Cold War Files: After-Action-Report (AAR) of a Rhodesian Ambush

Imagine initiating an ambush with a 40 mike-mike training round. That would be a Bad Thing. This ambush, as remembered by our friend and former Rhodie troopie Nick Bliksem, is just about as bad (but not quite). This was during the “Second Chimurenga” period of the Rhodesian Bush War, back when Jimmy Carter was POTUS, and the same year the Rhodie SAS moved from Cranborne Barrakcs to Kabrit. At the time he was with the Rhodesian SAS, which had been reformed in April 1961 as C Squadron. In 1976 it became 1 Rhodesian SAS Regiment. Read it, let us know what you think, and feel free to sound off with any lessonsyou‘ve learned out on the Sharp End. The Mad Duo

[All images sourced via Google Fu and YouTube. The passage of years and assorted ex-wives has robbed Nick of all but a few of his pictures.] 

A Hot Day in Mozambique

Nick Bliksem

It was our third day laying in ambush alongside a lonely two-strip tar road, deep in central Mozambique. The year was 1979 and Rhodesia had been at war with communist-trained insurgents (both Russian and Chinese) for well over a decade. We were a 12-man SAS callsign tasked with ambushing (and hopefully destroying) a ZANLA (Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army) commander and his accompanying escort.

[Note: a ‘callsign’ in the Rhodesian military at the time was essentially a unit or team that warranted its own radio designator – it could be Fireforce element, a single “stick” 4 men, a full SAS team or a 2-man sniper element. We’ll talk about how a handful of those guys, esp. Selous Scouts, worked all by themselves on singleton missions later. Mad Duo]

Our intelligence informed us that he would be traveling down this road in a 3-4 vehicle convoy consisting of Toyota Land Cruisers. These vehicles, by the way, had been kindly donated by the UN to aid in the peaceful development of the liberated masses of Mozambique. As usual, army callsigns on the ground and what they call “actionable intelligence” don’t necessarily go hand in hand (meaning one isn’t always married up to the other); the boys were getting slightly agitated sitting there for the third day in a row!

Read the Remainder at Breach Bang Clear