trust land (TTL) without a care in the world. As the relay station was only five minutes’ flying time from Grand Reef, the Fire Force was immediately deployed to contact the CTs.

The Fire Force consisted of the normal K-Car and three G-Cars. Because of the proximity to the airfield no paras were required. On pulling up over the target, it was found that the area consisted of open ploughed fields with the odd isolated rocky kopje. It was perfect ‘culling’ terrain. It was into one of these kopjes that the gang had bolted. During the initial deployment of stop groups around the kopje, Stops 1 and 2 came under fire from an RPD gunner, severely wounding Trooper Jim Buckley. In the initial firefight five of the CTs were eliminated, but as light was fading fast the action was broken off and extra stops were flown in to encircle the remaining gang still holed up in the kopje.

During the night a further three CTs were eliminated by stop groups as they tried to break out of the cauldron. At first light the next morning, with K-Car back overhead, sweeps of the kopje resulted in the killing of a final CT holed up under a rock overhang. The final score was nine CTs killed in return for two 1Cdo wounded. One CT escaped. The death of the farmer and his wife had been avenged within minutes of their murder and Jim Buckley, after a long battle, eventually recovered from his wounds.