Landmines!
It has been speculated by some that more vehicles in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) struck landmines during
the 7 year war than by all the Allied forces in Europe in WWII from D-Day until June 1945. Between
December 1972 and January 1980, 2405 vehicles struck landmines. 632 people were killed and 4,410 were
injured. By the end of the war, things had escalated to such a degree that between 5-6 vehicles were
hitting landmines every day. Note: Were it not for the prevalence of mine-protected vehicles, and
for the many counter-measures taken against landmines, the casualties would have been far worse.
The "Liberators" planted landmines everywhere they could. There were even odd incidents where
a train hit a landmine and where an aircraft was blown up on its runway as it hit a landmine!
In recent years many famous people, including Lady Diana went around the world telling everyone what
a terrible horror landmines are. There have even been suggestions of outlawing landmines completely.
They show how mine fields still exist all over Angola and Mozambique and how they still blow people up.
You get small landmines, anti-personnel mines, which are designed just to blow your foot off. And you even
get powerful anti-tank landmines. One fact which is always carefully skirted around and which people never
discuss is: Who planted the landmines? Where did they come from?
Answer: They were planted by SWAPO (now the government of Namibia), by Zanu(PF) (now the government of
Zimbabwe), by ZAPU (they were the opposition to ZANU(PF)) by Frelimo (now the government of Mozambique).
Yes, landmines were a major weapon used by the
Marxist black Liberation movements. Virtually all the landmines which are still out there today killing
and maiming people (mostly black people) were planted by those who came to "liberate" them.
What is also never mentioned is that this effective, and yet hideous weapon was used most indiscriminantly
against the whites in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The "Liberators" (like Mugabe and Nkomo), sent their
people to plant landmines on every road where it was possible. You can only plant them on non-tarred
roads - and there are many such roads in the rural and farming areas of Zimbabwe. Landmines were planted
everywhere. A farmer and his family might drive to town in the family car only to hit a boosted anti-tank
landmine. What is a boosted landmine? It is one which has various other explosives packed around it
to give it that extra punch. Well, if you hit a boosted anti-tank landmine with your family car there
is pretty much nothing left of you or your car afterwards.
This black-owned civilian 7 ton Isuzu truck hit a landmine on a public road. Three
passengers including a child died and two others were seriously injured. (Note the
corpse lying in the foreground). These people were killed by
the very people who were supposed to be liberating them!
But those landmines, being indiscriminant, and being put on public roads did not just kill white
farmers or their families. Tractors driven by blacks were blown up. Army vehicles would sometimes hit
them. But many 80-seater busses loaded with black people also hit them and were blown to shreds. I grew
up on a farm near the main road leading from Harare to Mozambique in the east. It was common to see the
remains of vehicles being towed back to Salisbury (Harare). It was so common in fact that as I look back
I realise I never bothered to take photos of these things. I saw all manner of vehicles being towed back
to Harare, including busses which had struck such things. My brother was in an old Bedford army truck which
struck a landmine. Luckily they had put sandbags all over the truck. They were driving along the one
minute. The next thing my brother knew was that he woke up lying in the grass. Strewn around him were all
the other soldiers who had been in the truck. His watch had stopped due to the blast. As he got to his
feet he realised they had all been knocked unconscious for several minutes. But for those sandbags they
would all have been dead.
This 80-seater bus carrying black passengers hit a landmine
We had a totally indiscriminant landmine war waged against us, and nobody in the world bothered to
say back then how inhumane it was. Nobody gave a damn.
In 1973, Mrs Margie Ward & her family struck a land mine in their Land Rover. She pulled her
entire family from the wreckage to safety. Sadly, she died two days later from her injuries.
But when a mere 250,000 whites in the middle of Southern Africa are fighting with their lives they
make a plan. Here is one of the little inventions we came up with in the 1970's. Take a look at a
Pookie below:
The Pookie
When the landmines were taking a very heavy toll and we were in danger of losing, someone came
up with a bright idea. Roads hundreds of kilometres long were mined. There just were not enough
people nor enough time for people to walk on foot with mine detectors. So someone wondered if you
could build a vehicle which could drive over a landmine without setting it off. Then you would
mount a metal-detector on it. They needed a vehicle which was light and which could have its weight
spread out over a wide area. They went and got hold of used Formula One racing car tyres and put
it on a small vehicle powered by a VW engine. The result was a Pookie!!
Rhodesia was under a lot of strain and money was tight. The only source of Formula One racing
tyres was the South African Grand Prix. Each year, army personnel from Rhodesia (dressed in plain
clothes) would go to South Africa and buy up used racing car tyres. The South Africans couldn't
understand what these crazy Rhodesians were up to!!
The first real live trial of the Pookie was on a long stretch of road known to be filled with landmines.
The Pookie drove along and detected each mine. Upon detection the vehicle was stopped and the landmines
were lifted. The Pookie was a roaring success. Only approximately five were ever built and they were
Rhodesia's Secret Weapon against landmines. In a few hours the Pookies could detect and remove landmines
which had been carried by humans for hundreds of miles and which had taken a long time to lay. Pookies
were so important that their location was a military secret and nobody knew which roads they were going
to sweep next. They could undo many weeks of labour by Marxist terrorists in a very short time.
Here is a Pookie from another angle. Note the metal detector hanging between the front & back wheels:-
The Pookie
The Pookie Troop
The Pookie at War! (Here we see a Pookie leading an army column across mine-infested terrain into
Mozambique on a cross-border raid to hit the enemy in their camps. This is no different to what
America did in Afghanistan after WTC. Note, behind the Pookie is a tank. Rhodesia could not afford to
buy tanks. The few tanks they had were actually Russian tanks captured on cross-border raids... As you can
see this Russian tank is now doing service in the Rhodesian Army!)
Funny Pookies! (Even in war there is time for a bit of fun. These Pookies were "dressed up"
for the Jacaranda Festival and were humorously named "Jacaranda" & "Jill". Note: Those "pipes"
sticking out at 45 degree angles are actually anti-ambush devices - a type of a shotgun).
When the Russians finally discovered that their entire landmine strategy was ineffective they went to
work devising a new type of landmine which contained no metal. So they invented the plastic landmine.
When the new mines were planted, the situation once more became critical.
Again the engineers thought and thought. Eventually somebody wondered: If you can't detect plastic,
can you detect a hole dug in the hard soil? So, using early, primitive computer logic, they devised
a "detector" which bounced sound waves into the ground and then analysed the reflection. The little
computer then used its logic to determine when it thought there was a "hole". Note, the soil on the
roads is tightly packed, but when you dig a hole for a landmine, no matter how tightly you pack it,
it is not as dense as the rest of the road. The Pookies were never again as effective as they had
been originally. Note, electrically detonated landmines were also used, but that is another story.
Nevertheless, they did manage to get reasonable success - though with many more
false alarms than before. So in the end, the Marxist Liberators were not able to defeat us using
landmines alone.
Let me mention a few other things about the little Pookie. You will note it is very small because
it only carried one person, the driver. The Pookies often drove in front of convoys. They drove
quite far ahead because they needed a decent stopping distance in case they detected landmines.
It was found, with practise, that a Pookie could travel along at 80 Km/Hr (48 mph) and still
effectively detect mines! It would then stop and the convoy would also stop behind it. Due to this,
the Pookie was thus always vulnerable to ambush. So it was armoured and the driver was protected
with bullet-proof glass. The shape of his compartment was in a V just in case a landmine went off.
The wheels were some distance from the base so that the blast effects would be some distance from
the driver and so the wheel could fly off if need be. Nobody ever died in a Pookie.
Pookies were in demand all over Rhodesia. Then Robert Mugabe's "Liberators" took to planting landmines
on airstrips.
This is what is left of a small plane from the African Development Fund which struck a landmine
on an airstrip. The pilot and three passengers were killed. Again, people were killed who were actually
trying to help the blacks!
It was not feasible to provide Pookies for the many landing strips and airfields in the bush. So
they put metal detectors on a bicyle frame.
This bicyle-mounted mine-detector was named the FU-2. One can't help if there was
some sort of message in the name! Note the car battery to power the detector.
It should be noted that Rhodesian mine-protected vehicles got a boost from some experiments which
had been going on in South Africa. The South Africans were having landmine problems in South West
Africa (Namibia). Their line of thinking was in the opposite direction to that of the Pookie. Rather
than developing a vehicle to move over landmines without setting them off, they were trying to invent
a vehicle to find them and to set them off! So they needed a vehicle which could survive landmine
blasts.
A Prototype of the "Spinnekop" (Spider)
The "Spinnekop" (Spider) - the final product. (Note it has a mine-detector right at the front)
Here is a selection of the many vehicles developed and used in Rhodesia with differing success.
They had typically African names like: the Hyena, the Crocodile, the Hippo, the Leopard, etc.
The Leopard. (Note the roll-bars & the V-shaped body to take the blast)
The Cougar. (Note the turret fitted for airfield patrol duty. It also has bullet-proof
glass windows)
The Rhino. (Originally developed for the Police to use. Note the roll-bars and armour plating.)
The Kudu. (Note the ribbed sides to deflect bullets when the vehicle is ambushed. The
sloping front is to deflect bullets from the front to protect the engine)
A Kudu - after hitting a landmine
The South Africans then went and built the ultimate anti-landmine vehicle, the Casspir. This very
tough and advanced vehicle is now sold across the world. This vehicle has the enviable reputation that
even though it has struck landmines, not one person has ever died in it because of a landmine!
The Casspir
Across the world, people fear landmines, but nobody mentions that the most effective anti-landmine
measures developed came from the small numbers of white people living in Rhodesia and South Africa.
Others may fear landmines but we lived with them and overcame them with our meagre resources!
I have many other stories I can tell, and if people are interested I'll put it up and show you
what white people in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) went through to survive against amazing odds - and
also South Africa and Namibia.
The Russians and Chinese tried many things. In the end, the Chinese guerilla tactics were the
most difficult to counter.
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