Rhodesian Army
Chris Cocks
Chris was born in Salisbury, Rhodesia in 1957 and joined the Rhodesian Army in 1976 and served with 3 Commando in the Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI) for 3 years. He was then offered a farming job in the country’s Lowveld; however, the army refused to countenance a...
Mike West
Fire Force
A Trooper's War in the Rhodesian Light Infantry Fire Force is the account of Chris Cocks’s service in 3 Commando, The Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI), during Zimbabwe’s civil war of the 1970s—a war that came to be known, almost innocuously, as ‘the bush war’. Fire...
Selous Scouts: Top Secret War
The Selous Scouts were the toughest and most efficient killing machine anywhere in Africa, and its members consisted of the finest guerrilla fighting men in the Western world. Unconventional in many ways, disregardful of parade ground discipline, unorthodox in their...
Operation Uric
OP URIC is the controversial operation of The Rhodesian War. Though it resulted in over 300 enemy dead for the loss of 15 of their own (the highest of the war) the Rhodesians, with their very high operational standards, did not regard it as a success. There was...
Operation Mardon
Operation Mardon was a series of coordinated Rhodesian cross-border raids into Mozambique between October and December 1976, aimed at disrupting the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA). These raids involved simultaneous attacks on ZANLA camps,...
Operation Long John
Operation Long John was an operation undertaken by the Selous Scouts of the Rhodesian Army on 25 June 1976 against two ZANLA guerrilla bases located in Mozambique near Mapai. Operation Long John was an attack on a guerrilla transit camp at Mapai and staging post...