Quote Originally Posted by jcustis View Post
I had the occasion to correspond with an RLI veteran (who shall remain anonymous), and asked him a few questions to round out my fairly broad understanding of Fire Force Ops in Rhodesia.

I'm always curious as to how the various Rhodesian security forces performed on the ground, as some of their lessons may be important as the Marine Corps looks to refine its Distributed Operations concept.

My questions, and the very in-depth reply, are posted below in 2 parts:
Initialy we wore shorts, T shirts and clandestine footwear (Black joggers with a plain sole) during our operations, including our para jumps. In 1978 the late Brigadeer Parker who was also a former CO of the RLI visited us at Mtoko where we were based as fire force. (1 Commando) He decided that he would like to do a training para jump with us wearing the standard dress as stated above. There was a fairly strong breeze blowing during the jump and he got a bit banged up hitting the ground. He then gave the instructions that we will not be allowed to jump in the same attire ever again. This was an order that we could not disobey. The camoflage jump suit was then issued to all para troopers.
During the earlier part of Fire Force we very seldom took cover, but preferred to walk or run straight at the enemy whilst firing at any target that presented itself. This worked well against the Zanu terrorists as they were not as aggressive as the Zapu terrorists. The Zapu were recruited mainly from the Matabele tribe which were of Zulu descent. During these attacks we were fortunate to have the K-Car armed with a 20mm cannon firing explosive rounds as air cover. Sometimes we also had prop driven earoplanes (Similar to the Vampire jet, I forgot the name) who dropped Frantan bombs (Rhodesian equavelent of Napalm bombs) and 37mm Sneb rockets.
The K-Car commander would orchestrate and co-ordinate the complete attack from the air. The sweep line would be informed if they were near any stop group. The stop groups were normally dropped off by helicopter, and would try and get into the best defensive and protected position they could without decreasing there fighting ability.