Peter Baxter Africa  »  African War History

An exploration of themes of African military history

Selous Scouts Operation Miracle: 26 September 1979

October 20, 2012
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Gerry van Tonder is a well known author, archivist and researcher on warfare in Southern Africa, Rhodesian military history and military history in general. He, along with Adrian Haggett, is the author of the definitive Rhodesian War Roll of Honour In spite of previous Rhodesian Security Forces successes against ZANLA bases in the Manica Province of Mozambique, it became evident from reconnaissance missions that camps had again been established in a sixty kilometre radius from the town of Chimoio, not far from the Rhodesian border town of Umtali. Within this area, in what was now called the Chimoio Circle, and to the east of the Chimoio-Tete Road, aerial photographs revealed a large sprawling complex of five ZANLA camps. The whole [...]

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Selous Scouts Operation Eland

October 12, 2012
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In early July 1976 Reid Daly began preliminary planning for Operation Eland. Air reconnaissance over the camp continued and Winston Hart searched ‘every capture and scrap of paper found in the rubbish tip, or on dead terrorists’ to build an accurate intelligence picture of the Nyadzonia Camp.[1] Reid Daly’s account of the operation, and several other sources too, make mention of a ZANLA section commander by the name of Morrison Nyathi who was captured in Inyanga and debriefed personally by Mac McGuinness. The impression gained is that information received by Nyathi clarified the picture considerably, lending detailed information on numbers, camp protocols, layout and other key intelligence. Discussion with surviving Special Branch Liaison Officers involved in developing the intelligence dossier [...]

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Siege of Elands River: 4 – 16 August 1900

August 1, 2012
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Map: Siege of Eland’s River Staging Post 4-14 August 1900 Map: Battle of Eland’s River 4 August 1900 With the capitulation of Johannesburg and Pretoria by early June 1900, the Commander-in-Chief of British Forces in South Africa, Lord Frederick Roberts VC, divided the Western Transvaal operational theatre into districts, with the sole objective of mopping up pockets of Boer resistance.  The Marico District, including the towns of Mafeking, Zeerust, Lichtenburg and Rustenburg, was assigned to Maj. General Robert Baden-Powell, his force including 1,100 Rhodesia Regiment troops, Southern Rhodesia Volunteers and BSA Police. Boer Generals Koos de la Rey and Christiaan de Wet continued to believe that victory might still be within the grasp of their respective Republics.  With pockets of [...]

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Fireforce: A Memoir of the Rhodesian Light Infantry

April 30, 2012
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Fireforce: One Man’s War in the Rhodesian Light Infantry. Written by Chris Cocks. Published by 30 Degrees South, Johannesburg South Africa. 2006 There is always a book somewhere out there that should have been read, but has not. As an author and writer on themes of African warfare and general history it is incumbent on me to read as much on the subject as is available, and there is a lot available. The Rhodesian War has generated an enormous amount of biographical material and general military analysis over the years, to the extent, I sometimes feel, that the whole episode has been mythologized far beyond the scope and significance of the war itself. To put it in a brief historical [...]

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Operation Quartz: Zimbabwe/Rhodesia on the brink

April 18, 2012
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Ceasefire and Elections The closing chapter of Rhodesian history was decided in Lancaster House, London, between 10 September-15 December 1979. There, in what has been described by some as the Funeral Parlour of the British Empire, the principal protagonists in the unfolding drama of the Zimbabwe/Rhodesia Bush War brought the curtain down on this, the last substantive act in the drama of British imperial disengagement. It was a moment of profound delicacy. The Rhodesian conflict had been deliberately regionalised in an effort (a) to attack and destroy external guerrilla forces in their bases of operation in both Mozambique and Zambia (also in Angola during Operation Vanity in February 1979), and (b) to so reduce the national transport and communication infrastructure [...]

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Biological Warfare in Rhodesia

April 15, 2012
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This is an excerpt from Rhodesia: Last Outpost of the British Empire. Article by Jeremy Brickhill highlighting the matter in more detail. On the battlefield, meanwhile, the intensity of reprisal and counter-reprisal grew, and as manpower shortages in the armed services became critical, any and every type of force multiplier was considered. The Selous Scouts and Special Branch were behind most of these ideas and were highly creative and successful in employing them. One such scheme turned the tables on the terrorist‟s tendency to rob rural stores. Operatives fitted transistor radios, much coveted by guerrillas in the field, with secret homing transmitters effective within a radius of 50 kilometres. The transmitters were usually only active when the radios were turned [...]

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Zimbabwe’s Poisoned Legacy: Secret War in Southern Africa

April 15, 2012
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This is an embedded article published in Covert Action Quarterly dealing with the use of biological agents during the Zimbabwe Rhodesia War of 1965-1980. A brief summary of the Rhodesian biological war program can be found here CAQ Magazine Zimbabwe,Rhodesia,Anthrax

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Mau Mau: The Legacy of an African Rebellion

March 21, 2012
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The Africa@War series Volume 7 offers and introduction to Mau Mau and will be available in mid-2012. In 1952 violence broke out in the British colony of Kenya, setting in motion what would be arguably the first of the modern African liberation struggles. The characteristics of the Mau Mau Rebellion were very different from later manifestations of the African liberation movement – the most notable of these probably being the Rhodesian War, but also similar wars in Angola, Mozambique and South West Africa (Namibia). The Mau Mau rebellion was fairly narrowly defined inasmuch as it was largely a Kikuyu affair, and took place in the Kikuyu heartland of what is today the Central Province, and what was then known euphemistically [...]

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The South African Air Force in the Border War

March 21, 2012
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The Africa@War series Volume 9 offers and introduction to South African air force operations in Angola  and will be available in mid-2012. The South African Border War was the last of the true African Liberation Struggles, which, at its simplest, pitted the monolithic South African Defense Force (SADF) and South African Air Force (SAAF) against the rag-tag guerrilla army of the South West African people’s Organization, or SWAPO. It was also, however, intertwined with the internal and international anti-Apartheid struggle, with the simultaneous war of liberation in Zimbabwe, and both the Angolan liberation war and the subsequent Angolan civil war that immediately followed. Initially – from 1966 to 1976 – the war followed a low-key counter-insurgency pattern, with a minimum [...]

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The South African Border War

February 4, 2012
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At the end of 1987 and the beginning of 1988 arguably the largest tank battle in Africa since WWII, and the only one of its kind ever to take place in sub-Saharan Africa, was fought. The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale was a key episode in what has since come to be known as the South African Border War. While the Portuguese fought two intense guerrilla wars in the region, those being Angola and Mozambique, and white Rhodesia similarly battled internal nationalist movements throughout the 1970s, none of these compared in any way in terms of size and regional impact to the semi-conventional, and at times fully conventional, war that South Africa fought against a combination of local liberation movements, the [...]

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Robert Bell Smart the Royal Engineers Signals Unit

January 27, 2012
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I was recently contacted by Eleanor Smart regarding a collection of photographs belonging to her and concerning her father who served in East Africa during WWI. What follows is her own description of the circumstances of Robert Bell Smart, and a selection of his photographs. Robert Bell Smart.  Born in Glasgow July 1890. Died in Paisley Sept. 1962  My father started his working life as a telegraph boy in the Post Office in Glasgow. In 1915 he enlisted in the Royal Signals, or The Royal Engineers Signals Unit, as Sapper R B Smart.  Not sure exactly. He was sent to France. This bit he never spoke of, so I don’t know where he was or what battle(s) he was in [...]

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Rourkes Drift and Isandlwana: Key sites of the Anglo Zulu War of 1879

January 1, 2012
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Deep in the signature countryside of Zululand – undulating grassland punctuated by rubble crowned kopjies and shallow river valleys – lie two key sites in the mythology of the black/white struggle for Southern Africa. The Anglo/Zulu War in many respects was the beginning of the end of black independent monarchy in Southern Africa. It came about as a consequence of a number of factors, some political and some visceral, but all of which were defined by one simple defining principal.: the simple fact that an aggressive and expanding British Empire could not tolerate the existence alongside it of of an independent, militarily vigorous, politically cohesive and culturally intact black mass such as the Zulu. Whatever might have been the political [...]

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THE OPERATIONS ON LAKE TANGANYIKA IN 1915

December 27, 2011
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By COMMANDER G . B. SPICER-SIMSON,. S.O., R.N. Wednesday, 28th March, 1934, at 3 p.m. ADMIRAL SIR WILLIAM GOODENOUGH,. C.B., M.V.O., in the Chair. The Chairman, in introducing the Lecturer, said that Commander Spicer-Simson had had a very varied and adventurous career. He saw service in China; he was on the Boundaries Commission in North Borneo; he made a triangulated survey of the Upper Yangtze; and between 1910 and 1914 he was the Director of the Gambia Survey. In 1915 he was sent out with a small party of officers and men on the expedition to Lake Tanganyika, which, if it was a minor operation of the War, was nevertheless one of great importance. Lake Tanganyika is a very considerable [...]

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Ian Henderson and the Hunt for Dedan Kimathi

December 4, 2011
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During the course of 1956 an extraordinary drama played out in the forests of the Kenyan Aberdare Range, as two men, Dedan Kimathi, a Kikuyu Mau Mau forest leader, feared in equal measure by friends and enemies alike, and Ian Henderson, a local Special Branch member and guerrilla hunter extraordinaire, enacted a deadly game of cat-and-mouse that marked the final death throe of one of Africa’s first authentic liberation struggles. The Mau Mau is one of those historic events that has the capacity to be all things to all people To the white settler community of the time, anguished by a sudden and catastrophic rebellion against their very existence, the Mau Mau represented a reversionist, primal and unspeakably savage baring [...]

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I Can Never Say Enough About the Men

September 8, 2011
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I had noticed in my general browsing of the web that a new book associated with the East Africa Campaign of World War I had been published, strongly titled I Can never Say Enough About the Men. It did not drift into my orbit, however, and I found no opportunity to read it until I was contacted by Andrew Kerr, the author of the book, with a request to review it on behalf of the Great War in East Africa Association. This I gladly agreed to do and shortly afterwards a copy arrived in the post. At a glance I found a richly illustrated narrative configured along the lines of a standard regimental history that dealt, it seemed, with the [...]

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The Rhodesia Regiment

August 15, 2011
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The Old Drill Hall Nowadays serving as an Interior Ministry building along Leopold Takawira Street more or less opposite the Harare Gardens. The Lion & Tusk is still in evidence. This is a reproduction of an historic publication reproduced by the Orafs, otherwise known as Old Rhodesian Air Force Sods How many thousands of soldiers have passed through (and sweated in and around) Salisbury’s Drill Hall In the past 60 years? And how many have staggered or been removed from the adjacent “Rat Pit?” It was in the Drill Hall that “Bomber” Harris, of Royal Air Force fame, after World War Two blew again a bugle which he had sounded when he served with the Regiment In World War One. [...]

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The Shangani Patrol

August 13, 2011
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As Rhodesian Administrator Leander Starr Jameson rode into the smoking ruins of Bulawayo in the aftermath of the first phase of the Matabele War he somewhat naively expected to find Lobengula waiting to surrender formally. This would have crowned an impressive advance with a clean victory and wrapped up the war in favour of the BSA Company with a minimum of dispute. However, with no formal surrender in hand and the King still at large,the game was still wide open. Technically the threat of an official decree from Sir Henry Loch on behalf of the Imperial Government remained. Neither Jameson nor Lobengula had expected such a swift advance on Matabeleland, and Lobengula could certainly not have foreseen such a conclusive [...]

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A Quick Sketch of the Zimbabwe/Rhodesia Bush War

August 8, 2011
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I have noticed a lot of search traffic on this site pertaining to the Zimbabwe/Rhodesian War.  Aside from the Wikipedia entry covering the period, there is very little on the world wide web dealing with the subject. What follows is a thumbnail sketch drawn from my own reading of the episode which is not intended to be an accurate historical synopsis. The political background to the Rhodesian Civil War The Rhodesian War of the 1970s was a civil war. It was fought for the preservation of the Anglo/Saxon values and culture that had been grafted onto the landscape as a consequence of British imperialism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The territory of Rhodesia comprised Mashonaland, Manicaland and [...]

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Selous Scouts: Rhodesian Counter-Insurgency Specialists

August 4, 2011
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The Africa@War series is being launched this year as a joint venture between 30 Degrees South publishing of SA and the Helion Group of the UK. It covers African warfare in the post WWII period, which, as we all know, is a very rich period in this particular field. The first book to be released in the series is Prof. Richard Woods treatment of Operation Dingo, the attack on the ZANLA Chimoio base in late 1977. Next is Battle for Cassinga by Mike McWilliams followed by two written by myself, France in Centrafrique and Selous Scouts: Rhodesian Counter-Insurgency Specialists. The Selous Scouts The story of the Selous Scouts has been covered comprehensively in Commanding Officer Col. Ron Reid Daly’s account, [...]

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France in Centrafrique

July 21, 2011
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An interesting project landed in my lap a few months ago. My publisher, Chris Cocks of 30° South Publishing in Johannesburg asked me if I would be interested in providing the copy for a pictorial account of Frances military relationship with the Central African Republic. What I knew about the country was fairly limited – it had been at one time the home to Emperor Jean Bedel Bokassa, one of the most notorious of the lunatic fringe of African demagoguery – but besides that only that it was one of least known of all the struggling, under developed and hopeless of Africa’s numerous basket case economies. Another notable gap in my knowledge of Africa had also been the structure and [...]

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The fight at el Wak, Northern Province, Kenya 23rd August 1926

Thumbnail image for The fight at el Wak, Northern Province, Kenya 23rd August 1926 March 26, 2011
This entry is part 5 of 6 in the series Harry Fecitt

This entry is part 5 of 6 in the series Harry Fecitt The background In the summer of 1926 No.4 Company of the 3rd King’s African Rifles (3 KAR) was stationed at Wajir and Mandera in Kenya’s Northern Frontier Province.  The company commander sent out regular patrols to monitor security activities along the border with Italian territory.  Jubaland had been ceded over from Kenya to Italy on 29th June 1925, purportedly as a reward for Italy joining the Allies in the Great War, and was recognised as the Italian colony of Trans-Juba.  The colony had its own Governor and postage stamps.  On 30th June 1926 Trans-Juba was incorporated into the neighbouring colony of Italian Somaliland. The settlements and wells of [...]

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The Maruka Patrol: The Central Highlands of British East Africa September to October 1902

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This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series Harry Fecitt

This entry is part 6 of 6 in the series Harry FecittBackground In 1901 the colonial authorities in British East Africa (now named Kenya) had completed a railway line from Mombasa on the Indian Ocean coast to Kisumu on Lake Victoria.  Ferries then transported passengers and goods across the lake to and from Port Bell in Uganda.  Having thus spent nearly 500 million pounds sterling (nearly US$800 million) in today’s money, the authorities wanted to make the railway pay its running costs.  To help towards this goal prime areas of land in the Central Highlands were selected to house white settlers. However the Central Highlands were populated by indigenous people living in tribal societies, and they had no wish to [...]

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The fight at Gurin, The Cameroon Campaign 29 April 1915

Thumbnail image for The fight at Gurin, The Cameroon Campaign 29 April 1915 February 25, 2011
This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series Harry Fecitt

This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series Harry FecittIn April 1915 Captain Derek Wetherall Pawle, 2nd Battalion The Border Regiment, was aged 27 and serving on secondment with the 2nd Battalion of The Nigeria Regiment, West African Frontier Force. At that time British, French and Belgian allied forces had invaded the Cameroons, Germany’s largest West African colony. The Germans put up a spirited resistance with their local troops and a number of European officers and NCOs. >> Map of Gurin Most of the fighting was concentrated in the jungle country between Douala, the main port on the coast, and Yaounde, a German administrative centre further inland. However the Germans maintained garrisons in the drier and more open [...]

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The Action Around OK Pass, Somaliland Protectorate, 1st to 3rd March 1919

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This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series Harry Fecitt

This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series Harry FecittDuring the Great War internal security still had to be maintained throughout the vast British Empire.  One continuous problem facing the British was the ongoing insurgency in the Somaliland Protectorate inspired by the Dervish leader Sayyid Muhammad Abdullah Hassan, the so-called ‘Mad Mullah’.  This insurgency had been running sporadically since 1901 and adjacent Italian territory had often been used for refuge by the insurgents when British operations in Somaliland appeared to be succeeding.  But by 1919 the situation was changing in that the Mullah was hiring Yemeni stonemasons to build sturdy forts within parts of the Protectorate that he controlled, and his followers were settling around these forts and [...]

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Fighting the Aliab Dinka Southern Sudan, November 1919 – May 1920

Thumbnail image for Fighting the Aliab Dinka Southern Sudan, November 1919 – May 1920 February 25, 2011
This entry is part 2 of 6 in the series Harry Fecitt

This entry is part 2 of 6 in the series Harry Fecitt  In southern Sudan in 1919 the Aliab Dinka, Bor Dinka and Mandari tribes inhabited an area west of the upper White Nile river.  The tribesmen tended to be tall and fit-looking cattle herders who were adept at using spears.  They had little if any time for western conventions such as wearing clothing or paying tax demands.  The shared governing authority in the Sudan was a joint Anglo-Egyptian condominium in which the British held the higher administrative posts and Egyptians the lower ones. But nobody did much to help the tribesmen, who were expected to pay tax and to provide labour for the Hakuma (government) on demand, without the [...]

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The Gold Coast Regiment in East Africa

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Once operations in West Africa were over, and the Cameroons had been seized from the German forces there, West African troops were nominated for the East African theatre. On 26th July the Gold Coast Regiment landed at Mombasa and joined General Smuts’ forces.  The Regiment was 1,428 men strong and had 12 machine-guns.  Also it incorporated two 2.95 inch mountain guns into its ORBAT, and brought 177 specially enlisted and trained gun-carriers for the artillery section and machine-guns.  204 other general carriers supported the companies. The ‘Gold Coasters‘, who wore a green-knitted forage cap on operations, were the type of troops that the East African theatre needed.  They adapted to the climate and the bush conditions, and fought hard.  When [...]

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The Final Shots in Portuguese East Africa

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This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series Harry Fecitt

This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series Harry FecittSHORTCOL September 1918 On September 1 1918, The German Schutztruppe commanded by Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck was moving northwards away from a fierce and costly battle fought over the previous two days at Lioma. The Schutztruppe’s strength on 1st September was 176 European officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) and 1,487 African Askari plus a large group of wives and porters carrying ammunition and supplies. A British column titled SHORTCOL was tasked with following up the German withdrawal. This column was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel W.E Shorthose DSO (The South Staffordshire Regiment) and it contained the 1st Battalion of the 4th Regiment of the King’s African Rifles (1/4 KAR), recruited [...]

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Why did you fight? Narratives of Rhodesian identity during the insurgency 1972-1980

Thumbnail image for Why did you fight? Narratives of Rhodesian identity during the insurgency 1972-1980 January 27, 2011

The piece published below is attributed, and is an important observation on events of the 1970s in Rhodesia, balancing out a good many similar academic oral studies made on the guerilla forces involved, and balancing out some emotional but factually lean historic studies of the Rhodesian War from the point of view of white  Zimbabweans/Rhodesians. Here is a PFD version of the below published on the BSAP.org site Why did you fight? Narratives of Rhodesian identity during the (Rhodesian) insurgency 1972-1980 An oral history project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, carried out by the University of the West of England, Bristol Final project report, October 2010 Dr Sue Onslow and Dr Annie Berry Project Background and Methodology [...]

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An Expedition to recreate the journey of the Mimi and Toutou

Thumbnail image for An Expedition to recreate the journey of the Mimi and Toutou November 24, 2010

August 2014 is the centenary of the start of World War I. Many commemorations will held in various parts of the world, including among the grave sites and battlefields of Africa. The Centenary of World War One This year, in combination with African Byways I will be organising, and guiding, a recreation of the journey of the Mimi and Toutou, provisionally set for 2012.

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Proof that it wasn’t just white against black!

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(Some interesting comments and observations on the theme of this article can also be found here) I was browsing through the photographs on the Rhodesian Military Facebook page, and noticed a comment attached to a picture of a black Rhodesian soldier manhandling a black guerilla corpse, that this was…‘Proof that it wasn’t just white against black!’ I hope that one of the results of this war will be some arrangement or convention among the nations interested in Central Africa by which the military training of natives in that area will be prevented, as we have prevented it in South Africa. It can well be forseen that armies may well yet be trained there, which under proper leading might prove a [...]

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