October 19th marks the anniversary of Operation Gatling; the “Green Leader” cross-border raid in which Rhodesia attacked ZIPRA (Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army) in retaliation for ZIPRA shooting down a scheduled passenger flight, Air Rhodesia flight 825, during the Rhodesian Bush War. Rhodesia suffered only minor casualties in the raid. But they claimed to have killed 1,500 ZIPRA personnel as well as some Cuban instructors. Other sources claim that those killed were refugees camped near the border. Sadly, history does not seem to remember the two airliners shot down by Zimbabwe along with the innocent civilians killed on them, but emphasizes the retributory Rhodesian strikes.
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19 October is the birthday of three notables – the late Alexander Zeisal “Zus” Bielski (born 1912), investor Jim Rogers (born 1942), and James Howard Kunstler (born 1948). Kunstler is well known to SurvivalBlog readers as the author of the novel World Made by Hand and the nonfiction book The Long Emergency. A fictionalized portrayal of Zus Bielski is seen in the movie Defiance. This movie was loosely based on the excellent book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans by Nechama Tec.
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Sorry, but I didn’t have time to prepare feature article for today, as I’m traveling out of state to attend a memorial service for my late mother, Barbara Marie Rawles [1].