It was late afternoon and with my enthusiasm at a peak I searched forward. I dared not proceed at low level with terrorists so close and climbed to 1,500 feet. Almost immediately I saw dark-green trees ahead and sensed this was the actual position of the terrorists. Alan Aird had been with me the whole time and he also saw the water in the heavily treed tributary that flowed into the Mwanzamtanda. This otherwise dry rivulet ran northwards along the edge of a rocky outcrop, then looped southward around a moderately high rocky feature. In this bend lay surface water with the dark-green trees lining the banks. Alan agreed with me that the terrorists were under those big shady trees and said he was certain he had seen bundles of something or other under the northernmost trees.
Back at base it was agreed that Dumpy Pearce should continue his follow-up and that fresh troops would be lifted into the suspected terrorist base early next morning. I do not remember the reason for this, but I only carried Alan, his MAG and a full fuel tank when I flew ahead of the three helicopters carrying Jerry Strong and his troops. I passed over the suspect point where both Alan and I saw what we believed were shell-scrapes at the edge of the tree line. We did not change direction until the other helicopters had passed over the site to drop troops behind a small ridge just 100 metres away. The helicopters lifted immediately to return for more troops as Jerry led his men directly to the suspect site. As he entered the trees, he called, “Terrs left about one minute ago—in a hurry. There is abandoned equipment—no time to collect—moving east on tracks.”
Poor Dumpy Pearce who had followed these terrorists so far was not at all happy that Jerry was right on the tail of the terrorists his callsign had been mentally prepared to contact in less than two hours. Major Southey refused to let Dumpy’s force join Jerry’s fresh troops, even though helicopters could have moved them forward in less than five minutes. Nevertheless this turned out to be a good decision.
Being under-strength, Jerry was moving cautiously in rough country. Soon enough the rest of his troops arrived and, though able to move faster for a while, patches of heavy bush in rough terrain well suited to ambush slowed Jerry down. His trackers reported following less than twenty men, which was way below the number Dumpy Pearce had given. In the meanwhile Dumpy had reached the terrorist base by the water where he found that a big force of about forty men had broken south. The only other tracks were those that Jerry was following.
Before Jerry’s troops reached one particular spot, I asked for 37mm Sneb rockets to be fired into a patch of bush on the lip of a ravine through which Jerry and his men would be passing. To assist Flying Officer Chris Weinmann, who was flying a Provost, identify the correct position, I asked him to follow my helicopter’s shadow until I called, “Now” to pinpoint his position of strike. So far as I know, this was the first time that one pilot guided another by using his aircraft’s shadow; but it worked perfectly and Chris placed the strike exactly where I wanted it. When Jerry reached the point a few minutes later, he reported that the tracks went through the point of strike but the terrorists had passed there some time earlier.
By late afternoon Jerry’s callsign had slowed to the extent that they were over one hour behind the terrorists when tracks crossed the north-south road leading to Kanyemba. Because the terrorists were heading directly for Mozambique, diplomatic clearances were needed to enter that country in ‘hot pursuit’. When it was too dark to track the troops settled for the night at the borderline. The road crossing had allowed trackers to get an accurate count of the number of men they were pursuing. This confirmed that, with only fifteen sets of prints, Dumpy was following the greater portion of the original group.
During the night authority was given to cross into Mozambique. At first light Jerry’s men received water and Mozambican maps before continuing the follow-up into flat, dry mopani country where the temperature would rise to thirty-eight degrees by midday. No aircraft came near Jerry until he said he was close to contact. As I approached his area, a radio transmission from Jerry was so heavily overlaid by the sound of automatic gunfire that I could not hear what he was saying. That he was in contact was obvious.
Jerry had heard voices ahead and opened out his callsign for a sweep through moderately open bush towards the voices. The terrorists saw the troops emerging from the bush line on the other side of a dry riverbed and opened fire, wounding one RLI trooper. Jerry called on the terrorists to surrender, whereupon they responded with vile language and anti-white slogans before resuming fire that kept Jerry’s troops pinned down for a short while.
The terrorist position was under trees on slightly higher ground on the other side of the dry riverbed. The RLI threw phosphorus grenades into the river line to give smoke cover to Jerry’s left echelon as it rushed over the riverbed and positioned itself on the terrorists’ right flank. With pressure on them from front and side, the terrorists’ action abated and Jerry crossed the river under covering fire to sweep through the camp where he found seven dead terrorists and one wounded. This meant there were still seven others close by.
Alan Aird and I searched forward and saw two terrorists lying against the bank of a small gully with their weapons pointing towards the advancing troops. Alan opened fire, forcing them to run in a crouch along the gully in the direction of Jerry’s flanking callsign. One fell then rose as Alan’s fire struck the second man who went head over heels. He rose again just where the gully seemed to end next to a clump of trees. Here both injured men disappeared from view. A gully line beyond helped us understand that a tunnel existed were the roots of the trees bound surface soil to form a natural bridge. The two terrorists were obviously in hiding under this bridge.
Then from above we witnessed a very strange action when two soldiers, one wearing a bright green item of headgear, moved to where we had lost sight of the terrorists. These two men were bending over the bridge and gesticulating wildly before both dropped on their stomachs moments before a grenade detonated in the gully next to them. They rose and did what they had done before, again dropping facedown as another explosion occurred. The act was repeated but, this time, the two wounded terrorists emerged and were taken prisoner.
Later we were to learn that Lance Corporal Lahee was the wearer of the green headgear, a tea cosy, which was the lucky charm he had used during Op Griffin to attract enemy fire. During the action in which he had been pinned down with Jerry Strong, he had lifted the tea cosy on a stick into terrorist view to confirm their continued presence and position. In so doing the cosy collected a number of holes. I knew the man had to be a bit crazy to be wearing such a bright article because it made finding him from the air so much easier than any other RLI soldier.
Lahee had watched the dust from our helicopter’s gunfire, which drew him to the terrorists under the earth bridge. Here he shouted to them to surrender. They refused, so he threw a grenade into the tunnel. The terrorists were just around a bend in the tunnel that protected them from the two detonating grenades that they had thrown back out into the gully. Lahee told them the next grenade would detonate as it reached them and this is what had brought them out of hiding at the very moment another terrorist was seen and killed by other troops.
A little past the point where the gully entered the dry river, I spotted a terrorist as he ran under a tangle of roots overhanging the bank of the main river. Alan had not seen this, and the terrorist was no longer visible to me. With Alan holding the MAG steady, I manoeuvred the helicopter and told him when to pull the trigger. With a touch of rudder I brought strikes to the correct spot for Alan to identify. We then made three passes down the river putting in accurate strikes on the spot before running out of ammunition.