Odds ‘n Sods:

Until October 15th, the SurvivalBlog 2005-2012 Archive DVD is sale priced at just $11.99.

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Winston Churchill once famously said: “History is written by the victors.” But I’ve noticed an exception to that rule: The history of Rhodesia’s Bush War. In this case, the victors were a gang of largely illiterate, communist (and quasi-communist) nincompoops who very quickly wrecked and looted the nation. Since the end of the war and the establishment of Comrade Mugabe’s Proletarian People’s Paradise there have been at least a dozen books published about the Bush War by former Rhodesians, but just handful that were written by the ZANLA , ZIPRA, and FROLIZI “War Veterans.” (The ex-terrorists who took power.) And not surprisingly, it was the “winners” who turned out to be the real losers, and it is the books by the exiled Rhodies that have had the lion’s share of book sales. (The books written by the former terrorists–often with the help of ghost writers–have had laughably weak sales and are mainly read by leftist academics. The only one that merits a mention is Dzino. Memories of a Freedom Fighter by Wilfred Mhanda, and even it is replete with sour grapes for Mugabe and his ZANU henchmen.) Some quite factual books about the war that I can recommend are: Fireforce: One Man’s War in the Rhodesian Light Infantry, The Saints: The Rhodesian Light Infantry, A Martyr Speaks, The Bush War In Rhodesia: The Extraordinary Combat Memoir of a Rhodesian Reconnaissance Specialist, Shadows of a Forgotten Past: To the Edge with the Rhodesian SAS and Selous Scouts, Pamwe Chete, and The Rhodesian War: A Military History. 21st Century survivalists can learn some valuable lessons by studying the history of this conflict, in which isolated farms often had to provide their own defense against the “terrs.”

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I was recently interviewed by Rory and his friends in a SGT Report podcast.