DELTA SCOUT: Ground Coverage Operator - Anthony Trethowan

Published by 30 Degrees South 2008

Softcover in good condition - does show reading wear but still in decent nick!

As a young Patrol Officer, Tony Trethowan was to experience rural life in remote stations in the bush of Matabeleland. He embraced the experience and learned Sindebele within a few months. The book is richly interspersed with anecdotes of wild frontier life of rowdy prospectors, obstreperous farmers, maverick hunters and bizarre eccentrics. He deals with a wide array of crimes and incidents from murder, tribal suicide, sorcery, robbery and drunkenness to horrific vehicle accidents. But as the bush war intensifies, Tony finds himself more and more involved in paramilitary operations. Ground Coverage was a BSAP intelligence-gathering unit operating literally on the ground in the rural areas. Known by his enemy, Nkomo s ZIPRA guerrillas, as Baleka, or he who runs hither and thither because of his propensity for rapidly covering vast areas, alone in his beaten-up police Land Rover, the second part of the book deals with the author's conversion from civilian policeman to full-blooded counter-insurgency operator in an African guerrilla war. Told with a sensitivity and pathos that is rare in military memoirs, Delta Scout is a brutally honest, compelling account of innocence lost. About The Author: TONY TRETHOWAN was born in England in 1955. His parents immigrated to Southern Rhodesia in 1958, where he grew up. He served in the BSA Police from 1974 to 1981 but resigned shortly after Zimbabwean independence.

Please see pics as they form part of the description.