Nothing that came later in any way excuses Smith's racist, apartheid-style government.
The main reason for apartheid was communism okay racism was in there as well. Blacks were under the wings of the Russian and were happy with the idea of communism while the whites were most certainly not.
Of course as is often pointed out black rule was a complete disaster and not lacking in racism.
Once communism failed so did the whole point of (or should I say excuse) for apartheid.
I see an ex 3 para every Saturday in a pub we don't reminisce. i asked a few questions to see if he was a Walt but clearly not. He never bothered to ask me as my questions clearly said I wasn't. It turns out we were both in JPC (Junior Parchute company). An obvious question was about a tour of Sudan, we were put on a sand Bank on the Nile for are R and R And given cans of red hot Mcewens while support company just went up and down the nile in a river boot. I am not sure what A company did wrong! Maybe there wasn't enough room on the river boat for everyone. As you can guess a certain amount of people had to stay sober with loaded weapons for the crocodiles which could clearly be seen (eyes only) circling the island.
One moron refused to jump with the Sudanese paras because they were dangerous! He was standing in front of me watching a jump of mixed sticks. Six 3 para six Sudanese etc etc. They were lifting there feet about 200 foot up a clear statement that that was there first jump. The moron said I will see my company commander I am sure he will understand (something like that) . Everyone looked at each other and assumed he wasn't serious. Refusal to jump in the door gets you six months and out. The army sees no difference in his Refusal to jump the day before getting on the aircraft. He got six months and out. He went to Belfast and joined the IRA but they never trusted him, so they didn't use him other than as a propaganda coup.
I only did two tours of NI, one with battalion (Crossmaglen) and a second, a two year tour as an arms explosives search dog handler again in South Armagh. An annoying place to be with regular "get on the helicopter that left 10 minutes ago" it was nice to get your personal helicopter dropping you off in the middle of nowhere. Its pity I was generally sitting in the door with my feet on the skids with a dog who thought that the change in sound of the helicopter (tail down) meant it was time to get out. Didn't seem to matter that we were couple of hundred feet in the air? Although when we got closer to the ground about 50 foot he would realise and step back!
I always considered the risk of South armagh exaggerated that's obviously in comparison to the op and the bloke I see in the pub on Saturday. He did the Falklands Mount Longdon nowt further to say. Other than I got married and left just before.
