At that very moment there was no way I would have believed that the radio tracker dog system would never be used in operations. We had just seen it work in the worst possible conditions. Unfortunately however, Air HQ passed the entire project to the Police. Though some effort was put into continuing with the work already done, it failed because regular police dogs were expected to conduct routine urban dog patrol work with the specialist radio tracking as a sideline. Worse still was the fact that operationally inexperienced handlers managed the dogs and all training was done at Mabelreign, which was a long way from New Sarum.
Had I remained on helicopters things might have been different because I envisaged Air Force Dog Section preparing four dedicated dogs in conjunction with a handful of battle-experienced soldiers who would be trained to handle them in the field. All training would have been done at New Sarum where all important helicopter participation was at hand.
Operation Mansion
AS A CONSEQUENCE OF OP Griffin, ZAPU had failed for the third time to establish a safe route through Rhodesia. But they tried again in yet another attempt in mid-August 1968. The crossing was made way over to the west at the headwaters of Lake Kariba. Operation Mansion was established when the crossing was detected 500 metres from where the Gwai River flows into the Zambezi Gorge.
Terry Jones, with his helicopter gunner Senior Technician Willy Armitage, tried unsuccessfully to get at the terrorists who were cornered in a cave on a steep riverbank with RAR troops poised on the ridge above them. Then Mark McLean and Corporal Technician John Ness had a go at dislodging them. Although one terrorist was killed, Mark could not flush the terrorists out into view of the RAR troops, so he requested his supporting FASOC to call for heavy airstrikes.
Vampires flown by Keith Corrans, Wally Galloway, Graham Cronshaw and Prop Geldenhuys struck with rockets and cannon fire. A Canberra piloted by Peter Woolcock with John Digby delivered a noisy load of ninety-six fragmentation bombs. The airstrikes broke the terrorists’ will and RAR troops inflicted some casualties before nightfall allowed survivors to escape back into Zambia.
ZAPU’s operations had been receiving a great deal of press coverage outside of Rhodesia. The party’s propaganda machine, ignoring dismal failures, claimed that its military wing had killed many Rhodesian troops with the downing of many more helicopters than we owned.
Operation Excess
ZANU HAD BEEN QUIET FOR AGES but then, spurred on by ZAPU’s exaggerated claims and an urgent need to prove itself to the Organisation of African Unity, launched a large group across the Zambezi River at Mpata Gorge. Having failed repeatedly, ZANU had learned to avoid the long distances previously used to reach populated areas. In this case they aimed to get to the large sparsely populated Dande Tribal Trust Land, but without getting too close to the police station and Army base at Kanyemba.
A border patrol unit only detected the crossing eight days after it had occurred. This was the consequence of infrequent surveillance of the rough ground at Mpata Gorge and because, in winter, there was no water for many miles beyond the Zambezi River. Operation Excess commenced when Lieutenant Christopher John (Dumpy) Pearce of the RLI took over from the border control unit and commenced a follow-up southeastwards through rough, dry country. The whole region had plenty of trees but in the dry season they were leafless making the hot breezeless conditions extremely uncomfortable.
An RLI Tactical HQ commanded by Major Rob Southey was established on the site of a disused road camp on the main east-west Zambezi Valley road where it crossed the Angwa River bridge at Mato Pools. The main JOC that had been established at Karoi for Operation Cauldron was still in situ to oversee Op Excess. On 28 July 1968 I led a flight of four helicopters to support the RLI operation.
My first task was to resupply Dumpy Pearce with water and rations a little after midday. I located Dumpy near the source of the small bone-dry Ruponje River on the north side of a watershed ridge, where I shut down to have a chat. Dumpy’s callsign was hot, sweaty and tired, but in good spirits. The men welcomed the cold water and ice I had brought them and rested whilst Dumpy and I talked. Dumpy estimated that they were seven days behind a group of approximately fifty terrorists. I asked him to point to the spot on the nearby ridge where he believed the tracks were heading. Having noted this, I got airborne and found I could actually land there.
It was obvious that aerial tracking this old trail in such dry grassless conditions was a non-starter but I had other ideas in mind. Looking over the ground ahead I could not help seeing a patch of bright-green trees about twelve kilometres away beyond a series of descending ridges. The walking distance was at lease twice the direct distance. The trees were off to the right of the direction the terrorists had been heading, but they gave the distinct impression of being sited on water. I was absolutely certain the terrorists must have been drawn to the spot having travelled so far without water. I called Dumpy and asked if I could fly his trackers forward to see if my guess was right, promising to have them back within fifteen minutes if I was wrong. Dumpy said it suited him but I must first get Rob Southey’s blessings. For this I had to climb quite high to make contact with RLI Tac HQ. Rob Southey did not accept my suggestion, so I set heading for base.
About one minute later, I received a call to say it would be fine to return to Dumpy and lift his trackers forward, providing Dumpy was with them. I raced back to pick up Dumpy and two trackers. When we landed on smooth short green grass next to the copse of green trees, the trackers climbed out and immediately pointed to terrorists tracks on the very spot we had landed. They established that there was no surface water as I flew the rest of Dumpy’s callsign forward to tracks now assessed to be five days’ old.
Pressing my luck, I headed off low and slow over a vast expanse of leafless trees in the direction the trackers were moving and noted a single prominent and unusually high tree with distinctive smooth yellow bark. Although it was a long way ahead it was certainly on the line the trackers were moving. At this stage I was short of fuel and returned to base.
I went to Rob Southey to suggest moving the trackers forward again. Colonel John Hickman, the Officer Commanding the RLI, was visiting and I learned that it was he who had persuaded Rob Southey to let me try the first move. Though this had been successful and had brought the RLI two days closer to the terrorists, Rob seemed reluctant to move trackers to ‘the tall tree’. One could hardly blame him, because it must have seemed improbable that the terrorists would have seenthings the way I did. However, he changed his mind when Colonel Hickman said, “You have nothing to lose Rob!”
I returned to Dumpy, picked up his trackers and put them down close to the yellow tree. They were more surprised than I to find that a man had climbed the tree to scan the route ahead whilst the rest of the group had waited close by. Dumpy’s men were brought forward onto tracks, now estimated to be thirty-six-hours old. Again I pressed my luck and, dealing only with Dumpy, moved trackers forward about six kilometres to where the trees gave way to open ground along the dry Mwanzamtanda River. Here the trackers had to cast 200 metres before locating tracks that were under twenty-four-hours old. I had just sufficient fuel to bring the whole callsign forward before returning to base feeling well pleased with myself. We had closed from seven days to one day in less than three hours. Had Colonel Hickman not been at the Tac HQ, this would certainly not have occurred and a new method of gaining ground might have been lost.