Lt-Colonel Ron Reid-Daly

Lieutenant-Colonel Ron Reid-Daly, who has died aged 81, was the colourful and outspoken founder and commander of the Selous Scouts regiment, whose unorthodox tactics during Rhodesia's bush war against nationalist insurgents were as effective as they were controversial.



As it was a secret unit answerable only to the commander of the security forces, the Selous Scouts earned a fearsome reputation for "dirty tricks" in its exploits against guerrillas, a reputation that Reid-Daly, a long-serving professional soldier, sought – unsuccessfully – to counter long after the war.



In fact it was a small highly-trained body of men (black and white) which had undergone the most stringent selection course. It operated in groups of two or three men who posed as guerrillas, infiltrating insurgent groups and calling in air strikes to destroy them, often in neighbouring countries where the insurgents were preparing to cross into Rhodesia.




It was, as Reid-Daly put it, "a good way of terrorising the terrorists" and it worked well, with the "Selousies" chalking up an impressive "kill rate". With the collapse of the Portuguese empire, Rhodesia's long border with Mozambique was exposed and the Selous Scouts were obliged to expand to include a territorial unit.

The resulting drop in standards and discipline gave some senior officers in the Rhodesian army, always jealous of Reid-Daly's independence, ammunition to discredit him and his unit. Scouts were accused of poaching ivory in the Zambezi Valley, and when Reid-Daly discovered his office had been bugged he confronted Lt-Gen John Hickman, then commander of the Rhodesian army.

The exchange in an officers' mess led to a court martial of Reid-Daly on a charge of insubordination. There was obvious sympathy for the Selous Scouts' commander during the hearing. He was convicted, but given the lightest possible sentence of a reprimand. Incensed by the blot on his army record, Reid-Daly fought the sentence in the civil courts. When that failed he resigned his commission and left the country.

Ronald Francis Reid-Daly was born in Salisbury, then capital of the British colony of Southern Rhodesia, on September 22 1928. At school he excelled, in his own words, "at nothing that was not on the rugby field". His early ambition to become a farmer gave way to his sense of adventure and he signed up for service in the Rhodesian contingent of the Far East Volunteer Unit.

SAS SERVICE
This unit was destined for service in Korea but was diverted to Malaya to fight the Chinese communist insurgents. The Rhodesian contingent, led by a young Peter Walls, later to become commander-in-chief of the Rhodesian security forces, became "C" Squadron of the British Special Air Service regiment, highly skilled in counter-insurgency warfare.

After three years of active service in the Malayan jungles, Reid-Daly returned to Rhodesia "and a boring civilian life". Soldiering was now in his blood, and he joined the Southern Rhodesian Staff Corps, becoming an instructor at the School of Infantry. In 1961 he became the founder Regimental Sergeant Major of the newly formed Rhodesian Light Infantry.

RHODESIAN LIGHT INFANTRY
He was commissioned in the RLI in 1964 and was appointed MBE after again seeing active service against the early insurgency by nationalist guerrillas crossing from Zambia. In 1975 Reid-Daly was on leave pending retirement. He was under pressure from his wife to "settle down and get a proper job" when he was summoned to see the army commander, Peter Walls, his old friend and colleague from the Malayan expedition.

FOUNDING THE SELOUS SCOUTS
Walls persuaded him to stay in the army to form and take charge of a new "combat and tracker" unit. The new formation would in reality be to recruit and train "pseudo terrorists" – preferably captured guerrillas who had been "turned" – to infiltrate their former comrades in the bush. The unit, said Walls, would be named the Selous Scouts after the legendary African hunter and tracker Frederick Courteney Selous.



Both men had become familiar with the technique of "pseudo gangs" during the Malayan campaign. Reid-Daly was enthused by the idea. Rejoining with the rank of colonel, he set about recruiting "the best of the best", as he put it. Men who had successfully undergone the stringent training programmes for the Rhodesian SAS and the RLI were given even more rigorous tests.
The Selous Scouts rapidly acquired the reputation of an elite unit, besieged by would-be recruits. "There was little we could do but try and turn the mythology to our advantage," Reid-Daly was to write later. "But many of the stories spun about us and what we were supposed to be up to made my hair stand on end."

Reid-Daly himself was, in fact, a ruddy-faced, genial man, with a ready sense of humour. His nickname among the hardened men he led was "Uncle Ron", and they were as ferociously loyal to him as he was to them.
Following his court martial he settled in South Africa, where he found, to his surprise, that the reputation of the Selous Scouts had spread far and wide. "To my horror, I found myself approached by all manner of dubious people offering me weird and wonderful assignments as a contract killer, or bounty hunter. They were always amazed when I told them I was a simple soldier and not the man they were looking for."
In the early 1980s he did accept what he thought was solely a military appointment in the Transkei, the first of the South African "homelands" to be granted "full independence" by the then South African government. He was put in charge of the Transkei army and was joined by other former Selous Scouts to give basic military training.
In fact, the state's rulers, Kaiser Matanzima and his brother George, saw the presence of the Selous Scouts as a deterrent to the numerous others plotting to dethrone them. In 1987 the Matanzima brothers were overthrown in a bloodless coup by Major-General Bantu Holomisa, ironically one of the officers trained by the Selous Scouts. Reid-Daly was forced to quit the Transkei.


He decided it was finally time to hang up his boots. He retired to Simon's Town, near Cape Town, to indulge in his hobbies of reading military history and watching rugby. He died in Cape Town on August 9. His wife, Jean, predeceased him, and he is survived by a son and a daughter.
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I have an autographed copy of Pamwe Chete, the history written by Colonel Reid Daly. "Uncle Ron", as he was known to his troops, will find his place in Valhalla.

A truly impressive and interrsting figure from recent history.

The Selous Scouts were the unit that got me interested in Modern Military History via a magazine that ran in the late 70s, Very Early 80s........reputedly a military genius and super nice guy !

V. Jealous of your autographed copy of the book.

Interestingly, I had no idead where he lived, but I was in Simonstown last year........would have made an attempt to track him down !!!


Ah well. Rest in piece.

Very interesting…what a man Col. Reid-Daly was…

Rest In Peace.

One of the Scouts' greatest operations was the Nyadzonya Raid, which obliterated a terrorist training/holding camp in neighboring Mozambique. To put it into current context, imagine if a group of 70 allied SF troops went into Pakistan in a mobile column, disguised as local militia, and located a Taliban/Al Quaeda training camp, just as they were holding morning parade, then opened fire killing over 1,000 terrorists, then safely returning to home base, with no friendly loss of life. Imagine how the rest of our troops, and the majority of the population would view that terrific blow against the enemy.
That is essentially what the Selous Scouts did, and the morale boost to the tiny Rhodesian population was immense.

I think much of the accomplishments of the Selous Scouts were due to the following factors.

> They were not, or did not appear to be, encumbered in a highly (or overly) technical and politicized military. To my limited knowledge, the Scouts were hardcore light infantry.

> Their political bosses, who were not tree-hugging panty wearing PC UN bleeding-heart liberal sellouts, arseholes were behind them and, in effect, gave them a hunting license.

> The men were not simply fighting for their country; they were fighting for their and their family’s survival therefore off came the gloves.

The Selous Scouts remind me very much of Roger’s Rangers in the French and Indian wars, so did their situation.
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Note: Den, I looked up Pamwe Chete by Colonel Reid Daly and I could replace BOTH lungs for that price...do you recommend another book of the RLI and the SS?

Quote :

To my limited knowledge, the Scouts were hardcore light infantry.

The Scouts had several roles, which changed over the years, mainly due to the advantage of having black troops trained to a very high standard.
At first the Scouts were set up to bring the Pseudo-gang concept into operation. Previously, some experiments had been run, using a mixture of Rhodesian SAS with black police officers. This was formalized in a specific regiment.
Regular black soldiers [mainly from RAR] together with turned terrorists would pose as terrorists and establish contact with actual terr gangs within Rhodesia. The white soldiers, although heavily disguised would keep out of site, and overwatch from OPs until the critical moment. Later it was found more effective to use the OPs to vector in Fire Force strikes. The Fire Force was a concept where groups of soldiers [initially SAS but later primarily RLI] were deployed to a number of forward bases, which had rudimentary accomodation, an airstrip, and heli-pad. At the report of a terrorist presence they would emplane, with the Dakota aircraft taking the paras to form a forward stopl line, while the heliborne troops formed the remaining sides of the capture box. Support was provided by cannon-equipped "K-car" helicopter gunships. At the height of the Bush War a Fire Force might crash out and have three contacts in one day.
To provide intelligence on the terrorist bases in neighboring countries the Scouts set up a Reccee Troop. Using both static-line and freefall parachute insertions, they operated mainly in two-man teams deep inside enemy territory.
The success of the Reccee Troop provided hot intelligence, and to action it the Scouts came up with the mobile column. Heavily armoured vehicles [some equipped with 20mm cannon taken from obsolete aircraft] and disguised to resemble local troops, the column would penetrate deep into neighbouring countries to kill or capture terrorists, sabotage key targets and generally put the terrorists on the defensive.
As the war progressed the Scouts also ran agents operating in a clandestine role in foreign countries.

Maybe not the relevant place but what was the relationship like between the Scouts and C Sqd. ?

Si
There was the expected rivalry between the established SF unit and the new. The Scouts were seen as somewhat glamouous, and drew many members from RLI and C-sqdn. At one point the SAS were dangerously low in manpower, and their CO, Brian Robinson asked Ron Reid Daly to stop recruiting SAS personnel. Since R-D was a founder member of C-sqdn he agreed, and the SAS eventually regained decent numbers.
Both units dis awesome operational work.

I have the book Bush War in Rhodesia which I thought was great, Dennis Id be interested in hearing your thoughts on it. Dennis can you recommend others besides Pawme Chete (wife would kill me for spending that much on a book).

A really good one is Fire Force by Chris Cocks. An inside view of what it was like operating on RLI Fire Force call-outs at the height of the Bush War.
Slightly cheaper than Pamwe Chete is the original text, written by Ron Reid-Daly with Peter Stiff.Selous Scouts: Top Secret War is still worth reading. In fact, Peter Stiff won an injunction against Pamwe Chete and the book was withdrawn; one reason why it is now a rarity, and expensive.
For a history of the Rhodesian SAS read The Elite.

The most comprehensive history of the Rhodesian Special Forces comes from Jonothan Pttaway and Craig Fourie. They have already published SAS Rhodesia, and a similar huge volume on the Selous Scouts is coming this year. Contact them here

Thanks for the book and other interesting info.

Africa’s military history has fascinated me ever since I read or heard about the Battle of Rorke's Drift, the Boer Commandos, the Mau Mau Uprising, the likes of Thomas Michael “Mad Mike” Hoare whacking-n-stacking Laurent Kabila’s Simbas”, and other such topics so I find this thread exceptionally interesting…thanks fellows.

A contact sent me a picture of the funeral of the Colonel.....



There were several former Selous Scouts from the UK in attendance showing their last respects.

The skill sets of some of the Selous Scouts were just awesome, I based a lot of my patrolling skills on lessons and tips learned from my uncle’s mates, who were scouts and it is one of the reasons I was voted cadet of the year by my peers in the early eighties.

I wish I could be as well thought of and regarded as Mr Reid - Daly when I die. He was a true soldier’s soldier and leader of men.

I had a former officer from Scouts on a BG course in Cape Province. He was one of the most modest guys I've ever met. One of the interesting things he told me was that he was on a camp attack into Mozambique using a flying column of disguised vehicles...



.... inside Mozambique they linked up with a two-man callsign who had inserted by freefall parachute to do the pre-attack recee. Mike told me that the guys on the heavily armed column were terrified by the thought of creeping around enemy territory with only one partner, yet when they offered to take the recee callsign back in their vehicles the leader said "no way, you attract too much attention, we prefer to walk"