My friend, John Peirson, with whom I served at HQ 2 Brigade in 1965/66-ish –when I was a Signalman and he a Captain – tells this true story. 

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In the early days of Operation Hurricane in the 2 Brigade area (that would probably have been in the early 70s) members of C Squadron, Rhodesian SAS captured a GOOK after a contact (firefight) in the Zambezi Valley.

The captured man was painfully thin and rather obviously starving and it was decided he should be given some food before they tried to interrogate him.

Accordingly, they gave him a tin of meat from a ration pack and he proceeded to wolf it down greedily, so ravenous was he. So ravenous, in fact, that he proceeded to choke on the food and, in spite of their best efforts to revive him, he died…

Afterwards Major Brian Robinson, the SAS Commanding Officer, sent an official message, through the correct channels, to the Central Ordnance and Supply Depot. The message read: “Congratulations on your first kill!”. 

The Major’s efforts were rewarded with an official rebuke from some humourless cardboard replica of a senior soldier at Army Headquarters.