Secret SAS Missions in Africa by Michael Graham

Author:Michael Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Aviation
ISBN: 9781526712486
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2017-10-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chaos by Kayak

By 1977, the nature of the second scramble for Africa changed quite suddenly.

The Russians and the Chinese may have been global allies but locally, in our patch of central Africa, there was plenty of competition between them.

For some time we had been fomenting trouble between the different factions they supported. So far there was nothing to suggest they knew what we were up to.

Our recent attacks on Russian-backed ZAPU had curtailed their activity while they recovered from the setbacks and redefined their approach.

In contrast, the Chinese-backed ZANU faction was thriving.

The military coup in Lisbon resulted in an immediate withdrawal of all Portuguese forces from Africa, and in Mozambique that meant ZANU now had unopposed access to the vast expanse of the Rhodesian eastern border. It was no longer restricted to the high-risk infiltration routes through the Zambezi Valley where cadre leaders, such as Rex Nyongo, had struggled for success, and where ZAPU efforts had so far failed completely.

ZANU now had an 800 kilometre border to work with. And in many places the international boundary – no more than a line on the map – bisected tribal lands where the locals continued to work their land and live their lives as they had for decades before the white men had made them people of one country or another.

For a guerrilla warfare campaign, conditions could not get much better.

Small groups of terrorists could now move with impunity right up to the Rhodesian border and quietly infiltrate and occupy one tribal area after another. Small-scale operations in these conditions would stretch military and police resources to breaking point.

But before anything like this could happen ZANU had to establish supply lines. And that’s where we came in. There was nothing like a Special Forces unit for causing chaos on communication and supply lines. We had multiple options of reaching them, and in the African bush we knew more about operating as invisible, small groups than anything taught at the School of Mao.

‘Just as I thought,’ said the brigadier, showing us pictures of the huge lake created by the damming of the Zambezi River at Caora-Bassa Gorge in Mozambique. It extended nearly 300 kilometres back towards the Rhodesian and Zambian borders; in some places it was no more than twenty kilometres from what were remote and undefended parts of the Rhodesian border.

The air photographs revealed eight boats moored near the hydro dam wall with a military camp close by. There were a couple of vehicles and a pile of fuel drums visible in the picture.

Further west and roughly halfway up the lake was the old Portuguese missionary settlement known as Mague. It was partially obscured by cloud, but the images showed a large camp where civilians had been rounded up to work and provide food for the terrorists. Off to one side of this civilian camp was a parade ground and barracks, and on a small hill overlooking everything was a KPV 14.5-millimetre anti-aircraft gun battery with mortars and defensive trenches. There were no vehicles.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.