Combloc SAW: Chinese RPD at the Range

Hello ‘Him,’
Hey, a Rhodie! Thanks for you putting yourself out there and your involvement and dedication to one of the greatest societies, causes and special people, like you, that this planet has ever seen… it was like the Battle of Thermopylae and the Spartan 300 versus the World.
I assume you know that Green Leader was the result of the massacre of survivors of the two airliners they shot down out of Kariba. All were out for blood… and we got plenty of pay back.
We left from Kariba Airport and came back through Mana Pools on Green Leader. I was on loan from RLI to ‘C’ Squadron SAS and jumped with them into Westland Farms about 150 klics north of Lusaka, Zambia. My parachute got fricking hung up in a tree but I had 60 pounds of explosives in my drop pack and the tree eventually got tired of holding me and that up.
We caught them with their pants down. They never thought we’d go that far north of the capitol. Good God… I probably would have shat my pants and stayed in the plane if I’d known we were out numbered as we were. Something like 100 to 1 or more as I was told later. That arsehole Ken Flowers, head of CIO, was letting Brit MI-6 know about our operations and they in turn informed the Terrorists. May he rot in hell. They were a little slow in doing so on this one though. Even though the soccer field and most of the camps were empty… Rhodie Intelligence found out where they’d gone and hit them there too… like about twenty miles away and stomped the shytte out of them there.
Got 1437 of them total on the op and one of ours wounded. Bombers, gunships and Lynx got most of them. But great by anyone’s numbers. If you’d seen what they did to the Rhodie farm families and their own tribal people you would understand why none of it weighs on my conscience… and then maybe you did see. Humanity is far better off with those arseholes removed from the planet.
We captured so much ordnance that the C47s flew around the clock hauling this back to Rhodieland. Not the Chinese stuff… but the primo Russian stuff. Brand new Russian RPD, AKMs, TM 57 mines, RPGs with sophisticated sights. We had so much ordinance we put what we couldn’t carry off under and around a pile of sudza the size of a house. Then the engineers blew that into next week and when I left on the chopper it had turned about ten football field sized areas of Africa white and it still looked like it was snowing at Christmas. Sudza given to the terrorists and labeled on the bags “World Council of Churches, Methodist Synod.” That permanently severed my ties with the church I was baptized in.
60 Minutes did a full hour on the World Council of Churches and their aid to the Communist Terrorists. But the Commies had taken over Rhodesia and that’s the only time 60 Minutes tells the truth… when it’s too late to do anything about it… and their broadcast served a dual purpose… to discredit Christianity. My combat partner, another American in SAS, was a former Vietnam Marine from Tennessee. He and I would check for booby traps and then pick the weapons boxes up and the bottoms would come out… termites.
Green Leader Raid… great recording on the internet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p1NRLFso6Q. I like the pilot’s warning at 4 minutes.
The SAS guy directly in front of me was the only casualty out of 400 of us… we were sweeping a tree lined dry river bed and adjoining fields when a terrorist popped out… fired at us and fucked off before we could get a bead on him. He hit the front sight of the SAS guy’s FN… bullet fragmented into his abdomen and bicep and the remaining fragments flew lickity split past all of us around and behind him. I remember he was cursing because his wedding was in a few days. But he survived.
Four two barreled 14.7 MM anti aircraft guns had been firing at us after we jumped but by the time we were all down, these terrorists saw the light, threw the bolts from their AA guns into the bush and were all butt cheeks leaving the area. Two terrorists were captured about a half mile away and had hightailed it out of their underground quarters just before we rocked up. These were some of the unhappy POWs you saw, I suppose. They were fresh off a Russian Aeroflot flight to Lusaka and hadn’t even had time to unpack their gear. Still had their Aeroflot dinner menus from the day before in their packs.
They’d spent the last year at the Patrice Lumumba University in Gorky, Russia. ‘Agricultural Training,’ as the university is known for (Sarcasm). Oddly, they had the same colored training notebooks the Rhodies had. Blue cover, white paper. They looked like they were made by the same printer… probably the company my Father In Law owned… ha ha!
All their instruction was in English. Detailed sketches of how to lead the target and shoot down paratroopers in one section…. ha! In one pack I found a photo of about 25 students standing between two ancient cannons at this Russian agricultural university. Races and people from all over the world… and I assume all commie terrorist graduates. We force marched to the area the terrorists had moved to prior to our raid to search and destroy in that area. I remember we had no water and were miserable for a day and a half until they got some to us.
Major H. asked for a volunteer to go into their underground bunkers and I jumped into the trench entrance and was the eager tunnel rat with my flashlight, 9mm and a stupid look you would have seen on my face if it hadn’t been so dark down there. Found nothing but two packs and was worried they’d been booby trapped… but I carefully checked them then went through them.
I also found a Walther PPK .380 and a Sten Submachinegun in fricking .45 caliber with Russian markings and two HE grenades. Martin O. and I disassembled and hid the Sten, pistol and grenades in the battery compartments of one of our radios which we closely escorted back to Rhodieland.
Someone ratted us out and they took the Sten from us, but Martin put the pistol and grenades in his personal pack. I found out later that he buried them somewhere in a flower bed in one of the parks in Salisbury. I suppose someday a gardener will tug on his rake and find a grenade pin on one of the tines.
Now it is equal misery for both black and white… except if they’re in the leadership. The equality of Communism.
Good to hear from a Rhodie!
Good God I miss that place…
Jack Lawson
Associate Member, Sully H. deFontaine Special Forces Association Chapter 51, Las Vegas, Nevada
Author of “The Slaver’s Wheel”, “A Failure of Civility,” “And We Hide From The Devil,” “Civil Defense Manual” and “In Defense.”
As one member of our Commando wrote in later years: “That country (Rhodesia) has cast a long shadow over our lives, has it not?”
As one struggles to endure the daily mundane of life, I realize he is right. He wrote on…
“Rhodesia is a woman whose name is forever written upon our hearts – against whom no earthly flesh and blood of female can ever compete. We shed our blood, sweat, tears and the blood of others answering her siren call. Now that the winds and the rains have washed away the stench of the rotting corpses, we remember only the flair of our youth as we jousted lockstep with an opponent equally as determined to rid the world of us, as we him.”
“Anoma – Anoma – Anoma!” Swahili for “I am a poor man – I am a poor man – I am a poor man!”
“But I am a rich man and she (Rhodesia) has made me so. We loved her like no other. Oh, how I miss her and my friends so!”
What amazing words, from yet another one of the guys in my Commando who appeared so ignorant that I didn’t think he knew how to read, let alone capture the spirit of then with such eloquent words.