Gunship Ace: The Wars of Neall Ellis, Gunship Pilot and Mercenary

Published in the United States of America and Great Britain in 2011 by

CASEMATE PUBLISHERS

908 Darby Road, Havertown, PA 19083

and

17 Cheap Street, Newbury RG14 5DD

Copyright 2011 © Al J. Venter

ISBN 978-1-61200-070-1

Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-61200-082-4

Cataloging-in-publication data is available from the Library of Congress

and the British Library.

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CONTENTS

BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR INCLUDE:

Report on Portugal’s War in Guiné-Bissau

Underwater Africa

Under the Indian Ocean

Africa at War

The Zambezi Salient

Underwater Seychelles

Coloured: A Profile of Two Million South Africans

Africa Today

South African Handbook for Divers

Challenge: South Africa in the African Revolutionary Context

Underwater Mauritius

Where to Dive: In Southern Africa and off the Indian Ocean Islands

War in Angola

The Chopper Boys: Helicopter Warfare in Africa

The Iraqi War Debrief: Why Saddam Hussein Was Toppled

Iran’s Nuclear Option: Tehran’s Quest for the Atom Bomb

War Dog: Fighting Other People’s Wars

Allah’s Bomb: The Islamic Quest for Nuclear Weapons

Cops: Cheating Death: How One Man Saved the Lives of 3,000 Americans

How South Africa Built Six Atom Bombs

Dive South Africa

Barrel of a Gun: A War Correspondent’s Misspent Moments in Combat

War Stories by Al Venter and Friends

To my lovely Caroline

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Gunship Ace is a book about a combat helicopter pilot who is not only an outstanding pilot but also a very good friend. I have been on operations with him in Angola and while he fought to turn around the rebels in Sierra Leone. In both ventures he was successful, so much so that in a personal letter to me in 2010, General Sir David Richards, then Chief of the General Staff—and today Chief of the Defence Staff in Great Britain— told me: ‘He is a great man; I and everyone in Sierra Leone owe him much.’

This is the first time in recent history that the serving head of a Western defence establishment has paid tribute to the role of a mercenary pilot in wartime.

Neall Ellis and I have been friends for a very long time. Indeed, I watched his four children grow up and he observed some of the disturbing antics of mine. In-between we sank a few ales, swopped a few yarns and travelled many different roads together. Writing about old buddies is never easy as you know them far too well to be complimentary about all they do. In a sense, as the saying goes, no general is a hero to his batman.

Nellis is different and, to me, a true hero. An efficient combatant when the occasion demands, had he not beaten the rebels back from the gates of Freetown—both times flying alone in an antiquated Mi-24 and at night— our governments’ representatives would today be sharing space with some of Foday Sankoh’s barbarians at the United Nations and other world bodies. In Afghanistan, for almost three years he has been flying support missions in Russian Mi-8 helicopters across some of the harshest and most demanding mountain terrain on the planet. This is dangerous work; while preparing this book for the printers in September 2011, these choppers twice came under RPG-7 attack while attempting to land. Nellis wasn’t flying at the time, but he was immediately tasked to try to find solutions to what appear to be an insoluble range of problems.

Neall Ellis has led an extraordinarily adventurous life through a dozen wars and more scrapes than he cares to remember. His career has been going on for more than 40 years and in this time he has never been seriously wounded, just scratched a few times.

One aspect of this book that concerned me from the start was that having had War Dog published by Casemate in the United States in 2006— much of that action also involving ‘Nellis’—there was bound to be a bit of overlap. Most of it has been avoided, but I have once more had to bring to the fore one event that is seminal to the conflict in Sierra Leone. That was the ambush on the road out of Makeni of a convoy of vehicles rushing to meet a turncoat Nigerian general who hoped to do a deal with the rebels. Using all the subterfuge he could muster, Neall Ellis rocketed and machine gunned the column, killing or wounding many rebel commanders. In effect, it was the beginning of the end for Sankoh’s Revolutionary United Front as they never recovered from the setback.

Others have helped put this work together and here I must pay tribute to journalist and author James Mitchell, who gave me much of what appears in the two chapters dealing with Neall’s time in Sarawak and while he served with a firefighting unit in South Africa. Like Nellis, James and I go way back: he even joined me on a lengthy sojourn across North America in a Hurricane motor home while I was working on the book on Richard David, the man who invented concealable body armour (and who has subsequently saved the lives of more than 3,000 law enforcement officers). 

Anita Baker edited this book and because of a plethora of detail, it became an enormous challenge for her to make sense of what was sometimes a jumble of facts, stats and figures. It took an inordinate amount of time and effort, but you can judge for yourself whether or not she succeeded. Thank you Anita—and here’s to our next title together.

Libby Braden was the force behind finally bringing this book to fruition, and what a marvellous job she has done. It hasn’t been easy because of the enormous volume of material, and trying to fit all of it into what was already a very substantial work.

I also have a special word of thanks for Steven Smith, editor-in-chief of Casemate and another old friend. He is the man who originally decided whether or not Casemate should take on this difficult work. He apparently didn’t hesitate, nor did David and Sarah Farnsworth, who own and run the company in Philadelphia.

A final word for my lovely Caroline, the woman who keeps my life, and my love, on track. You have been tolerant, affectionate and understanding during some extremely difficult times darling soul and, indeed, I am a very lucky man.

Al J. Venter

Downe

November, 2011

Neall Ellis at the controls of a former Soviet-Mi-24 helicopter gunship taken during a previous deployment in Sierra Leone. Author photo

PROLOGUE

Mike Foster, Neall Ellis’ co-pilot, penned the following observations while flying alongside him after take-off from Kabul in summer 2011. The helicopter, a Russian-built Hip registered ZS-RIX, was on its way to Khowst Salerno, a remote military outpost that routinely comes under attack.

He’s a tough bugger, this Nellis guy, still flying helicopter support missions in his 61st year and there is no talk of retirement. That’s roughly 40 years of action in a dozen or more wars, and he has never been wounded. He says he can’t stop now because he’s got to put bread on the table … too many people depend on him.

A peculiar, likeable fellow, Neall has become something of a legend in his time. He’s a father, a military man to his fingertips, a totally unforgiving mercenary fighter when placed in an uncompromising situation and, to his mates, honest to the point of being exploited by those less fortunate than he might be. He is peculiarly sensitive to the problems of others, although he’s got a bunch of his own that he rarely talks about, including the recent untimely loss of the woman with whom he shared six good years of his life.

He can also be stubborn, interesting and occasionally infuriating, especially if things involving the machines he flies haven’t been done his way. He refers to it as ‘survival—straight and simple’. Then he’ll add: ‘Just do it right and we won’t have problems when we least expect them,’ which has been his credo throughout his career.

These are all qualities that are typical of the Neall Ellis that I have got to know over the last two or three years. He is physically short, perhaps a bit stocky, but as confident as hell, with a discerning personality and force of character that reflects good leadership. He had probably acquired all that by the time he made colonel in the South African Air Force almost a quarter of century ago.

Neall Ellis has quite a few other accolades, which he won’t talk about. He has been acclaimed by quite a few notables, including General Sir David Richards, Britain’s Chief of the Defence Staff following victory against the rebels in Sierra Leone. That was the first time in recent history that British armed forces had worked hand-in-glove with an acknowledged mercenary. Before that, he was involved with Sandline’s Colonel Tim Spicer, who apparently has a high regard for him. There are others, but he’s non-committal about them as well. He just smiles when asked.

Neall also has the gift of being a good listener. There has never been a time when he hasn’t made me feel comfortable, even when he has been really busy and I have interrupted him or intruded on valuable time, of which he doesn’t have much because he’s often still at his desk at 10 o’clock at night working on the next day’s flying schedules. He always makes you welcome and gives you his undivided attention. What more can I say?

Neall was in the SAAF with me, but I never had much to do with him then as he was a lot senior to me. I only really got to know him after we’d been deployed to Kabul. Afghanistan is a land of contrast, harsh but pure, arid but green, sweltering heat contrasting with high altitude tables of snow, that’s how we pilots all see it. That is also where I really got to understand the man.

Roughly the size of Texas, Afghanistan has very few major roads. The ones that are there are being increasingly monitored and mined by the Taliban. These actions have forced Coalition Forces to rely more on aircraft to move troops and supplies. Indeed, many remote military bases and out-posts—particularly in the mountains—can sometimes be reached only by helicopter.

Bokkie the Mi-17 helicopter that was the real hero of the war in Sierra Leone. Full of holes, battered, but never beaten, this old war bird—with Nellis flying solo—played a major role against the rebels earlier in the war. Photo: Neall Ellis

Ambush of a Coalition Forces road convoy in Central Afghanistan. Photo: Neall Ellis

We arrived with the first group of South African Mi-8 helicopter pilots in Afghanistan and Neall approached this vast new Central Asian country with discernible eagerness. It was quite a hop, from flying Mi-24 helicopter gunships to being at the controls of slow and meandering Mi-8s. I reckon that it was hard for him to get accustomed to because the Hip is hardly an offensive weapon in this kind of environment. He changed his style of flying as well. These days he takes more of a defensive approach with the Hip—mostly high flying and none of the low-level aggressive stuff he was used to in Africa and elsewhere. You can’t help sensing that it is perhaps a little boring for him.

This has come to the fore several times in recent months: an example being the day we were flying along the western fringes of the Hindu Kush when Nellis leaned forward with a curious look on his face. He tugged at the side of his helmet and turned that side of his head towards the window. With an elated grin he happily exclaimed that we were being shot at. Quietly, and without fuss, he pulled his helmet straight again, leaned back in his seat and, with a look of contented nostalgia, continued with whatever he had been doing moments before.

Flying with Neall has its advantages. On long flights he insists that there has to be a break in the middle. That means stopping at a DFAC, usually on the turnabout point. It also means great food and goodies to enjoy. Fantastic! It does a lot for crew camaraderie and is always something to look forward to.

I enjoy going to Kabul with him too. If he wants something he buys it, simple as that. In Afghanistan the art of bargaining is something ingrained in the local psyche from birth. The old story runs along the lines of dividing by two whatever they first ask you to pay but Nellis doesn’t have the time for that kind of nonsense. He just hands over the money and doesn’t argue. He reckons that ‘if you want it, buy it, don’t dally around’.

It’s basically the way the man runs his life, and has done since his formative years growing up in the south of Africa.

CHAPTER ONE

FORMATIVE DAYS IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

Neall Ellis’s determination to hew his own path in life can be traced back to his youth and, more precisely, to his experiences as a schoolboy in Bulawayo and, later, in Plumtree, both in the south-west of what is now Zimbabwe. In colonial times it was known as Southern Rhodesia, or simply Rhodesia.

Born of good British stock in South Africa’s great mining and financial centre of Johannesburg on 24 November 1949, he didn’t live there long. Six weeks later his father moved the whole family to Rhodesia. At the time, Ellis Senior was general manager of Gallo Africa, a major music production and sales company, probably the biggest of its kind in Africa. Originally from Woolwich, near London, he had come out to South Africa with the Royal Navy during World War II. He had served on board the battleship HMS Royal Sovereign on Arctic convoy runs, shipping vital supplies to the Soviet port of Murmansk in Russia. His service with the RN also took him to South Africa where, in Simonstown—then a British naval base—Leslie Thomas Ellis met and married Ruby Sophia Hyams. ‘My mother’s side was very Afrikaans—they were Vissers—while my grandfather’s name was Hyams’, recalls Neall.

The move to Bulawayo brought many changes, including a number of different homes in the city. As Neall recalls: ‘My parents encouraged us to be pretty independent … we were strictly disciplined and my mother used to thrash us with a wooden coat hanger, but it would always break, so it wasn’t too bad!’

There were two large dams, not far from home, where the kids would fish: ‘Mom was petrified whenever we went near either of them, having already lost one son to drowning. However, we were taught to swim at a very young age—something like three or four.’

In one of the family homes, at Hillside, on the side of a kopje at the back of the house, the youngsters played their games in the nooks and crannies of the rocks and they would sometimes encounter cobras or other bush creatures that had ventured in from the wild.

We never thought too much about it—the snakes would give us a wide berth if they sensed our approach and we would duck away if we saw them—got spat at by a Cape cobra a few times, though.

At the time, Dad was very friendly with a man named Alan Boyle, an Australian, and both men were what you’d call ‘party animals’. They would go up north into Africa, driving or chartering a light aircraft, the idea being to make recordings of traditional African music which Dad loved. It was all the kind of antiquated reel-to-reel stuff that you never see today, bulky, testy old machines.

Neall believes that his father’s interest in this aspect of ‘Black Culture’ was the start of old man’s Eric Gallo’s specialisation in traditional African music, for which the company later became known. More important to the Ellis children at the time, their father would return from his trips with lovely ebony masks and other African carvings, curios and a huge variety of native trivia on which tourists today spend good money. Neall recalls: ‘One morning I went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. There was a candy box and inside, one great big lump of elephant shit!’

Growing up, young Neall remembers lots of weekends when the family and their friends went up into the Matopos Hills on picnics. Rhodes lies there, watching over the country once named for him, under a brass plate set into granite over his grave on the summit of one of the gomos.¹

Meanwhile, the kids would play games, such as kennietjie. This game would start with a groove being dug in the ground. Then one of the youngsters would take a twig and lay it across the groove, before flicking it with a stick and someone else had to catch it. These were the kind of pastimes that children of the original Pioneer Column must have played of an evening after they had unhaltered—or as we liked to say, outspanned— their oxen following a long day’s trek. Neall recounts:

I was fascinated by the historical impact of the area, especially what that tiny band of settlers who had followed in the wake of Cecil John Rhodes’ dream had achieved. There were lots of stories of these rugged, tough pioneers, almost all of them frontiersman like Alan Wilson and his Shangani Patrol … and their bloody and terrible end under the spears of Lobengula’s Ndebele warriors. There was a great lore, a fine historical tradition in all those tales that were recounted around the fire in the evenings, and I was fascinated. It was the same when my grandmother introduced me to the history of the Zulu people and their tribal cousins, the Ndebele, who moved northwards into Rhodesia long before the white man got there.

Early Rhodesian Department of Information photo of troops on deployment in the bush. Photo: Original Rhodesian government recruiting photo

It was possibly these interests that helped give Neall the ease with which he later crossed racial and social barriers, some real, some imagined, but strong, for all that. Race, then, was a feature of life in South Africa in the days of apartheid, and, while far less rigid and formalized in the Rhodesia of his youth, he recalls today that you really couldn’t miss the innuendos that involved ‘them and us’.

Among some of the first of the historic tales that young Neall can recall hearing was one told to him in the late 1950s about what was to become known as the ‘First Chimurenga War’, or the first liberation struggle of Rhodesia’s black population. As with similar rebellions against white settler communities in German-ruled Tanganyika and what later became known as South-West Africa before the start of the First World War, Rhodesia’s Chimurenga was an uprising against the white settlers of Rhodes’ British South Africa Company.

Most of it, as I recall, was passed on to us young people from the victors’ (white) side … but then that is how history usually emerges, kind of like ‘to the victor the spoils’. They used to have military tattoos at the Bulawayo Showground, with re-enactments of the mounted patrols on their horses, all very well done and actually quite impressive. Then, the African Impis—the black warriors in their proud headdresses, hardened cow-hide shields and assegais—would surround them, and there would be lots of firing and yelling ‘and the whiteys would see their gats. [An Afrikaans expression, impolitely translated as ‘seeing their arses’.]

Those family picnics in the magnificent Matopo Hills also gave Neall what he calls ‘the start of my love for the bush’.

We looked for what we called the ‘Resurrection Plant’. You found it in Rhodesia on the hills; it never totally dies. It’s a growth that survives on top of a rock in the dry winter months, just a blackened twig, but you place that ‘dead’ twig in a glass of water, and in just a couple of days, its leaves begin to sprout … that’s the Resurrection Plant.

Neall had one older brother, Peter, whom he never knew: Peter had drowned ‘just before I was born—some six months before’. His younger brother Ian today lives in Johannesburg, while his sister Janine (they were born 18 months apart) is married and is in Australia. The family remains in contact and despite distance—he is in Afghanistan most of the time these days—they stay close.

When he was old enough, Neall was sent to Hillside Junior School, which soon enough taught him about the unpleasant consequences of human relationships going awry.

There was a gang of us boys; we used to cycle home together. But it was pretty brutal. If one member of the gang fell out, there would be a fight, either with the leader of the mob, or with someone whom he nominated, in a little ‘arena’ among the rocks. One might have had absolutely no quarrel with that individual, but one still had to tough it out and it could sometimes be quite vicious.

‘From that came my hatred of bullying’, he says thoughtfully. Is it too much of a psychological leap to wonder whether this realization would, in future decades, lead Neall Ellis to feel no qualms about meting out swift and terminal justice to those, such as Foday Sankoh’s brutal killers in Sierra Leone, whose behaviour had taken them beyond the bounds of normal humanity?

In other ways, growing up in Rhodesia was a marvellous, privileged existence, with a vast hinterland waiting to be discovered and unending promises for the future. There was barely a family who didn’t have at least one servant—some of Neall’s wealthy friends had four, or even six, one for the garden, perhaps two for the kitchen, a domestic worker for bedrooms and cleaning and perhaps a driver who would take the children to school each morning and fetch them later in the day. It was an idyllic life.

That their country was landlocked didn’t keep them from the sea either. Families would sometimes drive, or take the then extremely efficient rail link to South Africa’s Indian Ocean coastline and its Natal beaches. So many families would gravitate to Cape Town during the Southern hemisphere summer holidays that there was even a resort near Simonstown which was for many years called Rhodesia by the Sea.

For the young Neall, however, holidays generally meant a much shorter journey. His maternal grandmother, Petronella, had divorced Neall’s Hyams grandfather and married Dougal Nelson, a Scot. They lived in Tzaneen, in the Northern Transvaal (now the Limpopo Province of South Africa), and farmed citrus fruits and bananas. They also made a home from home for their visiting grandchildren, a welcome that Neall still recalls with delight. The same applied when the Nelsons sold the farm and moved to Mooketsi, after grandmother Petronella started having health problems from smoking too many of the then-popular Springbok cigarettes.

Life was not always tranquil, however. One day in Tzaneen, he remembers, they were playing and his sister had the role of ‘madam’ and he was the ‘garden boy’.

I swung the hoe and although it was unintentional, it was a vicious blow and I cut open her head. My granny could be rather a fierce woman and I recall running away and hiding in the bush … but grandmother represented overwhelming odds and it was futile to resist and she meted out swift justice, much more efficiently than my mother… .

He has many happy memories of his time there as well:

We would always spend our school holidays there. On the farm we drank fresh milk but not much else but good food and healthy living: there was no electricity, no television, only Springbok Radio to listen to.

He well remembers the British series ‘Men from the Ministry’.

Meantime, other interests also took his fancy. ‘Grandmother possessed a fine collection of classical music—all old 78 vinyl records—which we played on a battery-operated gramophone’. Neall’s eclectic tastes in music remains a feature of his life.

‘Those were great times. We used to go into the bush and collect kapok, a form of vegetable down, from the seedpods of the kapok trees to fill our pillows.’ He also learned to collect mushrooms—while discarding unsuitable varieties—and today, in his sixties, he can still be seen running around when circumstances allow and inquiring from local residents about spots where edible mushrooms might be found.

‘Yes, I am rather interested in mushrooms. If I go into the Knysna Forest, I’ll pick them to eat, or to dry for cooking later.’

From Mooketsi, young Neall could look out of the kitchen window towards the Modjadji Hills and marvel at the lightning strikes flickering around the surrounding peaks. They were caused by the incredible electrical storms, which are always a summer feature of the region. ‘Perhaps that’s why I don’t mind loud bangs’, Neall comments thoughtfully.

Neall’s uncle regularly hunted for guinea fowl and bush pig, all of which supplemented the family’s regular diet.

‘He took me out into the bush with him. Grandmother had an old Richards and Harrington single-barrel shotgun with a hammer action that could nip you sharply if you weren’t too careful. There was also a .22 Savage rifle: I’ve still got them both,’ says Neall, who from the age of ten was allowed by his grandmother to go out alone and hunt.

Wildlife in the area was not always for hunting and eating. ‘I’ll never forget the snakes, particularly at Mooketsi … cobras—lots of them and puff adders. There were also twig snakes and boomslangs …’ he recalls thoughtfully. ‘A black fellow who I got to know quite well taught me about snakes, and also my grandmother, who had a reference library of her own with some quite old books, and I learned a lot about these creatures from them as well.’

As he reminisces, life—and death—could be pretty rough at times, and in those days people simply had to learn from a young age how to accept responsibility and look after themselves … and, of course, others.

One time, one of the labourers’ wives got bitten by a snake—I was about 14 at the time—and grandmother gave me the snakebite serum and told me to go and find out if the woman had actually been bitten by a poisonous snake and, if so, give her the necessary injection. Not that I’d ever used a syringe before … I realise now that had I actually injected her, it would probably have been the worst thing to do. For a start, I had no idea what species of snake it was, or even if there had been a snake to start with. I’m sure she lived, even though I didn’t give her the serum, because nobody complained.

Snakes weren’t the only danger in this remarkable Garden of Eden south of the Limpopo. ‘Grandmother had her own flock of geese and they could be formidable. There was a big gander called Shake and he guarded his flock with a passion … he’d nip you on your backside if you were slow and it was amazing how painful the bite could be’, Neall recalls.

There was also a large reservoir that was used to store water for the farm, where the young Ellis siblings used to swim. ‘But it was full of algae … and water scorpions and the little buggers used to bite you.’

Likewise, he says, there were some real scorpions—lots of them—and they were notorious for their ability to inflict one of the most painful of wounds. ‘I got stung by a scorpion on my foot, when I was barefoot at night; I heard a dog cry out—he must have been stung first—the next moment it got me. From then on I’ve hated scorpions.’

Back in Rhodesia, in 1962, Neall was sent to Plumtree High School, on the border with Botswana, which in its day was regarded as one of the best educational institutions of its kind in the region. ‘For me,’ recalls Neall, ‘it proved to be more of a school for sadists.’

Pupils were forced to undergo two-year periods of what they termed ‘initiation’. We call it hazing today and most of it is totally irrelevant to its supposed purposes of teaching new entrants how to live in harmony among themselves and with their supposedly more responsible elders. In his first pupils’ residence as a boarder—Hammond House, he recalls:

We weren’t allowed to have any hot water for those first two years … even though it got so cold during winter months that the bird bath outside froze solid and the outside water pipes would ice up. The seniors were allowed to beat us as well … or at least, it was kind of accepted that they had the freedom to do that.

In his view, it was no better that what was referred to as the ‘fagging system’ which had become institutionalised in many English Public Schools. In truth, he felt it could be both demeaning and painful at times …

Those bastards were absolutely dominant, a kind of law unto themselves. Although the masters were aware of what was going on, they did nothing because it had always been part of the traditional system. When I tried to protect some of the others, particularly a few of the younger boys, I reckon that was possibly the worst thing I could have done, because then the entire cabal descended on me.

On one occasion, when the pressure became too severe, he even ran away from school. ‘It just became too much for me to handle. Remember, I was still basically an immature youngster and, to this day, I react strongly to anybody who is a bully. Perhaps that is why I am invariably with the underdog, and have been so throughout my life.’

Nellis’ philosophy is basic. People who browbeat or intimidate those who are weaker than themselves, he maintains, are at the bottom of his chain of ethics and deserve harsh retaliation. ‘The unfortunate thing is that I tend to get emotionally involved in such fights, which has often placed me in a bad situation.’

Academically at Plumtree—which was what his schooling there was all about—Neall Ellis was regarded as being fairly ‘average’, and he admits that only some of the sports caught his fancy. ‘I tried cricket and rugby … and even some hockey, but none of that was for me. However I did well in swimming and water polo.’ Perhaps his sessions in his grandmother’s farm reservoir did end up paying a few dividends, because Neall ended up belonging to the school swimming team and getting his colours for water polo.

With his school days almost at an end, there were some serious decisions for the youthful Neall Ellis to make. The short-lived Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland had collapsed in disarray, with majority rule being quickly implemented in Northern Rhodesia (which was to become Zambia) while Nyasaland transmuted into Malawi. Everybody could see that Southern Rhodesia wouldn’t be far behind. However, with its far larger white ‘settler’ population (the majority of white residents were born there, rather than having emigrated from abroad), this was not a simple matter, as Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence in November 1964 was to show.

Typical Rhodesian security force patrol in contested area: normally a ‘Stick’ was composed of four soldiers or police reservists on active duty. Author's photo

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,