Rangers, Rustling & Rhodesia

Range Detectives of Rhodesia

Food & water have always been essential to life. Wartime brings out the best & the worst in people. There is always money to be earned.

Wars cause shortage, & despite creative sanction busting procurement efforts the Rhodesian war was no different. The country attracted people from all over the world. This is about one group of guys who protected the food of the nation.

Article embedded here with kind permission from the author who answers to the name, Colonel Kurtz.

Comment on this article from EVS who was there too: “Firstly. ..no one was starving. By 1978 the protected villages were set up and they were fed there. Each rural police station had a stock theft team and stock theft was pretty rampant. In the Nuanetsi area I recall a pair of so-called ‘contractors ‘ coming in and trying their hand to recover stolen cattle but they were guys gutted by the farmers themselves. … it wasn’t very successful. .. linguistically and terrain challenged they walked their butts off…. I was SB at the time and they would come back full of stories about things we could never prove on the ground. A number of Vietnam vets landed up here and some served. I knew a seriously bent out of shape chap who was with Guard Force. He was in charge of the ‘keep’ near the Mangazi gap in Ndowoyo ttl. He used to play revellei (sp) on a bugle and wore a pearl handled revolver like Patton! He didn’t stay long. But we applaud them for the support… it meant boots on the ground!”

Then I found this, credit is as per the embed which includes details of the actual post