... and to the RLI troopie.



RLI 51st Birthday – Cape Town 2012

Proposing the Toast to the Regiment – Mark Adams

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen… I am honoured to have been asked to stand in for Bill Wiggill tonight.

During the course of collecting the various contributions for the new RLI book – Africa’s Commandos - from those who have served in or with the RLI during the 19 years of the regiment’s existence my knowledge and understanding of the RLI has grown significantly.

It has been less about the phases through which the RLI passed over those 19 years as significant as they were …

…what with early years and service on the Belgian Congo Border
… to the significant manpower losses at the break up of Federation
… to the fun and games of the border control years
… to the earlier short sharp operations in the Zambezi Valley
… on to the low intensity continuous operations which begun with Op Hurricane in 1973
… and finally to the continuous high intensity operations through to the end.

For me it has become more about the human aspects of how the RLI ouens thought and behaved.

There has always been a broad mischievous and naughty streak running through the RLI from officers down to the troopies. The battalion has always been full of colourful characters. We all remember those characters of our respective vintages with great fondness and affection. They were good for morale.

There was always the ability to see the funny side of just about every situation the service and the war threw at us. I remember so well being repeatedly told by my training troop instructors that “If you haven’t got a sense of humour you shouldn’t have joined the army”. This humour, even if it was most often of the graveyard or gallows variety, served the battalion well especially when in the end we were committed to continuous operations with mounting casualties.

There were the lists of honours and awards, which in my personal view, were certainly under awarded in circumstances where continuous and daily displays of bravery and courage became the order of the day… these from young men so many of whom were under the age of 20 …with the rest being not much older.

There was the ability of the RLI to adapt to virtually any circumstances …as our second to last CO Tufty Bate stated from his personal experience in late 1979; “I realised that there was only one unit in the world who could be para-borne (one day) infantry (the next) an armoured column (a week later) and then marines all within the space of a few weeks.”

(The marine aspect amounted to a Dunkirk-style array of vessels hastily cobbled together to ferry the RLI across Kariba for a possible attack on a ZIPRA camp.)

My own personal observation is of how the RLI at war turned boys into men.

Remember intake 150 comprising about 225 recruits in mid 1976 and how 50 odd were fed into each commando almost doubling our combat strength overnight. We had to create new stick commanders to whom we gave only one each of the ‘fresh p...’ … err … can’t use that word here… so each new stick commander received one of the ‘fresh’ new troopies … resulting in Derrick Taylor my troop sergeant getting two new troopies and me - trying to set the example as the troop commander - getting three new troopies.

Next day as Stop 1 I deployed into a lively Fire Force scene with a Scotsman with unverified military service on the MAG and two 18 year old National Service Rhodesians with recruit course style ‘short back and sides’ haircuts which made their ears stick out.

It is certainly a testament to the quality of training Major Pete Cooper and his team in Training Troop delivered that despite my initial concerns about having three new troopies in my stick they acquitted themselves magnificently during a ‘liquorice all-sorts’ kind of day where we experienced directly to our front:

…20mm cannon being fired from the K-Car,
…Sneb rockets and Frantan from the Lynx,
…lots of small arms fire going in both directions… some at very close range,
…some grenade action to deal with a gook trying to get behind us
…and a swarm of angry African bees.

Such a first day in combat is not for the faint hearted … but these ‘boys’ took it all in their stride.

In fact despite my misguided anxiety over my stick they actually saved me that day when a well concealed gook zeroed in on me. In some armies the soldiers would wait for the officer to get shot before taking the enemy out … but not on that day … but then again … maybe it was because they were all brand new and hadn’t got to know me yet.

It did not take long before these self same troopies became the confident, strutting, street wise troopies of the RLI the Salisbury civvies had learned to fear. As we remember … when the RLI was in town the call went out … ‘keep your eyes on your wallet and your watch… and above all lock up your daughters’.

On another occasion out of Mtoko we spent a day and the night scrambling around a cave infested rocky outcrop. Leaving the MAG and one troopie to cover a cave entrance I moved off with a troopie to deal with some gooks who appeared to have a death wish. I kept looking behind me to see if the 18 year old with cheeks that had never seen a razor blade was still there. I shouldn’t have worried… of course he was still there. All bright eyed and bushy tailed… alert, wide awake and switched on… he was covering my back… he was after all an RLI troopie … even if he was just a kid.

I often think back to that level of mutual trust and faith we placed in one another during the war when we uttered the simple … yet powerful … words ‘cover me’. Something mere civvies would never be able to understand or comprehend.

There is not a day that passes when I am not proud … to an emotional level… of having served with those lovable ‘skates’ we called troopies… in the battalion we all love so dearly… the Rhodesian Light Infantry.

I end with a quote from our last CO, Charlie Aust who at the final parade on 17 October 1980 said: “Our colours will continue to fly higher than high. We know that in years to come we will say to our children and to our loved ones with the greatest pride: “I served in the RLI”.

…with that I ask you to be rise to toast the battalion … that Ian Douglas Smith named ‘The Incredible RLI’ … Ladies and Gentlemen … the RLI.