After taking a gap year to explore the world in the 1970s, Stuart Agnew probably didn't expect to end up supporting those caught up in the devastating Rhodesian Bush War.

Mr Agnew, who was born in the Aylsham area and these days lives in Helhoughton, near Fakenham, initially worked for his father's farming enterprise near Swaffham.

But, aged 25, he and his friends decided to buy a Land Rover and head to Africa.

Their initial adventure was to cross the Sahara desert via Timbuktu, before Mr Agnew separated from his friends on good terms to get to the south of the continent faster.

Travelling down the west of Africa, he was dismayed by appalling agricultural standards until he reached Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe).

While looking for short-term employment there, he was offered a permanent job with the Minister of Agriculture, which he declined but kept in mind.

Mr Agnew continued on to South Africa, where he sold health and leisure products on a door-to-door basis. He subsequently got a salaried job with Prudential Assurance in its pensions admin department, which needed someone with good English skills to look after it.

Keeping abreast of tumultuous South African politics, he was then motivated to accept the role as soil and water conservation officer he had previously been offered in Rhodesia.

He reported to Doug Tannerhill, a senior civil servant, and was posted to a rapidly-expanding farming area called Karoi.

Among Mr Agnew's tasks was to design contour bank schemes to prevent soil erosion. During his travels in a Land Rover, he had a number of near-misses with land mines, and even used his vehicle to evacuate injured tribesman from remote villages which had suffered terrorist attacks.

The Rhodesian Bush War was predominantly waged, at the time, in the Shona-speaking areas of the north east. “Hardcore” terrorists were trained in China, who in turn trained "softcore” terrorists in Mozambique.

Occasionally, police would send Mr Agnew and a local guide to terrorised settlements, where they would pick up civilian casualties after the military had killed the perpetrators.

“The attacks had a pattern," said Mr Agnew. "Demands for food and women were followed by a crude assessment of who might be assisting the white regime.

"If someone had a book written in English, his eyes were put out; if someone was suspected of listening to English on the radio, they pierced his ear drums; if someone was suspected of speaking English to white people, his tongue was cut out; if someone had collected condoms from the mobile family planning unit, he was emasculated.

“I saw some horrific sights and these injuries could be several days old, going septic and with no anaesthetic. I will never forget their horrible cries as we drove back on rough dirt roads to the clinic at Karoi, where only superficial treatment could be offered."

The solution to avoiding land mines was to give staff an eyesight test using a discarded number plate. The winner, Peter, then sat beside Mr Agnew as a lookout.

"My life was saved on two occasions by Peter, my sharp-eyed African assistant, who could spot the tell-tale signs of freshly laid mines far enough ahead for me to slam on the brakes," he added.

Mr Agnew was all too aware that his four-year immigrant's moratorium on military service was resented by farmers' wives.

They had been left alone while their husbands were serving.

He said: "They would not say it, but I could see they were thinking 'you are a civil servant, your salary is being paid from the taxes we pay from our hard work producing all this tobacco, and you got a four-year moratorium because you're an immigrant. I'm here with my children and my husband is gone.'"

That apparent disdain is what led to Mr Agnew enlisting with the army, who offered him an experimental intensive officer training course. He made it to the final 12 of the 60-strong cohort, but ultimately failed as only one person made the cut.

“I learned a lot, but I knew I was not ready after 12 weeks of training for men to entrust their lives with me on a battlefield," he added.

Mr Agnew subsequently took part in some uneventful military patrols, before returning to Norfolk for a farming career.

'Anything but civil'

It's not just Stuart who found himself at the centre of the fierce Rhodesian conflict.

Bob Cremers, from Watton, was based 20 miles from the north Rhodesian border in what was then known as Elizabethville from December 1961 to May 1962.

Aged 18, he was part of the United Nations peacekeeping force in the province of Katanga.

His experiences included being fired at while in a plane transporting UN officers, and seeing his corporal being killed by a mortar.

“I spent my first night in a slit trench with the instruction that all in front was hostile open fire if spotted,” he said.

“The African night was extremely dark and impenetrable. It did nothing for this anxious teenager. The night passed with watching tracer rounds going skywards and the occasional burst of Bren gunfire to ease tension.”

“Due to problems in Congo, we had a lot of refugees to care for," he added.

“As these were of different ethnic groups, there was a lot of tension and our job to prevent conflict was not always successful.

“Civil war is anything but civil.”