The second time we went through the Pungwe flats, I looked though the mirror and saw Jenny's head hit the roof. She was five. The Anatonga forest was on fire again, just before we hit the Pungwe flats. It is always thick with smoke in that area. The locals were always clearing the area to grow crops. We had to find a space to get off the road and wait for all the Portuguese army trucks to pass you. They were trying to stop terrorism, but they were so rotten with corruption. The Rhodesian and Portuguese army ended up cooperating, but the Portuguese soldiers used to leak like a sieve.
Once you got to the village, they already knew you were coming to attack them. We had a different philosophy. We wanted to kill everyone in sight. In fact, we did attack one village, and three of our guys got killed. The Portuguese soldiers may have been involved in corruption, perhaps getting ivory for giving information to the enemy. They also resented fighting to retain an African country, spending two years of their life on it.
The trucks would come flying down the road in the opposite direction to you. The road was full of humps and bends. These were caused by the fact the road was built alongside the Pungwe river, over marshland. It was 1974. Beira was great. It had a totally different culture. It was like going to the sea in the south of France or Spain. You would go to a restaurant and order a couple of beers and the table would pile high with snacks. So long as you were drinking there, they would bring you anything.
All the Rhodesians used to go down to Beira and buy wine in demijohns. It was nearly always red wine and nearly always sharp on the tongue. I got to quite like it. Rhodesian wine was not very good.
Once in Rhodesia, I was looking after an army camp outside Essexvalle. Everybody pushed off and went to Essexvale to drink at the pub. I went down with the sergeant, went to the bottle shop to buy some beers and Rhodesian wine, and came back again. Those who thought it was unfair I was left behind added a few bottles of their own wine. I have since discovered that beer and wine is an unfortunate mix for me. I got sufficiently blotto to say some unfortunate things on the radio.
The next day, the regimental sergeant major turned up and screamed at everyone. I learned a lesson to keep my big mouth shut and I had a stomping headache. I also learned not to drink Rhodesian wine. It's appalling stuff.
Back in Mozambique, the Portuguese were trying to prevent Frelimo from taking over the place. When I had reached nine years old, my father, who had a very senior positioning the civil service was getting intercepted messages between Frelimo and the Portuguese army. Frelimo were getting a bit careless with the messages they were sending out, leading to chaos and corruption in the organisation. Mum translated the stuff for dad's office. She got quite tense, as it was apparent that the scale of the operation was bigger than one might have expected. It also showed that Frelimo were talking to terrorists in Rhodesia. It should have made us worried about going to Beira later, but we just kept going. I did not see the connection between terrorism and people being shot up.
In those earlier days, the late 50s or very early 60s, my mother was really worried about terrorism. We didn't have any terrorism around where we lived and we didn't expect it, but when African nationalism started to get going, we became more aware of the dangers.
This started with political strikes on the railway lines, organised by Joshua Nkomo. It affected everyone because you began to become aware that the thin red line was getting thinner. That is a bit of a cliché but it's how we felt, that there wasn't a very big line between stability and chaos. Rhodesians were aware of the dangers of nationalism due to the Mau Mau, but we were not aware of what was likely to happen next.
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