Lt Colonel Dudley Coventry

Lieutenant Colonel Dudley Coventry

Edgar Walter Dudley Coventry was commissioned in 1938 after Sandhurst and served tours of duty with the East Lancashire Regiment in Ireland, India’s North West Frontier and Afganistan before the outbreak of World War Two.
By 1942 his aptitude for unconventional tactics was apparent and he served first in 5 Commando and Parachute Troop and then in the Special Service Raiding Forces. In 1943 he was in a unit which was smuggled on to the French coast to pin down German troops while scientists took soil samples from the beaches in preparation for the D Day landings.
In the same year Coventry achieved notoriety through an incident in the occupied Channel Isles when a German sentry, captured by his unit, was shot dead, leading to charges from Berlin that British soldiers were executing prisoners.
After the D Day landings, Coventry by this time a captain with the Royal Marines 45 Commando, harried retreating German troops behind the lines from commandeered vehicles mounted with Vickers machine guns. David Young the author of Four Five, a history of 45 Commando recounts how Coventry bumped into a startled SS trainee on the Weser River in Germany and killed him with a single punch to the jaw.
Coventry ended the war with a lieutenant colonels field commission but afterwards reverted to being a captain. He rejoined the East Lancashire Regiment in India. His unit was dubbed the “ killers of Calcutta” after the shooting of civilians in a mob about to storm their position on a bridge in the city, but he was nevertheless on parade when Lord Mountbatten handed the instruments of Independence to Jawarla Nehru in 1947. He then served in Germany Cyprus and Palestine with the 1st Parachute Regiment. In 1948 on a training exercise in France he broke his back in a parachuting accident but made an excellent recovery.
During the anti communist campaign in Malaya in 1955 he was with the 22 SAS Regiment. His remit was to be dropped in the jungle with a small unit and slowly cross grid a large area in search of insurgents. He emerged at the end weighing 137 lbs.
To avoid a desk job he then joined the French Foreign Legion serving in Algeria in the bloody but vain effort to put down the independence movement.
By 1960 however he had rejoined the SAS and was serving in Central Africa. But a year later he had resigned again from the British Army and had joined the Rhodesian Light Infantry.
When Ian Smith , the Rhodesian Front leader made his Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, Coventry helped form a squadron of about 120 men which severely set back first attempts by black nationalist guerrillas to launch their armed struggle.



In 1970 when he was 55 he transferred from the Rhodesian SAS to the Central Intelligence Organisation as a civilian field officer. But in effect he was running “ S – Desk “ in the Central Intelligence Organisation, known as the “funnies department” a job demanding an even greater degree of involvement in the world of subterfuge.

Among the tasks he was involved in was the formation of Renamo the right wing guerrilla movement which fought the Frelimo government in Mozambique after the independence from Portugal. After running training courses on a farm in eastern Rhodesia, Coventry, by then in his sixties, escorted units on foot through the border minefields into Mozambique.
Following Zimbabwes independence in April 1980 Coventry was among hundreds of commandos assassins saboteurs and spies flown secretly too South Africa to avoid the feared reprisals from the new black government. He took a dislike to the South African military and within hours he was back in Salisbury ( now called Harare ). He rejoined the army as a major and in the same year helped establish the Parachute Group and three years later the Zimbabwean SAS where he was promoted to lieutenant colonel the highest substantive rank he reached in his career.
In 1987 Coventry armed only with a walking stick was directing the fire of his commandos in the assault against Casa Banana, Mozambique, the headquarters of his former student Afonso Dhlakama the head of Renamo. One of his last tasks, later that year was to attempt to assassinate an anti government Zimbabwean guerrilla chief in neighbouring Botswana but he aborted the mission when he found he was being tailed by a South African hit squad.
During his British military service Coventry stuck for years at the rank of major, apparently because of a court martial charge for punching a Colonel who pointed a pistol at him in Madagascar in 1942. The former SAS commander David Stirling had stopped the charge being pressed. The incident is believed to be the reason Coventry never received any British decorations for valour. He was however awarded two Orders of the Legion of Merit by the Smith government. The Rhodesian civil war probably gave him his most serious injuries, he was shot once in the scrotum in 1960 as he charged guerrillas concealed in the back of a truck near the village of Karoi in the north of the country and through the knee when he walked into a guerrilla ambush near Deka on the Zambesi river in 1975.
In military retirement, losing the sight in one eye and hard of hearing Dudley Coventry was adjusting with difficulty to civilian life as a director of a transport company. He was asleep in his Harare home when a drunken intruder crushed his skull with the butt of an 1973 Winchester rifle that Coventry had obtained on one of his long marches in Mozambique. He died having been in a coma ever since the attack.
He had no children by either of his two marriages, the first of which to Mickey, ended in amicable divorce and the second to Frances, in separation

One of our instructors in RSA, who served with the SAS in Rhodesia sent the above, and said “he was a hard man, who laid the foundation for our unit” Even after he’d retired he would still turn up when selection courses were being held, and take part in the arduous load-carrying runs.

Lt-Colonel Coventry's medals

When did he die, Den? Was it 1973 (as I thought I read in the article) or more recently?

He was murdered in 1993 Si.
The full story of the incredible career of Lt Colonel Coventry has yet to be written. He was one of those amazing characters who live life to the full, while at the same time being larger than life.

Gotcha. That short piece certainly shows he was a special breed.

Interesting, that the Rhodesians, regardless of people's politics, maintained the nobility of human spirit whilst producing men who really did fight against the odds........bereft of all support, and who fought down to the ammunition in their pockets against a larger force that was better supplied and resorted to terrorism.

No challenge was too big for those guys. Alot in common with the WW2 spirit of the allies.

By the way, Dudley Coventry was wounded at least twice more than mentioned in the obit above.
He was leading a sabotage mission, when he stooped to tie his bootlace the explosive device detonated killing all of the others in the patrol. DC awoke with his hair on fire. When located by an RLI patrol Coventry greeted the leader with "Hello Sergeant-major, how are you?" What a player!

What a fascinating character! What did he dislike so much about the South African Army that would lead him to go back and train and fight with his former enemies (in the new Zimbabwean Army) even targeting people he trained (Renamo)? That seems very odd. I wonder how he reconciled it in his mind?

Although DC went to RSA and advised the South African Army on setting up their Special Forces, and hosted their first group of their guys to go through SAS selection, to then be the nucleus of the Recee Commandos, he seemed to prefer to stay in ZIM. After Independence virtually the entire SAS moved to RSA. DC, who had been running "funnies" for the CIO was offered a job, flew down, but only stayed long enough to decide SADF wasn't for him.
Interestingly, the rest of the SAS, which had become 6 Recee Commando, didn't really fit into the SADF and the majority left after a year. A mate told me that they had been given a briefing in Afrikaans, even though the SAS were all English speakers. So perhaps DC saw the writing on the wall.
Regarding leading attacks on his former students, all I can surmise is that he was a fighting man, loyal to the army he had signed up with, and would fight anyone.

Dennis wrote:

Although DC went to RSA and advised the South African Army on setting up their Special Forces, and hosted their first group of their guys to go through SAS selection, to then be the nucleus of the Recee Commandos, he seemed to prefer to stay in ZIM. After Independence virtually the entire SAS moved to RSA. DC, who had been running "funnies" for the CIO was offered a job, flew down, but only stayed long enough to decide SADF wasn't for him.
Interestingly, the rest of the SAS, which had become 6 Recee Commando, didn't really fit into the SADF and the majority left after a year. A mate told me that they had been given a briefing in Afrikaans, even though the SAS were all English speakers. So perhaps DC saw the writing on the wall.
Regarding leading attacks on his former students, all I can surmise is that he was a fighting man, loyal to the army he had signed up with, and would fight anyone.

Ok that makes sense. Did most of the SAS troopers return to Zimbabwe or possibly to the UK?

Some stayed in RSA, some went to UK, Australia, NZ etc. Several pulled tours with a Middle East army.
The former CO, Garth Barrett went into the security business and is currently based in USA selling mine-protected vehicles for the Iraq/Afghan wars

Dennis wrote:

Some stayed in RSA, some went to UK, Australia, NZ etc. Several pulled tours with a Middle East army.
The former CO, Garth Barrett went into the security business and is currently based in USA selling mine-protected vehicles for the Iraq/Afghan wars

That middle eastern Army wouldn't be the kingdom of Oman would it? I know Leroy Thompson often worked with ex Rhodesian soldies on VIP protection jobs in the Med.

Quote :

I know Leroy Thompson often worked with ex Rhodesian soldies on VIP protection jobs in the Med.

I'd look at any claims of having actually worked on such jobs with scepticism

Dennis wrote:

Quote :

I know Leroy Thompson often worked with ex Rhodesian soldies on VIP protection jobs in the Med.

I'd look at any claims of having actually worked on such jobs with scepticism

Interesting, I didn't know that about him. I'll keep that in mind.