Battle of ‘Hill 31’
At dawn on 15 November c/s 81A of K Company 10RR, operating in the Mutasa North TTL (south of Honde Mission), sighted approximately 30 to 40 persons moving in single file on the western side of a steep broken feature with numerous gullies and covered in dense jesse bush. There was a kraal to the north. Fireforce was called up, Captain Chris ‘Kipper’ Donald in the K-car. Sticks were dropped to the west of the target area and four 4th Batt Sparrows (trackers) led by Sergeant Laurie Ryan were dropped alongside c/s 81A and began to follow tracks on a footpath heading south. As they advanced they contacted two insurgents and killed both. Moving on and still on the track, they came around the feature and hit the main insurgent group.
A series of contacts, all at extremely close range, began to take place as sweeping sticks moved in. The mortar team from Support Company 1RAR was also called in. Trooper F. D. da Costa (recently arrived from Portugal), who was part of a sweep line, was killed by an insurgent who had been flushed out and had fired on the run. Da Costa’s body was casevaced to Ruda. The K-car’s 20mm cannon proved extremely effective. All call signs were performing well, Trooper Pete Garnett as commander Stop 3 being particularly aggressive (Donald recommended him for an award and he was awarded a Military Forces Commendation (Operational) for his conduct).
Two RAR privates, Philip Chagwiza and Chikoto Saxon, while on their way to the contact area in a G-car, were wounded by small-arms fire. Both were casevaced to Ruda. Rifleman Grobler received minor injuries and was also casevaced. The enemy had now settled themselves in the rocky outcrops on the western side of the kopje from where they continued to direct most of their small-arms fire at the helicopters. One RPG rocket fired at a troop-carrying G-car and exploded 20 metres behind it. Another helicopter was forced to land because of damage caused by small-arms fire. The sweeping stops closed with the insurgents and the fire fights took place at close range. The battle had gone on through the day, by the end of which 31 insurgents had been killed and one captured (by Lieutenant Rod Smith’s stick). An unknown number had escaped. Twenty-one AKs, 11SKSs, one RPD, one RPG (with 21 rockets) 19 boxes of ammo and a landmine were recovered and handed in to SB Ruda.
Beryl Salt on the Air Force’s participation: …The first signs of an enemy build-up came early on the morning of 15 November, when ground forces reported unusual activity in the valley. Flight Lieutenant Tudor Thomas, the senior pilot at Ruda, the police base in the Honde Valley about 55 kilometres north of Umtali, was called on for support. The four helicopters were crewed by Flight Lieutenant Chris Wentworth and Sergeant Tony Merber; Flight Lieutenant Tudor Thomas and Sergeant Brian Warren; Flight Lieutenant Trevor Baynham and Flight Sergeant Ted Holland; and Air Sub-Lieutenant Nick Meikle and Sergeant Hans Steyn.
The helicopters with RLI, RR and RAR sticks were quickly deployed and the first contact came about at 0645 hours on the western face of a kopje. The crews came under fire as soon as they flew into the contact area and were under sporadic fire throughout most of the day. Despite the difficult and dangerous flying conditions with early morning cloud, they worked steadily, trooping men and re-supplying ammunition. During the day, vital supplies of ammunition and fuel had to be ferried into Ruda.
During the 12-hour battle, the four helicopters spent a total of 14 hours in the air. It was good to be in on it, said Flight Lieutenant Tudor Thomas. A fixed-wing aircraft, piloted by Squadron Leader Dag Jones, also took part in the fight and put in several effective strikes on the enemy. “Afterwards, when we found out that the total killed was 31, the morale of the pilots and technicians was high. I had underestimated the number of terrorists and when we found out how many we had killed, it was fantastic,” said Dag …
Chris Cocks adds: … We christened it ‘Hill 31’, bit like the Yanks in Vietnam. Some called it the Battle of the Honde Valley. At the time, it was the biggest internal kill of the war and it was quite something to have been involved in. I remember how awed I was by Kip Donald’s control of the battle. He was controlling a good couple of hundred troops—RLI, RAR and TF (including Laurie Ryan’s formidable 4th Batt trackers), all spread out over several square kilometers, on all sides of the mountain. (And a mountain it was, not a kopje! We climbed up and down the bloody thing several times and it was pretty damned sheer.) I got my first confirmed kill here, fairly innocuous, but for me it was a life-changing event. I was in Lieutenant Roddy Smith’s stick. Humphrey van der Merwe was the MAG gunner and Peter McDonald, a new rookie from Canada, was the other rifleman.
We were in first wave (Stop 1) and got dropped at the foot of the gomo around 0700 hours. We hooked up with Laurie Ryan’s sticks, who’d just had the initial contact and were waiting for us. They all had beards and looked fearsome, but were good guys and were happy to see us. (We regarded the 4th Batt trackers as some of the best in the Army. Sadly Laurie Ryan was killed in a hunting accident shortly after the war.) Kip Donald then sent them up the path leading to the top of the mountain and directed our stick to sweep around the southwest of the base of the mountain and then straight up to the top, covering all the likely re-entrants the gooks might try and escape through. Roddy was like a bitch on heat, itching to get into the action and at times was literally bounding up the slopes—thickly vegetated, rocky and treacherous as they were. We had a series of running contacts all the way to the top. Humphrey nailed a couple of gooks snivelling down a gully with his MAG. One was only wounded and moaning loudly so Roddy chucked in an HE grenade and finished him off. This was Pete McDonald’s first contact and he was wide-eyed and scared, but hung in there. He was quite a portly guy and was struggling to keep up with our intrepid leader.
Around midday we finally got to the top of the mountain. To my surprise, we came across a TF stick huddled in some rocks. Where in the hell had they come from? They were old guys, scared to death and clearly didn’t want to be there. Their relief on seeing us was immeasurable and within minutes they’d packed up and were gone, down the mountain. We took over their position near the summit and spread out into all-round defence and waited. I was next to Humphrey looking out from some thick bush into a clearing that was the summit. No wonder the TF guys were so terrified. There were gook bodies lying all over the place, probably taken out by the K-car—the TF guys would have been pretty close to where the 20mm rounds were striking.
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