Peter Walls
George Peter Walls was a Rhodesian and later Zimbabwean soldier. He served as the Head of the Armed Forces of Rhodesia during the Rhodesian Bush War from 1977 until his exile from the country in 1980.
Early life
George Peter Walls was born in Salisbury, the capital of the British self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia, in 1927. His mother was Philomena and father was George Walls, a pilot, who had seen service with the Royal Air Force in the First World War. He received his initial education at Plumtree School in Southern Rhodesia.Early military career
In the closing months of the Second World War, he left Southern Rhodesia for England, where he received his initial military education at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He was commissioned on 16 March 1946 into the Black Watch regiment of the British Army.Return to Africa
Resigning his commission in the British Army, apparently dissatisfied with a proposal to transfer him to another regiment from the Black Watch, he returned home and re-enlisted with the Rhodesian Army, first as a non-commissioned officer in the Southern Rhodesian Staff Corps, and then as an officer in the Northern Rhodesia Regiment.Malayan Emergency
In 1951, Walls was promoted to the rank of Captain at the age of 24 years, and was appointed second-in-command of a reconnaissance unit that Rhodesia despatched to fight in the Malayan Emergency. On arrival in Malaya this unit was renamed "C" Squadron, Special Air Service, and Walls, proving his fighting and leadership qualities in the Malayan jungle, was promoted to the rank of Major, and appointed as the unit's Commanding Officer. On the conclusion of the victorious campaign after 2 years, Walls was appointed an M.B.E. in 1953.Southern Rhodesia
Returning home to Southern Rhodesia, Walls continued as a career soldier, holding a succession of General Staff posts in the Rhodesian Army, and attending the British Army's Staff College in England for training as a future senior officer. In November 1964, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and appointed to be the Commanding Officer of the 1st Battalion of the Rhodesian Light Infantry.With the advent of global decolonisation, Southern Rhodesia came under increasing political pressure from the Colonial Office and the United Nations to introduce universal suffrage and majority rule. In response, Ian Smith, then Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia, and his Cabinet issued a unilateral declaration of independence from the United Kingdom in November 1965, claiming that Southern Rhodesia was now independent as a dominion within the Commonwealth called Rhodesia. During this period, Brigadier Sam Putterill, Walls' commanding officer, reproached him for permitting his men to wear paper party hats at a regimental Christmas dinner printed with the words, "RLI for UDI." Rhodesia declared itself a republic in 1970.
General Staff Officer
After UDI, in the new Rhodesia, Walls was promoted to Brigadier, and appointed to the command of the Rhodesian Army's 2nd Brigade. In the late 1960s he was appointed to the post of the Rhodesian Army's Chief of Staff, with the rank of Major-General. In 1972 he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant General and appointed to the post of the Commander-in-Chief of the Rhodesian Army. In 1977 he was appointed as the head of Rhodesian Joint Operations Command, becoming de facto with this office the Head of the Rhodesian Armed Forces.Rhodesian Bush War
As international pressure upon the Rhodesian government to admit more indigenous Africans into the country's governance increased during the late 1960s, exerted by crippling economic sanctions, guerrilla activity intensified among the Shona and the Ndebele with support from the Chinese and Soviet governments, as a part of their Cold War strategy against Western presence in Africa. This support brought in modern weapons and training for the tribal forces, and the guerrilla activity escalated through the 1970s into full-scale guerrilla warfare in the Rhodesian countryside between the guerillas and the Rhodesian authorities – with Walls as the leader of the armed forces directing operations in the increasingly besieged nation. Many of these operations involved incursion raids into the neighbouring territories of Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Botswana and Angola, which were covertly harbouring the guerrillas of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army and the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army.In 1973, after a study as to the nature of the opponents that Rhodesia was facing, Walls summoned Ronald Reid-Daly and asked him to assemble a new army unit in response to the strategic nature of the escalating guerilla tactics of Rhodesia's adversaries. The new unit needed to combine cross-border insurgency warfare to take the fight to the enemies' bases of operation in territory under hostile governmental control, with domestic policing counter-insurgency operations of a more traditional colonial nature, both disciplines being drawn heavily from the experiences that both Walls and Reid-Daly had learned when they had fought alongside one another in the Malayan Emergency twenty years earlier. The new unit was the Selous Scouts.
In 1976, Walls oversaw the introduction of indigenous Africans into the Rhodesian Army as commissioned officers for the first time.
In 1977, Walls was appointed as Rhodesia's Commander, Combined Operations, commanding the nation's military and police forces, providing him with almost 50,000 men under his orders in increasingly severe fighting. On 3 April 1977, in a sign that time was running out for Rhodesia amid economic sanctions, Walls announced that the government would launch a campaign to win the "hearts and minds" of Rhodesia's indigenous African populations to undermine support for the guerrilla campaigns.
In May 1977, General Walls received intelligence reports of a ZANLA force massing in the town of Mapai, in the neighbouring country of Mozambique, and he launched an attack across the border to remove the threat. At this time Walls briefed the press that the Rhodesian forces were changing tactics from "contain and hold" to "search and destroy", and adopting a military policy of "hot pursuit when necessary." On 30 May 1977, a force of around five hundred Rhodesian troops crossed the border into Mozambique, engaging the enemy with support from the Rhodesian Air Force, and paratroopers conveyed in Second World War-era C-47 Dakotas. At the end of the operation, General Walls announced that it had killed 32 guerrillas for the loss of one Rhodesian pilot in action. Mozambique's government disputed the number of casualties, stating it had shot down four Rhodesian aircraft and taken several Rhodesian prisoners of war, which the Rhodesian government denied. Walls announced a day later that the Rhodesian Army would occupy the captured area of Mozambique until it had removed nationalist guerrillas from it. Kurt Waldheim, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, condemned the incident on 1 June, and political pressure, led by the United States, prompted the Rhodesian government to order its forces out of Mozambique.
In November 1977, Walls commanded another raid into Mozambique entitled Operation Dingo, inflicting heavy losses on ZANLA guerrillas quartered there. In a candid admission to the press, Walls gave an insight to the nature of the conflict that Rhodesia found itself in when he stated in an interview in September 1978 that: "There is no single day of the year when we are not operating beyond our borders."
In 1977, rumours began circulating in the Rhodesian press that Walls had become deeply pessimistic about the future of Rhodesia, and that he had been quietly preparing to abandon the country and personally relocate his family into South Africa, and had covertly purchased property there for this purpose. Seeking to scotch these allegations, with the attenuation they would have to the military morale of the troops still fighting under his command, he publicly issued a denial they had any basis in truth.
On 4 September 1978 a combined NATJOC meeting was held which Ian Smith attended. This was the day after the first Viscount tragedy. It appears that in the meeting after Smith had left, the generals or elements of NATJOC rebelled and decided to approach the British government to find out if a coup was staged, what would be the British Government's position if Rhodesia was returned to British rule. Declassified minutes of the British Cabinet meeting of 7 September 1978 shows that the British were approached. Any approach by these senior generals would hand the British a significant advantage in future negotiations. This also compromised Ian Smith's hand at the Lancaster House Conference.
On 4 November 1978, Walls announced to the press that 2,000 nationalist guerrillas had been persuaded to lay down their arms.
On 12 February 1979, in an attempt to assassinate Walls, ZIPRA shot down Air Rhodesia Flight 827 with a Soviet-made SAM-7 missile. Flight 827 was a regularly scheduled flight from Kariba to Salisbury. The aircraft was a Vickers Viscount known as The Umniati, and the second civilian Viscount they had shot down. All 55 passengers and 4 crew on board were killed. But Walls and his wife had missed the flight and were aboard a second Viscount which took off 15 minutes later, and which landed unharmed at Salisbury. The Zimbabwe African People's Union leader Joshua Nkomo appeared on British domestic television laughing about this incident, declaring that Walls was responsible for the passengers' deaths because he was the "biggest military target", and this justified the action. The Rhodesian government responded to the attack by air-strikes on ZIPRA bases within the borders of Angola and Zambia.
With the nation increasingly pressured by sanctions, the Rhodesian government offered an amnesty to the nationalist guerrillas operating in the field in March 1979, printing and distributing 1.5 million leaflets entitled: "TO ALL ZIPRA FORCES". The leaflets were printed with the signatures of Prime Minister Ian Smith, the ZANU founder Ndabaningi Sithole, United African National Council leader Abel Muzorewa, Chief Jeremiah Chirau, and Walls. Any who abandoned the Bush War were offered suffrage, food and medical treatment. Following this in April 1979, Walls issued an order to the Selous Scouts Regiment to train, organise, and support militants who had defected to the Rhodesian government's authority as part of Operation Favour. However this hearts and minds approach had only limited success, and the Bush War continued unabated. Following the Internal Settlement, Zimbabwe Rhodesia's government concluded a ceasefire with the Patriotic Front ahead of negotiations in London.