The other side of Grobbelaar…. Warriors legend reveals dark past

Bruce Grobbelaar, largely regarded as a football icon in the country because of his heroics for The Warriors and Liverpool FC, has revealed his ‘other side’ in a yet to be released new book, ‘Life in the Jungle’ that is being serialised in UK newspaper, The Mail on Sunday.

Although his role in the Rhodesian army is often mention in passing, Grobbelaar has finally opened up on his actually experience in the bush, revealing the day he shot and killed a Zanla fighter in Mozambique.

The Jungleman, as he was popularly known in football circles, chronicles his time as a Rhodesian soldier in the jungles of southern Africa in the book and singles out how – together with his fellow troops – they killed ZANLA forces fighting for Zimbabwe’s independence.

Bruce says he was compulsorily enrolled into the Rhodesian Army and still vividly remembers the first time he had to kill a ZANLA fighter.

“I still remember the first time I had to kill someone. I can still see his eyes. I’d been conscripted into the Zimbabwean Army and thrown into the Bush War — an uprising against the white farmers in my native Rhodesia,” writes Bruce.

He says the freedom fighters ambushed them and he was forced to kill for the first time in his life.

The jungleman says he “felt nothing but relief” after realizing that he had shot the freedom fighter first.

“What haunts me are the images burnt into my memory when we went into a raid in Mozambique,” Bruce recounts in the chapter published by The Mail on Sunday.

“We had to go into the river to get (dead) bodies (of Freedom Fighters who had been killed by air raid) out, to see how many people had been killed. But their corpses attracted crocodiles, so while we were taking them up from the river, we had to put our guns under the water and shoot at the crocodiles.” H-Metro.