Along the way there would be ready evidence of the low-key insurrection that then gripped the country, including burnt-out vehicles abandoned in the bush and others that had obviously been raked by gunfire. Occasionally, we’d spot a car or a truck that had tripped a landmine, some of them blasted by mines that had been laid on tarred roads. The guerrillas would drill out a small section of tar, lay their mine and then with great care, make it look like a pothole that had been filled with gravel.

On one occasion, Madelon and I travelled about 100 miles across a dirt road to Gulu to visit a friend; her husband was then serving in the army and he was based there. It was mid-afternoon when we set out from Fort Victoria and halfway there, I realized that what we were doing was possibly a mistake. We could be ambushed at any time, never mind the mines. The road was in bad shape and huge swathes of bush partly covered it in places. All we had for protection was her little .38-Special snubbie and my Colt .45 ACP: no match for even a single AK-47.

However, we got through, spent a few days in the officers’ quarters, and then headed back on the Sunday morning, this time with an escort for part of the distance. We did that kind of thing in Southern Africa in those days because we were young and in love and fate took good care of us.

It was on the trip back to civilization that we had a serious run-in with a bunch of insurgents on the main road between Francistown and Ramatlabama. They were all ZIPRA guerrillas and they used their weapons to stop us along a lonely stretch of road. All they wanted from us – about six or eight of them – was a lift to the next town. I said we’d take two.

No they countermanded – we were to take them all. It was clearly an impossible situation, which was when I told their leader to get fucked and drove off. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t gun us down in a country that was already playing the role of an uneasy host to their forces. Fortunately, I was proved right.

Asked to do that sort of thing today, I’d probably offer to take the lot and buy them their meals and beers as well.

War or no war, the 1970s were magic times in Africa. I was working for Republican Press, the largest magazine group in Africa that published magazines like Scope and Farmers Weekly, both of which had substantial circulations in Rhodesia and it helped a lot that the company had had almost all its foreign assets frozen in Rhodesia. Republican Press couldn’t take its money out of the embattled country at war, but that didn’t prevent me spending bundles of it each time I was assigned to go north. Following a phone call to the local representative of Republican Press, we’d make contact each time on my first morning in Salisbury and she’d hand me rolls of Rhodesian dollar bills, usually thousands of dollars at a time. I would always make very good use of it.

Location expenses it was called, but the trouble was, I couldn’t take any of it out of the country, which suited me fine. For the best part of a decade, I was able to cover Rhodesia’s war almost continuously and in the process gained an astonishing amount of experience in military matters. I was also able to feed a host of publications abroad and earn the kind of extra money that eventually allowed me to build a rather beautiful home in Noordhoek, one of Cape Town’s better suburbs.

Using company money with no restrictions whatsoever, I’d hire cars, stay in the five-star Monomatapa Hotel (which the army had dubbed ‘The Claymore’ because it had the curiously rounded shape of one), eat like an epicure at Meikles and move about the country as and when I pleased. If Bob Brown didn’t arrive to do the same thing himself, he was constantly sending over Americans to experience Rhodesia’s war and I played host to many of them, courtesy of Republican Press.

‘Brown’s Reprobates’ – as local and foreign media dubbed our exclusive little entourage – ended up a familiar sight in town. Each one of these Americans toted at least one large-calibre ‘piece’ and most eventually became members of the only recognized media centre in the country. The Quill Club was as much a hangout for local and foreign journalists and spooks as the inevitable ‘Guns for Hire’.

By then there were already quite a few Americans in the Rhodesian Army. Among the best known was Bob MacKenzie, who served with distinction in the Rhodesian SAS. Once that was over, Bob went on to become second-in-charge to former Selous Scouts founder-commander Colonel Ron Reid-Daly in the Transkei Army.

There was also Major L.H. ‘Mike’ Williams. Following some unconventional stints in Asia, Mike served as the tactical commander of the Grey Scouts, the country’s famed mounted infantry. Others included Chris Johnson from Houston, Texas, who’d originally served two tours with a Marine Recon Battalion, as well as Airborne/Ranger qualified Bob Nicholson from Fortune, California, both of whom eventually found a home in the RLI.

The 1st Battalion, The Rhodesian Light Infantry (nicknamed ‘The Saints’ or ‘Incredibles’) was a regular airborne commando regiment in the Rhodesian Army that became a parachute battalion in 1977. Regarded in its day as one of the world's foremost proponents of counter-insurgency warfare, its regular duties included both internal operations and external pre-emptive strikes against guerrillas based in the neighbouring territories of Mozambique and Zambia.

Organized into four company-sized sub-units called commandos, with an average fighting strength of about 70 men, their characteristic deployment was the Fire Force, a reaction operation called out by radio whenever enemy units were spotted, usually in remote locations in the bush.

RLI ‘troopies’ soon became the country’s most effective rapid deployment helicopter shock force. Small combat elements would consist of four-man ‘sticks’, each consisting of an NCO stick leader, a machine-gunner, a trooper, and a combatant-medic. Basic weapons were the 7.62mm FN rifle and belt-fed MAGs.

The RLI Fire Force concept emerged after a few hard lessons in 1974. Using French-built helicopters, some obtained legally and still more bought ‘under the counter’, as well as antiquated C-47 Dakotas or ‘Gooney birds’, back-up vehicles and support troops, this was a tactic, though expensive, that worked from the start. Operations in the bush that involved Fire Force always yielded results, some of them inordinately impressive in terms of kills.

What was notable about the RLI was its strength. At best it never numbered more than a few hundred combatants. As long as these men remained active, they were able to counter large numbers of insurgents, with RLI ‘troopies’ sometimes going out on two consecutive missions a day, three on rare occasions. There were operations when they were dropped virtually onto the heads of those they sought from 200 feet.

Very few counter-insurgency units in any country involved in counter-terrorism operations have managed to achieve such remarkable results. Part of the reason was that this ‘organised and extremely lethal bunch of hooligans’, as one Salisbury newspaper referred to them, were prepared to take the kind of risks needed. Another is that all the men were well trained, extremely fit and young enough to be bold – and more often than not, impetuous – in the face of the enemy and think nothing of it.

It is notable that many of the tactics instituted by a succession of RLI commanders – as well as by Ron Reid-Daly’s Selous Scouts – are today regularly studied by military institutions abroad, including those in Britain and the United States. Small-unit operations originally evolved during World War II, initiated by David Sterling’s Long Range Desert Group, and were later applied in Malaya and by British SAS Colonel Jim Johnson in Yemen while fighting an invading Egyptian Army. Yet, it was RLI tactics that all but perfected this methodology.