Silken Webs and Sausage Trees

This book records the malodorous military career of Sunray, 22 Bravo, and his three long-suffering Braves, through the haunting loveliness of the heat-shimmering, cicada-serenaded Zambezi Valley. It tracks them past fire and ice, feast and famine, flood and thirst, through sleepless nights and sheer terror, as they overcame exhaustion to stand awestruck at the sights and sounds beyond. Set in the Bush War, this humorous, poignant memoire presents seldom-seen perspectives of a young soldier’s coming of age during a counter-insurgency war. One fought in one of Southern Africa’s remotest and wildest places, beset also by its most dangerous animals, deadly serpents, pernicious plants, and malevolent biting insects. Did they traverse these wildest places led by one cursed as salao, the worst kind of unlucky, or by one inept in ways that simply beggared belief? Decide for yourself. But somewhere deep in the rushing apple-green waters of Kariba Gorge, the River God Nyami Nyami likely rolled his eyes. By journey’s end, you will know the soldiers of the notorious call-sign, 22 Bravo (“Known and Feared Throughout the Land”). Armed in the Garden of Eden, these snap-shots from the Sharp End are some of their stories.