This was the view looking north east from the water tower where we did guard duty during the day when we were in camp. Our schedule was usually 4 days out on patrol and four days in camp.

I went on a patrol where we climbed that mountain in the distance looking for terrs. I have a letter I wrote home from the side of that mountain and in it I did a cartoon drawing of what the guinea fowl looked like as they flew past us at high speed.

The pole sticking out of the tree was the antenna of our TR-48 base radio. This radio put out such a powerful signal the antenna would burn you if you touched it when it was transmitting on high power.

The camp had been attached a few days before we got there when it was defended only by black district assistants. These guys were not much good against the terrs - but once we got there the terrs avoided the place and stuck to their usual targets - unarmed women and children.

The camp had been mortared during the attack but only one bomb landed in the camp itself. The tarp on the roof, held down by concrete blocks, is where the bomb came down through the roof.

We had terrible, old shiny rifles - as seen here in the photo. In our training we had been told we would test our rifles before every patrol - but this never happened since we went operational with 2-Indep.

We had a contact earlier on this stint and, out of four guys, 1 rifle & the Bren jammed. The CO then decreed that we should all test our rifles and a number, including mine, jammed almost every shot. The clerks, cooks, etc. stationed at our company base, had kept all the new rifles for themselves - because they were constantly subject to inspenctions by the PF staff, and issued us with the old junk. After this contact, where our guys lost more than half their fire power , those of us with old junk, like mine, were able to return them to the company base and be given a new rifle that had been used for inspections! (Kind of makes sense when you are in a war and your life depends on your rifle).

I got a beautiful, new, black FN with a nice pin post at the front. It was so new the "S" and "R" were still white and the "A" red. I had never seen such a beautiful new rifle. It became my pride and joy. When I fired it, it worked fine. So, up until this time, I had spent months patrolling with a useless rifle and did not know it.

The legs in this shot are not mine. And, you can see the anti-tracking takkies we used to wear on patrol. (They had smooth soles). We patrolled in short sleeved shirts and shorts and got very tanned.

Looking west towards the clinic and the Mavuradonna Mountain range. The terrs had shot up the clinic. I patrolled as far as the eye can see to the west - and more.

There is my pride and joy propped up against the wall while I took this shot. I just loved that rifle. (In fact, just last year I bought myself a DSA-58 made by DSA Arms. Fabrique Nationale does not make FN's any more and the DSA-58 is made from scratch, in the USA, from the original FN blueprints. It is apparently the best FN you can buy in the world today. I often go out to the range to fire it)

Anyway, you can see the bullet holes and broken glass where the terrs attacked an unarmed building. Very brave of them.

This was the entrance to the camp. Again, you can see the radio antenna on the tree to the right. We were stationed here for a number of stints in this area. I remember being hear and hearing a distant explosion, then radio chatter stating that someone had accidentally detonated their claymore mine. In our stick I was always the one to setup the claymore and I'm glad I never made such a mistake.

As far as I remember, once we went operational, we only had one accidental discharge and that occurred when we were south of Bumi Hills. I still remember who did it but will not note his name. Those things happen and thankfully no-one was injured.

This shot is looking north west towards the Mavuradonna Mountains. There was an airstrip at this base and it was immediately outside and paralle to the fenc you can see there. At the time of this shot there had been a lot of rain and the bush was green. There were low rain clouds here and the mountains disappeared into them.

When I add my Google Earth shots of this region you can actually see the remains of Pachanza and the airstrip from space.

Four of us were stationed here for a few days to protect the black people who were finishing building their huts here. They slept here at night, guarded by us at first and later District Assistants, (DA's). The terrorists would often attack PV's at night - but only if they knew for sure that the military was not there.

We chatted to many of the black people in this village and I still remember a we had with about three young black guys our age. We asked them what they were unhappy about in the country and what they would like to change. Sometime I will recount the conversation and link it to here.

In this photo from left to right, Tom Whitney - (stick commander, carried FN), Norman Hill - (carried heavy barrrel FN), Tony Price - (carried FN) and out of the picture, me - (carried FN).

We patrolled the region in "Sticks" of four, looking for groups of terrorists who travelled in groups of 30 to 40 strong. We could never understand why the local population could not grasp the following:

The special branch told us that the local people thought we were weak and ineffectual. You see, much like Iraq today (2008-04-17) our strategy was to win the hearts and minds of the people. We were kind and decent to them and did all we could to protect them from horrifically vicious and brutal attacks carried out by the black terrorists. For example, they would come into a village at night, accuse a family of collaborating with the army, then literally dismember them alive, tearing off body parts like ears, lips etc., with pliers or cutting them off with knives, the husband, being the likely victim. His wife might then be made to eat his parts in front of her children. The terrorists would then destroy their livelihood by disemboweling their cattle or hacking off their legs whilst still alive, and often, as a coup de grace, they would tie up the family with barbed wire, throw them in a hut, and burn them alive. They made it clear to the other villagers what happened to whomever they decided was a collaborator. And, how do you win a war against that?

We were dealing with simple farming people who just wanted to live in peace on their little family farms and they were absolutely terrified of these brutal savages. They could not however seem to correlate the fact that only four of us young boys at a time would go out searching for groups of 30 - 40 terrorists. They could not grasp that the terrorists avoided us like the plague and they could not see that when four of us ran into 30 or 40 the latter came off very badly each time. We could not go around beating up and killing women and children just to show them we were strong and could do it too.

The army organized demonstrations to show the people that our weapons were strong - and I participated in a number of these. We put up barrels of water, rocks, etc. and blasted them with our rifles and machine guns accompanied by lots of oohs and ahs from the people - but it meant nothing. They were still too afraid to tell us anything as, by doing so, their lives were at stake. The army even resorted to doing the following to try to get through that we were able to kill the terrorists when we caught them. Often, after a contact, the dead bodies of the terrorists would be collected together and placed in a lage rope net.  A helicopter would then pick up this net and fly to many of the local villages, landing in each one, to show the people that we had killed the terrorists who had attacked them.

Alas, all to no avail. When you know that you and your family are likely to be literally ripped apart if you say something, you say nothing...

This was my equipment:

FN 7.62 mm rifle, 1,760 ft/sec, 17 tons /sq inch hitting power

Claymore mine I set up every night in ambush

Magazine with full metal jacket rounds and tracer every 4th bullet

Phorphorous Grenades

High Explosive Grenade

My backpack and sleeping bag are behind.

Wen we arrived at Pachanza it was staffed by a goup of black men known as District Assistants, (DAs). Their job was to guard the back farmers and their families who slept there at night. The three black men here were DA's but, unfortunately I only remember the name of one of them, at front right with his bren gun, Thadios Charles. The black man with the stove was the DA's cook. He ran and grabbed his stove for the group shot while the rest of us grabbed our weapons.

When we left Pachanza Thadios asked if he could write to me. (I had told him I was leaving the country to go to university in South Africa when I finished my service). Well, he and I corresponded for about a year after I moved to South Africa and I sent him a number of boxes of Benson & Hedges cigarettes that he asked for. Eventually he stopped writing and I do not know what happened to him. It was ironic however to me that, here I was, a white infantry soldier, made out by the world's media to be an obscene racist, yet a black man I met in the middle of nowhere, in the war, liked me and we wrote to each other.

I hate the media with an absolute passion for their utter abuse of power, their irresponsibility, their political agendas and unbalanced, distorted reporting, of which I experienced a lot as a Rhodesian Soldier.

The guys in our platoon are:

Back: Vaughn Appleton, Tom Whitney, Swannie Swanepoel

Front: Bin Jenkins, Chris Robertson & Beb Othitis

I took a photo of Thadios & sent it to him. I wonder if he is alive somewhere in Zimbabwe today...

We were back from patrol and a group of us cooked lunch together. Are far as I remember and can see here we had actually received some fresh rations for a change and were cooking our version of meatballs. You can see them in Tony's plate, and one in Gali's hand about to be dropped into the mess tin on the gas cooker.

In this photo from left to right:

Howard Benkenstein, John Morgan (at the back reading something) Tony King, and Gali Galanakis.

In base camp most of us slept on camping stretches we bought at civilian camping stores. You can see them some on the veranda behind us. The one at an angle against the wall there was mine. At night, when not on guard, I slept out here on the porch with my stretcher against inside of the low wall at the edge of the veranda. Just beyond the second stretcher is a door and our TR-48 base radio was in that room.

We were at the end of this tour of duty and packing to leave Pachanza to go on a pass home. At the time we did not know that this was the last time we would be here. As you can see we had a very well-used dart board. When we were in base, if not on guard we read books, played darts, cards and chess, wrote letters home, etc.

I remember one book I read, "The Arrangement" by Elia Kazan. I hated it and that is why I remember it.

People in this photo are from left to right: Charlie Brownlee, Tony Kiny, John Morgan, (holding a coke) Bin Jenkins, Jobie Burton, Swannie Swanepoel, Dave Scott & Doug Scott.

This was probably late 1976 or early January 1977. It was close to the end of my service and I took the camer with me out on a patrol. It is a pity the film was only black and white as it had rained a lot and the bush was very green. Those clouds behind us were dark grey rain clouds. These guys were all good friends and I patrolled with them a lot. We were on a patrol here and I asked them to stop and stand together for a quick photograph.

From left to right: Aiden Pretorius, Justin Whitcroft & Chris Robertson.

You can see what we wore when on patrol, camo shirts or T-shirts and camo shorts - (Aiden & Chris) which were actually camo trousers cut short, or in our green PE shorts - what Justin is wearing. I usually wore these too as I had not cut down my camo trousers. You can see too that Aiden had a home-made hand grip added to the stock on his FN. Chris carried the Bren and he also had a non-army issue backpack. They were all great guys and Justin was one of my closest friends in my platoon.

Chris's dad was a surgeon and when my grandmother fell and broke her hip he operated on her. A small world.

Take a look at Justin's right wrist and you will see a white bandage there, here is the story: A few days before this patrol we held a demo at a protected village to show the people that ourweapons actually worked. Justin and I participated in this demo along with other guys from our platoon. Justin took a turn firing the MAG, a belt-fed 7.62mm machine gun that fired at 600rpm. The gun's barrel gets extremely hot after firing a number of rounds. It has a carrying handle on top that swivels. He was holding the gun, and I was next to him. Somehow, as he swung it around, the handle flipped unexpectedly and the hot barrel was flipped onto his bare arm just above his right wrist. I remember hearing a hiss and seeing a small puff of what looked like smoke come from where the barrel landed on his arm. He received a bad burn from the barrel and this was the bandage the medic put on after treating it. It must have been pretty painful.