After the war was over, we learned that Joshua believed his only hope was to launch all his forces immediately with a view to overrunning Salisbury in two fast-moving drives. If successful, he hoped to secure Rhodesian forces to his cause so that, together, the RSF and ZIPRA could destroy the common enemy ZANU. Thereafter, an interim government would be established to prepare the country for all-party elections that excluded ZANU.
At COMOPS we obviously knew nothing of this. All we knew was that we had to stem the flow of ZIPRA men and equipment to the border areas, and secure the three permanent bridges at Victoria Falls, Kariba and Chirundu. But first the troublesome base near Kariba had to be taken out in an operation codenamed ‘Tepid’.
The RLI and SAS were assigned to Op Tepid. Since the RLI outnumbered the SAS, command of daytime operations from a high-flying Lynx was given to OC the RLI, Lieutenant-Colonel Ian Bate. Command at night vested with OC the SAS, Lieutenant-Colonel Garth Barrett.
The basic plan was for two RLI assault groups, both moving from the north, to drive the enemy off both ridges. Once these were secured, an SAS assault force would move, also from the north, through the main base below the ridges with RLI giving supporting fire from their elevated positions.
The assault forces were choppered in at dawn on 20 October. Once they had moved forward to their start positions, SAS and RLI mortar teams were brought in to the west of the western ridge. There were tense moments when the helicopters came in to land within sight of the enemy. ZIPRA had made an excellent appraisal of likely helicopter LZs and had prepared their long-range mortars for the very positions the helicopters landed. The enemy must have enjoyed the sight of Cheetahs making a hurried departure and the mortar teams scurrying for cover.
No attempt was made to prevent ZIPRA breaking out to the south because the whole aim of the operation was to drive ZIPRA from its base and, hopefully, to force the abandonment of heavy equipment. In the event, the RLI force on the eastern ridge only reached the centre of the feature at its highest point when it was stopped dead in its tracks. Troops became pinned down by accurate fire from both their own ridge and from the western ridge. Before long, the western assault force was also bogged down through intense fire from both ridges.
The distance between the two assault forces was almost two kilometres but the enemy gun positions responsible for holding them up were less than 200 metres from each force. In consequence the use of Golf bombs was impossible, yet only Golf bombs would have been effective against the entrenched enemy who had good overhead protection.
The Rhodesians were at a distinct disadvantage. They were exposed and only had light infantry weapons, whereas ZIPRA were dug in with vastly superior heavy weapons. It was just like Mapai all over again, and a situation of stalemate existed. Yet, even though the Rhodesians were out-gunned and could not move forward, ZIPRA preferred to remain in their defensive positions, fearing to expose themselves to the jet-strikes we could not have made so close to our own forces.
Attempts to outflank enemy gun positions on the eastern ridge resulted in a number of RLI soldiers being wounded. On the western ridge, an RLI trooper had been killed. Hunters, limited to 30mm cannons and 68mm Matra rockets, were employed on numerous occasions, but no strike was really successful. ZIPRA simply dived under cover when a Hunter turned in, accepted the explosions above them and immediately emerged to continue firing at anything that moved. By sunset nothing seemed to have been achieved and the RLI was ordered to make a tactical withdrawal, under cover of darkness, to regroup.
When Garth Barrett took command that evening, nothing suggested that ZIPRA had been rattled. Everything pointed to the Rhodesians having to reorganise, bring in extra troops with heavier weapons and make another push next day. Garth realised that, even though ZIPRA seemed too strong to even consider moving out, he should position a force for this eventuality and ordered the positioning of ambushes on the vehicle track south of the base.
Between nightfall and midnight the area was quiet, but then ZIPRA unleashed a full-scale mortar bombardment on likely Rhodesian positions and even fired two 122mm rockets to add to the noise and excitement. At the time the Rhodesians had no idea that this was a cover-up to an orderly withdrawal of the entire ZIPRA force. During its move southwards, the enemy force was allowed free passage by one of the RLI’s southern ambushes because the unit commander realised his force of twenty men was too weak to take on nearly 200 closely grouped ZIPRA. For this he was strongly criticised!
After the war I learned from ZIPRA that the reason for the withdrawal was that their positions had become known to the Air Force and that the Rhodesian ground forces were known to have moved some distance away. This being so, the ZIPRA commander felt certain all his positions would be annihilated by the Air Force the next day using their ‘silent bombs’. This was the name given to Golf bombs because men who had been just beyond their lethal range claimed they had not heard the bombs go off. They had only experienced high over-pressure and suffered temporary deafness.
Follow-up operations got under way at first light, but only limited kills were scored against the ZIPRA force, which had taken the precaution of splitting into small groups. Nevertheless the aim of driving ZIPRA from its base had been achieved.
Operation Dice
LANCASTER HOUSE TALKS HAD BEEN on the go for six weeks when Op Tepid wrapped up, and General Peter Walls had been called to London. Before his departure, the general listened to his COMOPS planning team’s ideas on how best to counter a ZIPRA invasion. We specifically argued against ambush and harassment tasks in Zambia because this would have limited effect in stemming any large-scale flow and would almost certainly lead to clashes with Zambian forces. Yet to await ZIPRA’s move and deal with each crossing-point on the Zambezi River, from Rhodesian soil, was obviously ridiculous. Not only would ZIPRA make its crossings at night to minimise interference from the Rhodesian Air Force, their powerful Soviet-supplied equipment would easily drive off any protection force during the critical stages of establishing a bridgehead on Rhodesian soil. Thereafter we would be forced to destroy some of our own bridges to hold up the enemy for Air Force attention in daylight.
Only the destruction of Zambia’s road bridges and culverts on all routes to our border made sense because this would prevent any large-scale movement. Our plans to cut the Great East Road from Lusaka to Malawi, the southern route from Lusaka to Chirundu, and the southwestern route from Lusaka to Livingstone were already complete.
General Walls needed no persuading. He realised only too well that Rhodesia’s David could only beat ZIPRA’s Goliath in this way. However, he was at pains to make us understand that the destruction of a Commonwealth member’s bridges would wreck any hope of the British Government showing any sympathy to the Muzorewa Government’s cause.
Whilst, from his understanding of the goings-on at Lancaster House, he doubted that any such empathy existed, we could not rock the boat just yet. General Walls said he would be in a better position to judge all issues once he got to London. In the meanwhile the SAS, Selous Scouts and RLI were to get on with the job of harassing ZIPRA movements. In consequence, Operation Dice started out with ambushing tasks to make access to Victoria Falls, Kariba and Chirundu difficult.