unidentified officers alleged that Gowon and other Ugandan high-ranking commanders focused more on "their petty feuds" than on the war. One of the greatest problems for the Uganda Army was its lack of artillery, while the Tanzanians had ample access to Katyusha rocket launchers. Gowon put off this issue until another Ugandan general urged him to finally do something about it. Gowon asked Amin to buy artillery abroad, but the man who was entrusted this task simply pocketed the money. The TPDF invaded on 21 January 1979, and defeated the Uganda Army in a series of battles. Amin consequently dispatched Gowon to the frontlines which was "widely interpreted as a punishment". Eventually, Amin's Libyan ally Muammar Gaddafi intervened by sending an expeditionary force, whereupon a combined Ugandan-Libyan counter-offensive was launched against Lukaya on 10 March 1979. The battle turned against the Ugandans on 11 March, as the TPDF launched a successful counter-attack. In an attempt to strengthen morale, Gowon and General Isaac Maliyamungu joined their troops on the front line at Lukaya. For unknown reasons, the positions the two men took were frequently subject to sudden, intense rocket fire. Ugandan junior officers tried to convince their men that the Tanzanians were probably aware of the generals' presence and were targeting them with precise bombardments. The Ugandan troops nonetheless felt that Maliyamungu and Gowon were harbingers of misfortune and nicknamed them bisirani, or "bad omen". The leading Ugandan commander at Lukaya, Godwin Sule, realised the generals were not having a positive effect and asked them to leave the front. According to an unidentified "high Ugandan official" who was in exile in Nairobi at the time, Gowon and other officers unsuccessfully urged Amin to step down as President after the Battle of Lukaya. Soon after, a Libyan officer visited Gowon's headquarters, and relayed that Amin had fired him. The Libyan then mounted a tank and addressed the Ugandan soldiers present, telling them that Gowon had betrayed them to the Tanzanians. The soldiers were enraged, and wanted to murder their former Chief of Staff, but Gowon claimed that he intended to muster reinforcements. Using this excuse, he fled to Kampala and from there to Wile Nile on a motorcycle. His troops believed that he had deserted, prompting one of them to comment in an interview with the Drum magazine that "Our recent chief of staff, Major General Gowon, has disappeared. Only hell knows