Rhodesian Light Infantry men are skilled and battle-hardened in counter-insurgency operations and their airborne “fire force” troops are in the front line of the battle against Communist-trained insurgents now creeping into Rhodesia in larger numbers than ever before.

The support commandos were already in action when I arrived soon after dawn at a remote airfield in eastern Rhodesia. They had been sent to kill a group of insurgents holed up on a rocky hillside 30 miles away.

Sheeting rain had turned the airfield into yellow mud. While I waited, I looked over a Douglas Dakota aircraft, a veteran of Orde Wingate’s Burma campaign.

The commandos use the “Dak” to drop on guerrilla positions, jumping from 500 feet.

For the jump they wear their normal battle order of a tee-shirt, shorts, and tennis shoes.

Rifles are strapped to their sides with string and their ammunition pouches are filled.

The commando unit returned at dusk, muddy and weary. They had killed 10 of their enemy and lost one man, a young White soldier of 22 who had just been married.

Young soldiers

They were subdued and talked quietly among themselves, their thoughts on the day’s fighting and their dead comrade.

They were young, mostly 18 or 19. The veteran corporals were in their early twenties, and many were scarred by old bullet wounds.

Late the following morning the war began again. A police patrol 40 miles to the south of us ran into another group of guerrillas. Both sides saw each other simultaneously and in the exchange of fire a Black policeman was shot through the thigh.

Within minutes “Stop 1,” the first “stick” of the fire force, was on its way in helicopters, followed swiftly by a tracker team. It soon became clear that a small guerrilla group “bumped” by the police was part of an unusually large concentration.

Helicopter pilots estimated between 30 and 40 men and coolly reported by radio that they had been missed by a couple of rockets but were taking hits from small arms fire.

My “stick” was next in. We prepared to sprint down the landing apron as the first helicopter returned from the contact area.

The machines rotor blades had been hit and there was a delay of five minutes while the pilot filed down the rough edges of the bullet holes and covered them with sticky tape. Then we were in and away.

Only Cpl Hennie Du Toit commanding the “stick” had headphones to listen to the briefing from the contact area.

The only order he gave his men was to jab his finger towards a narrow strip of bush between some maize fields as we swooped down to land. Everyone knew what he meant.

The soldiers spread out and began the sweep, moving slowly and firing into denser patches of bush.

The fighting is often a series of duels. I remembered how the soldier had died the day before. A guerrilla had jumped out of the grass two yards in front of him and cut him down with a burst of automatic fire. The soldier had managed to fire one round before the guerrilla fired, but it went wide.

Russian rifle

A dark movement in the cornfield on the right: the machine gunner whirls and fires. The rapid rattle of the guerrilla’s automatic fire and the heavy crashing of the soldier’s machine gun are simultaneous.

The soldier stoops and second later his thick brown arm holds up the Russian rifle above the waving corn. The sweep moves on. The bush is so thick that a man can remain hidden only a yard away.

A huge explosion and a black hole appears in the ground on my right. Cpl Du Toit is thrown backwards and at the same time the bush erupts as unseen automatic weapons open up on us.

The blast was a rocket and the insurgents had waited until we were 15 yards away before opening fire. The soggy ground took most of the shrapnel, but the corporal had blood streaming down his face from a splinter in the head. The rest of us were untouched.

The Rhodesians, with their fingers curled lightly round their triggers and their safety catches “off,” fired back instantly, at the same time flinging themselves sideways, forwards and back into the thicket available cover.

30 yards range

The ground was flat, with no solid cover, although we were at least hidden from view. The insurgents had the advantage of a hollow in the ground and some thick trees.

The volume of fire put down in the first minute and a half was intense and the noise deafening. With no more than 30 yards between both sides the bushes were cut to pieces.

The corporal withdrew the “stick” about 15 yards to better positions and we were reinforced by a young officer, Lt Neil Jackson, with four soldiers. He called in an air strike and within 30 seconds one of the circling aircraft came sweeping down.

We were so close to the guerrilla’s positions that the plane had to fire its rockets well behind us. They passed low over our heads before crashing into their targets.

Chinese grenades

Chinese stick grenades started exploding just in front of us., showing the crouching troops with mud and debris. The Rhodesians replied in kind, hurling the heavy hand bombs, and then flattening themselves to avoid splinters.

I was now on the extreme left of the line, on the edge of cover, and could see the lighter Soviet-made bullets ricochet of the thick undergrowth, while the heavier Rhodesian sliced through everything to their targets.

Now the light was fading, and I edged out of cover to try to get film of the enemy. I saw the muzzle flash of a machine gun some 30 yards in front of me and was looking for the man behind it when the guerrilla saw me and swung his gun on to me.

As the bullets spattering up the mud on my left came towards me, I remembered that some fool had said “Terrorist always shoot high in thick bush.” The burst stopped 12 inches short of me and, as I rolled back into cover, I heard the machine-gunner fitting a new magazine.

The firing continued for about an hour after dark, each burst momentarily silencing the chorus of frogs in the wet maize fields. Two wounded Rhodesians were evacuated to hospital via helicopter while the others moved up to spend a wet night in ambush round the enemy.

The action finished early the next morning. Teams went out to find the wounded and those who had escaped. The dead were loaded into helicopters.

The insurgents had lost six dead and probably some wounded. Three Rhodesians had minor wounds. For them, they said as they climbed into a lorry bound for the nearest pub, it had been “a very ordinary day.”