With a limited armed guerrilla ‘struggle’ now underway, Neall was initially faced with the possibility of joining the Rhodesian Army. Had he done so, he would have served with many of the boys from his school. However, his father opposed this course of action and instead he went back to South Africa, this time to try his hand at a law degree course at the University of Natal.

While he should have spent more time than he did on his academic studies, his options rested largely on participation sports, which was why he got involved in canoeing, judo, weightlifting and rowing fours amongst other activities. He also began to show an interest in underwater pursuits, taking up diving and spearfishing as extracurricular activities.

His ‘other’ extra-mural activity centred on his girlfriend Barbara (or ‘Babs’, as everybody called her) back in Bulawayo. That meant hitchhiking back to Rhodesia every long weekend, no mean task at a distance of almost 1,000 miles. The good life couldn’t last, of course, and the end result of all these pursuits was that the aspirant sportsman didn’t even sit his last exam. ‘My father was mightily unimpressed’, he recalls.

At that point, young Neall was accepted for an officer training course in the Rhodesian Army, which meant he would be based at Gwelo. As the Rhodesian Army was looking for quality rather than quantity it was a particularly tough regimen:

We had two colour sergeants who, as the saying goes, ‘protected our interests’. One, by the name of Simpson, was a particularly hard customer from Yorkshire; the other, Nortje, an Afrikaner, was somebody we all regarded as a terror—he was also our drill sergeant. Nortje would march us until some of the guys dropped, but curiously, after that initial three-month of basics, he turned out to be quite a pleasant sort of fellow.

The routine was hard, with daily inspections to keep us on our toes. There would also be a lot of time spent on the range, polishing our so-called shooting skills. Having used firearms in the wild for almost as long as I could remember, I was pretty good at it. Still, we had our hiccups, and Nortje would taunt us with the comment: ‘I know what’s on your mind … you guys all want to shoot me, well go ahead and fire and see how I react’. He would also warn the men: ‘but beware if someone makes a mistake!’

Group punishment was termed ‘wildebeest’ and was a brutal rough-and-tough, no-option drill. Essentially, it consisted of the entire squad running around like lunatics through a routine that resembled something between a jungle gym and an obstacle course, the only difference being that we’d have to perform all the requisites while hauling each other across our backs.

One day, our mentors decided that we were to be instructed on crowd and riot control. We were teamed up with a Territorial Army cadet officer group and were delegated to perform the basis for controlling a riotous crowd, the Territorials being the crowd. It was all pretty realistic training as the other side was allowed to throw rocks and bricks and a few heads were cracked as a consequence, as might have been expected.

The culmination came when we were herded into a squash court— about 40 of us jammed into a relatively confined space. The doors were jammed shut and two teargas grenades were thrown in. It was the cruel and mindless act of a psychotic, but we were hardly in a position to argue. Obviously, there was immediate panic and some pretty desperate efforts to get clear of the place because we quickly discovered that the gas masks didn’t have the requisite filters. We got out eventually, but it was a massive effort because we were all fighting, literally, for survival.

I was as sick as a dog afterwards, but there were others who collapsed, moaning and crying real tears. Still more of the group were vomiting … it was horrendous, but then the military in those days was full of the kind of sadistic bastards who would subject us younger guys to mindless trials. Then, if things really did go wrong, they would shrug their shoulders and move on and do the same thing again at a later date. To this day, when I smell tear gas I react badly. The worst part was that it was an unusually hot day and we’d all been sweating from the effort with the rocks and bricks. That meant that whenever we touched our bodies, the chemicals in the gas gave us a severe stinging sensation.

As an officer cadet, Neall Ellis had several personal problems of his own. He was busted for fighting in the corporal’s bar, which he had no authority to enter in the first place, and, as a result, he was charged with assault and being drunk. That little episode took place towards the end of the course, after about nine months of training.

Ordered to appear before his commanding officer, he was reminded that officers never drank in the bars of NCOs without being invited in to do so. Even if they were invited, it was just not good form to get involved in a bar brawl.

His reply was curt and totally uncalled for: ‘What is the difference, Sir? In 10 years’ time, this country will have a black president anyway.’

The next moment I found myself on the floor: I’d been given a short, sharp crack to the side of my head by the Rhodesian Army lightweight boxing champion. He was my escort and had been standing right alongside me.

That one comment effectively terminated Neall’s career in the Rhodesian armed forces. However, as he recollects, being thrown off the junior officer’s course was probably the best thing that might have happened:

In any event, I was starting to get more interested in flying, and even considered applying for a transfer to the air force for flight training, although whether I would have passed selection there, after the fracas in Gwelo was another matter.

Meantime, he’d also had problems after returning to base from leave, when he’d tried to patch up things with Babs, his girlfriend—their relationship had become rocky due to his extended periods away.

We were doing a survival course in the bush which, as usual, turned into something gory. The thrust of it centred on teaching us the basics of survival under the most arduous bush conditions imaginable … and in Africa it can sometimes be really difficult!

As he recalls, the instructors had their own ways of doing things, like forcing the men to carry boxes of sand over long distances in difficult terrain. They were required to go in search of food because everything was taken from them, including sleeping bags and any warm clothing they might have brought. As Neall remembers, being winter it was a really hard call because after dark, in the Rhodesian countryside, temperatures tend to plummet.

After some days of that bullshit, we were given some bricks which we had to put into our packs. We were then split into groups, or ‘sticks’ of three. They said that they would give us food to start with, and, indeed, they did—all of a couple of tins of bully beef for an unspecified period and no water.

We were then ordered onto an antiquated Rhodesian Air Force DC-3 Dakota and flown to Buffalo Range in the south-east of the country, where our first operation was to reconnoitre an old gold mine. Map coordinates were provided, together with a specific destination where we were to be debriefed after our so-called recce.

Meanwhile, we had every Territorial Force unit in creation chasing after us, and for those who were caught, it was really fierce: some men were stripped down naked for interrogation—not pleasant in the middle of winter—while others were made to stand on rocks in a flooded quarry. I was lucky because I seemed to be quite good at escape and evasion. In the end we were all captured, but I missed the interrogation part because by the time I was hauled in, the allocated period for that phase of the exercise was up and so I was spared the ‘torture’.

Thankfully, says Neall, the time on that leg of the course went quickly. On the fourth day, something happened that was to change his life forever.

I was waiting there, on the edge of the airstrip when out of the sun came this bright, shiny little aircraft, a South African Army Cessna 185. It landed, taxied towards where we were waiting, and from it emerged a pair of shiny polished brown shoes and an immaculately dressed guy in neatly pressed khaki clothes, wearing a tie and Ray Ban sun glasses with a great big watch on his wrist. His blond hair was perfectly combed and somewhat longish by military standards. When he got close up you couldn’t miss the after-shower deodorants, which I suppose wasn’t difficult, because we hadn’t washed for more than a week. Under other circumstances he would have been quite nondescript, but there, way out in the bush, he was unique. The man was an army pilot serving with the South African police and he looked like he was having the time of his life.

It’s funny how small things become etched in your mind, which was how it was with me. At that precise moment I decided that I would become like him: I would become a pilot, I told myself. I met him afterwards—Captain Piet van der Merwe—and his daughter later became quite famous as a Miss South Africa. That same young lieutenant—as he then was—ended up flying some of us northwards, straight over the magnificent Chimanimani Mountains, and I already knew where my future lay. It certainly would not be with the ‘Brown Jobs’, a term which aviators sometimes disparagingly use when they refer to soldiers.

Meanwhile, on the orders of my father, I was required to give the academic world another bash. I enrolled at Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg for a legal degree, or what is known locally as Bachelor of Arts, Law. My deal was that he paid my fees while I was required to earn enough to keep my head above water.

My first job was pretty mundane: tending tables at the Spur Steakhouse in Rosebank. The other waiters couldn’t believe that I was actually working for a weekly wage and that I refused the tips clients gave me. In the end, I put all that extra money into their pool as they only earned what they were tipped.

Meanwhile, there had been some other changes as well. My folks moved back to South Africa from Rhodesia while I was in the army and Babs, my girlfriend, wasn’t talking to me. So at the end of it, there was nothing left for me in Rhodesia and I left the country for good. One of the first things I told Dad was that I wanted to join the South African Air Force, but being ex-military himself, he saw no future for his son in uniform and gave me a pretty explicit thumbs down.

Then, when my second stint at university also turned sour, mainly due to boredom, I simply upped sticks and signed on the dotted line at the headquarters of the South African Air Force in Pretoria.