Thanks for the recommendation. I'll have to see if I can pick up a copy at a reasonable price.
I read the Cox and Croukamp books while I was working on my T2K Kenya campaign history (Operation Proud Lion). I thought the former was decent and the latter pretty poor. I wrote a fairly harsh review for Croukamp's book on Amazon.com.
"I was really wanting to like this book more than I did. First off, it's a bit pricey for a paperback with a couple dozen small, black-and-white photos sprinkled throughout. Second, I bought this book to learn more about Selous Scouts operations and, after reading it, I really didn't feel any more knowledgable on the subject than I did before I started. The author seems to take for granted that the reader already knows combat tracking techniques, what pseudo-terrorist operations were, and what Fireforce was, among other things. As a result, he never really explains anything particularly well. Aside from those two main gripes, the book is not very well written. The author uses the same idioms again and again and it really gets to be tedious reading. He also jumps around quite a bit temporally, moving backwards and forwards through time during the largely chronological narrative. Too many awkward personal stories are recounted. The author starts to come across as a bit of a pervert (dating a 13 year old; sneaking into a married woman's bedroom at night, etc.). The author also included commentary on his draft written by a former commanding officer and sometimes rival. I found this rather odd. In the end, I was wishing I was reading the commenting officer's book instead (which, unfortunately, is out of print and very pricey to acquire new or used). Better maps would have helped, being as the author operated all over Rhodesia and beyond its borders. Overall, this was a mess of a book. Although some parts of the book are OK (the combat stories), I really don't think the sum of these parts was worth the $25 I spent on it. I probably won't be reading this book all the way through again.
As a soldier, Mr. Croukamp may have been one of the best of his generation, but as a writer, he leaves much to be desired."
Anyway, the Rhodesians had some interesting tactics for low-intensity counterinsurgency warfare. Ultimately, however, their strategy failed. Like the U.S. in Vietnam, they won many battles but still lost the war. Perhaps that's why the U.S. military has failed to draw any lessons from it. I believe that one can often learn more from the mistakes of others than from their successes.
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