Finished "Top Secret War" today, its the official history of Rhodesia's Selous Scouts as written by their commander. I'll be doing an ongoing thread on my thoughts about the book here, a sort of informal collection of history/anecdotes/quotes from the text that I found intriguing

The Selous scouts were a Rhodesian clandestine special forces regiment, whose specialty was identifying, infiltrating, and eradicating terrorist units within their country, and within neighboring nations.

The regiment numbered roughly 700-1000 men, and their selection process was infamously grueling- 80% of recruits dropped out in the first 2 days. It tested one's capacity to handle intense physical and military training in the wilderness of Africa... while essentially starving.

For the first 5 days of the selection course you were given no rations, on the 5th day the recruits (those who'd stayed!) were given a rotten baboon corpse to boil as their first meal. This taught the men an important lesson on what one can survive on while living in the bush.

Turns out that rotten meat can be eaten if thoroughly boiled, it just tastes nasty. But I suppose running on empty for 5 days might improve the flavor!

The Scouts were also pretty unique in that they were integrated, the unit was between 50-80% black depending on the year.

Its interesting to see how thoroughly reviled Rhodesia was as a "r@cist" nation, when their special forces operatives were not only integrated, but there was also a strong sense of brotherhood between black and white, the men even sang the their regimental songs in Shona.

This nuance is more easily found in a book written during the era (this book came out in 1982, 2 years after the scouts were disbanded), as opposed to afterwards when a narrative is fully formed. Its particularly intriguing to a man raised on UN approved BS for most of his life.

Lt Colonel Ron Reid Daly's insights regarding pre-"Decolonization" Africa are fascinating, in 1954 he remarks "Africa, as a whole, was a peaceful continent... a haven of tranquility... I could not envisage any decent wars breaking out there at all." A stark contrast w/ today!