Chris Cocks – i-go-books

A Colonial Boy

pinetownprinters — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 11:40:10 +0000

In this Gerald Durrell-meets-Graham Greene account the author examines the accident of his birth to an English father and a South African mother in the booming postwar colony of Southern Rhodesia. La belle époque Rhodesienne ends abruptly when Prime Minister Ian Smith declares unilateral independence from Britain in 1965, but life in Midvale Road, on the outskirts of the capital, Salisbury, ticks on, and by, as it always has, and it is here, between 1957 and 1968, that the wind of change gusts up the lane, and through the boy. Against the backdrop of the embryonic bush war, apartheid, Vietnam, the civil rights movement and crushing sanctions, the boy grows up, with purple bauhinia blossom underfoot and the fragrance of unrest in the air. A Colonial Boy tracks the formative years of a child who is a keen observer of life and takes us on a wonderful journey that is at once innocent and ugly, funny and tragic, but always honest.

Out of Action

30degreessouth — Mon, 01 Dec 2014 10:37:16 +0000

Out of Action is the reworked and updated edition of Survival Course, the sequel to the best-selling Fireforce—one man’s war in the Rhodesian Light Infantry.

Africa’s Commandos

30degreessouth — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 06:35:37 +0000

The RLI … killing machine extraordinaire Few, if any, regiments have left their mark on the history of modern warfare as did the Rhodesian Light Infantry. Raised on 1 February 1961 the RLI first evolved into a commando unit then became involved in mundane border-control duties in the Zambezi Valley.

The Saints

30degreessouth — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 14:54:02 +0000

We’ve seen the stories of the more ‘glamorous’ Selous Scouts, the SAS and the Rhodesian Air Force, but very little about the RLI, often underrated, but arguably one of the most effective counter-insurgency units of all time. This was the unit that brought the ‘Fireforce’ concept to the world’s attention—the devastatingly ruthless airborne envelopment and annihilation of a guerrilla enemy.

Fireforce

30degreessouth — Mon, 01 May 2006 11:08:30 +0000

Fireforce is the compelling, brutal but true account of Chris Cocks’s service in 3 Commando, The Rhodesian Light Infantry, during Zimbabwe’s bitter civil war of the ’70s—a war that came to be known almost innocuously as ‘the bush war’.