Discapacidad intelectual

Macombe Days, 1973-1974

Shortly before Rhodesia staged her rebellion and declared UDI. Brian Robinson. one of the unit's new young lieutenants. went to Britain on attachment to 22 SAS. absorbing all he could about the role of the SAS and soaking up atmosphere from the masters.

He was only the second Rhodesian SAS officer to have been attached to 22 and it was an invaluable experience; one which was ultimately to have a direct effect on the way the Rhodesian Special Air Service was to develop.

For all Brian's initial ideas were based on what 22 were doing on their operations behind enemy lines. By living with them. talking to them. thinking SAS 24 hours a day. the young Rhodesian gained a unique insight into what the SAS was all about­ what they should do, and perhaps just as importantly. what they should not do.

It was 1965 and 22 SAS were working right into Borneo. and the closer Brian Robinson got to know the operators. the more he heard about the sort of operations they were doing there ... seeking out enemy camps, leading in the infantry to attack them. melting into the night and going on to their next task. It was the typical everyday work. the deep penetration behind-the-scenes clandestine work that made the SAS what it was.

Suddenly, all the SAS's well-known diches- long range deep penetration. seek and destroy. shoot-'n'-scoot- became part of Brian's life.

Then. having got himself on the flight manifest to go to Borneo with 22 SAS. UDI

happened and the adjutant called Brian in to spell out exactly what it meant to the Rhodesian soldier.

"Look. I'm awfully sorry about this." he told Brian ''but you are no longer welcome here."

And that was that Brian Robinson was on the next plane to Rhodesia. It was a big blow and Brian was bitterly disappointed. He knew he could have gained a wealth of experience in Borneo that. could have been used back home in Rhodesia.

Now that it was 1973 and the Rhodesian SAS was working externally in Mozam­ bique. he saw it as an ideal opportunity to employ his men in their proper role. just as

22 SAS had done in Borneo.

The squadron could act as the eyes and ears of the Rhodesian Army, providing the infantry with information for their attacks on terrorist bases and routes. The SAS's role was not necessarily to do the killing. as most people in Rhodesia thought Since the desert days, the SAS's role was npt to engage the enemy. but to outwit them.

But getting that message across was not such a straight-forward task.

For the first few months after the Frank Wilmot incident. the SAS were working south of the Zambezi River, watching and monitoring ZANLA and FRELIMO movements.

It became very apparent that the so-called Ho Chi Minh trail was far more than one simple route, which would have been easy to ambush. It was a whole series of routes running through villages and kraals. in a vast area that was something like seventy kilometres (45 miles) wide.

But sitting and watching paths, and acting as the eyes and ears. took time, and the average soldier sometimes could not understand why the SAS were doing it

Rhodesian SAS soldiers were young, magnificient - and like all soldiers, they wanted action. And they could not help feeling that by making them sit and watch paths for weeks on end their commander was messing them around

Nothing could have been further from the truth. Brian Robinson realised that it took time, often months. to build up a picture, to establish where the many infiltration routes were, which could ultimately lead to big ambushes being mounted and to large-scale camp attacks.

Yet while the SAS continued to follow their traditional role and act as eyes and ears for the infantry, the plan was not followed to its logical conclusion because- accord­ ing to Brian Robinson - the SAS did not have the benefit of adequate support troops.

All SAS information was passed back to Two Brigade ops room where the staff spent their time putting lines and stickers all over the maps where they intended positioning cut-off troops. It all looked extremely impressive on the maps. On the ground however, it was not so good

It became extremely frustrating for the SAS. having risked their lives and located groups of 150 or so ZAN LA moving southwards each day, to call in a group of infan­ try which was unable to react effectively and eliminate the insurgents ... thereby leav­ ing ZANLA to continue on their way unopposed and infiltrate into Rhodesia

Ideally, what was needed Brian felt. was a superior infantry unit like the British Parachute Brigade. But that was just not available in Rhodesia and Brian eventually conceded that if their information was not followed-up effectively, the SAS were just wasting their time.

Having at long last managed to convince everyone that the SAS's role was not to kill the enemy but to act as eyes and ears, Brian then began to fight for the right to do the infantry's job for them - to kill the enemy!

He was basically fighting against himself. but he had no choice. If the enemy were to be stopped the SAS would just have to do the job themselves ... and what started as reconnaissance turned into a hit-and-run, hunter-killer role, which was acceptable to Brian Robinson as it was the shoot- 'n'-scoot of the Borneo days- a volley, inflicting casualties then disappearing into the night as soon as possible.

The SAS troops themselves certainly welcomed the opportunity to be unleashed and do something positive to put a stop to the enemy.

As they were working so far from Salisbury. a tactical headquarters was established at an old mission station at Musengezi in Rhodesia from where the helicopters and aircraft were on standby to speed across the border for casevacs, airstrikes, resupply, trooping and extraction.

It didn't take too long for the Rhodesians to realise that if they were to tum the terrorist tide effectively, they needed to get right to the source- and that meant operat­ ing north of the Zambez� taking the war right to the Zambian border where ZANLA were crossing over in their journey down Mozambique and into Rhodesia

It meant doing deep-penetration operations; it also meant they needed a perma­

nent f01ward base inside Mozambique ... and in September. 1973. the SAS established a permanent tactical headquarters at Macombe, a Portuguese aldea­ mento (a strategic protected village) with an all-important airstrip on the south bank of the Zambezi.

Aircraft remained on standby at Macombe forward tactical headquarters during the day and were pulled back to Musengezi rear admin base at night, for they would have been sitting ducks to any enemy hidden in the thick surrounding bush and armed with mortars or rocket launchers.

Macombe aldeamento- housing civilians to protect them from the rampages of FRELIMO- was at one end of the grass and dirt airstrip and the SAS tactical head­ quarters was in a tented camp part way down the runway. The troops based up in

bivvies under the trees around the camp.

A number of armed black militia guarded Macombe and although they came under the control of the Portuguese Army in Tete, they had been left very much to their own devices.

There were few roads and these were so heavily mined the militia ventured out from the safety of the aldeamento only every few months to make the long and hazar­ dous trek to their nearest control station at Zumbo. sixty kilometres (37 miles) away, to collect their pay.

The arrival of the SAS at Macombe was one of the most classically successful counter-insurgency operations of the entire war. The RAR were to join them later and they kept the area south of the river clear of enemy while the SAS worked north.

Although their boundaries were set to some extent by the Portuguese. the SAS's area of operation became more and more flexible and the greater successes they had the more terrorist camps they destroyed the more they forced the enemy northwards and away from the Rhodesian border.

The SAS began at the Zambezi and just kept walking towards Zambia. dominating the area and keeping the enemy on the run.

So successful were the SAS's hunter-killer tactics, and so deep inside Mozambique were they, that for a while, the enemy were taken totally by surprise and didn't know where they had come from.

When ZAN LA and FRELIMO finally worked out that the SAS were in the area. they actively went in search of them. increasing their groups from twenty to sixty to give them more confidence. They even brought in dogs to hunt down the SAS men.

The SAS would parachute into a single DZ previously selected and reeded by a freefall pathfinder group, and cache their parachutes in plastic bags. They would then split up into their various patrols and fan out towards their prescribed areas to carry out their tasks of ambushing. patrolling. observing and locating camps and the main inftltration routes into Rhodesia

Unless there was a need for them to regroup for a camp attack. the patrols would not meet up again until the end of their six-week stint

If they were not pulled back to Macombe forward tactical headquarters, a parachute resupply would be dropped in to them every 14 days with food. radio batteries, medical supplies and ammunition.

This period became known as the Macombe Days -and it served to sort the men from the boys.

Many soldiers fell by the wayside when Brian Robinson hegan insisting that every SAS man hiding away in a little comer of SAS HQ. who was fit and able and drawing

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ra-pay had to go on ops into Mozambique. Those who did not were posted to other units.

The length of the operations took their toll on some of the married men too. The normal operation was six weeks in the bush and ten days back in Salisbury, which in those early days of the war was unheard of.

The Macombe saga lasted more than a year, but long before it came to an end, many married men, placed under a lot of marital pressure, had moved on to join units which were not so demanding.

Waging war north oft he Zambezi was tough and those SAS men who managed to overcome the rigours of the Macombe Days. went on to become the mainstay of the SAS in later years.

The Macombe Days era was an entirely new ball game. They were a very long way from home and left very much to their own devices.

It was new even to the most experienced combat soldiers who had seen service in Viet Nam or Aden. In those particular theatres there was always air support some­ where near at hand, and no matter how deep into the interior they were, they could be confident that within a matter of minutes of calling for support, the planes would be overhead dropping ofT their deadly payloads.

That was not the case in theMacombe Days. Generally, an ageing Provost plane had

to struggle up from Musengezi rear administrative base in Rhodesia to do an air­ . strike, and the SAS were basically relying on it to frighten the enemy away rather than

for any damage it could inflict

To add to the SAS's troubles, there were also the deadly anti-personnel landmines liberally sown around the countryside, which opened up an entirely new dimension

in the war for them.

The bush was extremely thick and often there was no option but to use the few overgrown tracks that there were. Every soldier knew that with each step he took he ran the risk of having a leg blown off.

It was not conducive to good nerves and enemy AP mines claimed two SAS lives before theMacombe Days were over. Thereafter the SAS had very good cause to have a healthy respect for AP mines. The SAS occasionally laid AP mines themselves, but some men were totally against using them at all unless they could be absolutely certain the enemy would walk on them straight away.

For the AP mine was a double-edged sword that could claim Rhodesian lives, especially if planted in a remote area on the offchance of scoring a hit Often they were planted in the dead of night and the operator might not know exactly where he was, making it difficult to keep an accurate log.

The SAS were often tasked to go back into the same area weeks, months or even years later, running the risk of blowing themselves up on their own mines.

The extremely rugged mountainous terrain north of the river made patrolling over long distances carrying extremely heavy packs, particularly tortuous. The merciless blistering heat, bathing every operator in sweat during the long summer months and the torrential tropical downpours during the rainy season, only added to their discomfort

Virtually every soldier experienced enormous weight losses on each bush trip. Some lost more than nine kilograms (24lb), a situation made worse by their meagre diet

Being run-down made them particularly susceptible to veld sores. The excep­ tionally cruel African bush, with most trees, bushes and creepers harbouring vicious

thorns, took its toll. ·

Even the grass was an enemy and cut into them. In normal circumstances, minor cuts and scratches could be ignored, but the SAS had to meticulously paint theirs with antiseptic as they could very quickly become septic and develop into runny bush sores which were impossible to heal. Many SAS men still carry the scars from those as a reminder of the rugged Macombe Days.

There were perpetual problems with malaria-carrying mosquitoes, which were the most concentrated they were ever to experience. Despite religiously taking anti­ malarial tablets, men still went down with malaria.

Water had to be constantly purified with tablets to prevent the particularly unpleas­ ant intestinal disease, bilharzia. Other diseases, long since forgotten by the civilised world - cholera, typhoid, blackwater fever- were still common in those areas. Often troops returning from long bush trips would go down with diseases the doctors were unable to classify.

Once they were in the bush, they were in, and would only get casevacked if seriously injured

The terrain was wild, with thick bush and reeds, and often nil visibility. It was just bush, bush and more bush, with few signs of life; less of civilisation. Mist hung along the riverlines, and low clouds clung to the mountains and huge rock kopjes, often making resupply difficult

It was like being transported back in time to an Africa of hundreds of years before, except now there were few wild animals, as many had been killed by FRELIMO and ZANLA.

There were no telegraph poles or roads leading anywhere and the few tracks they came across were overgrown, and the hardly distinguishable foot paths were often criss-crossed with hundreds of felled trees, chopped down by FRELIMO to stop the Portuguese convoys travelling the countryside.

South of the river, there were the occasional cut lines gouged out of the bush years before by the Portuguese in their anti-tsetse campaign.

The enemy were not only ZANLA, but the locals too, and the SAS soon learned to steer well clear of civilians, who invariably reported their presence to FRELIMO.

For even though the SAS donned camouflage cream and appeared as black as the enemy, they could not pass close examination. And even if they did, the locals generally knew everyone in the area and reported them anyway.

The SAS's bushwork quickly developed and became superb.

Every man was alert to the possibility of a hostile civilian, FRELIMO or ZANLA

watching through the thick bush, and the little things that could give the enemy away -the crackle of twigs .. . scuffling noises which sounded like baboons but without the familiar chatter ... the sudden noise as a flock of birds flew off and turned into the sun ... even an eerie feeling that told them something was not quite right ... the seep­ ing of water into fresh spoor, and the feeling that hit them in the pits of their stomachs that they were about to walk into an ambush ...

Or the times when, in their search for terrorists, they investigated track patterns picked up in the thick bush by aerial reconnaissance ... when the tracks led them through dark narrow tunnels of undergrowth and the hairs stood up on the backs of their necks. Times when they couldn't go left or right, they could only go one way ... and with every step they took they could lose a leg on an anti-personnel mine, or every comer they turned they could be met by a hail of machinegun rounds and have their heads blown away.

They learned not to linger too long in one place; not to base up for the night in the same spot where they had eaten their last meal of the day; not to take the presence of even a solitary herdboy for granted ...

Tactics which they had learned back in Rhodesia suddenly took on new meaning; for now the war games were for real and from the moment they leapt out of the Dakotas they were in enemy territory. in unknown country, and there could be no relaxing until they got back over the border again.

They always spoke in a whisper and only when necessary. )"hey might well have been on a long bush trip in the company of a lot of other soldiers. but they would only exchange a few words with them the entire stint

When they took a smoke break, there could be no sitting in little groups chatting about this and that One man would always go forward to watch the front and the last one would face the opposite direction to cover their spoor. The others would face out­ wards. so the patrol was facing the four points of the compass.

It was during the Macombe Days that Brian Robinson introduced what was for Rhodesia the fairly revolutionary idea of reducing callsigns from six-man to four­ man groups to enable them to cover more ground, and to make them more acceptable

In document NICOLL ANDREA JIMÉNEZ PASTÉN. Tesis para optar al grado de Magister en Desarrollo Cognitivo. Profesor guía: Ignacio Figueroa Céspedes (página 45-0)