Deliberate attack on enemy camp

"If you give a riddle to a man, and he asks you for the answer , then the dowry paid for his mother was a waste". This is a Nigerian proverb that kept on popping up every time I thought of my then Director , Dr. Richard Leakey.  29 of us were recruited in december1991 and we started the platoon commanders course in manyani in January 1992.  Most of us had worked in different Government ministries, some as teachers, electricians , veterinarians and few came straight from secondary schools. I had worked with the Agriculture ministry, livestock division for six and a half years after graduating with a certificate on range management from AHITI Kabete  ( Animal Health and Industry Training Institute ) in 1984. It took us seven months to complete the course and on graduation Dr Leakey read us the riot act , and it sounded like we were being released in to a tunnel with only one exit, and that the whole world  expected us to stop poaching at all costs , and that it would be a sacrifice to conservation if we got  killed in the act. Dr Leakey was a very hard man to please, and we never asked him for answers. 

I was posted to Meru National park in October 1993 from the Tana Primate Reserve in Baomo where I ran rounds with a platoon of 30 men trying to stop high way robberies between Lamu and Garsen, and Garsen to Hola. A mouth full, but a story for another day. In early November , just one month in to my posting, 11 elephants were killed by poachers in Sarara, and Sir Richard had asked us for a quite Christmas . This was a silent order, but we understood it all the same ; that the good doctor wanted us to silence a gang before Christmas . We have always kept our promise, one way or the other. 

The patrol team pursued the bandits who killed a government official and abused several women on the Marsabit-Moyale Highway in earnest, and they followed the bandits trail for most of the morning while it was still cool for days can be hot here, very hot indeed, and they needed water, but they had little of the precious liquid and they knew that they had to save what they had. So they sipped from their water bottles when they stopped for short rests between runs, and they came across empty water jerrycans dug from the way side, and they knew that the guys they pursued were veterans and that they had planned their route out well. They had buried water  on the route in intervals of five kilometers apart, which meant that they could walk the whole day without rest if they had to. But they were heavy from the loot they carried so they were slow. On the second day the rangers saw a man seated on a hilly outcrop and he had a binoculars and he was watching the path where the rangers were following.

The patrol team had also spotted our plane, and so did the bandits, for the man they saw with the binoculars was scouting the path and watching the plane at the same time. The team needed food and water, and they knew we had all this in the plane, but contacting the plane would alert the bad guys and that was not acceptable. So they hid in the bushes and we failed to see them for the second day in a row. The man spotted on the rock took time just siting there and this gave the rangers confidence that they must have reached their hide out. So they also waited and watched him till sun set when he eventually came down and disappear  from view. By this time only one man was awake , the team was over exhausted , really hungry and very thirsty . The team leader urged them to move closer to the hide out after dark, for by this time the bandits had started a fire and some were singing. They were home and very comfortable for no security personnel  had reached this parts for years. We were later informed by the inhabitants of Losesia village that the last team of GSU soldiers who ever reached those areas were wiped out by bandits and that two of them have never been seen. Not even their bodies.

The team formed their rear base 500 meters from the hideout and two rangers were picked to go spy the other camp. Took them a while but when they came back their report raised spirits of the whole team. They confirmed that they had the right group and that they were not keeping any sentries, and that they were already going through the loot. The team had two options, to attack at that particular time ,or wait till morning. They discussed options and they all agreed to mix things in the morning. One was because they needed rest and second was they did not fancy night clearance . Soldiers who are not on suicide missions will never vote for night clearances after a contact. So they settled on a deliberate attack, and  men were given duties. 

Two rangers went up the rock as a cut off unit, two groups of two men each were placed meters apart in the center of the area as the killer group and the other two were placed far right on another cut off. They formed a carve like formation, but they decided to sleep at the rear base due to exhaustion. The officer needed to map out the grounds for the attack, so he chose two men and they crawled to within fifty meters of the enemy camp and could have gone further but for the lack of cover. They were too close to the enemy camp that they could see their faces from the glow of the camp fire, and heard them talk about the evil things they did to the women. Some of them came to within reach of the rangers to relief themselves and some to hide the looted goods. The men held their cool and crawled back to the rear base satisfied that they had the right group and that they were to be eliminated without second thoughts.

All units were in place by four o'clock in the morning, and waited for the good morning that took ages to come. They did not have to wait for the sun to rise, because one of the bandits woke up and went in to prayer. Something must have touched him , or the animal instinct in him must have triggered a nerve , for the man started kicking his sleeping companions and tried to reach for his gun, then all hell broke loose , Four G3 rifles in the killer group opened up as one, and the cut off unit on the far right freed their compressed FN magazines in union. The only group who had orders to hold fire was the one on the rocks and they obeyed the order. The noise was satisfying to the shooters but something else to the receivers on the far  end. Three of them managed to raise their heads then met the volley and died without seeing their killers. One of them was shot on the left leg but somehow managed to limp through the flying lead, naked, and was reported the only survivor . The fifth guy was injured but managed to run in to bushes below the big rock outcrop. 

Firing stopped for the men to reload and an order given to hold fire, but one of the rangers on the top of the outcrop shouted position of the injured man and in the process exposed him self and almost paid for it. The injured bandit released a short bust and one round creased the scalp of the ranger , throwing him flat on to his back. One of the rounds also hit the rock where he was laying and debris hit his left eye puncturing the cornea. The team below leveled on the bandit and he must have been hit fifty times, for when we later saw him, he did not have a head, and his upper side looked like a sieve.

The rangers went to clear the scene and the first thing they saw almost spoiled their success ; laying there between two dead  bandits, was a bazooka tube, and it was loaded. A squeeze on the trigger would have spelled doom to the rangers, and there were two spare shells close by. They also recovered three AK47 rifles and all the loot. The team cleared the scene, picked some water and cooked food which the bandits did not need, and moved out of the area for they feared that the gun fire might attract other unwanted evils. By mid day, some rangers were so tired that they could not move, so they took cover in a thicket to rest and three of the strong ones volunteered to walk to the losesia village which was the only known center in the vicinity to seek for help, and this they did , and the chief with his home guards carried water to the team, and that explained the police uniform I saw when we eventually found the gallant men while flying in our spotter plane.

The officer who was leading the team is Dr. Francis Lesilau who is currently a Senior Assistant Director , and the corporal was Lmwate Lenguro who is now a Warden Two and three of the rangers are assistant wardens including  Mr. Lotir who was injured and he lost the eye permanently.