THE  CHRONICLE,  WEDNESDAY,  SEPTEMBER  29,  1965
PORTUGAL FIGHTS BITTER
WAR AGAINST
FRELIMO
From Lord Kilbracken
BY military aeroplane, army lorry and gunboat I
have traversed in 10 hard days the whole active
battle zone along Lake Malawi, where Portuguese
troops are locked in combat with Frelimo (nationalist)
guerillas.
The Frelimo have infiltrated in
strength from Tanzania, next
door, where they are equipped
2tfid trained.
The scale of fighting in this
bluer, unsung war has steadily
increased since the first minor
incidents just a year ago -—
especially in recent weeks when
there has been a strong Frelimo
build-up.
Today the battle zone
stretches some 20 to 40 miles inland along almost all Mozambique's lake shore from the Tan-
zanian   to   the   Malawi   border.
In 3,000 terrorised square
miles the Portuguese, both civil
and military, are now confined
to five small isolated garrisons:
Metangula, Maniamba, Cobue,
OUvenca and Nova Coimbra.
Surrounded
Not one white settler dares
stay in-all the area. Their once-
neat holdings are today silent
and abandoned. And most of
the Africans—they belong to the
Nyanja tribe—have fled to the
mountains and islands or to
Tanzania or Malawi.
In SO miles of lake shore from
Metangula to the Tanzanian
border only two African villages
are still inhabited.
Of • the five garrisons, I contrived to visit "all but Olivenca
~*~a surrounded outpost supplied
by airdrops and held by a mere
40 men.
I also made it to the Anglican
mission at Messumba, where two
British clergy—Archdeacon John
Paul and the Rev. Charles
Wright—and a British nursing
sister, Miss Irene Wheeler, t&m
ah anxious African community
■ of more than 1,000.
The Frelimo, a Viet Cong in
miniature, are a tough and
elusive enemy. They generally
operate in very gmall units,
often of only half a dozen men,.
I could obtain no estimate of
their total strength in Mozambique.
They are at home in the
jungle and bush, where they live
off the country, striking silently
by night, withdrawing swiftly
into tiie dense cover if the
Portuguese reply in strength.
I was told (*^cialiy) that they
enter rwo^uibique from Tanzania where thev have a forward
supply base at Songea, and that
they infiltrate mostly through
the border village of Tchiundi,
thence by dug-out canoe along
the lake or overland through the
jungle.
I was told that their instructors in Tanzania are Communist-trained.
I saw much captured equipment — mortars, grenades,
machine-guns, high explosives
and mines — certainly identified
as Chinese- and Russian-made,
which tended to confirm this.
Land mines
The so-called "president" of
Frelimo, Dr. Eduardo Mondlane*
runs the show from Car es
Salaam. He is a graduate of
Syracuse University, New York,
and has a white American wife.
Throughout the battle zone ail
main roads have been mined by
the Frelimo and are subject to
ambush.
And they have recently surged
south to cut the vital supply
routes to Meponda and Nova
Freixo from Vila Cabrei.
It is now possible to reach
Vila Cabrei by road only by the
circuitous route via Marmps.
AH surface, supplies from Nam-
pula and the sea must make this
detour.
I saw several Frelimo mines
which  had  been  dug  up  and
made safe. In particular I
remember—and am unlikely to
forget—the one found buried in
the tiny airstrip at Maniamba
at the precise spot where I
landed an hour later.
Like others I saw, it was
Russian and made of plastic.
This virtual absence of metal
components, and the unlucky
fact for the Portugese that much
of the Nyanja country has traces
of natural ferrous deposits,
would make electronic detection
impossible. Anyway, the army
has no detectors.
Visually
From time to time the
Portugese manage to force
through a military supply convoy, but these must proceed at
walking speed to allow visual
inspection of the road.
I asked at Maniamba how they
located mines. The one just
found, which had probably been
laid the previous night, had been
located visually owing to the
freshly-turned red earth, a
young soldier told me.
Otherwise, he added easily, It
was not too difficult.
They simply drove captured
Frelimo — or, as he put it,
"the blacks" — along roads
believed to have been mined.
And he mimicked the 'knees
up' stamping march they were
made to adopt — but this cannot be a general practice,* nor
by any means always successful
Stepped on one
I saw a dozen knocked^out
Jt®p$ and lorries at Vila Cabrei*
the advance GHQ on the
operational perimeter, and a
total of as many again at
Metangula and Cobue, which I
visiteo by gunboat.
A soldier returning from
patrol stepped on a buried mine
during my scary day in Cobue.
He was horribly dismembered
and died instantly. We brought
back his corpse m the gunboat
for burial at Metangula.
Four others were injured or
suffered shock in the explosion
and returned with us on
stretchers to hospital.
At least 30.000 Portuguese
troops, including Africans, are
believed to be in Mozambique
—on grounds of security 1 was
refused an official figure.
About 1,200 are in action in
the Nyanja country, and perhaps
as many again in the north-east I
where " the   Frelimo   are  also |
active in the Mueda area.
There are many African I
soldiers in the Portuguese
army but, whatever the reason
may have been, I never saw
one in the operational zone,
though I d'ni see half a dozen
African sailors (mostly cooks or |
stewards) at Metangula.
Five planes
Throughout the troubled north |
the Portuguese are now desperately short of equipment as|
well as men.
They have no tanks in thel
Nyanja country  and only five
aircraft, based on Vila Cabrei
Four of these are single-e.ngined|
Harvards.
The Harvard was in RAF ser-l
vice a quarter of a century ago
but only as a trainer even shen
It carries four light machine-
guns and a maximum bomb load
of about 2,00Mb.
It can also carry rockets.
The filth aircraft at Vilal
Cabrei is a Dornier spotter aeroplane of doubtful vintage, also
singie-engined, '