Mzee' is the Swahili word for an 'old timer', a respected elder. Mzee Ali Kalikilima was born near the present-day town of Tabora in western Tanzania, probably in the 1870s - there is mention of 'The Doctor', Dr David Livingstone - to black Muslim parents of noble birth. Aged 14, Ali led his first slaving safari to the shores of Lake Tanganyika and thence, with his caravan of captured slaves and ivory, through the malaria-, tsetse fly- and lion-infested wilds, to the Arab markets of Dar es Salaam, some 1,200 kilometres away on the Indian Ocean. With the arrival of the German colonizers, Ali joined the German East African forces as an askari. He worked on the railway line that was being laid from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma and finally to Mwanza on the shores of Lake Victoria - a monumental feat. With the outbreak of the First World War, he found himself attached to the forces of the legendary German commander, General von Lettow-Vorbeck. He saw action at the Battle of Salaita Hill near Mombasa and was with the General to the end, fighting a guerrilla campaign through southern Tanganyika, Portuguese East Africa, Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia and to final surrender. After the war, he joined the British Colonial Service as a game scout.

Ronnie Selley, a South African from rural Natal, joined the RAF on a short- service commission in 1937, considered the golden age of aviation. During these glory years of Howard Hughes and Amelia Earhart few guessed at the brewing storm and dark days to come. After completing his training on antiquated First World War aircraft, Selley was posted to 220 Squadron coastal command, the RAF's under-staffed and under-equipped poor relation to the more prestigious Fighter and bomber commands. Tasked with reconnaissance, convoy patrols and submarine-hunting the pilots of Coastal command chalked up more flying hours than any other RAF command. It was not uncommon for pilots to be in the air, searching the waters of the North Atlantic, for up to sixteen hours a day, in aircraft that were neither capable of such ranges nor, initially, adequately armed to defend their charges. From the outbreak of war until after its cessation Coastal command had aircraft in the air twenty-four hours a day, every single day. The toll this took on the men of Coastal command was unthinkable. The first RAF pilot to sink a German U-boat, Selley went on the win the DFC for his actions during the Dunkirk evacuation. He won high praise and newspaper headlines such as "Plane fights 13 German warships", "One RAF man bombs 3 ships, routs Nazis" and "One against eight" were not uncommon. Selley subsequently suffered acute battle fatigue and spent time convalescing at the Dunblane hydro. Thereafter, he was posted by the Air ministry as Air Vice-Marshal Breese's personal pilot. On 5 March 1941 Ronnie Selley, Air Vice-Marshal Breese and the entire crew of the fully armed Lockheed Hudson they was flying experienced engine problems, lost speed, stalled and exploded on impact at Wick in northern Scotland.

On 11 November 1965, Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith unilaterally declared his country independent of Britain. International sanctions were immediately instituted against the minority white regime as Robert Mugabe's ZANLA and Joshua Nkomo's ZIPRA armies commenced their armed struggle, the Chimurenga, the war of liberation. As Communist-trained guerrillas flooded the country, the beleaguered Rhodesians, hard-pressed for manpower and military resources, were forced to devise new and innovative methods to combat the insurgency. Fire Force was their answer. Fire Force as a military concept dates from 1974 when the Rhodesian Air Force (RhAF) acquired the French MG151 20mm cannon from the Portuguese. Visionary RhAF and Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI) officers expanded on the idea of a 'vertical envelopment' of the enemy, with the 20mm cannon being the principal weapon of attack, mounted in an Alouette III K-Car ('Killer car'), supported by ground troops deployed from G-Cars (Alouette III troop-carrying gunships and latterly Bell 'Hueys') and parachuted from DC-3 Dakotas. In support would be a propeller-driven ground-attack aircraft armed with front guns, pods of napalm, white phosphorus rockets and a variety of Rhodesian-designed bombs; on call would be Canberra bombers, Hawker Hunter and Vampire jets. In spite of the overwhelming number of enemy pitted against them, Rhodesian Fire Forces accounted for thousands of enemy guerrillas, with a kill ratio exceeding 80:1. At the end of the war, ZANLA generals admitted their army could not have survived another year in the field-in no small part due to the ruthless efficiency of the Fire Forces, described by Charles D. Melson, the Chief Historian of the U.S. Marine Corps, as the ultimate "killing machine."