Death Flight. Michael Schmidt
big Cecil “Vise Grips” van den Bergh14 led a convoy of 20-ton trucks through Beit Bridge [the border with South Africa]. No questions were asked at the border. At the final destination, a Special Forces base in Phalaborwa, they unloaded tons of captured ZANLA weaponry …’
This haul would come in useful in the Recce’s future pseudo-operations. Armstrong recalls that ‘the majority of Selous Scouts remained in the rebadged unit. The Training Officer, Major Geoff Atkinson, with Captain Ian Scott, the Adjutant, co-ordinated the move to South Africa of those European soldiers who joined the South African Special Forces.’
Stiff writes: ‘Many black operators, both black detectives and turned guerrillas, agreed to leave, although some changed their minds later. Most of the policemen and some of the ex-soldiers were married, while the ex-guerrillas were single. The transportation of wives and families to South Africa was arranged.’15 But Stiff notes that, when it came down to business, only 28 black Selous Scouts pseudo-operators and some support personnel made the move south under Operation Winter. The chief recruiter for the SADF was former SAS paratrooper Major Mike Curtin.
‘Not a single former guerrilla’ made the trip south – remarkable in view of the gruesome reprisals meted out to these men when they were captured by the enemy. Trooper Moses Morrison Nyati, turned guerrilla and Scouts guide on the 1976 Nyadzonya raid, had been ‘gruesomely flayed alive’ by ZANU. More than ten black Scouts were likewise abducted and surreptitiously murdered; others curiously rose in the ranks of the new Zimbabwe National Defence Force. Scott notes that ‘Boet Swart facilitated an airlift of the volunteer African soldiers and their families to South Africa’.
The TRC estimated that about 5 000 Rhodesian military personnel were recruited into the SADF during this period. ‘Apart from skilled counterinsurgency specialists, other security personnel who joined this southern exodus at independence or soon afterwards included some Special Branch police officers and intelligence personnel from the Central Intelligence Organisation.’16
Many former Scouts and SAS paratroopers retreated into the shadows in a continuation of the regional covert war to defend the tattered remnants of white-ruled Africa. On 14 March 1980, just prior to independence, about 100 Rhodesian SAS parachutists who had opted to join the South African Special Forces were incorporated as 6 Reconnaissance Commando under the command of Commandant Garth Barrett of the SAS,17 alongside 1 Reconnaissance Commando at the Bluff in Durban.
The Rhodesian SAS was disbanded on 31 December 1980. A telegraph from 22 SAS in Britain paid the following tribute. ‘Farewell to a much-admired sister unit. Your professionalism and fighting expertise have always been second to none throughout the history of the Rhodesian SAS. C Sqn still remains vacant in 22 SAS orbat [order of battle].’18
A former MI6 agent, the late Nigel Morgan, told this author in July 2018 that at the last British SAS dinner he attended, he had been informed that the Rhodesian C-Squadron SAS was still considered to be in the regiment’s order of battle, a highly unusual honour for a disbanded unit.
In April 1980, a group of former Selous Scouts who opted to come south were incorporated as 7 Reconnaissance Commando at the new Special Forces base outside Phalaborwa. The name was soon changed to 3 Reconnaissance Commando to avoid confusion with 7 South African Infantry Battalion, also stationed at Phalaborwa. The 3 Recce name also replaced that of the defunct small-teams 3 Recce from the 1970s. Small-teams capacity was, however, retained in other units of the SADF and the auxiliary South West Africa Territorial Force (SWATF).
Scott recalls that he was briefed at Special Forces HQ, on the 13th floor of the Zanza building in Pretoria, where he, Major Geoff Atkinson, and Major Boet Swart put together the new unit. Peter Stiff says Swart, operating out of the Zanza building, was the unit’s de facto OC while it was being consolidated and building of the Phalaborwa base was completed, but Atkinson took over as soon as it was fully formed.
Scott gives initial 7 Recce numbers of about 40 white and 30 black ex-Scouts under the command of Atkinson, who would later be replaced by Barrett.19 Paul Els indicates that 3 Recce’s numbers soon swelled to about 120.20 All the new Rhodesian recruits were required to get their wings, or at least convert to the SADF parachute system. Training was conducted at the military airfield at Dukuduku in northeastern Zululand.
According to Stiff, various white Selous Scouts ‘drifted in’ and signed up at 3/7 Recce over the next few months. These included Lieutenant Jean-Michel Desblé, Lieutenant Piet van der Riet, Colour Sergeant Noel Robey and Scouts Recce Group 2IC Captain Tim Bax. ‘During the next few months, there was a trickle of experienced black policemen and soldiers from such units as the BSA Police and the Rhodesian African Rifles, who crossed the Limpopo River to seek a future in South Africa.’ Most of the men were routed through Phalaborwa. Some enlisted and some ‘went on their way to other things’, Stiff writes.21
Integration of the markedly ‘English’ Rhodesians into the majority Afrikaans-speaking SADF Special Forces was far from smooth, and cultural dissonance and other grudges would lead to most Rhodesians resigning from the SADF after their initial contracted year or few years thereafter – with some notable exceptions, which will be discussed later.
Major Peter Schofield, a former British Red Devils freefall display team leader turned 1 Recce operator, contrasts the long-haired and bearded – but supremely disciplined – Rhodesian ex-SAS soldiers with their sloppy South African Recce counterparts: ‘The first day they [the Rhodesians] came on parade, about a week after they’d come south, with 1 Recce, when they were going to form up 6 Reconnaissance Commando … they formed up out of sight and they marched on as a unit with their commanding officer, little Garth Barrett, … and the RSM with his pace stick and his two coloured sergeants22 with their pace sticks … they were immaculate. They marched on, their drill was perfect, they halted, turned, faced 1 Recce that was a shambles. The RSM was a scruffy bugger with long hair. He was a tough cookie, Trevor Floyd, but he was an ugly piece of work. And the moment they marched on and I saw them march on like that, I said to myself, guys, you’ve just blown it. You are finished, you are stone dead in the South African Defence Force. It was so resented that they were so smart, that they were so disciplined, that they were so organised.’23
Although, Stiff notes, the ex-C-Squadron SAS men got on exceptionally well with their 1 Recce comrades at the Bluff, as they had a camaraderie dating back to their days together with D-Squadron SAS, there were some serious cultural ‘minefields’ to cross: the Rhodesians didn’t speak any Afrikaans, did not hold morning church parades as the South Africans did (considering a man’s religion to be a private matter), and came from a background in which many of their grandfathers had fought the Boers. To the Rhodesians, the Anglo-Boer Wars were ancient history, but to the Afrikaners, the experiences of the British concentration camps and scorched-earth policy were an intense and painful part of their families’ living memories. In the event, despite the expense the SADF had gone to to expand the Bluff base and build the new one at Phalaborwa, it is curious that neither the ex-Scouts 3 Recce nor the ex-SAS 6 Recce ever received any official unit colours or flashes.
8
Recruiting a few hard men
Months before most of the Rhodesian operatives enlisted in the SADF, one key operative was already carving out a new career south of the border.
Major Neil Kriel had joined 1 Reconnaissance Commando, stationed at the Bluff in Durban, in February 1979. He was a group commander, but that post would prove ephemeral, as within days he was called to a meeting in Pretoria with the General Officer Commanding (GOC) Special Forces, Major-General Fritz Loots.
It is likely that Kriel’s notable operational command skills and his reputation for a high kill rate in counterinsurgency operations had brought him to the attention of Loots, though Kriel stated that, as a staff officer at 2 Brigade (or Group, at Mount Darwin), he had ‘trained about 11 companies of South African policemen’1 and that ‘from about 1976 onwards’ he had liaised with Loots personally. The latter ‘would put me into the right positions and I would then meet the other staff officers who would then supply us … the specialised equipment.’
Kriel recalled: ‘When I got into Pretoria on 9 February, I made