Nick Tselentis ([email protected]) sent in these pictures and says: Firstly please allow me to congratulate you on a really fantastic site and an excellent job, please keep up the good work. Here are some pics from the war days in Rhodie. Most of the photos, except where noted, were taken by me when I was in the Rhodesian Air Force and the honour to be on operations with the Security Forces as a member of 7 Squadron [ Flight Engineer-Gunner].   A brief history of the origin of each photo is as follows:  

Photo taken on a refuel stop during Fire-Force duties in the Mt Darwin - Mtoko area - troopies are from Support Commando 1 RLI. An interesting story comes to mind about the second from the left RLI member in the photo, the Stick Leader Sgt. Jock McKelvie. He was serving in the Royal Marines on board the HMS Fearless when Ian Smith had "words" with Harold Wilson, then PM of England. Jock met Ian Smith and was so impressed by him that he left the British armed forces to go out to Rhodesia and sign up with the RLI !!  

This one was taken in the Chiredzi / Buffalo Range Areas, Fire Force Duties with 1 Cdo RLI  - the green fields below are all sugar cane under cultivation. 

Taken whilst en route to Mtoko Forward Airfield [FAF]. - One can clearly see here the low altitude the squadron used to operate at [tree-top] in order to avoid ground tracking /  SAM's. Electrical wires were a real hazard flying at that altitude .

Scanned from a page I kept from a magazine advertising the Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation. As one can see the troopies listening to Forces Request and the voice of Security Forces Sweetheart, Sally Donaldson, [her portrait superimposed on the picture], reading out loved ones' requests to the lads in the bush.  

Picture of the Alouette awaiting for the sirens to go off to scramble the Fire Force - Visible are the twin .303 calibre Brownings that were retrofitted to the helicopter in place of the FN MAG which really was a ground use weapon - the rate of fire of EACH Browning being 1200 rounds per minute as opposed to the MAG which was about 600-800 RPM. The Brownings were removed from the Provost trainers when the aircraft was removed from service.  

These next two were taken by Air Force photographer during new Pilot and Engineers Flight training [OCR] involving hoisting exercises and landing on top of rocks - photos taken in the Prince Edward Dam and Seki reserve areas.

When Rhodesia first declared UDI in 1965, I was about 12 years old and wrote a letter to Ian Smith asking for a signed or autographed photo of himself - the PM's office courteously replied to me stating that the PM thanked me for my wishes and sent the attached photo to me with the PM's signature

We all remember the currency we had there.  

Once again keep up the excellent effort you are making, as sites like yours are what is necessary to open the world's eyes to what a fantastic country with a high standard of living Rhodesia was, with the rest of the world's jealous efforts to screw the works up, mainly because they could not achieve or live the standards we Rhodesians had there.