A number of officers at Air HQ considered such practices a misuse of helicopters. Fortunately, most recognised the true value of these stopovers because it saved many wasted flying hours. If two hours of actual flying training was to be done in two parts and a farm visit was taken in between, it saved the high cost of having to route to and from the training area twice. The second benefit was the all-important matter of generating good public relations for which the Air Staff received loads of good reports.
Police Reserve Air Wing
ANOTHER GROUP OF PEOPLE WE were getting to know in these times were pilots and observers of the Police Reserve Air Wing. PRAW had been established along the same lines as the Kenyan Police Air Wing that did such good work during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya.
PRAW operated privately owned aircraft ranging greatly in make and capacity. All crews were flying enthusiasts who longed to be employed in operational roles in preference to mundane transporting of passengers around the country. But their operational training was very limited and wholly geared to police needs and thinking.
One aspect of training that received an inordinate amount of attention was message dropping. All aircraft were fitted with radios for civil aviation communications but the police radio network was not compatible with these sets, hence the need for occasional message drops. To meet this shortfall, a message was inserted into a small weighted bag to which was attached a long thin red streamer. A ground party could easily follow the streamer when the bag was dropped, even in the thickest bush. The PRAW pilots however placed great emphasis on dropping a message at its recipient’s feet.
I was called upon to lecture PRAW pilots on air operations in general but, because of the number of individuals involved, my lecture was given in two sessions. At question time during the first session a lawyer from Umtali, Dendy Lawton, raised the matter of message dropping in mountainous areas. I spelt out the immense dangers of flying at low speed close to any mountain and stressed the reason for having a long streamer to assist ground parties follow and find a message. Flight safety was the issue, not accuracy of the drop. In particular I said no drop should ever be made flying towards rising ground, irrespective of the wind direction.
During the second PRAW session Chipinga farmer, Bill Springer, raised the self-same question. He received the same answer and cautions I had given Dendy Lawton. Yet, incredibly, it was these two men who met their deaths making drops towards rising ground.
On 6 May 1967 Dendy Lawton ploughed into the side of a mountain and his observer, Bill Perkins (Perky), was thrown clear. When Perky staggered to his feet he saw that the aircraft was on fire with Dendy inside. Without hesitation he went into the aircraft to rescue his friend but was driven back badly burnt and Dendy perished. It took many months for Perky to recover from severe burns, though he eventually did so with surprisingly minor scarring.
Two years later, on 19 July 1969, Bill Springer was dropping supplies to ground troops monitoring the valley through which the Umtali to Beira road and rail line ran. In the process Bill flew into rising ground. How it came to be that Bill Perkins was there I do not remember. But Perky got into the aircraft and, with fuel pouring all over him, he managed to pull badly injured Bill Springer clear of the wreck.
Fortunately for Perky there was no fire this time but, unfortunately, Bill Springer lost his life. The bravery shown by Bill Perkins in knowingly going to a friend’s aid in spite of a real danger of being burnt again is beyond description.
Chapter 6
Operation Nickel
BY MID-AUGUST 1967 I had completed helicopter conversions for Peter Nicholls, Hugh Slatter and Mick Grier before moving to Makuti where the RLI was engaged with incoming terrorist groups. They were also searching for arms reported cached in a cave.
Border Control units continued picking up small terrorist group infiltrations across the Zambezi east of Chirundu at a time when the Zambezi Valley floor was stinking hot and bone-dry. Soldiers were catching up and accounting for almost all terrorists whose water bottles were either empty or contained urine. The few terrorists that managed to reach local tribesmen above the escarpment were reported to the police who either captured or killed them. So ZANU was getting nowhere!
It was whilst I was with the RLI at Makuti, that the officers and men ripped sleeves off camouflage shirts and cut legs off camouflage trousers to counter the heat. All wore veldskoen boots (vellies) without socks because socks picked up irritating burs and sharp grass seeds. Most young farmers had rejected socks years before this for the same reason. In the cool of evening I noticed Army officers were wearing slacks and vellies but no socks. They nicknamed the bare skin of their ankles ‘Makuti socks’; a name that stuck. Thereafter, vellies and Makuti socks were fashionable for most young Rhodesian men.
The search for the hidden arms cache eventually led RLI to a site in the Vuti Purchase Area. It proved to have been the cache point but the equipment had been moved just before its discovery. All the same, it was interesting to explore the narrow cave whose deep bed of bat guano made one bounce as one walked. A ledge on one side of the cave was at the base of a vertical tunnel that led to another small ledge on the open side of the ridge above the cave. ZANU’s keepers of arms had built a long stepladder that gave access to this opening so that they could survey all approaches; which is why they detected the RLI’s approach in time to move their arms cache to safety.
My real interest in the cave was the huge quantity of bat guano that was much sought after by gardeners. Recognising the commercial value of this natural fertiliser I planned to do something about getting it to market when I could find time to do so. However, I obviously talked too much and lost out to one of 3 Squadron’s VR pilots who had the time to set up camp and extract all the guano, which he sold in Salisbury. During later operations I located another cave off the Umfuli River in the Mcheka-wa-ka-Sungabeta range. This cave contained greater volumes of bat guano but I never did find the chance to capitalise on it.
I was still operating from Makuti when, on 14 August 1967, I received orders to get to FAF 1 (Forward Airfield 1). This was an established permanent Forward Airfield at Wankie Town. At the time FAF 2 was being developed at Kariba Airport. In time to come another eight such bases would be built. On arrival at FAF 1, I learned what the flap was about. A large group of terrorists (later established to be ninety-four men) had crossed the Batoka Gorge, downstream from Victoria Falls, during the night of 9 August and had covered a distance of almost seventy miles before Rhodesian forces made contact. The operation was codenamed Operation Nickel.