OUT OF THE FIRE: Bush War Poetry

Some men come home from war with medals. Beaver Shaw came home with poems. Written in logbook margins and oil-stained notebooks, these 303 poems were never meant to be published. They were too raw, too real. But they are too important to stay hidden. Out of the Fire is a poetry memoir by Gordon Bevis Alan Shaw — known as Beaver — a veteran technician gunner of the Rhodesian Air Force who flew Alouette III G Cars and K Cars with 7 and 8 Squadrons during the Rhodesian Bush War, 1965 to 1980. He flew Fireforce operations across the Rhodesian Midlands, served with Fireforce Delta near Beitbridge, and went on cross-border raids into Mozambique, Zambia, and Botswana — including the strikes at Chimoio and Westlands Farm. He watched men die beside him. He carried it all in silence for decades. And then he wrote it down. This is not a comfortable book. It names names. It remembers faces. It refuses to let the fallen disappear. The 302 poems cover Operations Griffin, Gatling, Uric, Dingo, Repulse, Mulligan, and Noah. They honour the Rhodesian Light Infantry, the Selous Scouts, the Rhodesian African Rifles, the Grey Scouts, the British South Africa Police, the Special Air Service, 4 Squadron, and the paratroopers of Fireforce. They pay tribute to real men and women whose names deserve to be spoken aloud: Lt Roger Carloni BCR, Major Bruce Miles Snelgar, Rob Nelson, Dale Collett, Rupert Fothergill, Jack Malloch, Dennis Croukamp, Mario Tassios RLI, Darryl Watt, Yvonne Mulligan, Sally Donaldson, Michael Borlace, Martin Olds, Andre Dennison BCR, Jon Kennerley, Alan Balson, Clem Coetzee, Fred Groenin, and scores more. They cover aircraft — the Alouette III, Dakota, Canberra, Hawker Hunter, Provost, Lynx, Vampire, and Puma 164 on its final flight. They walk the ground at Mukumbura, Entumbane, Nyadzonya, Elim Mission, Altena Farm, Barragem, Vila Salazar, Grand Reef, New Sarum, Thornhill, Llewellyn Barracks, Mtoko, Mavonde, Nuanetsi, Umtali, and along the Sabi, Umzingwane, and Zambezi rivers. There are poems about UDI, Ian Smith, Lobengula, Nehanda, the Gukurahundi massacres, the farm invasions, Zimbabwe Rhodesia, and the betrayal that followed Lancaster House. There are poems about the MAG, the FN rifle, the K Car cannon, Noddy Cars, the Bedford RL, and the weapons of a bush war fought on foot, in the air, and in the dark. There are poems about fear, faith, survival, guilt, casevac runs, blue on blue, night ambush, the sanctions years, and the PTSD that had no name in a soldier's vocabulary. There are poems about the women — the mothers, nurses, radio operators, farm wives, and sweethearts — who held the country together while the men were in the bush. And there are poems about what happens to a soldier's soul when the war is over and there is nowhere left to go. And woven through all of it: love letters to Rhodesia — a country that no longer exists on any map but lives on in the hearts of Rhodesians scattered across the world from South Africa to Australia, from the United Kingdom to the United States. With a Foreword by Air Vice Marshal Hugh Slatter, and compiled by Beaver's wife Mimi Cawood Shaw — author of The Voice of 303 — this is a vital, unfiltered document of Rhodesian military history, African bush war poetry, and one man's journey from the battlefield to faith and peace. The past is etched in us. But it is not our prison. — Beaver Shaw Essential for Rhodesian Bush War veterans, Zimbabwe military history readers, Rhodesiana collectors, families of the fallen, South African military history readers, students of African colonial and post-colonial history, and anyone who believes that poetry can carry truths no history book can hold.