When I moved into town, a lot of friends told me my army commitments would have to increase. Town was First Battalion and they used to go once a month. I immediately volunteered to go into O P A, which was only called out when needed. That was the out-of-town battalion. There were only demonstrations going on in the city at that time. I got my transfer to Fourth Battalion.
Nothing happened for ages. Then one night, I was sitting in bed and I heard the radio say, "All members of first battalion to report to the drill hall immediately!" I heard vehicles starting up all around me. The next morning, I read on the bill boards that Fourth Battalion was now called up. The African Nationalists had decided to march on the center of town. They stopped them in the nick of time. The boys at the drill halls were given rifles and told to jump on a truck. They they were then taken into trouble zone. The soldiers surrounded the nationalists and then started to pump tear gas into the center of the demonstration. They just avoided having to fire on them. I heard later how some of the guys had gone down in land rovers and, finding themselves in a rioting crowd of some three or four thousand, and being pressed on both sides, their vehicles were attacked by wheel spanners, in trying to take the wheels off the vehicles.
If you have a gun pointed in your face, you might think twice about taking off a vehicle's wheels, so that didn't happen. The officials turned off the water and power supplies to Highfield, where the demonstrations were taking place. The next morning, there were helicopters flying back and forth over the township, dropping teargas. It was to make them realize they were vulnerable, so that they wouldn't march on the capital, Salisbury.
Th army had a standard technique for dealing with riots. They would march into the middle of the rioters with a platoon of soldiers, who then formed a circle, and the officer would stand up in the middle of the circle and read the riot act. I heard my dad reading it once on the radio.
In most riots there's a core leader, so getting rid of the leader was the first priority.
After a few days it was defused and everyone went home. The biggest problems were the piccannins because they thought they were invisible and would come and pelt you with rocks.
The next thing that happened after that time, I got appendicitis. I just started feeling a bit ill. I went to the doctor who diagnosed me. He booked me in. Another guy being booked in had the same name as me., so I was just glad he was also going in for an appendix operation.
This was about 1962 and I'd started work in '59.
While in the army, I met up with someone who suggested into Fyfe house, which was a very good place to live. I just applied and they told me to move into flat four. When I was staying there, I used to write notes on the mirror to remind myself what to do. When I got back there was a note from the cleaner, "What I do now, sir?" The notes were just to remind myself to do things, like to go fencing on a particular night.
When I took up fencing, I had an outfit made with padding around the chest area and steel gauze. When people push that foil forward fast, it can hurt. I wasn't very good at fencing and there were a few new people who weren't that good either. All the same, I persuaded a new girl there to go for it and she got me. I said, "Very good, now do it again!" and she did.
I had to make sure I won the last bout, but she stabbed me again, and after that I could never beat her. It annoyed the hell out of me that I could train someone up to have more confidence than me.
Over the weekends, in 1966, I would go sailing. I met up with other people who were sailing and would offer to crew for them. Lake Mcilwaine was nine miles across. I had petrol coupons to get there, to buy four liters of fuel a month.
Meanwhile, the militants started to hold up people on the road north and then setting fire to them with the occupants in them. This led to the Rhodesian Front getting a clean sweep when an election occurred in '63 or '64. In the mean time, the Federation had already broken up and Britain had given the other members of the federation independence, but she refused to give independence to Rhodesia. That's because the African nationalists had spoken very closely to the British The leader RF, Winston Field, had been replaced by Ian Smith, a war-time hero. Smith had been a prisoner of war Italy. He had escaped and walked over the Alps in winter, barefoot.
Smith decided he'd had enough dealing with Britain so we weren't taking direct orders from them. He'd declared UDI and after this all the world put trading sanctions against Rhodesia, which led to a lot of strange developments. The Nationalists became more aggressive and started invading Rhodesia from Zambia in the north, in armed columns. We started hunting them with jet bombers. The aircraft were left over from the World War 2. The principal one was the Canberra Jet Bomber. We also had one or two Hawker Hunters.
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