zackomoroblogs

Retired Air force Brigadier Uncle Roy Gilo, is now clocking close to seventy but remains extremely hardworking, hard-drinking, clever, competent and even if retired loves dressing in top quality clothes as a   matter of course. He is also popular with his immense popularity attributed to his love of spinning some good yarns. This only happens though after partaking at least eight tots of his favourite drink of Rum. His tall tales are embellished with apt descriptions in a controlled voice and pointed pauses of the natural storyteller.   His unnaturally bent nose further adds to the credence to the tales. I call his bent nose unnatural in the sense that it had once been broken and the surgeon did a poor job fixing it. I had asked him how he had ended up acquiring such a nose. Uncle had taken a long drag of his cigarette, sipped his rum, shook his head like a soaked dog and with a twinkle in the eye slowly narrated to me the story. It had happened about forty years ago, Uncle say

Even in a windy Somalia night, Crickets chirp and locusts sound their soft, muffled  buzzing  as 36 desert boots of number 16 platoon of Echo company trudge through the night to lay an ambush against the Al Shabaab. The Platoon is on African Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) mandate to sanitise Somalia from the AS extremist Islamic group and the warm but windy early evening of February was part of the mandate. The distance to be covered by the platoon was a mere twelve kilometres from our base on a   location intelligence had reasons to believe was a common route used by the Islamic militants for the collection of their logistics. I was the point man of the platoon leading the human snake of 36. We shuffled rather than walked on account of the heavy weights hunkering us down. After a two hour march, the platoon understandably was sorely tried by humping the heavy but necessary load through the hot night terrain.   Each one of us carried a weapon; at least eight magazines and rounds