Some time after Op Cauldron there was a need to uplift large numbers of RAR and RLI soldiers from different locations and take them to their vehicle transport sited at a single pick-up point. At the time, there were four helicopters available for the task, mine being one. I elected to undertake the RAR uplift with another helicopter, and tasked the most junior pilots to do the RLI uplift. This was an entirely selfish decision!
All of the troops had been in the bush for many days without having bathed or changed their clothing. The use of deodorants was forbidden because even the lightest scent would give terrorists early warning of troop presence. It was for this reason that had I elected to collect RAR soldiers. Experience had taught me that the smell of white soldiers is appalling after only one week without a bath, whereas the smell of black soldiers, in equal circumstances, was much easier to tolerate.
The difference between black and white body odours was probably due to diet. For me the smell of unclean black men is similar to that of faintly rotting onions. With the passage of time, the intensity increases but the basic odour remains much the same. On the other hand, the smell of unclean whites varies from individual to individual ranging from stale, sour milk to rotten meat. Collecting RAR was fine because I knew exactly what to expect and each man entering the helicopter smelled the same as the next. With white soldiers, I found myself retching from the foul stench that changed as each man came aboard; and no batch smelled the same as another.
P. K. van der Byl
P. K. VAN DER BYL WAS a very colourful, eccentric minister in Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Front Cabinet. Of South African aristocratic stock, he spoke with a very affected nasal accent in a style somewhat akin to Eton graduates. He did not wear underpants and dressed ‘to the left’ in a manner that confirmed his reputation for being well endowed.
Following the Vampire strikes against Hedebe’s group, PK decided to visit the site. He was not really known to the men in the field at that time and his arrival at Karoi for his helicopter flight to site was quite an eye-opener because his dress was so appalling. Below his Australian bush hat he wore a pink shirt with bright-blue tie, khaki shorts with black belt, short blue socks and vellies. On return to Salisbury he appeared on national television properly attired in suit and tie. Speaking of his visit to the airstrike site and making grand gestures with his hands he told of seeing “Blood, blood everywhere!” In fact we knew the red fluid splattered about the area was mopani sap oozing from shrapnel wounds to the trees.
When the RLI and SAS got to know him better, PK became very popular with the soldiers. His ridiculous accent appealed to them just as much as his strange dress. He often requested to be taken on patrol so he could “shoot a terrorist” but asked that care be taken not to get him “lawst”.
After one of his many field visits, he was flown back to Salisbury in a helicopter piloted by Peter Simmonds. Contrary to orders given Peter to take the minister to New Sarum, PK ordered Peter to drop him off where his servants would be awaiting him close to his home. When the helicopter landed in Salisbury Botanical Gardens, right next to the main road during rush hour, all vehicles came to a halt to watch the unbelievable sight of ‘white-hunter PK’, with elephant gun over shoulder, leading white-clad servants carrying baggage on heads.
After he became better known to the Air Force, he arrived by air at Thornhill to attend some official function or another in Gwelo. Station Commander Group Captain Ken Edwards offered the minister lunch in the Officers’ Mess after his official function was over. PK said he had an awful headache and declined the offer. However, when he returned to Thornhill, he told Ken that he had changed his mind and would love to take up the earlier offer of lunch before flying back to Salisbury. Not surprisingly the caterers were in a bit of a tizzy for receiving such late notice but, as always, they presented a superb meal.
There were many officers and wives enjoying a Saturday lunchtime drink in the Grog Spot when John Digby walked in wearing P. K. Van der Byl’s very smart Homburg hat. He had found this on the table in the entrance hall to the mess. “Surely the minister with his British Army background knows better that to leave his hat in the entrance hall of an officers’ mess when its rightful place is in the cloak room!” Having said this, John placed the hat on my wife’s head.
Beryl immediately sat on the bar counter and posing in an exaggerated manner made some statement in PK’s affected accent. She was still doing this when Eddie Wilkinson whipped the hat from her head and, before he could be stopped, poured a full pint of beer into it causing instant loss of shape. Some officers took sips from the hat before it became the object of a roughhouse rugby match during which it shrivelled and shrunk into a shapeless mess. Once the match was over, the hat was unceremoniously driven down one of the horns of a kudu trophy hanging on the wall. When the minister was ready to leave, his headache immediately re-developed because he could not find his prized hat. Group Captain Edwards tore into the Grog Spot to see if anyone had seen it. Everyone pointed to the kudu horns.
PK took off for Salisbury in a thundering bad mood and John Digby phoned officers at New Sarum to brief them on what had happened. A whole group of them rushed off to find hats and gathered at Air Movements in time to meet the minister. As PK emerged from the Dakota, everyone doffed their hats in greeting. Unable to respond, the minister’s annoyance and headache worsened. Fortunately he was humoured sufficiently to accept the offer of a drink in the mess where his headache dissipated before his departure for home in good spirits.
John Digby took all the Saville Row hat-maker’s details from the destroyed hat and, through his brother in London, had a new Homburg made. When Terry Emsley was persuaded by John to present the new hat to PK, the minister vowed never again to leave it unattended in any place other than a hatbox in the boot of his car.
For all his eccentricities and flamboyance, PK was a bright politician who spoke fluent German. I heard it said that he very cleverly saved Rhodesia many millions of dollars by ‘confiding’, very loudly, with a fellow passenger on a Lufthansa flight out of Germany. This was done to make sure that an agent, whether British or American I do not know, sitting behind him could hear his words. He knew the agent was trying to establish the purpose of his visit to Germany—and PK wanted to oblige. This was because he had just received confirmation from home that the new Rhodesian Mint had successfully started pumping out high-quality Rhodesian dollar notes. By boasting loudly about the German firm that was about to deliver Rhodesian currency through an agency he named, he triggered a UN action that blocked the deal. Thanks to PK, this ‘UN sanctions-blocking success against Rhodesia’ not only saved millions in foreign currency at UN expense, it highlighted anotherof the country’s self–sufficiency triumphs.
Roland Coffegnot
SUD AVIATION’S CHIEF TEST PILOT, Roland Coffegnot, made his second visit to Rhodesia to discuss any problems we were experiencing with our Alouettes and to fly with instructors. Being Sud Aviation’s test pilot for the Alouette III’s, Roland knew the absolute limits of these machines, which made flying with him both enlightening and frightening.