THE WAGES OF WAR

On the afternoon of July 19, 1975, a patrol of the Rhodesian army’s reservist Territorial Force encountered a group of communist insurgents just inside the rogue nation’s northeast border with Mozambique. In a subsequent firefight the reservists killed two guerrillas, sending the rest scattering into the surrounding bush. At the patrol leader’s request reinforcements from the Rhodesian Light Infantry’s 2 Commando soon arrived, and the beefed-up force set off in pursuit of what the Rhodesian troops assumed were fleeing guerrillas.

The insurgents had no intention of breaking contact, however. After moving down the banks of a dry riverbed, they set up an ambush and waited. When the pursuing Rhodesian force rounded a bend of the river, the guerrillas opened fire, killing two of the troopers outright and wounding a third. The insurgents then ceased fire and shifted position, leading the commander of the RLI contingent to mistakenly assume they’d again fled. The officer ordered men forward to scout the riverbank as a combat medic attached to the RLI reaction force broke cover to assist the Rhodesian casualties. As he neared the downed men, the medic came under concentrated fire from the concealed guerrillas and was killed instantly by a round to the head.

By then hundreds of Rhodesian military personnel, white and black alike, had been killed in the long-running war against Soviet-, Chinese- and Cuban-backed communist rebels operating from neighboring Zambia and Mozambique. The medic’s death was thus sadly unremarkable—except for the fact that Corporal John Alan Coey was from Columbus, Ohio, and a former U.S. Marine in training. Coey was one of several hundred Americans who chose to serve in the Rhodesian armed forces, and he bears the dubious distinction of being the first of his countrymen to die in the conflict known