The Elite: the Story of the Rhodesian Special Air Service

Engineering & Transportation

Barbara Cole

Engineering

Covos-Day Books

The horror of guerrilla warfare in Africa Fireforce is the compelling, brutal but true account of Chris Cocks's 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, together with the Selous Scouts and the Rhodesian Air Force. Fireforce became the principal strike weapon of the beleaguered Rhodesian forces in their struggle against the overwhelming tide of the Communist-trained and -equipped ZANLA and ZIPRA guerrillas. The combat strain on a fighting soldier was almost unbelievable, for the Rhodesians, who were always desperately short of ground troops, were sometimes obliged to parachute the same men into action into as many as three enemy contacts a day. While estimates of enemy casualties vary, there seems little doubt that the RLI accounted for at least 12,000 ZANLA and ZIPRA guerrillas-but not without cost. Fireforce is not for the squeamish. Although it has been written with unforgettable pathos and humor, it tells of face-to-face combat in the bush and death at point-blank range. It is a book which does nothing to glorify or glamorize war, for as Chris Cocks found at such a young age, war is merely a catalog of suffering, destruction and death. Fireforce has been described by critics as being to the Rhodesian War what All Quiet On The Western Front was to World War I and Dispatches was to Vietnam. Read it ... it will be an experience you never forget. Chris Cocks lives in Johannesburg. This is the fourth edition of Fireforce. He is a partner in the South African Publishing house, 30° South Publishers. Cocks is also the author of Out of Action and co-author of The Saints-The Rhodesian Light Infantry.

Fireforce: One Man's War in the Rhodesian Light Infantry

History

Cocks, Chris J.

Military

The adventurous life and times of a British colonial policeman in a bygone era of Africa. Retired police superintendent David Craven vividly details the wide range of crime and criminals that confronted the elite officers of the British South Africa Police. Included are first hand accounts of mounted police patrols in the African wilds and the early days of counterinsurgency operations in Southern Rhodesia's savage bush wars.

Mapolisa

Craven, David

Europe

The story of the South African Special Forces ("The Recces"), from inception in the 1960s to disbandment in 1993. A unique account of one of South Africa's premier units, masters in the art of reconnaissance and clandestine warfare. Pro rata, the most highly decorated unit during the wars in Angola and Namibia/SWA. Special forces operators were carefully selected and trained to gather covert strategic and tactical information about enemy activities. They learned how to observe silently, harass the enemy and destroy selected targets -- all behind enemy lines. Frequently required to face great dread, they had to learn to control that fear in order to survive. This book brings the reconnaissance soldiers - the recces - to those who have wondered about what kind of men they were. Their families, their heartaches, their sufferings and achievements. These men were not assassins who eliminated spies in hotel rooms. They were responsible men who had a sense of integrity and served their country proudly.

We Fear Naught but God

Els, Paul

The horrifying story of the official British war policy toward the Orange Free State in the Anglo-Boer War. All but ignored in most histories, the British followed a scorched earth policy of total war in which more than 27,000 civilians, mainly women and children, were herded into concentrations camps where they died in the most barbaric conditions. A shocking expose.

Fire in the Sky: The Destruction of the Orange Free State, 1899-1902

Coetzer, Owen

Africa

An electrifying account of 15 months as a squad leader in the Rhodesian Police Anti-Terrorist Unit that fought in the country's harsh eastern border region. This book provides a vivid ground-level view of counter-terrorist operations as well as the author's harrowing transition to civilian life in the post-war period. An important book about a little understood period of African history.

Survival Course

"...Perhaps it is the early morning chill that awakens them. They are mostly young and enthusiastic - but combat is a maturing process that can change a youth into an adult overnight. ...At last they have suited up and completed the briefing. The weapons are loaded and the aircraft are servicable to fly. The pilots forget the anxieties and tension of the early morning hours. ...The peace of the morning is shattered by the rising crescendo of the engine noise. ...Then they are rolling into a steep dive upon the waiting target. Their hands inside their gloves are sweating; their mouths are dry." Vlamgat is the gripping story of the South African Mirage F1 jet fighter pilots in action during the tense years of the bush war. Their experiences are authentically told with accuracy, humor and pathos - by an author who writes from the cockpit.

Vlamgat

Lord, Dick

Beloved African is a story of a great and enduring love -- in the early days of Rhodesia -- of the builders, educators, the history, the triumphs and the troubles of that beautiful country. The story is remarkably intact. It draws upon Nancy Hammond's precise memory for detail; upon hundreds of letters written and lovingly preserved since the early 1900s; on the headmaster's annual reports from Tjolotjo, Mzingwane, Goromonzi and Domboshawa to his Head Office, from 1936 to the early 1960s; and upon a series of tape recordings with John the "Beloved African", 18 months before his death in South Australia in 1996. John Hammond was one of Rhodesia's great educators -- loved, respected, and sometimes misunderstood by black and white alike. The extraordinary role he played is woven against a background of increasing tension as he strode the political and educational stages, fighting for the extra time he needed to educate his schoolboys and girls to the point where they would be in a position to lead the new Zimbabwe with wisdom and integrity. The agonies of what subsequently occurred and the effect it had on him are woven through a wonderful tale of the continuing love story and partnership between John and Nancy. The book gives a not always popular view of what life was like to those who were determined to try and make it work, but whose efforts were so often thwarted by political duplicity.

Beloved African

Biographies & Memoirs

BAKER, JILL

Professionals & Academics

Mafeking ranks as one of the major military epics of the Anglo-Boer War. A courageous garrison led by British Army Colonel Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, withstood more than seven months of starvation, death and destruction before they were relieved. A powerful story of human endurance.

Mafeking!: The Story of a Siege

Yorke, Edmund James

Flower-Smith, Malcolm

In the mid-eighties, at the height of the crisis in South Africa, Richard Jurgens, a young white man, joins the predominantly black revolutionary movement. Having undergone the twin rites of passage of compulsory military service and university, he leaves his world of relative privilege and goes to work for the movement in exile. There he and his wife discover that idealism has no place in the revolution, and that cynicism and authoritarianism exist on both sides of the fateful chasm between blacks and whites in Africa. In this compelling autobiographical account, Jurgens recounts with humor, forthrightness and insight his experiences of the many forms of exile. Coming to consciousness in a time of profound turmoil and confusion, he takes an unusual course through the conflicting worlds of Africa and he finds himself continually representing the Other in whichever divided group of people he happens to be. Dissidence begins in loyalty, he discovers, and exile begins at home.

The Many Houses of Exile

Jurgens, Richard

Historical

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