FUCKING USELESS AIRFORCE someone shouted out behind me, at that moment i agreed with him totally. I was in an aircraft with 23 other parachutists , stood up and hooked up ready to run out of this aircraft, especially now as i could hear the sounds of heavy ammunition flying past us, This should not be happening I remember thinking, the previous day I had attended the most detailed briefing I had ever heard, and one of the first things that was said was,"the airforce jets are going in first and will take out the anti aircraft positions, here here here here and here", well obviously one of the heres did not get the message or the airforce missed him, he was now doing his level best to shoot us out of the sky.

Finally the green light came on and we started running out of the door. I was number two out of the door On these type of jumps you are despatched very low about 400 foot, this is stop you being an easy target for as short as time as possible. Therefore once out of the door you dont have a lot of time to look around before you arrive on the ground. Once I landed I began taking of my parachute harness, turning my radio on , untying my rifle when I heard one of my guys xxxx on my left, shouting xxxx xxxx, i looked up and all I could see were hordes of people running towards us. The majority of them had AKs on their shoulder s, they were all shooting directly up at at the sky where they thought the threat was coming from. I dont think they even knew we were there

Four days ago I was sat in Botswana. We d been deployed to monitor the main road from the Kazangula ferry south, Zanla were using specific vehicles to transport terrorists along this road them infiltrate into Rhodesia. We d set up a base in Victoria Falls, then we d been deployed the night before. It was quite a mission getting in, had to walk all night and evade a few locals, we were expecting to keep an eye on the road for a least a week so I was quite surprised when we contacted our base and were told we had to return to what was salisbury asap. I thougt there might be an error and asked them to confirm our return which they did. We could nt leave our position until night fall then again walked most of the night to rv with the trucks across the border. We d also been instructed to go straight to our new barracks, Kabrit,situated near the airport. and not go to the old one Cranborne. This was quite strange in itself as we hadnt fully moved into the new barracks yet

As we drove in and parked in Kabrit a friend of mine , Dave Berry, came up, he was all smiles, and said there was a big job tomorrow but he knew he was going in by chopper and I was going in by parachute, he hated parachuting so was chuft. After cleaning up and grabbing a bite we all had to attend a briefing at a nearby hangar. Inside it had been set up with a centre area, which was surrounded on three side by stadium seating - large enough to accommodate about four hundred people. On my left were sat the pilots and air force staff - in the centre where i was sat the sas, and on the right were the rli and various like signallers. On the floor in front of us a very detailed model was uncovered- showing every aspect of the camp we were to hit tomorrow. As mentioned before the plan was for the jets to go in first and take out the anti aircraft positions- as mentioned previously we know how that turned out - followed by a wave of bombers - followed by the k cars , helicopters fitted out with 20mill canons - whilst this was going on we would parachute in and surround the camp. At some point someone asked how many terrorists were in the camp - the reply was, as far as they could tell from arial photographs and intelligence - 6000. There was a bit of a stunned silence and some nervous laughter. The briefing itself was brilliant and covered everything.
After it was over a lot of guys myself included went and drew more ammunition - then it was more preparation then dinner.
Security was very tight no one was allowed to leave the camp and no phone calls were allowed to be made. What I liked about this op was that it was nt at the crack of dawn like most of them - the plan was to attack at 0745 - apparently the camp stood to early hours every morning expecting an attack at some point. Rumour had it they had a captive monkey which went ballistic if it heard an aircraft - as it was an aircraft was sent to fly near the camp so when they heard us coming they would think it was another false alarm.

Next morning up early check equipment - big breakfast and then it was time to make our way to another hangar to kit up and strap on parachutes.
As we made out way to the hangar I will never forget the sight and sound of thirty helicopters leaving in waves for their staging areas in preparation for the attack.
In the hangar there was a lot of activity - each aircraft carried 24 parachutists - after strapping in and checking equipment again - we walked out side and clambered into our assigned aircraft. The aircraft taxied to the runway and took off in turns -

We d been moving forward now for about an hour and a half, about an hour ago we d been resupplied by parachute with water and more ammunition.
We were entering the camp proper now , starting to find evidence of living accommodation and lots of class rooms. I remember one class room had instructions on the black board showing how to lay a landmine, another on how to strip and assemble an AK, there were lots of fires burning.
After securing the area we began to search for documents and equipment.
The document haul was huge so much so I dont think we were able to fly it all out, we found store rooms full of arms, rifles, rocket launchers, landmines and explosives, also store rooms full of tinned food mostly donated by nordic countries, go figure,
The weapons and arms we could nt fly out we blew up, we found a 37 mill anti aircraft gun, we covered it in plastic C4 and blew it to bits. I think the intelligence haul out of there was massive and would keep SB busy for a year.
Tons of arms were removed the choppers continually flying in and out.
As late afternoown approached we started to think about laying up for the night. We lay down in one straight line in quite an open area, someone came around and gave us our arc of fire - amything that moved in our arc that night was shot. There were still a lot of fires burning so the visibility was quite good - each person took a sentry turn - we just moved down the line when it was your turn the guy next to you would wake you up and when your time was up you woke the guy next to you.
Not that there was much sleep - everynow and then the sentry would open up on something - initially you would look up to see what they were shooting at but it happened so often you didnt even bother.

Then next day it was time for more searching and destroying what we couldnt take.
About mid day we started moving to a pick up point where we would start to be extracted back to Rhodesia.
While we were waiting for the choppers one of our medics , Andy was bitten by a centipede, turns out he was allergic to and went into anaphalatic shock, the other medics had to attend to him giving him adrenalin amongst other things. He was casavaced out and made a full recovery, would be very strange to survive what he d been through and them killed by an insect.

When we arrived back at Kabrit, once again we were nt allowed to leave or make phone calls, rumours were flying around about what was going on but no one knew for sure. I did nt care I had a nice dinner and went to bed.

The next day still nothing was certain about what was going on. Most of us were hanging around one of the sports field. Some of the guys had got together and started having a cricket match, I was lieing on the grass and every now and then you would hear the crack as the batsman hit the ball followed by polite applause. It was surreal considering what the previous two days had been like and now here we were almost like attending some village cricket match in the UK country side.
Finally we were called to the hangar for another briefing.
We were told that after the success of the previous attack we were going to do it again. This time would be a lot easier though as there were only 4000 terrorists in this one, and that my friends is a story for another day.