Stan was as much a puzzle to me as I probably was to him. When I first met him, I was new the Chaplain Corps and he was completing a six month period of service as a sergeant-chaplain. He had been a member of PATU (Police Anti-Terrorist Unit) when he received his “call to ministry” as a Baptist pastor. As a preparation for full-time ministry he had been begun coursework and for practical experience, transferred to the Chaplain Corps.
He functioned as aide-de-camp to the Chaplain General. If I remember correctly, as he finished his tour as a chaplain, he was heading to a seminary in South Africa to finish his coursework. About the time we moved to Bulawayo, he returned to Rhodesia as pastor of a Baptist church in Bulawayo.
What was a bit strange was that he began wearing a clerical collar, something unknown in Baptist circles. He told me that he thought that it commanded respect, especially from the British Rhodesians with their Anglican backgrounds. Rhodesians with an Afrikaner background would be also be accustomed to the collar with their Dutch Reformed ministers. It was odd, but who was I to judge oddness? After all, I knew just how odd I was with my anti-clerical, anti-organized church, Jesus Freak/Thiemite, pistol packin’, foul-mouthed persona.
But because Stan had always been forthcoming with me and had gone out of his way to help me adjust to life in the chaplaincy, I felt that I could trust him with my own misgivings about God’s plan for my life. One evening after a day at the barracks, I gave him a phone call.
I began to share my concerns about how the Smith government was beginning to openly discuss a transition to multiracial government and my own misgivings about my role as a chaplain. Stan told me that one of the reasons that Col Wood had left the chaplaincy was that Mugabe, in his broadcasts from Mozambique had added Norman and the Chaplain Corps to his list of enemies who would be killed after “liberation.” That meant I was on the list!
This alarmed me, to say the least! But before the conversation could go any further, Stan said something that made my heart skip:
“Jeff, we should get together and talk in person. It is likely that your phone is tapped.”
Whoa! All of a sudden, I remembered the conversation with Robin Moore months earlier. He had lamented that the government’s Internal Affairs division was watching all of us foreign soldiers with a jaundiced eye. Americans were the subject of the closest scrutiny because of the deteriorating relations with the US.
To make matters worse, Robin had published a story with a photo of Pegi and me in the New York Times syndicate of over 17 papers in the US. That same article also appeared as “The Crippled Eagles--VII,” pages 231-38 in his 1977 book, Rhodesia. I had also been filmed while in uniform, standing with Robin and several other American soldiers in front of his home in Salisbury. Just over my shoulder was Robin’s plaque that announced that his home was the unofficial “American Embassy” for Crippled Eagles (American soldiers) in Rhodesia. This played on the ABC Evening News. I was a bit exposed!
Hearing the concern in my voice, Stan invited Pegi and me over for dinner the following week. We would speak about all of this in private.
I would have immediately rushed over there that night if it weren’t for plans that I already had to travel to Salisbury the following morning. I was headed to Army HQ for one of my regular meetings with Maj Gen MacIntyre to report on the morale of the contingent of foreigners serving in the Rhodesian Security Forces.
Early the next morning, I rode my motorcycle over to 3 Brigade HQ on the other side of Bulawayo. From there, I was able to catch a ride in the back of a truck with some other troops heading to Army HQ in Salisbury. I was supposed to be reporting on the morale of other soldiers, but my own flagging morale was sure to color the conversation with the General.
Next: Tell Them to Go!
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