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Rhodesian Bush War
Three Sips of Gin: Dominating the Battlespace with Rhodesia's Elite Selous Scouts
DINGO FIRESTORM: The Greatest Battle of the Rhodesian Bush War
On 23 November 1977, an armada of helicopters and aeroplanes took off from Rhodesian airbases and crossed the border into Mozambique. Their objective: to attack the headquarters of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army, where thousands of...
Africa's Commandos
A chronicle of the military revolution of The Rhodesian Light Infantry; from commando unit to killing machine extraordinaire Few, if any, regiments have left their mark on the history of modern warfare as did the Rhodesian Light Infantry.
The Rhodesia Regiment : From Boer War to Bush War, 1899-1980
The Rhodesia Regiment was formed in 1899 to fight for Queen Victoria during the Boer War. It was the leading unit in the Relief of Mafeking. Later, at Elands River, along with Australian troops it fought successfully against the overwhelming odds of a major Boer force...
SHADOWS OF A FORGOTTEN PAST - To the Edge with the Rhodesian SAS and Selous Scouts
This all new work, published in partnership with Helion & Co., chronicles the experiences of Paul French who upon leaving the British Army’s 21 SAS (V), sought adventure and excitement in C Squadron of the Rhodesian SAS. After passing the arduous Rhodesian SAS selection course, Paul was thrown into the maelstrom that was the Rhodesian Bush War. Read More
Zimbabwe - Warm Heart, Ugly Face
This the story of a traumatic decade of hyperinflation and its debilitating consequences for the people of Zimbabwe. It starts with the author's arrival, in the late 1990's, in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second largest city and once the industrial heartland of the country - before the violent takeover of the white-owned farms. The author takes the reader through a ten-year 2000-2009, characterized by centralized period, from control of all facets...
Re-living the Second Chimurenga:
Memories from the Liberation Struggle in Zimbabwe
Fay Chung grew up in a Chinese family in Rhodesia in the 1950s and 1960s. In Zambia, she joined the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), and took part in the radicalisation of the nationalist rising, which led to Zimbabwe's independence in 1980.
Rhodesian Combined Forces Roll of Honour 1966-1981
This new work, based on the original by Richard Wood, honours all who lost their lives in action,or while on active service, with the Rhodesian Security Forces during the period 1966-1981... Read More
Signs of the Time - Insignia of the Rhodesian Security Forces 1899 - 1980
This excellent volume is a record of the insignia and history of the Rhodesian armed forces from inception to 1980. It features an impressive array of badges, uniforms, printed matter, flags and headgear of units as diverse as the...
A Hole in Our Lives Forever
This book is a collection of true stories revolving around a group of Rhodesian National servicemen from Intake 147 and about their experiences in the army. It is also about a journey of self discovery and reconnecting with old comrades...
See You In November: The Story of Alan 'Taffy Brice' An SAS Assassin
In September 1979 Alan 'Taffy' Brice, a Rhodesian Central Intelligence Organisation operator, went to London to assassinate Robert Mugabe at the Lancaster House constitutional talks. His plan to detonate an explosive device in the foyer of the Royal Gardens Hotel, Kensington, was advanced to trigger stage when the operation, code named 'November' was called off....
Three Sips of Gin
In Three Sips of Gin Tim gives a fascinating and humourous insight into the decadent lifestyle that prevailed in East Africa during his childhood and of the realm of the remote boarding school where status amongst the schoolboys was determined not by achievements within the classroom, but by more notable deeds worthy of schoolboy lore...
When a State Turns on its Citizens: 60 years of institutionalised violence in Zimbabwe
Lloyd Sachikonye traces the roots of Zimbabwe's contemporary violence to the actions of the Rhodesian armed forces, and the inter-party conflicts that occurred during the liberation war. His focus, however, is the period since 2000, which has seen state-sponsored violence erupting in election campaigns and throughout the programme of fast-track land reform.
Rainbow's End: A Memoir of Childhood, War and an African Farm
Honest memoir describes growing up on an African farm during the 'Rhodesian Bush War' and the twilight years of white colonialism in the 1970s. It also explores the shock yet euphoria of Zimbabwean independence in the 1980s...
African Police and Soldiers in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1923-80
Making use of archival documents, period newspapers, and oral interviews, African Police and Soldiers in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1923-80 examines the ambiguous experience of black security personnel, police, and soldiers in white-ruled Southern Rhodesia ...
Mugabe: My part in His Victory
Mugabe-my part in his victory is a light-hearted but factually based look at national service in the Rhodesian police force immediately prior to Robert Mugabe's accession to power in Zimbabwe. It follows the ...
Catastrophe: What Went Wrong in Zimbabwe?
No one in 1980 could have guessed that Zimbabwe would become a failed state on such a monumental and tragic scale. Acclaimed writer Richard Bourne shows how a country which, when it achieved a delayed independence in 1980...
THE FRONT LINE RUNS THROUGH EVERY WOMAN: Women & Local Resistance in the Zimbabwean Liberation War
A Zimbabwe-specific study, focusing on the lives of women in a small locale (Chiweshe) during the anti-colonial insurgency, this book is also a challenge to established and still current modes of thought and research orientations which over-simplify the complex realities women face in the full range of violent conflicts...
Mugabe's War Machine
Mugabe’s dictatorship had survived due to the vicious military oppression of the population and the ruthless suppression of opposition. At the same time Mugabe has indulged in numerous military interventions outside his borders regardless of the cost in terms of regional stability, lives and money...
The Search for Puma 164: Operation Uric and the Assault on Mapai - The battle for Mapai … and the final closure
September 6, 1979. Into the deepening darkness of the African night, a lone Aerospatiale Puma helicopter flies resolutely northward, leaving behind the desolation of the battle for Mapai...
The Part-Time War - Recollections of the Terrorist War in Rhodesia
Life for adult males in Rhodesia during the terrorist war in the 1970s was strange, to say the least. Every male deemed reasonably fit was required to serve in one of the security forces for blocks of time during the year. Training was minimal and disruption to work and family life was inevitable...
Who Killed Hammarskjöld?: The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa
One of the outstanding mysteries of the twentieth century, and one with huge political resonance, is the death of Dag Hammarskjöld and his UN team in a plane crash in central Africa in 1961. Just minutes after midnight, his aircraft plunged into thick forest in the British colony of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), abruptly ending his mission to bring peace to the Congo.
From Rhodesia to Mugabe's Zimbabwe: Chronicles of a Game Ranger
Nick Tredger, after an 18 month national service stint in the Rhodesian Army, joined the Dept of National Parks and Wildlife in 1978 as a cadet-ranger. His first station was the remote Chizarira National Park, where amongst the isolated rugged mountains and gorges, he and a handful of brave young rangers working in siege conditions...
Call of the Litany Bird: Surviving the Zimbabwe Bush War
"Don't get killed on the way home" - these words, uttered by a 5-year-old girl in Zimbabwe, were what first made her mother realise that her children regarded their friends being killed as normal. Eventually Susan Gibbs brought her family to England and she has now recorded her experiences in a deeply moving book about her struggle to bring up a family...
Soldier No More
With farming destroyed throughout their country, food unobtainable and justice disregarded, Zimbabweans face hunger, homelessness, murder, beatings and a bewildering future. As an unaccredited, part-time journalist, Zimbabwean author David Lemon spent ten years travelling around the country in search of 'human interest' stories for a national newspaper. In this book he writes...
Tactical Tracking Operations – The Essential Guide for Military & Police Trackers
This manual is packed with practical lessons, drills and techniques for successful tracking operations. It details how to find and follow tracks through any terrain; assess the age of tracks; relocate the trail after it's gone missing; evasion methods and the co-ordination of tracking activities.
Viscount Down (DVD)
Sunday, September 3rd 1978, at 17.05hrs local time, Air Rhodesia Viscount VP-WAS rose smoothly from Kariba airport on a scheduled flight to the capital, Salisbury. Visibility was good as flight RH 825 climbed at 160 knots to its cruising altitude of ...Read More
The Zimbabwe African People's Union, 1961-87:
Exploration of the political history of insurgency in Southern Rhodesia between 1961 and 1987, with particular reference to the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU). Formed on December 17, 1961, ZAPU became the first revolutionary, national, movement to explicitly call for majority rule on the basis of a universal franchise.
Soldier Blue
A brilliant, captivating and deeply moving coming-of-age memoir set against the backdrop of the Rhodesian bush war of the 1970's. Paul Williams's writing sparkles with wit, irony and pathos as he explores the appalling truths of the battlefield, and the fragile world of romantic love.
THE FEAR: The Last Days of Robert Mugabe
In mid-2008, after thirty years of increasingly tyrannical rule, Robert Mugabe, the eighty-four-year-old ruler of Zimbabwe, met his politburo. He had just lost an election. But instead of conceding power, he was persuaded to launch a brutal campaign of terror to cower his citizens. Journalist and author Peter Godwin was one of the few observers to slip into the country and bear witness to the terrifying period that Zimbabweans call, simply, the Fear.
Inside the Danger Zones
Sometimes hilarious, sometimes tragic, Inside the Danger Zones is the story of Paul Moorcraft’s work during the major wars of the last three decades.
As a freelance war correspondent and military analyst for many of the top TV networks, Moorcraft has parachuted into countless ...
Bitter Harvest - Zimbabwe and the Aftermath of its independence
Ian Smith, Rhodesia's former Prime Minister, is a man with the ability to excite powerful emotions in all who hear his name. To those who revere him he is a hero, a mighty leader, a man whose formidable integrity led him into head-to-head confrontation with the Labour Government of Britain in the 1960s.To others he is a demon. In his revealing autobiography Ian Smith himself tells the truth about his remarkable political career.
PK Van Der Byl: African Statesman
This engaging work notes the life and times of PK van der Byl; one of the major players in a political drama that ended in the accession to power of Robert Mugabe under the auspices of the British government led by then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. By his very nature PK was controversial and confrontational. This account is likely to give offence to some because it portrays him as bluntly as he was in real life...
The Story of the Northern Rhodesia Regiment
The story of the Regiment from its founding in 1891 and early colonial police actions to campaigns in East Africa in the First World War, then major battles in Somalialand, Ethiopia and Burma in the Second World War.
Badges and Insignia of the Rhodesian Security Forces 1890-1980
Badges and Insignia of the Rhodesian Security Forces 1890-1980’ is not only an illustrated reference book for collectors but is a unique assemblage of the various badges (official and unofficial) worn by the units of the Rhodesian Security Forces. The 400-plus drawings are meant to show the evolution of various...
Rhodesia: Last Outpost of the British Empire 1890 – 1980
This is the first complete history of Rhodesia, the country founded by Empire Builder, Cecil John Rhodes. It tells how Rhodes’ men engaged Lobengula, the Matabele king, in lengthy negotiations while at the same time seeking a Royal Charter and the right for white pioneers to occupy Mashonaland. It relates Rhodesia’s history right up to Lancaster House in 1979 and the ‘free and fair’ elections that foisted the Marxist Robert Mugabe and his regime on the country.
James and the Duck -Tales of the Rhodesian Bush War (1964-1980)
A very different tongue-in-cheek personal account about a forgotten war. Between 1964 and 1980 Rhodesian men from all walks of life left their families and jobs to fight for their country. They were farmers, bankers, railwaymen, shopkeepers, miners and even Members of Parliament, who every six weeks, changed their soft civilian life for battle dress, rifles and grenades. These are their stories. It's not really about war heroes. It's more about bluestone charged, but still lustful troops coping with fighting terrorists, boredom, longing, fear and death.
Fireforce
THE HORROR OF GUERRILLA WARFARE IN AFRICA - Fireforce is the compelling, brutal but true account of Chris Cocks’ service in 3 Commando, The Rhodesian Light Infantry, during Zimbabwe’s bitter civil war of the ’70s—a war that came to be known almost innocuously as ‘the bush war’. ‘Fireforce’, a tactic of total airborne envelopment, was developed and perfected by the RLI...
War Veterans in Zimbabwe's Revolution - Challenging Neo-colonialism & Settler & International Capital
This book traces the roots of Zimbabwe's well known, but little analysed, revolution of 2000 to the 1970s guerrilla war, revealing the foundational philosophies, cosmologies and experiences that are manifest in the War Veterans-led revolution. It is a bold account of an ongoing bottom-up struggle against neo-colonialism, ...
This work is an attempt to look at some of the realities of Zimbabwe's liberation war and at what happened afterwards, rather than at the comfortable myths. Both heroic and terrible deeds are recorded.
Violence has powerfully shaped the history of Matabeleland from the 1890s to the 1980s, and silence has surrounded the history of this region of Zimbabwe, excluding it from national memory. This text aims to break the silence and redress the imbalance of Zimbabwe's national history.
The Rhodesian war
This book depicts the military history of Southern Rhodesia from the first resistance to colonial rule, through the period of UDI (unilateral declaration of independence) by the Smith government to the Lancaster House agreement that transferred power. There are vivid accounts of the operations against the 'guerillas' by the security forces and the intensity of the fighting will surprise readers. Atrocities were undoubtedly committed by both sides but equally the protagonists were playing for very high stakes.
The Saints
Compiled and edited by Chris Cocks, bestselling author of Fireforce. At last! the history of the Rhodesian Light Infantry. We’ve seen the stories of the more ‘glamorous’ Selous Scouts, the SAS and the Rhodesian Air Force, but very little about the RLI, often underrated, but arguably one of the most effective counter-insurgency units of all time.
Special Air Service Rhodesia: The Men Speak
This is the second edition, re-worked with a lot of new material added to the earlier 2004 publication SAS Rhodesia: Rhodesians and the Special Air Service - J Pittaway & C Fourie.
This definitive work has been lavishly illustrated with many previously unseen photos...
Masodja
Formed in 1916 as The Rhodesia Native Regiment, its Shona and Ndebele troops were blooded with honour in the East African campaign, pitted against the wily General von Lettow-Vorbeck and his German askaris. Disbanded in 1919, the regiment was re-formed in 1940 during World War II as The Rhodesian African Rifles...
Sunday Bloody Sunday: A Soldier's War in Northern Ireland, Rhodesia, Mozambique and Iraq
A most topical work given the recent Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday. Jake Harper-Ronald wanted to be a soldier from childhood . In 1966 his ambition was fulfilled when he was conscripted as a National Serviceman into the Royal Rhodesia Regiment. He afterwards moved to the UK and passed selection for the ultra tough Parachute Regt ...
Out of Action
Originally published as Survival Course in 1999, now long out of print, Out of Action is a reworked and updated edition, the sequel to the best-selling Fireforce—one man’s war in the Rhodesian Light Infantry. The book is divided into two distinct parts:
Part 1, ‘War’, chronicles Chris Cocks’s final 16 months of combat in the Rhodesian bush war, as a stick leader ...
Delta Scout
Delta Scout was the call sign for Tony Trethowan’s Ground Coverage ‘stick’ during the Rhodesian bush war of the late seventies. This is the story of an ordinary policeman, a young man who signed up with the British South Africa Police as a raw 18 year old and who was to serve eight years with that fine force.
Echoes of an African War
In Echoes of an African War, Chas Lotter, the soldier poet of Southern Africa, matches his haunting poetry with authentic photos, paintings and sketches to tell the story of the Rhodesian bush war – the formula is both effective and stunning. You have to see it.
Blue and Old Gold - Now in Stock!
The BSAP held the honour of occupying the Right of the Line—one of the greatest police forces of the British Empire and Commonwealth. In 1889 Cecil John Rhodes was granted a royal charter by Queen Victoria to...
Kevin Woods Story
Kevin Woods was sentenced to death in Zimbabwe and jailed for twenty years by Robert Mugabe. For more than five years of his detention he was held in the shadow of Mugabe’s gallows, cut off from the world, naked and in solitary confinement. He had been a senior member of Mugabe’s dreaded Central Intelligence Organization...
Rhodesia Remembered
Three superb films produced by the RLI Assn (UK) and Westminster King Productions including;
Rhodesia Remembered : 45 minutes
The Troopie : 35 minutes. - The Nkomo Assignment : 30 minutes -
we can’t recommend this DVD enough!
CounterStrike
The militarily acclaimed Fireforce concept
Fireforce as a military concept dates from 1974 when the Rhodesian Air Force (RhAF) acquired the French MG151 20mm cannon from the Portuguese.
So far No Further
Given the headlong rush of the Macmillan government in Britain in 1959 to be rid of its colonies, Rhodesia should have been the first African colony in line for independence. Rhodesia was self-governing, and possessed...
Winds of Destruction
Winds of Destructionis a unique account of one man’s service in the Rhodesian Air Force, spanning a period of twenty-three years from 1957 to 1980—through the politically turbulent years of Federation; the Unilateral...
West of the Moon
From colonial northern Zululand to guerrilla warfare in the Gona re Zhou of Rhodesia—a vast panorama of southern Africa
West of the Moon—A Game Ranger at War is a sweeping canvas that evokes a bygone era of the 1940s’...
Without Honour
This work is the true story of a white policeman in post-war independent Zimbabwe.
Join the author as he details the history of Rhodesia and Zimbabwe taking you into the beginnings of the dissident issue in Matabeland, the killing of two close friends in an insurgent ambush and the ensuing operation to track down the assailants. Witness also Mugabe’s notorious 5th Brigade...
Lost in Africa
“Irreverent, self-deprecating, hilarious and poignant, Stu’s story will make you alternately laugh and cry”
—Chris Cocks, author of Fireforce
‘Lost in Africa’ is a colloquialism from the Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI), meaning ‘a state of bewilderment or cluelessness’, which Stu Taylor uses to describe his disjointed life.
Dead Leaves - Two Years in the Rhodesian War
It is January 1978. Groups of nervous, dutiful white conscripts begin their National Service with the Rhodesian security forces. Ian Smith's white minority government is in its dying days and negotiations towards majority rule are already under way. For these 18-year-old rookies there is nothing to do but go on fighting, hold the line while the transition happens around them.
Never Quite a Soldier: A Rhodesian Policeman's War 1971-1982
The author was a policeman with Rhodesia's elite British South Africa Police during the Bush War days. His first involvement with the war came when he was member-in-charge of Macheke Police Station. Groups of infiltrating ZANLA guerrillas moved into the area and embarked on a murderous campaign targeting both black and white civilians...
Never Quite a Soldier
Excitement, humour, tragedy, sadness and hope; these are the ingredients of David Lemon's brutally honest story about a policeman's role in the dying days of Rhodesia and the birth of Zimbabwe. As one of the few white officers to fight for Ian Smith, BIshop Muzorewa, he is in a unique position to write about the turbulent years of war and its terrible aftermath.
The Bush War in Rhodesia
This is a soldier's story told simply, with feeling, humour and without heroics. It also gives a fascinating insight into the personality of the author, who relates his personal experiences in a down-to-earth, no bull style of storytelling. After 35 years the Rhodesian bush war has been largely forgotten, but the author's front line account will rekindle the...