SOME NOTES ON THE Ugandan ARMY, 1978-1979

Introduction.

The original purpose of my other page about the Ugandan army was to provide a description of its appearance during the Kagera War. I then got somewhat bogged down in the exact details of the Marine Regiment’s dress uniform, the number plates seen on military police Toyotas, and so on. So, now, this page will be a description of the Ugandans in the Kagera War, and nothing else.

This page is functionally an appendix to the other one, and the reader should go there for particulars of unit distinctions, vehicle insignia, etc.

Footage of the Ugandan army during the war is hard to come by, and of course I run the risk here of generalising too largely from too few examples.

The soldiers.

The men seem to have presented a rather businesslike appearance during the war. One can see a few stable belts and lanyards but, in the main, everyone is dressed soberly and practically — and in uniform, without civilian items. Very little camouflage is in evidence. Beyond this, it’s hard to say much, as no doubt the finer details (armament, camouflage patterns available, etc.) would have varied between units — and, for all this, see the previous page. The men in the clearer footage are very light on belt equipment, but they’re behind the lines listening to Amin harangue them, and perhaps when actually in the field they had fuller equipment, like the men in the “Vita vya Kagera” film, of which I have only a very low-quality copy. The AK pouches seem to be locally made, and not standardised.

The vehicles.

I have almost nothing to say here about the vehicles — please consult the other page for details about their paintwork and markings. Vehicles are often seen in wartime footage heavily camouflaged with natural foliage.

The Libyans.

These are rather elusive fellows, rarely seen in the source material.

A well-known photograph (which I don’t reproduce here, for copyright reasons) shows Amin reviewing a handsome Libyan unit at Entebbe airport. These men wear British “turtle” helmets, Egyptian-style two-tone blob camouflage and black boots, with pattern 58 webbing. Helmets are mostly plain (tan?) but a couple have nets or are crudely spraypainted in dots of a second colour.

“Vita vya Kagera” has brief footage of what seems to be Libyan prisoners. They dress in plain fatigues, with an M65 style jacket, all mostly various shades of olive-green, but a few seem to have camouflage jackets or trousers, of an utterly indecipherable pattern. A photo in Avirgan & Honey (between 76-77) shows Libyan prisoners in the same attire. One can distantly see brushstroke camouflage in background figures, though these could be their Tanzanian guards. The Tanzania-Uganda War in Pictures by Mmbando contains several photos of Libyans, but they’re all either stripped to the waist, or dead, and so of fairly little use. One cadaver is wearing camouflage of an indecipherable pattern.

One piece of footage lingers on a horribly shot-through corpse (I decline to show this here), seemingly of a Libyan, wearing jacket and trousers in what I think is the German “swamp pattern”, but I’m not certain.

I’m conscious that there seem to have been several types of Libyan unit in the war — the regulars, the “People’s Militia”, and the “African Legion”. I have no idea how to distinguish these units beyond that, presumably, the regulars were the best dressed and equipped.

For a point of comparison, a short bit of 1978 footage depicting Libyan soldiers in Chad, has them in the same style of uniform as the men pictured here, with tan jungle hats. A few men wear “swamp” camouflage.

A tan recoilless rifle jeep, with Arabic number plate, can be seen in footage — no doubt this is Libyan.

Libya apparently fielded some T-55s on its own account. This is an obscure matter.

• Footage of a 1979 parade in Tripoli shows many T-55s, all in a solid greyish tan shade.

• The well-known Rhodesian T-55s, which were originally a Libyan shipment to Uganda, were tan with green blotches.

• There’s a very confusing bit of news footage showing T-55s. We have a Tanzanian officer identifying one, specifically, as “a T-55 medium tank, made in Russia”, and saying his men captured nine of them. We see two: each is solid green, like a Tanzanian tank, and has four discs in the standard Tanzanian positions — they seem to be white, but heavily effaced by overpainting in brown(?) — very unclear. I don’t think these can be Ugandan tanks, as its T-55s seem to have all been in the two-tone camouflage scheme I described in the relevant place. I also don’t think they can be Tanzanian — I don’t think the Tanzanians would feel the need, in the middle of an extremely successful campaign where much Ugandan armour fell into their hands, to pretend their own tanks were enemy war prizes. I note also that the T-34s supplied by Libya seem to have been a solid green (see the other page). So I wonder if, by elimination, these aren’t Libyan vehicles we see here? And either the discs were applied by the Libyans for some reason, or, perhaps, by the Tanzanians, to indicate that the vehicle was hors de combat and nobody should shoot at it until a Tanzanian vehicle could tow it away. I do not know.

• On the last point, note also, on the previous page, the captured Ugandan Saladin, with a yellow disc. Whatever that may mean, with reference to this.

The Palestinians.

I haven’t seen the Palestinians, unless they’re hiding in plain sight somewhere in the footage. Avirgan & Honey (at 89) describe corpses which were originally taken to be Libyan, but their “PLO scarfs” identified them as Palestinian. Presumably, then, they wore generic fatigues in Libyan style, or actual Libyan issue items. The “PLO scarf” was no doubt the classic white and black shemagh.