History of the Rhodesian Bush War & Selous Scouts

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
The Jesse Kelly Show. Another hour of The Jesse Kelly
Show on a wonderful, wonderful Monday. But we're setting aside
all politics now because it's the start of the second
hour on Monday. We're gonna do Medal of Honor Monday.
Then we're gonna go back into the history of the
Rhodesian Bush War. And look, we'll be back to politics
next hour. There's all kinds of stuff we have to

(00:23):
get to Ukraine, stuff, emails, the Biden administration, what they
did with Social Security numbers and more. But you know
what now is we find an American hero, someone who
earned a Medal of honor, and we remember his name
and we remember his deeds. And this is something I
really want to encourage you to do this in your

(00:44):
own life. In some way. I didn't do any of
these things. Trust me, I'm not that guy. I'm just
reading them right. You can do this yourself. You can
do this in your home. You can do this in
your work, in your Sunday school, in your school. You
can talk about these people. You can talk about Archie
van Winkle. Archie van Winkle was born in Juneau, Alaska,

(01:08):
nineteen forty two. He goes and signs up for the
Marine Corps to go fight in World War Two. And
he does, goes and fights in World War two. Okay,
comes back from World War Two, survives and gets out,
goes back to regular life. Right then Korea kicks off.
Archie Van Winkle says, well, I want to get down

(01:29):
on that. Goes right back into the Marine Corps and
off to Korea. He goes, and let's find out exactly
what he did. Hey, honoring those he went above and beyond.
It's Medal of Honor Monday for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity

(01:54):
at the risk of his life above and beyond the
call of duty while serving as a platoon sergeant and
company in action against enemy aggressor forces, immediately rallying his
men in his area. After a fanatical and numerically superior
enemy force penetrated the center of the line under cover
of darkness and pinned down the platoon with a devastating

(02:16):
barrage of deadly automatic weapons in grenade fire. Staff Sergeant
Van Winkle boldly spearheaded a determined attack through withering fire
against hostile frontal positions, and though he and others who
charged with him were wounded, succeeded in enabling his platoon
to gain the fire's superiority and the opportunity to reorganize.

(02:40):
Realizing that the left flank squad was isolated from the
rest of the unit, he rushed through forty yards of
fierce enemy fire to reunite his troops, despite an elbow
wound which rendered one of his arms totally useless. Severely
wounded a second time when a direct hit in the
chest from my hostile hand grenade caused serious and painful wounds,

(03:04):
he staunchly refused evacuation, then continued to shout orders and
words of encouragement to his depleted and battered platoon. Finally
carried from his position, unconscious from shock and loss of blood,
Staff Sergeant Van Winkle served to inspire all who observed
him to heroic efforts in successfully repulsing the enemy attack.

(03:28):
His superb leadership, valiant fighting spirit, and unfaltering devotion to
duty and the face of heavy odds reflect the highest
credit upon himself in the US Naval Service. How about
that guy moved on and lived until nineteen eighty six.
And I don't know why. I always thought this was cool.

(03:50):
Ashes scattered at sea at his ashes scattered at sea.
Kind of cool. I'm not wrong about that, Chris. Kind
of cool, right, kind of cool. All right, So let's
do just a couple minutes of background in case you're
just now hearing it, which I doubt you are, so
I already told you last Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in

(04:10):
hour two, I've been chronologically going through the Rhodesian Bush
War all right now. To set it up, it was
a tribal conflict. Originally, the British came in essentially colonized
the place, turned it into a thriving, wealthy, wealthy country

(04:32):
where you had to have There were all kinds of
restrictions on voting. And keep in mind, we're talking about
a million two million black Africans here, a couple hundred
thousand Europeans here, Yet ninety five percent of the people
who were eligible to vote were white Europeans. This is
post World War two. The world's chafing on that, Britain's

(04:54):
chafing on it so bad. Trying to get them to
change it, Rhodesia flat out rebelled and just declared independence.
They said, we're our own country now, We're no longer
your colony and This is at a time on the
planet where the Communists, especially the Soviet Union, Cuba and China,
they are training rebels and insurgents all over the globe

(05:16):
to infiltrate, infect and bring down any country that is
not a communist country. And since the sixties, these gorillas
have been going into Rhodesia. Now, also keep this in
mind a couple of things. As I mentioned, the world
sold this whole thing as white versus black, all the
liberal college professors and idiots in the media and politics.

(05:39):
It was not that at all. White people and black
people were working hand in hand in Rhodesia. More than
half of the Cellist scouts, one of their special forces
type units, more than half of them were black. The
Rhodesian Light Infantry hugely black. It's a complete lie to
think it was white for black. That's how the world

(06:01):
sold it as this Nazi state apartheid. That's not how
it was at all. And the economy was so good,
especially compared to the other African countries that other Africans,
Black Africans had been pouring into Rhodesia for the employment opportunities.
We're talking a very very modern, wealthy, fantastic country in

(06:21):
the military, which is going to matter a lot because
they're about to need it. The military was tiny about
twenty thousand and excellent. These are young men who grew
up in the outdoors. That automatically helps hunting, familiarity with firearms.
They almost all of them had fathers who fought in
World War II. Rhodesia was well represented in World War Two,

(06:44):
so much so that the British government had to tell
them please stop enlisting, No, no more, you stay please.
These are hardcore fighting men. There aren't many of them.
There aren't many troops, and this is really gonna matter
for today. There are not many truths. Oops. There are
not many planes. Half their air force was South Africa.

(07:05):
There aren't many helicopters. They're just they don't have very
much stuff and also going to be important for today.
Rhodesia is enormous. You know, when I was a kid,
my dad used to take me hunting all the time
all over Montana. Now, if you're in a big state

(07:25):
like California or Texas, this won't blow you away. But
if you're not, this this may We would get in
the cars sometimes and we would drive four five hours
on the highway and we wouldn't come close to being
out of the state yet four or five hour drive

(07:46):
at eighty miles an hour on the highway still not
out of the state. Place is enormous. Montana is enormous.
Rhodesia was actually a little bigger huge. It's a huge
place now. The final recap, because today it matters is
our clock, draw a circle on a piece of paper

(08:09):
or in your mind, the clock matters. Remember, from about
nine o'clock to twelve o'clock you have Zambia, all right.
From twelve o'clock all the way down to six o'clock
you have Mozambique, gonna be a problem. Now from six
o'clock to about eight o'clock you have South Africa. And

(08:30):
South Africa is really, by this point a huge reason
Rhodesia is still thriving. South Africa is providing, like I said,
troops that've been providing other things. And Mozambique, that country
that is twelve to six. They are currently run by
the Portuguese. The Portuguese, according to virtually every account I read,

(08:54):
their military was all but useless, completely useless. That the
Rhodesians didn't sound like they had any respect for them
at all, but that wasn't what was important. What was
important was Mozambique is on the water. Remember Rhodesha is landlocked.
Mozambak is on the water, and the Portuguese were friendly
with Rhodesia. Thus trade oil, Rhodesia is able to sell

(09:17):
in trade. It's things with South Africa and Mozambique. And
remember how small that fighting force is. That's a lot
of border. You can't you can't properly secure a border
all the way around three hundred and sixty degrees with
twenty thousand troops. It's just you don't have enough stuff.

(09:38):
But they didn't have to. Remember, almost all of this
communist guerrilla infiltration was coming from Zambia, that country that's
up there from you know ten o'clock, nine o'clock to
twelve o'clock if just the northwest. And Zambia has a
big river on the border, so it was even easier

(09:59):
to secure it. Look at the river, kill the terrorist
when they're crossing the river, and you're good to go.
But nineteen seventy four comes and really this was the
moment Rhodesia was lost. It'll take years that we're about
to fight our way through these years, but what happened
in nineteen seventy four really screwed them bad. In nineteen

(10:21):
seventy four, the Portuguese lose Mozambique and Mozambique becomes a
hostile terrorist harboring country. That's a problem. Next is the
Jesse Kelly Show on a Wonderful Monday. Remember you can
email us Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com. Continuing our

(10:45):
history of the Rhodesian bush War. Previously it had just
been Zambia with these different gorilla groups. And always remember
there are two different gorilla groups, two different Zapu and Zanu.
One group is back by the Soviets, the other group
is backed by the Chinese. And remember they do not

(11:07):
like each other because each group essentially comes from one
of the two tribes that had originally been on Rhodesia,
killing each other and slaving each other, slaughtering each other.
These two different Kami groups do not get along. But
no big deal, it's just Zambia, right, We've got Zambia covered.

(11:30):
Then Mozambique falls in nineteen seventy four, the Portuguese pull
out of it. Apparently they were quite salty about it
as well. They did things like fill up the toilets
with concrete. It was essentially exactly what it sounds like. Hey,
I guess you don't like civilization. I guess we'll destroy
the civilization we created for you. I'm sure you'll be

(11:51):
able to recreate it, right, see you guys. And yeah,
Mozambique didn't do very well. Mozambique, like I said, though
it essentially is sixty seventy percent of Rhodesia's border, their
small force previously could handle a tiny border, essentially running

(12:12):
border patrol. Now what do you do? The terrorists immediately
began setting up big camps in Mozambique, and so the Rhodesians,
and they'd been doing this before. To the Rhodesians start
figuring out they have to play offense, not just defense.

(12:35):
You see, they had camps set up all over the country,
military camps set up all over Rhodesia so they could
do these quick reaction forces, which we will get into.
But that's just trying to you know, stop the leaks
when you find them coming in. You've got to go
find these people in their countries. And they begin they
will launch obviously unauthorized massive military actions into Zambia, into Mozambique,

(13:05):
trying to blow up these training camps, trying to blow
up the supply lines, trying to do whatever they can
do to kill the gorillas before they come into Rhodesia,
to deprive them of arms, to do whatever they have
to do. For instance, it's a great example of it.
And we're about to go over some operations here, which

(13:25):
I'll get to in a moment. But for instance, I
mentioned there's a port in Mozambique, and I also mentioned
the Russians, the Chinese. They were involved in this, deeply
involved because they wanted to control Rhodesia after it fell.
So how are those weapons getting there into Africa? Lots
of them are coming by ship. The Rhodesians identified the

(13:47):
port where the weapons were coming in through Mozambique. To
the Mozambique port is freaking brilliant. In this port, they
had a problem. You see the port it was it
was a where the river met the ocean. And I
don't want to get too technical with this kind of stuff,
but essentially, dirt, I'll just call it. Dirt starts to

(14:08):
pile up at the bottom of the river, at the
bottom of the port, and the port isn't deep enough
if that happens to allow a huge ship to come in.
So what they had was a boat that would dredge
the bottom, it would clean up the dirt, It would
clean out the dirt, and this is something you had
to do often. The Rhodesians were just unbelievably good at

(14:30):
these kind of super secret Ninja special forces type missions.
They got scuba divers into the port and they nuked
the boat that dredged the river. The boat dead in
the water. Now the river cannot be dredged. The bottom
of it raises up so much. The port is dead.

(14:52):
They can't get any more Chinese munitions into the port.
But wait, there's more. They figure out that they're going
to take their guns along this train. You know what
we will do. We'll wait until the train is about
to cross a massive train bridge, I mean picture it,

(15:13):
you can picture it in your mind, over a canyon.
They wait until the train is basically entering the bridge,
and they nuke the bridge so the train doesn't have
time to stop. The train. Yes, it does have some
civilians on there, but it also has tons of munitions
that we're going to be used to kill Rhodesians. The

(15:36):
train cannot stop. The bridge blows up, oh all the
way down to the bottom of the canyon, and the
train goes. And then to pour salt in the wounds,
the Rhodesians go down to the bottom of the canyon
and steal all the guns and munitions, so they have that.
And remember, in case you're wondering why with the fall

(15:59):
of Moses Mbique, Rhodesia now has one friend. It's South
Africa that friend that's down there. But you know, from
six o'clock to eight o'clock South Africa, remember that the
UN because of Britain, they have these crippling sanctions on Rhodesia.
Now they're having a hard time economically because Mozambique's gone.

(16:22):
They're having a hard time getting stuff in munitions, things
like that. They can't get stuff. They are landlocked. They
are completely dependent on South Africa. Without them, they have
nobody in South Africa. It's helping, don't get me wrong,
but they can't do that much. So we'll talk about
a couple other operations. One it was a revenge operation,

(16:47):
revenge for what. Well, you know how communists can't control themselves.
They've never been able to control their demonic impulses. Probably
not a good idea to hand them anti aircraft to
missiles where civilian airliners fly. Hang on, it is the
Jesse Kelly Show on a fantastic, fantastic Monday. Back to

(17:11):
our Rhodesian bush war. So I don't want to get
too in the weeds on the details, but there is
something that kind of matters for our purposes here. Remember
I said that Zambia is that country to the northwest
of Rhodesia. Mozambique is the country that it's essentially their
entire eastern border. The Soviet backed gorilla groups were really

(17:36):
Zambia right in Mozambique. Those gorilla groups, that gorilla group,
they were backed by the Chinese, and they had two
different types of war. They were trying to fight the Chinese.
It's almost it's almost too on the nose. The Chinese
were more focused on being subversive, being quieter about it,

(17:59):
less technologically but more spy stuff. Does that make sense.
The Soviets, they had tanks. They wanted their gorillas to
be outfitted with heavy equipment, and one of the things
they gave them was surface to air missiles. Remember the

(18:20):
gorilla groups, neither of them had air power at all.
A huge advantage the Rhodesians had was they had excellent
helicopter pilots, excellent fighter pilots. That they had air power
the gorillas did not seems like an easy problem to solve.
The Soviets said to their gorillas up in Zambia, Hey,

(18:42):
how about some weapons that can shoot down a plane?
But communists cannot control themselves. There is a passenger airline,
a passenger airline flies in the wrong place, and the
Kami gorillas shooting down. Now it doesn't get blown up

(19:03):
completely in the sky. Yes, of course, the explosion hurts
and kills people. The crash landing hurts and kills people.
But there are several survivors on the ground. Okay, sounds good, right, Well,
some of those survivors managed to crawl away from the
wreckage get somewhere where there's essentially some place to hide.

(19:28):
Others are too tired, sick, or injured to do so.
The ones who crawl their way into the bush and
find a place to hide, they were the living witnesses
of what happened next. The Calmie Monster guerrilla groups that
shot down the passenger airliner drove up to the crashed

(19:49):
plane and promptly executed all of the survivors. The word
would have never gotten out had there not been living
survivors out. Obviously word got to Rhodesia. In Rhodesia is furious. Now,
up to this point, they had not really done cross

(20:09):
border things. Right now they're going in cross border things
like the ship thing and the bridge thing. They hadn't
really done that yet. Now they go in and it's
called Operation Gatling, where they attack three different gorilla camps
in Zambia over the course of three days. It's almost
a simultaneous attack. Helicopters, planes, troops. Now I need to

(20:34):
clarify something about the troops because it's such a large
country and there were so few troops. The Rhodesian troops
were basically all of them airborne troops in some way.
They were always parachuting into a place or getting out
of a helicopter. It was the norm. You could hardly drive.
I mean there was driving, don't get me wrong. But

(20:56):
when they launched operations, they were always from the air.
Air operations. So they do a huge cross border attack
into Zambia. Now, what do communists do? What do communists
do today? And always when they get attacked. When they
do something terrible and they get attacked, they play the victim.

(21:17):
The communists. After this three day affair, the Communists came
out and said, hey, you killed a bunch of innocent civilians.
Rhodesia killed a bunch of innocent civilians. Now I know
you're probably rolling your eyes and saying that's ridiculous, and
of course it is, except who runs the media today, Communists.

(21:38):
Who do you think was running it back in the seventies, communists.
You know that communist governments around the globe, including in
Western civilization, they hated Rhodesia, hated it. They were trying
to get the place to stop. What I'm saying is
the media, the governments, they were all too willing to

(21:58):
believe the communists propaganda that civilians were killed and mass
in the Rhodesians looked terrible. Now I need to explain
something before we get into other things like torture and
other operations and stuff like that. Fire force really cool name,
I know, but fire force is something the Rhodesians did

(22:21):
and here's what it was. Because of the size of
the country has already mentioned, because of how many troops
they had, how do you get everywhere. When you find
out there's been an infiltration of gorillas. When they find
fifty gorillas, one hundred gorillas, they set up I'll call
them army camps all over the country. All over the country.
There would be I'll just pick a number. It's going

(22:43):
to vary, but one hundred troops in one camp. Helicopters
are there, planes are there. Now. I mentioned before the
group known as the Cellus Scouts. It's really Sellou Scouts.
It's a French term, but I'm just going to call
them the Cellus Scouts is that's what most people know
them as. The Sellas Scouts were this elite unit where

(23:06):
they tracked people. It's what they did. They hunted down
gorillas and tracked them. Also, kind of a cool little tidbit.
Did you know that more than half of the Sellas
Scouts were Black Africans who were communists before and they
recruited them and turned them and now they fought for
the cell With Scouts. How about that? Really cool? Anyway

(23:26):
they would do, they did all kinds of things. They
would pose as warlords and things like that. They would
do all kinds of things. But their job essentially was
to go find these gorilla in incursions into the country.
And let's say they're out and they find one get
they find a large group of tracks, they find trash,
they find something, they track it, and they find fifty gorillas,

(23:50):
fifty gorillas who are having lunch in a riverbedep. They
get on the radio. This is what fireforce was. They
get on the radio and the closest camp of the
Rhodesian military, the closest camp would mobilize boom troops. Everybody,
get in the helos, get in the planes. And the
idea of it was this get to where the gorillas

(24:13):
are quickly. And more importantly, they were trying to envelop
the gorillas. Why envelop the gorillas, Well, the gorillas had
a strategy they used. Remember it's easy to think about
these guys as unsophisticated. They had all kinds of training
from the Soviets and the Chinese advanced military training. What
the gorillas would do when they were caught, they would disperse.

(24:37):
Everybody would kind of go in a different direction, and
then they would know, I need to get back across
the border. Once I get back across the border will
reconvene and we'll be fine. The Rhodesians know this is
what they do too. So the idea of fire force
is mobilize the helos, mobilize the planes, mobilize it all.
Mobilize the troops so fast that you enveloped them so

(25:00):
they can't get out. You try to trap them and
kill them all, trap them and kill them all. By
the end of the war, which we're not going to
get to yet, but by the end of the war,
the Rhodesian troops were basically worn down to the nubs
because they would go on two, three, four fire force
missions a day. Don't think you would get on the

(25:21):
helo and go out and kill fifty gorillas and then
it's time for a beer at the local officer club. No no, no, no,
no no, you went right back to base. Maybe went
back to base. Maybe you went right from one fire
force mission to another fire force mission, all over the country, flying, killing,
dying all day long, flying killing, dying all day long.

(25:41):
That was fire force, essentially a quick reaction force that
allowed this admittedly wonderful Rhodesian infantry or military in general,
to quickly get to where the gorillas are and kill them.
And that's a good thing because the Kamis are now
getting in more and more and more. Because that friggin

(26:04):
border with Mozambique is now open for them. The Rhodesians
have to start taking other measures, if you will. It
is that Jesse Kelly's show, trying to get through part
four of the Rhodesian bush War. I'm not gonna be
able to wrap it up tonight. I will wrap it

(26:24):
up tomorrow. I don't even think it'll take me an hour.
I could look, I could continue to go on and
on and on. I know it's a fascinating thing, but
we'll get back to politics here in ten minutes. Remember,
you can email the show Jesse at Jesse kellyshow dot com.
So it really is so impressive to me as I
read through it. How advanced in the thinking the Rhodesian

(26:46):
military and they're essentially their spy agency. Was I told
you they now realized they had to cross borders and
attack the gorillas in their camps in other countries before
they got into Rhodesia. You had to do something to
kill them in their countries, and so they come up
with something called Operation Dingo. Now it would have been

(27:12):
quite an ugly affair to watch it, but still so impressive.
Here was Operation in Dingo. Here was the idea behind it.
Two gigantic terrorist bases. That's what they called them terrorists,
and essentially that's what they were. And remember, these terrorists
are setting land mines on Rhodesian roads, butchering farmers whenever
they find them. They really didn't. They used terror tactics,

(27:34):
bombing things. They're just there. They were terrorists. Operation Dingo
identifies two large gorilla bases. Here's what they start doing.
They start taking Rhodesian planes jets their military planes, and
flying overhead of the bases, over over top of the bases.
Why they wanted the terrorists, They wanted them to get

(27:59):
used to the sound of Rhodesian jets flying overhead. You know,
at first, when you first fly overhead, the terrorists think
they're about to be bombed or something like that said,
they run and they hide and they get into bunkers.
But then you do it enough times, the terrorists start
to figure out, wait a minute, nothing bad's going to happen.
I don't need to pay attention to the Rhodesian jets

(28:20):
flying overhead. I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. Operation
Dingo was this. They loaded up all these troops onto
planes with parachutes. Then, as per usual, they flew some
of their jets over the bases. The gorillas, you know,
they're gonna look up, but by now they realize they'll

(28:42):
be fine. The Rhodesians knew when the troops would gather
for formation on their base. They waited until the troops
were at formation. Essentially you're standing out in the open,
and then they start dropping huge bombs on them, in

(29:02):
incinerating them, napalm, you name it. Apparently there were body
parts all over the place of these communists terrorists because
the Rhodesians caught them in formation. And as soon as
or basically as the planes are dropping bombs on the

(29:24):
Kami terrorists, the Rhodesian troops are jumping out of planes
with their parachutes and parachuting down. As the Kami guerrillas
are firing up at them with AK forty sevens, putting
holes in their parachutes. The Rhodesian troops land. And this
is where I'll get very frank with you. This war

(29:47):
was fought in a way that may make you squeamish,
uncomfortable both sides, and it was a war that was
barbaric because it had to be. The Rhodesian troops couldn't
afford to take prisoners aid the wounded. No, no, no, They
walked around killing all of them. And they had identified

(30:11):
the likely escape routes the gorillas would use, and they
set up a hidden blocking force. So as the gorillas
are fleeing the base, they get mowed down as they
run right into the Rhodesian guns. The Rhodesians are walking
around shooting gorillas in the head as they're burning to death.
It is a horrible, horrible, ugly affair that was awesome,

(30:35):
an incredible military campaign and a huge success. But this
is where I'll leave you for today, because tomorrow I
set Operation Dingo's one of the coolest operations ever. It's
probably the one we will go into tomorrow, to be
honest with you. But I'll leave you with this now
and forever. What I'm about to say has been the case.

(31:00):
Wars are not just military things. There is always a
political aspect to every single war. Always, Alexander the Great,
as he's out there conquering the Persian Empire, is constantly
having to deal with politics and political intrigue back home,

(31:24):
Julius sees you name it. There's always a political aspect
to every war. We like to imagine there was a
time when it was just two armies squaring off like men,
and we didn't have these pesky politicians. It's never been
that way. Rhodesia was always doomed because the world was

(31:45):
against them politically, and by doing the military things they
had to do to win, they were actually increasing the
public opposition to them. I find Operation Dingo to be
an insanely impressive military campaign. The public did not Now

(32:07):
it was in Rhodesia, Don't get me wrong, they were
quite happy about it in Rhodesia, but globally, America, the UK,
it was essentially sold as a mass slaughter of civilians.
They claimed there were all kinds of refugees in the
camp who had been killed and executed. Internationally, this huge

(32:29):
military success didn't land well. And now we're at the
place in Rhodesia. Now we're in the seventies, the late seventies.
They can't hold back the tide anymore. Of gorillas. They've
even put land mines along the Mozambique border, all kinds

(32:50):
of land mines the Rhodesians have. But it was such mountainous,
rough terrain you couldn't possibly mind all of it. They're
finding a way to get through. They are now regularly
setting up camps. They are the Rhodesians are having to
take steps I just mentioned politically, That's why I brought
this up. Steps like remember those African tribal peoples who
are still there. The Rhodesians are pulling them out of

(33:14):
the reservations, the villages they'd put them in, and said no,
you can't stay there anymore. Now you have to come
into the city because they can't have them being recruited
by the communist terrorists who are coming in. It's a nightmare,
a total nightmare. We will finish the Rhodesian bush War
tomorrow