mini-SITREP XLVI
Published by the Kenya Regiment Association (KwaZulu-Natal) – June 2015
DIARY OF EVENTS: 2015/2016
AUSTRALIA Brisbane: Sunday Curry Lunch, Oxley Golf Club 19.07.2015 Brisbane: Sunday Curry Lunch, Oxley Golf Club 22.11.2015 Sunshine Coast: Sunday Curry Lunch, Caloundra Power Boat Club 20.03.2016 Contact: Alastair Napier Bax. Tel: 07-3372 7278
ENGLAND Royal Logistic Corps Officers Mess, Deepcut, Surrey. Curry lunch Wed 22.07.2015 Contact: John Harman
KENYA Nairobi Clubhouse: Remembrance Sunday and Curry Lunch 08.11.2015 Contact: Dennis Leete
NEW ZEALAND Auckland: Lunch at Soljans Winery, Kumeu 17/09/2015 Contact: Mike Innes-Walker
SOUTH AFRICA Cape Town: Lunch at Mowbray Golf Club Jul 2015 (TBA) Contact: Geoff Trollope. Tel: 021-855 2734
Editor: Bruce Rooken-Smith, Box 48 Merrivale, 3291, South Africa Tel/Fax: 033-330 4012.
Kenya Regiment Website
[Ed. My thanks to readers who continue to supply me with material for m-S, and to Graham & Betty Bales and Jenny for proofreading.]
Front cover: Mount Kenya with Ngare Ndare forest in the middle ground. Photo first appeared in Africa Geograpic Oct 2013, and is reproduced with kind permission of photographer Dale R. Morris. Taken near Lewa Downs
Back cover: Absolute bliss!
The views expressed in mini-SITREP XLVI are solely those of the contributors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Editor, nor those of the Association
SEVENTY
[Sean O'Kelly]
No cliché-ridden rhyme is this About the passing of the years; No catalogue of greying hairs Or creaking bones, or failing ears.
(Once I had a kind of yen To reach my three-score-years-and-ten, But now I've done it, I aver, That half of that's what I prefer).
I've few regrets for years gone by, I don't resent the way they've flown. I did a lot of crazy things Thank God not all of them are known.
(Once I had a kind of yen To reach my three-score-years-and-ten, But now I've got there I'll reveal Believe me, mate, it's no big deal).
So now, when humped upon my chair And Tempus Fugits like a bird I'll not complain of chances missed Or plead for re-runs long deferred.
(Once I had a kind of yen To reach my three-score-years-and-ten, But now I'm there I must admit That I don't think too much of it!).
Printed by Pmb Drawing, Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
FOREWORD
In this edition, readers will note a definite shift in content from earlier mini-SITREPS; there are fewer articles about the Emergency and war and more about the Kenya we knew and loved. Articles by members are becoming fewer but I feel that eulogies, sadly, of which there are many, achieve the same result, and remind us of the sacrifices made by members and their families because of military service.
Some years ago, Margaret Lead (née McKenzie) dropped off a carton of Blackwood’s magazines (Maga) at the Howick SPCA where my wife Jenny works as a volunteer. Over a period of time I scanned all articles about East Africa, some of which appear in this edition.
Under its fifth editor, William Blackwood III, Maga became strongly identified as an essential part of the British colonial social life, found in every backwater club and station, the type of magazine George Orwell in the early 1940s characterised as being read by "the 'service' middle class", military service members and colonial civil servants, from whose ranks authors were drawn; professional writers who were very conscious of the fact that its readership was drawn from those who served or lived in the Colonies.
During WWI, sales of the magazine rose from an average of 9200 a month in 1914 to a wartime high of 26,000 in 1916. Likewise, WWII saw an equivalent jump from 9600 a month in 1939 to a post war high of 30,000 in 1946. But by the 1950s, the Magazine was in decline, due in part to changes in British society, tastes, and readership abroad.
The death of the British Empire also signalled the slow demise of Blackwood's Magazine, which had become identified so much with the activities of those who had once run British territories. As British colonies became independent, journalists, readers and contributors to the magazine could now only reminisce nostalgically about Britain's vanished empire, and of Maga's place in it.
Despite the best efforts of its last two editors, the magazine folded in December 1980. The firm followed soon after, losing its independent status under an amalgamation with the equally long lived firm Pillans & Wilson (P&W); thus ended a distinguished record of almost 180 consecutive years as one of Edinburgh's best known publishing firms.
In this modern technical age, my efforts to contact P&W have been in vain, and as all the authors of articles I will reproduce are long gone, I will publish in good faith. I can only assume that P&W suffered the same fate as Blackwoods?
The late Venn Fey’s wife Beth, lives in Underberg and has approved my using some of Venn’s articles from ‘Wide Horizons – Tales of a Kenya that has Passed into History’, with illustrations by Beth.
My thanks to Dennis Leete, Tim Hutchinson, Tom Lawrence et al for ongoing research, and to Billy Coulson and Mark Barrah for distributing unnamed photos in the hope that the missing details will be forthcoming.
Dennis Leete located Maj J.J. Drought’s diaries, has had then photographed and hopefully, excerpts will appear in future editions of m-S.
Lastly, my thanks to John Davis and his Committee, and to Ian Parker for having the foresight to photograph ledgers and albums before they were archived with the Imperial War Museum
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CORRESPONDENCE
John Pembridge [KR7429]
*****
Brian Carr Hartley [sKR215]
*****
Nigel Bulley
1- George McKnight [KR4246]; 2-Derek Brunner [KR3954]; 3-John Waldron [KR4784]; 4- Unknown; 5-Charles Hummer [KR4115]; 6-Nigel Bulley [KR3630]; 7-Tony Pritchard [KR4263]; 8-John Hudson [KR4236]; 9-Bombay Barrett [KR3978] or Jim Matheson [KR4224]; 10-Norman Adams [KR4254]; 11-Brian Turner [KR4011]; 12-Neville Millican [KR4268]; 13-Monty Brown [KR3902]
[Ed: In the hope that we can finalise names, have enlarged the in-the-tent, below Charles Hummer’s tea mug, smoking #4].
*****
Brian Ennis [KR4257] responds to Billy Coulson’s request for names of the Fort Jericho men in the photo on page 1 of m-S XLV. I spent my two years with ‘B’ Coy and knew your Dad quite well. Our OC was Major Ray Nightingale. ‘B’ Coy finished up as part of ‘O’ Coy also commanded by Ray. I managed to get out in November 1955.
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Re: the Photo. #10 is Norman Adams; # 1 could be Mike Tucker; #2 could be Derek Brunner; # 11 is Brian Turner; #13 I think is Monty Brown, and I think #9 is Bombay John Barrett. Correct are : Hudson #8, Bulley #6, Pritchard #7 and Hummer #5. I am sure about Adams and Turner.
I still keep in touch with Tony Pritchard in Tasmania, Nigel Bulley now in the Cape. My good friend Peter Reynolds [KR3963], sadly died last year. It seems most of those special people I spent such special times with, are passing on to more peaceful situations, your Dad included.
**
Billy Coulson
I often met Ray Nightingale [KR1342] as a youngster and again later when I was an Officer in The British Army. He was an impressive character and then when I learnt that he had passed SAS selection at 42 and been involved in rescuing hostages from the American Embassy in London, I was even more impressed. Dad was a highly organized and driven person, with highly developed leadership skills and I am convinced that his time working closely with Ray honed these skills which he put to such good use in later life.
Can you tell me exactly when was ‘B’ Company was amalgamated into ‘O’ Company? My Dad told me he was Sergeant Major ‘O’ Company for two months before his release; was it Jan 1955 or late 1954?
We have all seen Peter and Lofty Reynolds [KR4461] here in Kenya over the years. I was aware that they had both been in ‘B’ Company and was regaled as a boy with many ‘B’ Company stories by my Dad, and Lofty especially. This is where my interest in The Regiment started. Another coincidence is that my daughter was at school in the UK with, and is quite close to a girl called Juno Anderson whose Grandfather was Peter Anderson MC, OC ‘B’ Coy prior to Ray .
Sadly people are moving on and I was sad to hear Nigel Bulley’s brother Spike had passed on; another name that got a regular mention in our house.
**
Dennis Leete to Brian Ennis: Billy copied me into your E mail: Good to hear you are well
Yes, sadly the final chapter is on our doorsteps now. It’s always the case, that we wait too long, then ask the questions, too late!
If my memory serves me right, I left ‘I’ Company in September 1954 to go to Egerton College (with Pete Reynolds) so the amalgamation to form ‘O’ Company, must have occurred in Jan 1955. We were distraught to hear of Pete's passing, so soon after he returned to Australia. He was with us for a lunch, a couple of weeks before he left, and in very good spirits; hoping to get back to Kenya, in a few months time, to catch up with his long-time friend, Frankie Cuthill, a neighbour from Molo, who used to look after the Reynolds’ very young kids when they went away for a few days. Their son Connor is in Kenya at this moment on a ten day assignment, and we hope to see him this evening at the Gilgil Club. Julie, his eldest, is my god-daughter.
Ronnie Boy [KR3730], another survivor from ‘B’ Company, lives in Thika, and though we see him once in a blue moon he remains a good friend.
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George Mc Knight is in Mauritius on a week’s holiday with his school day’s girlfriend, Chris Harte who now lives in England. For the last 26 years, every second Sunday of January, George throws a lunch curry party called the ‘Class of 46’ which is his anniversary of joining the Prince of Wales school. There are usually about fifteen old boys plus wives and widows and it is a great reunion with a few beers and Pimms; and chat about who is left. It is now the Class of 46, 47, 48 and even 49, to keep up the numbers!
*****
Aylwin Halligan-Jolly [KR6194]
Must say both the Sitreps [XLIV and XLV] have been very favourably received by all the watu. I decided to initially send them via email, then print and distribute hard copies for those without internet connections or computers and/or poor eyesight.
We have three options for the KRAWA lunch but I think next year we will return to the Bayswater Hotel in around September/October.
*****
Stan Bleazard
*** Robin to Stan: [28/11/2014]: Unfortunately, I can't add to the above incident but hopefully every little bit of info helps? I knew the family pretty well and can confirm that their farm was at Moiben. I knew the youngest son Gerald Alec [KR4383], then known as Alec and living in Zimbabwe, better than Phil, and brother, Robert. Their father was a retired Brigadier - I think Gurkhas but could have been Indian Army. When I was at the PoW I spent many holidays with Gerry at the farm, and later, visited quite often when I was with the Plateau Wattle Company in Eldoret; but neither Phil nor Robert were around much at the same time. [Ed: Gerry Alec died in Harare, Zimbabwe on 18th September 2011.]
Incidentally Gerry and I were on the same Rhodesia course (4th course, 1953), and were both Home Guards with Support Coy; lost contact until we met up again after I joined the Kabete Veterinary Laboratory, and he was married and living in Karen.
By the way - I have been in pretty frequent contact with Doug Bird's son, Piers, in England, and nephew, David, in Queensland - David inherited his uncle's love of flying.
*****
Don Rooken-Smith [KR4969]
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when he was 19? On page 4, Stan Bleazard mentions Brig. Phillip Myburg; he and wife Bumpty lived at Moiben. He did a bit of horse class judging at the Eldoret Show at one time, and was a keen tennis player. Page 41. I shall try emailing Jim Pirie as I am interested to hear which ranch near Naivasha he ran, and the Timboroa farms. I found his article interesting, but then again how many of us have similar tales!
*****
Ian Campbell-Clause [KR6035]
Secondly on the subject of Rothschild giraffe - about seven were taken to Kigio Ranch; which is adjacent to Malewa Bush Venture Camp run by Chris & Chris C-C, where those attending the Regimental reunion, camped in November 2013. Joanna Lumley [Ed: Of Gurkha fame.] compèred a video of the transport and release of the animals. Last I heard they were reproducing well.
Lastly, I owe you an apology. Obviously I have quite a mental lag! The terrorists I interrogated took me for a ride. However, this was because when I first reported to my DMIO, a Captain Mansbridge, I was told I would be on a charge if I so much as waved a pen at a terrorist.
Jim Wallace's gang of thirteen or so, were obviously telling the terrorists they brought out, exactly what questions I had to ask and were told what answers to give. This extended to telling me they each had been educated at the African Inland Mission Kijabe. As I say, I apologise for advising you that 110 or whatever terrorists had all been educated at the same school; should have thought of it sooner. [Ed: Jim Wallace was an FIO during the Emergency and awarded the GM [01/05/1956]; apparently Jim gave a lecture of his experiences at his old school in UK, and where he left his notes. Efforts to contact Jim’s widow in the Eastern Cape, proved fruitless, so, unless a reader can advise me which school Jim attended, his story remains untold.]
I asked them why they were helping us to catch their friends and was told that as we had won that war, they wanted to save as many as possible for the next one. I laughed - couldn't see it!
*****
Mike Innes Walker [KR4426]
Over the years there have been articles in m-S with which I have had personal experience or connection - this edition contains two.
Firstly, the comment by Brian Carr-Hartley (page 2) where he mentions that the second 'Tree Tops', built by Eric Sherbrooke Walker (ESW), was burnt down by Mau Mau. At that time I was attached to 'D' Company 7 KAR, stationed at Marrion’s farm, Mweiga, not far from Tree Tops.
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That night our sentries raised the alarm and we saw the flames from our camp. Mine was the duty platoon, so next morning, at first light, we were sent to check out the situation. Despite a lengthy and very thorough search we found no trace or sign of Mau Mau.
Naturally there was considerable discussion in the camp about the incident, for some three days earlier several of us had seen a number of trucks full of furniture leaving the area. The following is an extract from ESW's 'Tree Tops Hotel', published in 1962:
"Sad and crestfallen, we motored back to Nyeri. Not only had we muffed a first-class chance of dealing with some Mau Mau but we also had put an end to any hopes of keeping Tree Tops open. No longer would the terrorists give it immunity. Therefore, with a heavy heart I decided that the tree would have to be abandoned.
"That very same day I took a couple of lorries there and carted away all the furniture and fittings, leaving only a bare shell. We locked and wired up the doors and windows, and winched up the ladder".
Incidentally, ESW also owned the Outspan Hotel, one of the Regiment's favourite 'watering holes'. He was a colourful character, for not only was he a 'bootlegger' during the US prohibition, he had a remarkable military record. [Ed: An article about ESW is contained on pp 28/29]
Secondly, the photo of the Lincoln over the Aberdares (page 5), brings to mind 'a close encounter'. During a routine forest patrol we were resting up when we heard a Lincoln approaching at low level. I knew we could be seen, so I told my askaris to take cover and then took off my hat and shirt, stood in the open and hoped for the best. The crew must have seen me as I saw the rear turret guns swivel away as it flew overhead.
Some 36 years later, I was playing in a tennis tournament on Norfolk Island (South Pacific) and got talking to a lady spectator. Somehow the subject of Kenya came up and when I enquired further, she told me that her husband had flown Lincoln bombers during the Kenya emergency - SMALL WORLD!!
On that same patrol we 'walked off my map' and got lost. Fortunately, Punch Bearcroft [KR3142] was buzzing around in his PRAW Piper Tri-Pacer and I managed to contact him on my not very reliable 88 set. Telling me to 'stay put', he said that he would return and airdrop a new map, which he did. The map, which I still have, was well wrapped-up, around a Tusker bottle (empty?).
*****
Colin Billowes [KR4385] < [email protected]>: 2014 has been a largely non-eventful year except for the sad news that Bobbie and I have decided to go our separate ways. Things were simply not working and I think it is for the best.
On the health front, my only problem has been a painful pinched nerve in my right buttock which had the unfortunate affect of allowing my right leg to fold up without warning from time to time. Fortunately, none of these tumbles were serious, so no harm was done. I have not had a great deal of experience with chiropractors - one time many years ago one tried to fix my bad disk in my back without success. However, a good friend of mine highly recommended his, so I decided to give it another go. I am delighted to report that the treatments were a complete success, if painful. His principal treatment consisted of rolling me up in a ball and jumping on me - but it worked.
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I'm still playing golf and tennis regularly although a leg problem did slow me down a bit but I seem to be mostly over this now. I think that part of the slowing down can also be attributed to the fact that I will be 80 next year - an age I really never expected to achieve.
Indeed, it exceeds the predictions of my late and unlamented sergeant major, Joe Cameron, by 61 years.
[LEFT: CSM CAMERON AFTER A KGVI POP.]
[Ed: Photo provided by Elva Mitchell, formerly married to Bill Botha KR4190.]
I am still enjoying my Rolls-Royce and ALFA Romeo cars, which I keep in Ottawa. I love to take them to classic car shows. About half way between Ottawa and Montréal on the north side of the Ottawa river is the biggest log cabin in the world. It is in fact the luxury hotel named Monte Bello and every year they hold an Italian car show, which is attended by people from both Ottawa and Montréal and even further afield. This year over 200 classic Italian cars attended in the beautiful setting alongside the water.
One amusing incident occurred when somebody produced a camera-carrying drone which spent some time flying up and down over the cars taking pictures. Needless to say, this was not a popular activity, especially in the eyes of the Ferrari people who were worried about the thing crashing on their very expensive cars. I hope the owner of the drone had good insurance.
Had a nice little Christmas present from the tax man; I, together with many others, made a charitable contribution in 2003 which was disallowed so we appealed it. Over the years I would get the occasional letter from the tax man saying it was still under review but I don't think I have heard anything for about the last four years. Then out of the blue, I get a letter saying that the appeal has been partially accepted and that I will be getting a refund with interest. When I called them they said they had no idea how much I would get but it was certainly in the four figures. I had pretty well forgotten all about it so it came as a nice surprise. Who says the taxman is always a villain!
I have mentioned before that I enjoy volunteering at the Naples classic car museum (the Collier Museum) where I occasionally give tours but mostly prepare research reports on some of the collection. These are published in our newsletter and the reward for this is a ride in the car when it is given a road test, as each car is, at least once a year.
Just yesterday, I was invited to take a ride in our 1926 Hispano Suiza roadster [LEFT], which was a great experience. The last time I rode in a Hispano was in about 1953 in Kenya when I helped a friend overhaul his Hispano. His car at the time was simply seen as a somewhat beat up old tourer - the one I rode in
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yesterday is worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars and is in perfect condition. I've searched through my old negatives for a picture of the Kenya car without success. Any of my old Kenya buddies remember anything about this?
So here's wishing you all a healthy, happy and prosperous 2015, with an emphasis on HEALTHY for many of you.
*****
A MOUNT KENYA EVENING
['62']
In the Mount Kenya forests, the trees seem to grow taller and more friendly as the evening closes in; and the bird-song dwindles as the stars blink with increasing strength from the darkening sky. The askaris, as usual, did not notice this as they began to shuffle in their packs for the tins of meat and vegetables they would eat for their evening meal. The day's work was over and there would be no ambush that night: we could relax until tomorrow, when the dawn would remind us that our patrols must go out again.
One of the askaris crawled out of his bivouac at the whispered, but none the less impressive, summons of the African sergeant-major. He tucked in his shirt and laced his jungle-boots sulkily, pulled his smock over his head, and picked up his rifle and ammunition. He was the escort to the Kikuyu porters who carried our heavy kit when the platoon moved to a new forest base and who were now going down to the stream to fetch water in the big tureen for the evening brew of tea.
In my bivouac I surveyed my own assortment of tins to decide which should be my supper. 'Mutton Scotch Style,' 'Steak and Kidney Pudding,' or 'Corned Beef'? After a minute or two of the most careful consideration my favour finally settled upon the 'Corned Beef,' and I was just about to reach for the tin when I heard a faint, respectful and apologetic cough. I looked up to see the oldest of the porters looking down at me. He was a wizened little man with sunken eyes and a lined skull-like face; his head and jowls were covered with short, sparse, stubbly grey hairs which, against his brown skin, suddenly reminded me of the burned gorse on the moors at home.
"Well, what's the matter?" I said. "Effendi," he said, wringing his hands in a nervous manner and glancing fearfully over his shoulder, "I have come to tell you the grievances of the porters." Once again he glanced over his shoulder, and then continued in the unmistakable tones of a man who is quietly submitting to the greatest injustices.
"All is not well with us, Effendi. We are made to carry loads heavier than we can bear, and that is very hard, very hard. We have to fetch the water, dig the choos (latrines) and the rubbish pit, and we are treated harshly by the sergeant-major, who makes fun of us," Suddenly he seemed to break under the weight of the porters' collective woes. "Effendi, this is not work for men, we are made to do too much work, we do not wish to stay - we want to go home to our villages," he said, in a sudden rush of words, looking fearfully at me to see if his worries had aroused my anger. Poor old man, I thought, gazing sympathetically at his woeful figure, perhaps the sergeant-major does push them about too much.
"Old man," I said, in what I hoped was a reasonable tone, "I understand your troubles, but you must realise that we have ours too. After all, is it not your own tribe that has started all the killing and has caused us to be here? I want to go home too, so do the askaris and the sergeant-major. Do you think we want to be here and do this sort of work every day? You will have to stay here and do what you're told as long as we are here; this is your tribe's affair as much as ours, and you must help us in any way you can. It is much safer to dig holes than to go on patrol: your lot is not as hard as you 8
think. Do you understand?" "Yes, bwana." He did not understand at all, and stared at his feet in the trampled leaves outside my bivouac.
He turned round and shuffled off, and I turned once again to my 'Corned Beef,' musing on the incongruity of an old man begging favours from one with less than half his years.
Suddenly there was a commotion among the bivouacs, and I turned to see the old porter, a spiteful and fearful expression on his face, cowering before Sergeant Alphonso, a wise, gentle, old Achole tribesman from Uganda. Alphonso was shaking with unaccustomed rage, and beating the Kikuyu about the shoulders with a stick.
"You deceitful, impertinent, worthless son of a snake," he hissed between the blows - Sergeant Alphonso even in his anger was mindful of the order forbidding speech above a whisper during the day - "who gave you permission to go to the bwana Lieutenant with your whines? You idle creature, you're not worth this stick I have in my hand. You're given a coat and a blanket and a shilling a day for sitting about doing nothing while the askaris walk their feet off looking for your relations. Go away into your bivouac and tell the other old women that the sound of your whining makes us feel sick and we do not want to hear it again."
The porter scuttled off between the grinning groups of askaris, who were enjoying the spectacle of old Alphonso in one of his infrequent rages, though their amusement was tempered by the hope that his anger would pass before he sat down to talk at the fire after supper; for, once aroused, Alphonso's anger was to be avoided. But this time he seemed to toss aside his feeling with his stick, as, wagging his head from side to side, and clicking his tongue he strode off to prepare his supper. I decided to let the matter rest until Alphonso explained it, as I knew he would in his own good time.
But this would not do, it was getting dark and I had not started cooking supper. I decided to fry the 'Corned Beef' in a little margarine - I had contrived to save half a tin of margarine from the last ration period - with some vegetables. A second examination of my array of tins showed me no vegetables but several superfluous tins of cheese.
I took a tin of cheese across to the bivouac in which Lance Corporal Nzuku was reading Private Erupe's letter to him for the third time. Erupe, like the majority of the askaris, cannot read. Nzuku was the wireless operator, and he took great pride in displaying his advancement in the world by reading the askaris' letters for them. Nzuku's expression was in sympathy with the sentiments of the letter, but his voice gave no one word more emphasis than another. Erupe's face was twisted in an effort to concentrate; he was a very simple Turkhana, and did not easily understand what he was hearing.
They both looked up and smiled widely when they heard me approach. For a moment we studied the tin of cheese in my hand and looked knowingly at each other. "I want to exchange my tin of cheese for a tin of peas, Nzuku," I said. Nzuku considered the matter gravely for a moment or two before replying. "That would be difficult, Effendi," he said, "I have only a large tin of peas and you bring me a small tin of cheese. Now if there were perhaps a tin of jam as well . . ."
For two minutes we discussed the relative merits of peas, cheese and jam, while Erupe frowned at his letter. He had lost interest in food for the time being, his face was a picture of concentration once again; the simple words of the letter had carried him back to his village, to his brothers and to his new wife whom he had bought on his last leave after what seemed like endless saving.
A quick mental picture of the cans on my shelf showed me that the jam could be spared. With solemnity we exchanged the peas for the cheese and jam. It was a good bargain, I decided; I could
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use the other half of the tin of peas for supper tomorrow with perhaps the 'Steak and Kidney Pudding.'
Darkness had fallen quietly and unobtrusively, a gust of wind rustled the undergrowth and drew weary creaks and groans of protest from the tall trees. The sergeant-major loomed up in the shadows to report that the sentries were properly arranged and to ask how many men would be required for the dawn patrol tomorrow. His African face was serious beneath his jungle hat, but the twinkle in his voice made me laugh as I gave instructions.
My supper had been a success; a self-heating soup, corned beef, cheese and biscuits and the inevitable cup of tea. I felt smug and self-satisfied, and enjoyed a few minutes complimenting myself on my cooking and in turn being gratified by the compliment of so accomplished a diner.
Usually my efforts at cooking were attended by a gleeful little gremlin who blew smoke in my eyes, tipped soup in the fire, glued meat to the bottom of my mess tin, and transformed my potato powder to an uneatable fibre. Nevertheless my accomplishment, I admitted ruefully to myself, was confined to 'Corned Beef,' 'Steak and Kidney' and those other solid Service dishes which baffle the insides of the consumer, and that limitation was likely to last for some time.
The Africans were sitting round the two fires, chatting and drying their socks and jungle boots. I searched in my pack for a cigarette, lit the candle on the makeshift shelf in my bivouac and went over to one of the fires. The askaris moved over to make room for me on the log. There was a silence as they watched me search for a match. Sergeant Alphonso pulled a blazing branch from the fire and held it out to me. I gingerly lit my cigarette from one of the huge yellow flames dancing on its glowing surface. I wondered how to mention the porter affair without immediately disrupting the easy atmosphere of the little group round the fire. Erupe reached for a steaming sock, examined it carefully and with a quiet grunt of satisfaction began to put it back onto his foot.
"What news of your wife, Erupe?" I asked. "She is well, Effendi," he said with pride, smoothing the still steaming sock on his foot. "And when are you going to buy another?" He chuckled with delight. "Ahe, Effendi, the army is hard; little money, not always enough food, even less leave and always too much work - how am I to seek another wife?" "You must work hard to become a corporal and then a sergeant, and then you will have enough money to buy five more wives."
The thought of Erupe as an N.C.O. made both him and the others exclaim and laugh, "Just imagine it, Erupe as bwana belt, he will need five wives to polish it!" (The African RSM's highly polished Sam-Browne was an object of much wonder among the askaris.) "Even if, after one hundred years, you got the belt, Erupe, you would only lose it to the makorras in Nairobi; why, perhaps 'the general' here would steal it with your money as well to help him raise a new army," said Old Alphonso with a smile.
'The general' was a captured Mau Mau leader loaned to us by the police as a tracker-cum-informer for that area. Apart from an astonishing ability to eat almost anything and talk incessantly about his own importance, he had so far been remarkably useless. On this occasion, however, he hastily disclaimed such deeds. "I have told you before I am a colonel, not a general, and you do me wrong to call me a makorra; it is the old porter who was a makorra, not I - I am a colonel."
"That old man is a bad one," said Alphonso. "Last night he was sitting by this fire boasting to us how he and his friends used to beat up and rob the askaris in River Road and on the train to Mombasa when they went on leave before the war; I remember it got so bad that we were not allowed into the city because of the makorras. He boasts one day, and the next he is impertinent, but he will not try his tricks again, you'll see."
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"I'm not a makorra, I'm a colonel," 'the general' began pompously. "Shut your noise, you old wind- box, you're a Mau Mau and that is much worse," said Kaboya, a lively and aggressive little corporal.
So that was old Alphonso's reason, I thought. The old man was one of those dangerous and often brutal tricksters at whose hands the older askaris had often suffered in the days before the war. It was easy to picture a young askari on the first day of his annual leave wandering round the more dubious back streets of Nairobi, strutting about in his smart uniform and occasionally patting a pocket that seemed to contain a great deal of money.
A simple man like Erupe perhaps, with ideas of a wife or a cow or two goats, excitedly filling his mind. Then suddenly to wake up, aching and bewildered, with not even the uniform left. The little man had almost convinced me with his woes; I wondered what sort of fool he thought I was. But I suddenly realised how very little I knew about Africans, how wrong it was to expect them to conform to European standards and ideals which they neither wanted nor understood. The old porter had thought to get away from this work which he did not like, or at least to lessen his own tasks.
Alphonso had hit him because he despised such people in particular and the Kikuyu in general, not because he had tried to deceive an officer; for did not every askari do just that when it suited him? It was a common practice to do so, just as it was for the batmen to steal an occasional sock or handkerchief. Everyone knew the bwana officers were all rich, so it was natural to take a pair of socks. If they really needed them that much, they would wear them anyway.
Deceit and theft were two words which these soldiers did not understand; but expediency they did, and for them it was far more important than a multitude of European morals. There was no personal dislike in the matter, and if such an affair should be discovered - well, the consequences were to be accepted cheerfully as a punishment for foolishness in allowing oneself to be discovered.
So, I mused as I enjoyed my cigarette, there was really nothing to the incident at all. As far as the Kikuyu was concerned his scheme had failed and he accepted his punishment as a forfeit. As far as Sergeant Alphonso was concerned, he had shown the Kikuyu makorra that he would not be allowed to have his own way even if it was not very hard to hoodwink the Lieutenant. As for me - well, I would have done a great deal better if I had applied my jungle boot to the old rogue's backside in the first place rather than appeal to a better nature which he did not possess, and which he would have despised if he had.
The askaris were laughing at Sergeant-Major Lemian's words, "Truly," he reflected contentedly, "in my house I am the bwana CO." "You are indeed fortunate to be the bwana CO in your house," said Kipsang ruefully as the gurgles of laughter faded, "in my house I am not even bwana two-i-cee; and, ahe, the last time I went to see the bwana CO in battalion HQ, he put me in jail for being late at the end of my leave, although I told him it was really the fault of the train and not me - I think I am much better off in the forests."
"Yes, you would be stupid enough to think that, Kipsang," said the sergeant-major. "If you have a head of rock you will go to jail until it becomes soft enough for some sense to enter, then when you come out you can still go home to your mother and father on your next leave, but here in the forest if you are charged by a rhino, trampled by an elephant or shot by a Mau Mau - what will your mother say then?" He shook his head in mock sorrow at the stupidity of the young men of today.
Behind us there was a sudden thud, and a squeal of delight. Ngati's face appeared in the fire-light; he had speared a large forest rat on a stick. Last night one of these rats had eaten a whole packet of
11
biscuits from his bivouac, and then added insult to injury by scampering off over Ngati's face, so tonight he had been ambushing the rubbish-pit to wreak his revenge.
"You are very fierce tonight, Ngati," I said. "Yes, Effendi, tonight I am extra brave." "Well, as a reward for your skill and your courage you may do an ambush all by yourself this evening." Ngati's face was a picture of dismay. "A la!" he exclaimed. He put his hand to his mouth and his eyes rounded with horror at the thought of a night outside his sleeping bag. "Yes, you may ambush the rubbish-pit all night with your panga," I said.
With a gesture of mock dismay he tossed the dead rat and the stick into the rubbish-pit and ran off, laughing amidst the laughter, to the group round the other fire.
Nearby the raucous calico-tearing call of a hyrax drowned the other night noises. It was answered by others all round us, until the whole forest echoed with their barks and whinnies. A log snapped and settled suddenly in the fire, raising a flurry of sparks. I realised that I was feeling tired and looked at my watch. It was a quarter-past eight. I rose and stretched myself.
"Well, good night." "Good night, Effendi," echoed behind me as I walked away. The sentry was a lonely black shape huddled beside his Bren gun and I knelt down to chat with him for a moment before retiring to my bivouac.
The candle had been snuffed out by a predatory breath of wind, but that did not matter, it would mean an inch saved for another evening. I made a sleepy mental note to ask for more to be sent up with the next rations as I pulled off my jungle boots and climbed into my sleeping bag.
The last things I heard as I fell asleep were the chuckles and muttering of the askaris round the fires and in their bivouacs. Soon the last few Africans retired, and the fires slowly died into smouldering heaps of ash. The night enveloped the sleeping camp and we were lost in the anonymity of the forest, merged with the heart of it.
It seemed almost unbelievable that we existed at all, but in the darkness the sentries huddled motionless, gazing down the darkened game tracks, guarding the bonds of the illusion that was our camp.
[Blackwood's Magazine : Number 1686 : April 1956]
*****
MAY THEY REST IN PEACE
They went with songs to the battle, they were young, Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow, They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted, They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them. [Laurence Binyon] Since mini-SITREP XLV was printed, we have been advised of the deaths of the following members. In ( ) the name of the member/source whence the information came: [See also page 76]
12
Alp, John Robin Blackburn [KR7330]. 22/01/2015. Slindon, West Sussex (brother Gordon) Armstrong, Cherien, wife of Mike [KR4026]. 03/01/2015. Vredehoek, Cape (Geoff Trollope) Baillon, Topsy (née Mercier). 03/12/2014. Pietermaritzburg (The Witness) Banting, Christopher William Villiers [KR4881]. 07/11/2013. Mandurah, WA (Jim Landells) Bowser, Ted, husband of Diana, formerly Crow (*Gordon 6033) 02/02/2015. Ballito (Ros Moore) Bulley, Rodney Kenneth (Spike) [KR3523] 15/12/2014. Durban (Anne Smith) Campbell, Robert Ian Martin [KR4239/5742]. 12/06/2014]. Nairobi (George McKnight) Campbell-Gillies, Hamish [KR4441]. 01/02/2015. Hawaii (wife Jane (née Ferguson)) Caukwell, Robert Arthur [KR4372/5667]. 10/02/2015. UK (Bill Jackson) Cole, Zara Joy wife of Stewart [KR4361]. 25/03/2015. Howick, RSA (The Witness) Esnouf, Joseph Paul [KR6137] 05/08/2014. Durban (daughter Charmaine) Fernandes, Michael Henry Luis [3949] 05/01/2014. Nanyuki (Bobby Fernandes) Francombe, Ian Westray [KR6812] 25/12/2014. Kent (Ian Morrison) Irwin, John Henry Ernest [KR4187]. 29/11/2014. Albany, W Australia (Neil McDonald) Hall, North Joseph Alfred (Alf). 17/04/2015. Pietermaritzburg. (Wife Ayliffe) Jennings, Alan William [KR4192] 25/11/2014. Mombasa. (Peter Rodwell) Jones, Dennis John [KR3614/5799] 27/01/2015. Johannesburg (Keith Elliot) Lester, David Ivor [KR4131]. 18/11/2014. Howick, KwaZulu-Natal (wife June) Marais, Joseph Maritz [KR4297]. 13/11/2014. Pietermaritzburg (Boet de Bruin) McCartney, Brian (Bing) Edward [KR3323]. 01/01/2015. UK (brother John) Millar, William Russell (Rusty) [KR4456]. 18/12/2014. California (Dennis Leete) Nicholson, Ernest [KR4503]. ??.??.??. Thailand (Iain Morrison) Pape, Anthony (Tony) Paul [KR6031]. 28/08/2014. Mombasa (Tony Shepherd) Prinsloo, Francis (née Daniel). 22/03/2015. Maun, Botwana (brother, James Daniel) Seal, Michael Robin, husband of Sylvia (née Urquhart). 12/04/2015. Howick (The Witness) Shaw, Giles Eric [KR4785]. 21/02/2015. Queensland (Alastair Bax) Spence, William Robert McAllen (Mac) [KR4640/5884]. 30/01/2015. Nairobi (Dennis Leete) Temple-Boreham, Freda wife of Morrice [KR680] 26/01/2015 Howick, RSA (The Witness) Templer, Justin Gauntlett [KR6019]. 08/01/2015. Bristol (Iain Morrison) Williams, Rory Frazer (Bill) [KR7430]. 19/02/2015. Nanyuki (John Pembridge)
*****
RODNEY KENNETH (SPIKE) BULLEY [KR3523]
[02.06.1926 - 15.12.2014]
[son Bruce]
Rodney Bulley was born in Pietermaritzburg, and with his parents Ken & Vangie, moved to Kenya in 1928. After attending the Prince of Wales School in Nairobi, he enlisted into the Kenya Regiment [31st March 1945] and in 1946 was seconded to the KAR for movement control of troops on Lake Tanganyika. During the Emergency he served with the Kenya Police Reserve. [LEFT: SPIKE AND HIS DOGS.] After the war, he went to Rhodes University in Grahamstown, where he met and later married Jean Bulley (née Leighton) in 1951. He picked up the nickname Spike from his school days, but always preferred, and introduced himself as Rod.
13
His entire working career was spent with Car & General in Nairobi, as a company director and factory manager. Jean and Rodney were married for 63 years.
Rodney had a great love of Kenya where he lived life to the full, travelling widely and with a passion for the outdoors, the wildlife, shooting, fishing and working his beloved dogs. He continued training gun dogs when they emigrated to South Africa in 1982, his efforts rewarded when his last Labrador ‘Kali’, became a South African Field Trial champion.
Quiet and understated, Rodney will be remembered for his unwavering dignity, courtesy and appreciation to others, even during the last difficult months of his life - a perfect gentleman to the end.
Under the wide and starry sky Dig the grave and let me lie Glad did I live and gladly die Here he lies where he longed to be Home is the sailor, home from the sea And the hunter home from the hill (Robert Louis Stevenson)
*****
BOOK REVIEWS
GROWING UP IN COLONIAL EAST AFRICA - COCKTAIL HOUR UNDER THE TREE OF FORGETFULNESS'
[Alexandra Fuller] (Simon & Schuster)
This book returns to follow a similar vein to her first best seller 'Don't Let's Go to The Dogs Tonight'.
This time, Fuller writes about the life of her mother, Nicola (Bobo) Fuller, who was one of the mesmerising characters in the first book, where the author does not describe her mother in a flattering way. Here, as if to make amends, she tries to explain why her mother was the crazy, mad, alcoholic person who careered through the pages of 'Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight'.[Ed: Understand Nicola was the daughter of Roger Huntingford, who worked with the Eldoret Agricultural Department. When they first came out to Kenya they lived at Kaptagat, and Nicola visited Hugh and Zoe Foster, and became friends with their daughter Mary, and the chimp Stephen; explains the photo on the cover. My brother Don wrote an article about Stephen in m-S XXXIV – June 2007].
Throughout 'Cocktail Hour', her mother accuses her (the author) of researching and digging up background to 'write another awful book'. It is obvious that being an author and writing about one's family is a difficult thing to do.
One treads a fine line between one's own perceptions and the events as they happened. Fuller tries to understand the events that shaped her mother's life.
14
As the story unfolds, it is clear that the woman, who we have come to know as a vivacious and often dramatic person with a streak of eccentricity, is a product of an extremely unconventional upbringing.
Born on the Isle of Skye, she was brought out to Kenya with her parents to live in colonial East Africa. Her first friend was a chimpanzee called Stephen Foster, and from there she is shaped by her passion for horses and riding and her artistic temperament.
While many people see white colonials as spoilt and arrogant, this book may reveal another side to this strange tribe of people who manage to fall in love with a continent despite the many tragedies that occur.
This is an interesting and entertaining read, and a feather in Fuller's cap.
Trish Beaver
[Ed: Also by Alexandra Fuller - ‘Leaving Before the Rains Come’.]
*****
A LEOPARD IN THE KITCHEN
Old Africa magazine captures stories and vintage photos from East Africa’s past. One of the magazine’s most popular columns has been ‘Only in Africa’, short quirky tales that could only happen in Africa:
A tug-of-war with a python swallowing a beloved pet. Snakes in the loo. Goggling through the dust on bicycles on the red-murram Nairobi-Mombasa road. Morning tea prepared from last night’s bathwater. Driving between a giraffe’s legs at 60 mph. Fishing your boss’s false teeth out of the longdrop toilet.
And much more, including our title story of a leopard in the kitchen.
The amazing stories in this book have been compiled by the editors from the pages of Old Africa magazine. If you enjoy these stories, be sure to read Old Africa magazine, where new stories like these appear every issue.
****
THEY CALLED ME MEMSAHIB - THE STORY OF A HOTEL PIONEER IN KENYA
[Vanessa Noon Aniere] Packed with quality old photos, this story on the life of Eva Begbie Noon is an easy read offering new insight into what it was like to make a life in Kenya 100 years ago.
15
Eva Begbie arrives in Mombasa in 1912 with two small children to meet up with her husband Tom Begbie. Tom had gone ahead to Kenya to set up as a newspaper publisher in Nakuru. In Mombasa Eva is met with the devastating news that her husband has died. With only £1 in her purse, Eva gets off the ship and travels by train to Nairobi to visit her husband’s fresh grave and sort out his affairs.
In Nairobi she stays at The Boarding House above Ainsworth’s Bridge. In a strange turn of events, she eventually takes over the Boarding House. She meets a family friend Harry Noon and the two marry in 1913.
The two turn the Boarding House into the Salisbury Hotel, the start of a lifetime in the hotel industry. Later they start the Westwood Park Hotel in Karen. They go on to build their crowning achievement, the Nyali Beach Hotel, in the 1940s.
Eva’s son Alec learns to fly under Tom Campbell Black, an aviation pioneer in Kenya. The book offers wonderful photos and glimpses of the beginning of commercial aviation in Kenya.
The book is written in the first person, with the author using many of her grandmother’s own words as recorded by Jan Hemsing in a 1975 book on the Nyali Beach Hotel called Happiness Through Heartbreak.
Though the author calls the book a novel, it is essentially an accurate story of her grandmother’s life. By calling the book a novel, the author uses her “story teller’s license” to embellish the story with side notes and historical facts that her grandmother would have been likely to notice - anything from Ali Khan wearing fancy blue sunglasses in 1912 and wielding a long rhino hide whip as he collects passengers at the Nairobi Railway station, to comparative histories of other hotels in Kenya to a history of Zanzibar.
Though these additional historical bits are interesting, they detract a bit from the main story, which is how Eva Begbie Noon overcame tragedy to establish her family in Kenya and their contribution to the hotel and aviation industry.
Despite minor spelling errors scattered through the text (eg. Mtwapa Creek is spelled Mwatapa or Mwtapa and the country of Cyprus is spelled Cypress), the story, the amazing photos and quality printing and paper make this book a handsome addition to any library on East African history.
Reviewed by Old Africa Staff.
They Called Me Memsahib is published by Mills Publishing, Nairobi, 2014. Available in leading bookshops in Kenya.
*****
16
BRITISH EAST AFRICA DISABLED OFFICERS’ COLONY AND BEYOND
Assembled by Tim Hutchinson, this well-researched book ‘BEADOC and Beyond’, is a 202-page collection of articles written about the forgotten Soldier Settlement scheme in Kenya after the First World War.
It was based in Kericho and designed to compensate the War Wounded, as part of their Gratuity, for services rendered to their country during the war.
It is a sad fact that, with the exception of one man, they all went bankrupt.
Included are the names of BEADOC members and their progeny.
This fourth Edition (2014) of BEADOC and BEYOND now includes the History of African Highlands Produce Co. Ltd, and early Tea Planting.
UK cheques for £12 which includes postage to a Kenya address (For overseas addresses please contact Rosemary to ascertain cost of postage) should be made out to and sent to
Mrs. R.Hutchinson Box 196 GILGIL 20116 Kenya Tel /Fax 050 50130 072-225 3047
M-Pesa for Shs 2400/- will also be accepted and should be sent to 072-225 3047 Shs 2000/- if collected.
*****
FROM MTOTO TO MZEE - STORY OF MY LIFE’S SAFARI
[Mervyn Maciel]
Mervyn Maciel was a Goan member of the Kenya Colonial Service. His autobiography is endearingly titled in Swahili ‘From Childhood to Elder.’ It is a wonderfully descriptive account including over 100 photographs. The book covers his time in government service in Kenya with the Provincial Administration and later the Agriculture Department, as well as his years in the UK after his position was Africanised.
Maciel’s many postings in remote parts of Kenya in the 1940s and 1950s gave him an unusual insight into colonial life and the role of the colonial service in Kenya’s development from colony to nation.
His father, Matthias Maciel, went to Kenya in the 1920s and worked in the Secretariat in Nairobi where Maciel was born in 1929. Maciel went home to a Catholic high school in Goa while his father continued to serve in Kenya during the war. Tragically, his father died while returning to Kenya after home leave in 1942 when a Japanese
17
submarine sank the British India liner in which he was travelling. Maciel’s mother had died in 1935 so as an orphan Maciel was brought up by his grandparents in Goa. On leaving school he took a job in Nairobi.
He arrived in Kenya in 1947 and first worked in the DC’s office, Nairobi, followed by postings to Mombasa and Voi. Seeking adventure, he applied for a posting in the Northern Frontier District (NFD) and was sent to Lodwar, the District HQ of Turkana District. It was a harsh, hot, dry, remote and lonely place, made bearable by the legendary DC, Leslie Whitehouse. Maciel got to know the Turkana, probably the toughest of all the tribes in Kenya. His next posting was to Marsabit District, where the Boma (HQ) on the mountain was under the charge of ‘Windy’ Wild, another long serving and redoubtable DC. Maciel befriended the Catholic missionaries there.
[LEFT: DC WINDY WILD, SIR EVELYN BARING AND ADC BRIAN HODGSON]
Maciel married Elsie Collaco, whose family lived at Kitale where her father worked for the Provincial Administration. After Marsabit, the couple moved to Kisii. Frustrated by his failure to gain promotion, Maciel applied for a transfer from the Provincial Administration to the Agriculture Department and was posted to Machakos as Provincial Office Superintendent. This entitled him to a European type house (which he got after lengthy argument) instead of an Asian type house, and 1st class passages for himself and his family’s home leave in Goa. His final posting was as Executive Officer in the Plant Breeding Station in Njoro in the Rift Valley. The work involved monitoring field trials instead of just office files, which appealed to his interest in farming.
In 1966, President Kenyatta announced that clerical jobs held by Goans were to be Africanised. A compensation package included a pension and passage to Goa or the UK. Maciel and many of his friends chose the UK. He bought a house in Sutton in Surrey, which he called ‘Manyatta,’ a Maasai word for a homestead. He built a new life for his family, working for a succession of companies, including Gestetner and British Gas.
Maciel was secretary of the local Catholic church and helped in a successful fundraising to build a new church there. He also became a Special Minister and Reader. He published Bwana Karani in 1985, his memoirs of his service in the Provincial Administration in Kenya. Elsie produced a cookery book of Goan recipes, which sold well both locally and in Goa.
Maciel’s book shows how he faced life with enthusiasm and determination. In Kenya he played cricket and tennis and went on safaris, shooting or fishing. He made friends everywhere and had a special bond with his cook. He wanted to join the Kenya Administration Club, which was formed in the UK after its members came home from Kenya. But the rules limited it to senior staff, which essentially meant white members only. After almost 40 years, the rule was waived and Maciel was invited to become a member and he has been able to enjoy the company of those with whom he served for so long. Reviewed by Peter Fullerton
This book is available directly from the author: Mervyn Maciel, ‘Manyatta’, 219 Collingwood Road, Sutton, Surrey, SM1 2LX (U.K.. Price: U.K. £8 (£10 inc. p & p) Rest of the World: £16
***** 18
CHRISTOPHER WILLIAM VILLIERS BANTING [KR4881]
(14th May 1934 - 7th November 2014)
[son Michael]
Born in Dar es Salaam, to Doris and Bill Banting. The family went to England when he was just two years of age; at his christening he ran around talking to everyone in fluent Swahili!
He went to Fiji with his parents and sister, Angela when he was six. This coincided with the arrival of Anne's family; Anne, Bill's wife-to-be was four. They were neighbours and remained on Fiji for the duration of WW2; they shared fond memories of Fiji and spoke of them often over the years.
After the war, the Bantings returned to England where Bill completed his education and played rugby and hockey for his school. He went out to Northern Rhodesia where he farmed with his uncle, before moving to Kenya where he attended Egerton Agricultural College.
He was drafted into the Kenya Regiment to do his National Service after which he farmed in the Molo district. Chris maintained a number of friendships from those days.
As luck would have it, in January 1956, Chris read in the local paper that Anne, her sister Liz and their parents had arrived in Kenya. Old acquaintances - dare I say flames - were rekindled and Chris and Anne were married in 1957.
They continued farming in Molo during which time Fiona and Alastair were born.
Chris was still playing rugby and hockey, and would occasionally take part in the odd fox hunt. On one occasion, suitably garbed and at full gallop, his mount stepped in a hole. Chris attempted to control the fall by grabbing the horse’s ears but gravity intervened, and so Chris, still holding onto the ears, kept travelling forward, describing a spectacular somersault over the horse's head, earning for himself the local legend as 'the young fellow who controlled his mount by the ears.'
Life was good in Kenya, but in 1960, having attended the last Regimental ball they headed for Mombasa and sailed to South Africa where they stayed with Chris’s parents in Durban, before again ‘returning to the land’. However, he did not enjoy farming in South Africa, and moved to Rhodesia where he worked for Hulletts, opening up huge tracts of the African bush and developing the sugar industry in the lowveld. Julie and Michael were born in Rhodesia.
Life was also great in Rhodesia, but in 1971 the company transferred Chris to Empangeni on Natal's north coast.
Eventually, he went into business for himself, becoming proprietor of the Crown Sebestos Paints distributorship for the Zululand region.
Corporate re-alignment resulted in a move to a management position in the car-hire division of an Aviation company, which, given his sociable nature, really suited him.
Chris and Anne then decided to return to England to look after Anne's by now aging parents. They bought a corner shop-cum-post office in Somerset where Chris once again proved to be a popular figure, especially around Christmas time when the results of his specially prepared 'punch' often resulted in him having to drive the odd customer home!
19
In 1983, rather than rely on the National health, they sold up and returned to South Africa where Chris underwent an operation.
In 1987, they moved to Australia. Stays in Busselton, Perth, Greenmount, Swan Hills, Scarborough and Australind all seem to have gone by, way too quickly.
Chris was a member of the Lions organisation for 27 years, helping to raise funds for various deserving causes, many of them as President of one or another branch.
He had a devilish sense of humour as generator and distributor extraordinaire of DAD jokes. He always said that he seemed to be holding the deep end of the prawn net while Mum would be cruising along at the shallow end.
Chris and Anne, married for 57 years, were great supporters of the Kenya Regiment Associations, and in recent years received great comfort and fellowship from members.
He will be missed by his children, grand children - Brendon, Marcus, Jessica, Michael, Jamie Lee and Nicholas, great grand children - Charlie, Isaac, Hayden, Tilly and Benjamin, and not least his puppy, Lizzy.
*****
WILLIAM MILBURN BARNES [KR6763]
29/07/1932-04/03/2000
[A.L. Allan]
William Milburn (Bill) Barnes died on 4th March 2000, after suffering from cancer. In his last days he worked to transfer his word-processing data for the April issue of the Survey Review, which was printed on time. Over 150 persons, including his widow Marjorie and their five daughters attended a service of thanksgiving for his life and work on the 11th March, to pay tribute to a man of talent, whose many social graces and infectious laughter impressed and endeared him to all he met.
Bill was educated at the King James I Grammar School, Bishop Auckland, from 1943 to 1950 and gained a scholarship to read Geography with Surveying at King's College, Durham from 1950-53, where he gained his BSc.
Appointed to the Colonial Survey Service, he studied, under Col Biddle at University College London, for the Postgraduate Diploma in Surveying which he gained in 1954.
He was posted to the Survey of Kenya as Staff Surveyor and rose to the position of Assistant Director; during this period he was respected for the great care and accuracy with which he carried out his work, and the gracious way he accepted the need to perform his six months National Service in that country.
In 1966, he was appointed Senior Lecturer in the Department of Surveying and Photogrammetry at the University of Nairobi Kenya, and in 1972 he succeeded Laurie Adams [KR3158] as Head of Department. Thus began an academic career in which he was to command great respect for his skilful management and effective teaching.
20
In 1976, on the retirement of David Munsey from the Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenharn, he was appointed Senior Lecturer and later Principal Lecturer in the Department of Civil Engineering with responsibility for Surveying. This UK location enabled his talents to become widely respected by teaching colleagues through his support for the Annual Meeting of Teachers of Surveying. He acted as host for two such meetings. Through the aegis of these annual meetings, Bill was able to make very special practical and sensible contributions to discussions, again with great humour and charm and without causing offence.
Perhaps Bill's greatest contribution to the surveying profession, was his secondment, in 1983 to 1985 as Professor of Land Surveying, to the Department of Land Surveying, University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad. His task was to establish a 1st degree course in Land Surveying. Still his usual cheery workmanlike self, and very capably assisted by Ken Pugh, he recruited efficient staff, established and equipped the fine laboratories, and put flesh on the structural bones of the curriculum. He was self-effacing about his own academic ability, and preferred to encourage others to carry out research and development under his guidance. He was an effective, enthusiastic teacher who motivated his students by example and precept. In fact he proved to be the ideal person to act as midwife at the birth of the new course in Land Surveying at the University of the West Indies.
In 1985, he returned as Principal Lecturer to the Department of Civil Engineering, Royal Military College of Science, Cranfield, where he remained until his retirement in 1997. During his time at RCMS he maintained a close relationship with the School of Military Survey Royal Engineers at Newbury, where his degree students did most of their photogrammetry, and where some went on to take other studies after graduation from the RCMS. He also liaised on geodesy matters with Dr J.E. Olliver at Oxford University thus keeping himself and his course in touch with current developments.
He was appointed as Editor of Survey Review in 1980. To this work he was again able to bring limitless tact and efficiency with great effect. It is a mark of his dedication to the preservation of this primary journal that he gave virtually his last hours to see that publication continued smoothly after his death.
On the personal side, Bill was a most enthusiastic and accomplished golfer. He was Captain of the prestigious Muthaiga Golf Club in Nairobi, where he and his colleague, Professor Laurie Adams, would carry out weekly research into 'applied ballistics". He was several times Chairman and/or Captain of the RCMS Golf Society at Shrivenham, whose greens often became the focus of his talent as a watercolourist.
He was a fascinating raconteur and could entertain with happy sounds on the piano. Throughout his life, he enjoyed the companionship and support of his wife Marjorie, and the joys of family life with their five daughters. The reason that Bill always seemed at home with himself was surely because of their devoted support.
We conclude with words from a respected former colleague, Ken Pugh, who said of Bill. "You know! Bill and I were like brothers! I've been trying to define what was special about him. I think that it is this. Most of us have a few friends and many acquaintances. With Bill it was the other way round". And so it was.
The Survey Review has lost an efficient, talented and respected Editor. July 2000
*****
21
LINCOLNS IN KENYA
John Harris [KR4485]
The following is an extract from a book I borrowed for reference purposes while making a model of an Avro Lincoln B2/4A SX976 (below) from a Tamiya Avro Lancaster B.Mk. I or III using a purchased resin conversion. [BELOW: JOHN’S MODEL OF A LINCOLN]
On 14th August 1954, tragedy struck for the second time at a Lincoln Squadron in Kenya. It was a Saturday, fine for once, with cloudless skies, and getting off to a good start with three successful strikes and a PR sortie in the morning. The crews had been stood down and were relaxing after lunch when a report came through that the Army had run across a large concentration of Mau Mau (known to the crews a Mickey Mices) in the Nyeri region.
A maximum-effort op was required immediately, and an on-the-spot meeting showed that three crews could be mustered by getting some out of bed, etc. The op was laid on so quickly that some of the crews had no time to change back into uniform, merely donning flying overall over their civvy clothes.
Fortunately three Lincolns were already fuelled and bombed up, so within less than an hour of first receipt of the request they were airborne, led by Flt Lt Steve Nunns and crew [RE332] who had already done a strike that morning. The other two Lincolns orbited Nyeri Hill while Nunns dropped down low to inspect the reported target, finding the cloud base to be only 900ft. Nunns bombed first from just below the cloud. Not knowing whether fuses were delayed or instantaneous, and conscious of being below safety height he slipped behind a hill for shelter as Flt Lt Roy Matthews flying RE299 followed him in to bomb; then came Flt Off Stan Crockford in SX976, his bombs being released at minimum interval, going down in a close, almost continuous stream.
As the first bomb exploded on impact with the trees, so its shock wave exploded the following bomb while still well above ground; the second did the same to the third, the string of sympathetic explosions passing right upwards, bomb by bomb, the final one bursting just below the open bomb bay of the Lincoln.
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Two large pieces of shrapnel passed vertically up through the bomb bay with tremendous velocity, one at the rear end, causing little damage. The other piece, however, came up through the cockpit floor, hitting the engine control pedestal and seriously injuring the flight engineer before passing out through the canopy roof. It knocked the two starboard propellers into fully coarse pitch, jamming the control levers and setting up a severe vibration which caused the pilot to think that both starboard engines had themselves been hit.
The navigator/radar operator, F/O 'Jeff' Jeffery, leapt forward to tend the stricken engineer, and to help feather the starboard engines. He and the other navigator, F/O Doug Malpas, did their best to lift the engineer out of his seat and into the nose, severely hampered by the aircraft having dual controls.
The cockpit was a frightful mess. Crockford had broadcast that he was in trouble, and inadvertently the R/T was left on in the heat of the moment so that the crews in the other two Lincolns heard the terrible agonies of Crockford's men as they escorted SX976 back to base.
By a skilled piece of flying, Stan Crockford somehow nursed his Lincoln back on two engines, along valleys, round hills, before setting her down perfectly at Eastleigh with no margin for error. Tragically, the flight engineer, Lou Pinn, died on arrival at sick quarters.
[Ed: I queried John’s mention of Avro Lincoln and Avro Lancaster in the same sentence – see para 2 above, because many readers are/were under the misconception that it was the Lancaster and not the Lincoln that was stationed in Kenya during the Emergency.
John responded: Four Marks of Lancaster were used during World War II - Marks I and III had Merlin engines, the B.MkI being powered by Rolls-Royce built Merlins and B.MkIII being powered by Packard-built (American) Merlins. Ground crew who worked on the engines used to fight over the toolkit that came from America because it was so comprehensive!
The BMkII was powered by Bristol Hercules radial engines. The fourth one was the B.MkX, built by Victory Aircraft in Canada and used mainly in Canadian squadrons in England.
Conversion is easily done – the Lincoln is 80% Lancaster. The alterations were new wing tips to increase the span, an extra bit to add to the fuselage to lengthen it aft of the bomb bay, a small alteration to the bottom of the rudders, a new nose, new engine nacelles to accommodate the semi circular radiators instead of the square ones and new type hubs for the main undercarriage – in our museum, the Lancaster B.MkVII (FE), built by Austin Motors, has these modified undercarriage legs and wheels, presumably changed during Aeronavale use. She never fired a shot in anger being finished in May 1945.]
*****
CHARLES BRAND BLACK DFC. RAFVR
[nephew John Black]
Born 17th May 1917 in Gourock, Renfrewshire, he was the younger of two sons to Matthew Alexander Black and Elizabeth Margaret Brand who emigrated to Kenya in the very early 1900s. Charles went to the Nairobi Primary School and the Prince of Wales High School.
On the 1st June 1939, he enlisted into the Kenya Police as an Assistant
23
Inspector, and on 5th June 1941 resigned to join the Royal Air Force on 5th June 1941.
After training, he and his friend John Nicoll (known as Freddie) were posted to 208 Squadron. The squadron had been reformed in Egypt in 1920, and joined the war proper when Italy declared war in June 1940. A number of Hurricanes were received at the end of that year and Charles found himself flying reconnaissance sorties for the advancing troops as they moved through Cyrenacia (now Libya). He was promoted to Sergeant on the 9 May 1942, and Flight Lieutenant early 1944.
The squadron was based at the Kirkuk oil company outside Haifa where opportunities to go out were very few and far between, but Charles managed to return from a night-out with a battered old piano accordion in his possession; he couldn’t play it so handed it over to Freddie, asking him to teach him to play; Freddie still has that accordion today. The sand surrounding Kirkuk is I am told, saturated in oil, and Charles being a smoker, lit up and threw the match, still aflame on the ground, which then started to burn; luckily they managed to stamp it out!
August 1944 found the squadron at the Foggia airbase in Italy, from where many missions were flown using Mk4 Hurricanes. On 15th October 1944, Charles was flying a Hurricane [KZ407] and fired rocket projectiles at a tank; a ricochet struck his aircraft, damaging the tip of one propeller blade, the starboard Oleoleg [Ed: telescopic shock absorber to dampen effects of landing] and radiator fairing, but he managed to land safely. [LEFT:HAWKER HURRICANE MK 4 (TANK BUSTER) OF 6 SQN BEING SERVICED AT FOGGIA ITALY, PRIOR TO SORTIE OVER THE ADRIATIC 24 JULY 1944].
In another incident [01/09/1944] whilst operating from the Isle of Vis, off the coast of Yugoslavia, he and three other pilots, Freddie Nicoll being one of them, in a Hurricane Mk 4, and two Spitfires from 249 Squadron, attacked two Siebel ferries (catamaran- type landing craft) near Lukova, two salvos hit each ferry, setting them on fire and exploding ammunition, all pilots strafed, a total of six strafing runs were made, under very heavy German flak.
‘Flt Lt Black, out of ammunition, checked he had enough inboard fuel to get back to Vis, then dived and jettisoned his long range fuel tank into one of the ferries nearest the shore, destroying it.
On the 8th September 1944, the London Gazette announced his award of the DFC, probably not for just one incident, but a culmination of many. Freddie Nicoll also received the DFC at the same time. Charles was also appointed ‘B’ Flight Commander.
After the war, Charles returned to Kenya, married Dawn Doré, and joined British Overseas Airways, as one of their first pilots in East Africa; was a founder pilot for East African Airways.
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He was not happy with commercial flying; felt he was just a glorified taxi driver and was very bored, so joined the Gourock Rope Company as their East African representative, remaining with them until his retirement thirty years later.
I found out at some point he joined the Kenya Regiment and took part in a number of operations against the Mau Mau, who in the fifties were causing havoc in Kenya. [Ed: Charles was either called up or enlisted 28th May 1950 [KR3699]; promoted Sgt and discharged 1951, presumably because of his age (34), or employment?. He may well have joined the KPR?]
He loved flying, and as one of his children said, we were virtually brought up at the Aeroclub, he was always in the air, just flying for the fun of it. On the 9th August 1958, Charles was again in the air, this time flying aerobatics for the opening of Embakasi (Nairobi) Airport by the last Govenor of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring, standing in for the Queen Mother who had been delayed in Australia.
Charles moved to South Africa where he farmed at Richmond, Natal. In 1987, he was diagnosed with Parkinsons Disease, and moved to a retirement home in Margate, KwaZulu, Natal, where he passed away aged 82 in December 1999.
*****
AMATEUR DRAMATICS AT THE NANDI BEARS CLUB
[Brain Leahy KR7433]
Two letters in Old Africa Issue # 52 spurred me into writing this article. In one letter there were pictures of a Captain Hook in a production in the Molo Theatre, and also a letter from Patrick Chemigin wanting to know more stories of Nandi Bears Club.
ABOVE: NANDI BEARS RUGBY XV
STANDING L/R: PETER SCOTT [KR6769], MERVYN BRENT [KR7338], BRIAN LEAHY [KR7433], BASIL SOUNDY [KR7399], PALLE RUNE, DOUGIE ROSS, ROBIN OUTRAM [KR6709], NICK STOBBS, TONY CHURCH [KR6402], NICK ROLES.
FRONT ROW: DICK UTIEN, MALCOLM JOHNSTONE, PETER JACKSON [KR7199], JEREMY ROFFEY [KR7426], JAN SCHEPPENS 25
Social life in Nandi in the 1960’s was very much centred on the famous Nandi Bears Club. Although private dinner parties were commonplace, the majority of the district would go to the club for ‘Club night’ on Wednesday and again at the weekend. Wednesday was always well attended with rugby practice, nine holes of golf, tennis and squash before congregating in the bar for much jollity.
Saturdays involved some sporting fixture in the afternoon followed by a dance to entertain visitors, while Sunday’s were golf, tennis spoons, squash and then a curry lunch provided by the wives of planters, with the numerous bachelors providing liquid refreshment. In the evening all gathered round an ancient projector to watch a film and if the projectionist, Fred Jackson, got the reels in the wrong order it caused much hilarity.
On one Wednesday night, Jean Hamilton announced that she had written a pantomime ‘Goldilocks and the three Nandi Bears’ and was looking for likely thespians. After a lot of banter and Tusker fuelled auditions, a few of us were given parts and scripts. The three ‘Bears’ were Nigel Challoner [KR6077], Brian Leahy and David de Bromhead [KR6687].
Jean Hamilton was quite a feisty producer and try as she may she could not get David de Brom to contain his raucous laughter and he was replaced by Andrew Tainsch. Ian and Dulcie Sloan played the King and Queen while Jimmy White was the District Officer. Nigel Challoner doubled up as ‘Juma’ and together with Jimmy White enacted the famous ‘Window Cleaner’ joke, which is still told at Nandi re-unions to this day.
On the last night, a certain Saturday, there was a matinee performance followed by an evening show. Jean insisted that we had to stay in costume and make up in between performances. The problem was we could only drink our Tusker through straws to avoid smudging the exaggerated lipstick. This had an immediate effect and the evening performance warranted a standing ovation and the audience were doubled up with laughter leaving Jean Hamilton furious and threatening never to work with us again.
The arrival in the district of Doctors Nick and Wendy Roles to run the local hospital, caused a great deal of excitement. This talented couple could play the piano and sing, and immediately became involved with producing a cabaret for the New Year’s party. Malcolm Johnstone, Nigel and Rosemary Challoner, Nick and Wendy Roles and Brian Leahy dressed as monks and sang choral music of sorts. Brian and Wendy then dressed as a boy scout and girl guide and gave a rendition of ‘When I was a little boy scout’. The Nandi Bears were right royally entertained!
Nick Roles suggested a play and ‘Charlie’s Aunt’ was the final choice as Nick and Wendy had played parts in the play at Medical School. Jean Hamilton was persuaded to produce it. Once again the call went out for parts and Rosemary Challoner, Wendy Roles and Gail Outram took the main girls part while Nigel Challoner was ‘Jack’ and Brian Leahy as ‘Charlie’ with Nick Roles playing the famous Aunt. Peter Wood played Bassinger and Ian Sloan Mr. Spettigue. Dulci Sloan played the real Aunt.
Rehearsals took place at least twice a week with Jean Hamilton reprimanding anyone who had not learnt their lines! A stage had to built in the club and David de la Hay [KR4721] and Eric Forse who were the fundis, set about building a stage with curtains and of course foot lights. They did a very good job with a great deal of improvisation and ingenuity, and everything worked.
After two months the play was ready and as the club could accommodate approximately 80 in the audience, the thought was two shows would be sufficient for the whole district to see it. However, word got out and folk came from Nairobi, Kericho and Nakuru and two extra shows had to be
26
arranged. They went ahead and finished with a gala night with dancing and much merriment; much enjoyed by all who took part.
Shortly afterwards, there was talk of doing another play; ideas were tossed in the arena but eventually the classic, ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ won the vote. Jean said she was willing to produce it and all the old crowd offered themselves for parts. Rosemary Challoner and Wendy Roles played the old Aunts, Nigel Challoner and Brian Leahy played Mortimer and Jonathon, David Hamilton and Peter Wood were Cops’ and Malcolm Johnstone the Vicar, Dr. Harper. Ian Sloane was Dr. Einstein. Jean Hamilton doubled up and played Elaine Harper as well as producer. Nick Roles was Teddy Brewster.
Once again the stage had to be built and Eric Forse and David de la Hay set about resurrecting the one they had previously made.
Great support from the district and once again we gave four performances. Rosemary Challoner produced further plays but alas a few of us had left the Nandi Hills.
*****
JUSTIN GAUNTLETT TEMPLER [KR6019]
[6th June 1937 – 8th January 2015]
[Parish Circular]
Justin Templer was a long-time member of St Joseph’s Parish in Portishead, Bristol. Whilst preparing for Mass in St Joseph’s School he was taken ill and despite the efforts of school staff, paramedics and the air ambulance team, he died.
Justin gave generously of himself and supported many worthwhile causes, especially St Joseph’s Church and School; he will be deeply missed by school and parish communities. He had a large family and consequently took a keen interest in Catholic education. He was a foundation governor of St Joseph’s School for many years and became involved in the Diocesan Education service. This led on to his appointment as the diocesan representative on North Somerset Council and involvement in various council committees and working parties. He was instrumental in establishing a trust to help with the cost of school transport once North Somerset Council withdrew its support for denominational transport. Each year he would go to school to announce the results of election of pupils for the school council; as ‘Returning Officer’ he wore a bowler hat, which never failed to amuse and entertain the pupils.
A draughtsman by trade, Justin was a very practical person who played a large part in many projects and made an invaluable contribution to both the parish and the school. He supervised the building of the new school in Bristol Road and was subsequently responsible for designing and overseeing various schemes to improve and enhance the school. He led the project to design and build our parish hall and was heavily involved in the recent refurbishment of the church for which he designed the new gallery and related works.
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Justin was from a different continent and a different age. He was born in Kampala before the Second World War and his first language was Kiswahili. This indicates that he was looked after and brought up with servants which was normal for people of his class in those days of the Empire. I used to joke with him when filling in ethnic monitoring forms for the Council that he should be included as an African.
When a young man Justin had served in the Kenya Regiment [KR6019] and he retained a belief that things worked best when run on military lines; some people agreed! Justin was not inclined to change his mind and never wavered in this belief. He loyally supported his regimental benevolent association for many years in various roles and only relinquished this responsibility when it was finally merged with the Rifles Benevolent Association a couple of years ago.
Justin was invited to join the Catenian Association some years ago; at the time of his death he was vice-president of the Bristol Catenian Circle and looking forward to taking over as President in April. [Ed: Founded in 1908, the Catenian Society is an international, non-political body of proudly Catholic laymen who meet at least once a month in local units called Circles, to enjoy each other’s company and thereby strengthen their family life and faith through friendship.]
Justin was always a gentleman and performed his various roles and responsibilities with honour. I think he may sometimes have looked askance at 21st century Britain, which was so different from his own very traditional background. He was a man of deep faith and a fearless advocate on behalf of the church. Having decided to join the Catholic Church, he never wavered or doubted and he built his life on belief in Jesus and His church. Justin was involved in every aspect of the parish and he was invariably present at every Mass and other service at the church.
In recent years Justin suffered greatly with various health problems and a lesser man would undoubtedly have been discouraged. Justin was remarkably stoic in accepting a great deal of pain and suffering. He refused to succumb and carried on regardless of medical, parish and family advice to slow down and take things easy. This mixture of stubbornness and fierce self-reliance was typical of the man.
The end came suddenly, but not unexpectedly, on 8 January. Justin had transported all the equipment from the church to the school and was setting up everything for Mass of the Epiphany. It was his heart that failed. Fr Matt was present as well as some members of staff, so Justin did not die alone. He died just as he would have wished, preparing for Mass in his beloved school.
*****
ERIC SHERBROOKE WALKER
[Ed: Further to Mike Innes Walker’s letter on page 6.]
Edgbaston hero turned smuggler who hosted a princess - Birmingham Post By Justine Halifax
Eric Sherbrooke Walker survived the war and had a remarkable life. The son of Reverend George Sherbrooke Walker and his wife, Jessie Elizabeth Carter, Eric was born in Edgbaston on July 4, 1887. He went to King Edward’s School and then Oxford University.
He was a personal secretary to Baden Powell, the founder of the Scouting movement, and was one of the first two Scout inspectors, overseeing all of Wales and the south of England.
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He joined the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War but was shot down and held as a POW in Germany. He is said to have made 36 attempts to escape. Apparently, on one occasion, a German girlfriend from before the war helped him to escape by supplying him with wire cutters (provided by Baden-Powell) hidden inside a piece of ham.
After the war ended he was employed as a temporary Captain fighting against the Bolsheviks with the British Military Mission in south Russia alongside the White Army in the Russian Civil War. He was awarded the Military Cross for his gallantry.
Eric Sherbrooke Walker returned to England after the war and married Lady Elizabeth Mary “Bettie” Fielding, the daughter of the 9th Earl of Denbeigh, on July 26, 1926. Needing money to finance his marriage, he ran a bootlegging business, smuggling liquor into America during the Prohibition era, while Lady Bettie worked as social secretary in the British Embassy in Washington.
When Walker shot and wounded a corrupt state trooper who had tried to steal his cache of whisky, the couple fled to Canada. He later wrote ‘The Confessions of a Rum-Runner’ under the pseudonym of James Barbican about his life during that time.
The couple finally emigrated to Kenya, where Walker bought 70 acres of land and opened the Outspan Hotel. In 1932, he opened the Treetops Hotel as a night-viewing station for wildlife. These business ventures may well have been financed by his bootlegging days in America.
He was host to Princess Elizabeth and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, during their February 1952 visit to Kenya. The couple had accepted an invitation to spend a night at Treetops and arrived there on the afternoon of February 5, 1952. During the night, unknowingly, the Princess succeeded to the throne of England. Her father, King George VI, died in his sleep at Sandringham in England in the early hours of February 6, and the Princess received the news later that day.
Walker’s business prospered, encouraged by public interest in the accession of Elizabeth II. His hotel business was even featured in National Geographic Magazine and celebrities, including Charlie Chaplin and Paul McCartney, visited the hotel. Walker also wrote a book about his life in Kenya and Treetops, named ‘Treetops Hotel’.
His former employer, Lord Baden-Powell, retired to the Outspan Hotel and bought a share of Walker’s hotel business to pay for his cottage in the hotel grounds - named Paxtu - and now home to a Scouting museum. BP died there in 1941.
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A house on Walker’s farm was used during the shooting of the film version of ‘Born Free’. An avid hunter during his younger days, Walker, like many others, became an advocate of wildlife conservation in his final years in Kenya.
He retired to live in Majorca, Spain, and died there at his home, Cás Fidavé, on May 13, 1976.
*****
WILLIAM ROBERT McALLEN (MAC) SPENCE [KR4640]
[son-in-law, Marcus Le Brocq]
Fiona has written these words that she would like me to share. Before I begin I should like to say that it is such a joy to look out in the audience now at those of you wearing a fun waistcoat or safari jacket in memory of Mac.
[LEFT: MARCUS & FIONA, JANNETT HOLDING G/SON AVI, AND MAC]
Mac was born many moons ago in 1936, in London. His dad was in the police force and investigated various clues of the Loch Ness Monster. There emerged an early African link for the Spences when the alleged Nessie footprints were found to have been made with the aid of a hippo's foot umbrella stand.
Mac was taken squeaking to Kenya at the age of three and there he grew into a man under the African sun, amongst the rich wildlife, warm Kenyan people and sleepy Indian Ocean. He attended boarding school but was only chosen to say grace before the school supper once in his many years there, after standing up and accidently saying, “For what we are about to receive, may the lord have mercy on us.”
Mac’s main interests were rally driving, deep sea fishing, reading and the theatre. He also liked to keep fit and he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro at the age of 17, Mount Kenya at 42 and of course there’s the Jersey ITEX* walk at 65! [Ed: *International Trade Exchange?]
He was an excellent co-driver in the East African Rallies - except on one occasion when Mac’s car was in the lead and he had to make a decision on whether the car should take a left or right turn as there were no cars ahead of them that had made any tracks. He went with left but unfortunately it took them onto a farmer’s property, through his garden and right up to his house. The farmer was NOT impressed but Mac and the driver made a swift loop and drove off the property. Now, because they were in the lead, every single car in the entire East African Rally that day followed Mac’s tracks skidding at over 100 miles per hour onto this farmer’s property and he was so mad he eventually came out firing his shot gun.
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He was called up for military service into the Kenya Regiment not long after his 18th birthday and served full time during the Mau Mau Emergency. There were some light hearted experiences during this tense time. Mac went to school with and was in the Regiment with the famous singer, Roger Whittaker [KR4746]. Even though Mac was small he put up with no nonsense and had a fiery temper to match his then red hair! During one military training exercise Roger insisted on continuously peeing on Mac’s tent, so Mac decided to set up an electric wire outside his tent. Sure enough when Roger visited Mac’s tent the following night he was nearly singing soprano!
Mac stayed in various ranks until the Kenya Regiment was disbanded; commissioned, he described carrying the Queen’s Colour up the Hill to the Cathedral of the Highlands, as his ‘finest hour’. On the 12th May 1963, the Regiment’s final parade was commanded by Lt Col Douglas Bright and Col DA took the salute outside the Law Courts.
[LEFT: THE REVIEWING OFFICER WAS THE ACTING GOVERNOR OF KENYA, SIR ERIC NEWTON GRIFFITH-JONES, ACCOMPANIED BY GOC EA COMMAND, MAJ GEN SIR RICHARD GOODWIN. THE COLOUR PARTY COMPRISED: QUEEN'S COLOUR - 2LT MAC SPENCE [KR5884]; KENYA REGIMENT COLOUR - 2LT DERYCK JORDAN [KR5886], AND ESCORTS - C/SGT BEV SMITH [KR6633]; SGT ROB CURRIE [KR6096] AND SGT MIKE O'HARA [KR7245] – THE LATTER TWO NOT SHOWN]
Following this life changing experience, Mac, with four of his friends, moved into a bachelor pad called Nyumba Simba, because the previous owner had kept a lion there.
Starting as a trainee with the Registrar General, Mac became an advocate of the high court of Kenya and a partner at a major law firm in Nairobi - Hamilton, Harrison & Mathews - where, for 25 years he was involved in all manner of cases, including high profile murders.
In 1977, he married fellow Kenyan, Jannett Croxford, and gained a step daughter, Patricia Jannett. Then Fiona was born in 1979. They left Kenya in 1984 for Lechlade England where Mac had to start from scratch, having not practised in English law. This wasn’t an easy time for Mac and the family, having left behind his beloved country, dear friends and established career.
Managing a small law office by the Thames, Mac began to start his life over again. As we all know, Mac liked to wind down in the local pub, often accompanied by his famous dog Spot. One afternoon Mac had gone in for his usual Saturday afternoon pint and had tied Spot to his bar stool. There Mac was deep in conversation with a friend when the pub’s cat sauntered past Spot. Well
31
Spot was having none of this and took off after the cat. Of course Mac was pulled off the bar stool backwards to the floor and dragged off after the cat, wearing his pint!
In 1988, he accepted an offer not to be refused; to practice trade-mark law on an international scale out of the specialised, Jersey office of Spoor & Fisher Jersey.
I would like to pause here to read the words of the partners from Spoor and Fisher:-
“Some people touch and enrich our lives, and Mac was one of them. Mac had an encyclopaedic knowledge of African Intellectual Property law, and a unique grasp of its evolution and subtleties. Integrity and honesty were his bywords, and he was of the old school where sound advice came first, and profit second. He was a master of both the written and spoken word, and his ability to construct an entire paragraph out of an enormous single sentence, sprinkled with perfectly positioned commas, was legendary.
“By the majority of the staff, Mac was always addressed as ‘Mr. Spence’, never ‘Mac’; this may seem rather old-fashioned in this more casual age, but it was entirely appropriate in Mac’s case, as he induced a natural and unquestioning respect in those who came into contact with him. Although Mac was of modest temperament and physical stature, he had an authority about him which doubtless came from his Kenya Regiment days, and many a noisy social gathering was stunned into immediate silence by Mac shouting “Now hear this!” at the top of his voice.
“It would be true to say that Mac was slightly eccentric - he loved his colourful waistcoats, loud (and often tongue-in-cheek) ties, and cufflinks. On less formal occasions, he was not afraid to opt for safari gear, even in chilly Jersey climes, and could often be glimpsed at weekends striding around the streets of St. Helier in his shorts and stockings. A keen observer of human nature, Mac had a wonderfully dry sense of humour, and could usually be relied upon to find something amusing or anecdotal to say in even the dullest or most stressful of situations.
“Spoor & Fisher Jersey is a poorer place without him - and we feel the loss, not only of Mac’s considerable professional skill and expertise but, above all, his kindness and wise counsel. Mac always referred to his trips to Africa as ‘going on Safari’; Africa was where his heart lay - and he is now on the greatest safari of them all; may the sun always shine on him.”
Mac retired from the partnership in 2004, but remained very much involved in the firm as a consultant.
Special memories for me, personally, are probably ringing him and asking for his daughter Fiona’s hand in marriage, and making him cry. I am not sure if it was the fear of having me as a son in law or tears of joy. I hope the latter. I shared many a 'sun-downer' with Mac, learning about Kenyan history, movements in trademark and patent law and of course he always kept me updated with the dizzying heights of Jersey politics! Mac always had a joke to share every time we met and had an amazing way of always making them just clean enough to tell without causing offence.
I think the one element of Mac’s nature that we will all remember was his generosity - which undoubtedly goes hand in hand with Jannett’s. I suspect most people in this room have been treated by Mac to at the very least a supper, a lunch or even just a pint! On one occasion Mac treated a friend to come and try out a traditional Kenyan safari experience - however, on her first night she felt quite afraid in her tent and so on the second night Mac agreed to sleep in her tent alone so that she could share with Jannett. Unfortunately, this act of sharing backfired as a rumour quickly spread through the village about this lucky old fellow who had a harem of women and how he was coming out of a different tent each morning.
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Fiona described Mac as her rock - always there for her in the background. They had a very special and unique relationship and would often turn to each other for advice and support. He was such a proud father and nothing was too much trouble. He was her friend and confident. Of course she says dad had a quick temper, a temper that flared and burst into flames but that died away just as quickly. She recalled one occasion where she was sent out of his office for giggling whilst he was on the phone to a magistrate. When she says sent …a more accurate verb would be thrown. And then there were the times when she wasn’t best pleased with him! Like when he turned up to her cycling proficiency test in front of all her friends in his full safari gear! And there were the times when outsiders weren’t impressed by either of them! For example, when Fiona mistakenly took some of his homebrewed Sloe Gin into FCJ Primary School thinking it was Lucozade and offering it to her friends.
His best advice, which he gave to his niece, was always simple, such as “always be just who you are, that is the person we love“.
Mac loved becoming a grandpa and would insist that Avi called him Mzee Babu. He was one of the first visitors at the door wanting a cuddle and took great delight in building towers with Avi, helping to organise his first birthday party and crawling through Avi’s play tunnels. The two of them had the same cheeky grins that could melt even the coldest hearts and I know that Avi will be extremely proud of his grandpa as he grows up.
Mac went to some extremes and beyond during his lifetime whether it was climbing mountains, representing his country in war, starting over again from nothing or rising to fame within his profession. He did this in his lifetime all with a quiet, humble and unassuming character. He was gently supportive to all those around him and above all he surely taught us all the value of a good joke! Our special message would be to say - Asante kwa kila kitu - to a warm, intelligent, funny and generous man and to wish him safari ya salaama.
There followed a song by Roger Whittaker and a PP presentation of photos of Mac’s life.
*****
THE 3RD (KENYA) BN, KAR RELIEVES THE 4TH (UGANDA) BN KAR
[Extract from KR4237 Len Gill’s ‘Military Musings’]
When the Malaya-jungle-experienced 3(K)KAR arrived back in Kenya to relieve 4(U)KAR, their fine reputation preceded them. 3KAR's record of successes against the tough communist terrorists was second to none. In eighteen months they had killed more bandits than any other unit that ever served there. Apart from their natural ability in the wilderness, they were well led by senior officers from British regiments who had volunteered to serve with African troops in action in a foreign field. Several officers had agreed to demotion in order to take command of companies. All company commanders, normally Majors, were actually Lt Colonels.
The Regiment was commanded by Lt Col Joe Crewe-Read, tall, slightly stooped with a large aquiline nose, giving him a vulturine appearance. He was a popular leader, and with such seniority under his command, his job became almost entirely administrative, a function in which he was particularly able. The job of organizing patrols against the bandits was left to the experienced, senior company commanders. But, in order to make his presence felt, Joe insisted that all his officers learn Swahili. This was not a popular order, and though the officers were to serve only a two year term in the battalion, they acquiesced with good humour.
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So effective was the Bn in Malaya, that when they were recalled to Kenya on the declaration of the Mau-Mau Emergency. A big farewell parade was organized and C-in-C British Forces Malaya, General Sir Gerald Templar, [LEFT] was to take the salute.
Senior officers from the Colonial Service and the Police were to attend, along with other senior military officers. The chief Colonial Administration Officer had served in Kenya in a senior position, and attended Jean's School in Nairobi, an academy where officers serving in colonial administration and military units in Kenya attended courses, including Swahili lessons. The standards were very high, and anyone aiming to pass the Swahili examinations had to be well acquainted with the language.
So, the first speech at the farewell parade was made by the ex-Kenya senior Administration Officer in very correct, flowing Swahili. This was followed by the Commissioner of Police who had also served in Kenya, and knew the language well. His Swahili was equally correct.
General Templar now had to make his speech, but of course he didn't speak Swahili. Knowing of Joe Crew-Read's insistence that his officers learn the language, he turned to Joe and asked him to translate for him. Joe rose nervously to his feet. Unfortunately, he had failed to give himself the order to learn the language, so his Swahili was barely of the 'kitchen' variety, as used by European housewives in Kenya.
The General's highly rhetorical speech ended with words along the following lines:- "And by your resolution and successes you have provided an example that has raised the determination and morale, not only of all the other troops serving here, but also of the gallant administration officers and the brave police." Joe's translation fell a little short - "Na Bwana General anasema mazuri sana." This was very well received as it cut the blah to a minimum, a point always popular with soldiers.
The Swahili word Bwana has several meanings. Basically it is a word of respect, and in the context of the above, there is really no equivalent in English. In modern times it has come to mean Mr, Sir, Master, but it also has the connotation of worthy personage. Another form of address is Mzee which has a similar sense of respect. Literally Mzee means old person, but has connotations of dignitary, elder or sage - wise one, and is more frequently used when addressing an older person. Neither Bwana nor Mzee reflect subservience in the person using the term. That is to say they do not imply 'Oh Lord and Master', as many Europeans suppose when they first arrive in Kenya. A person holding a superior position may well use either term when addressing a person of lower rank or social status for whom he has respect.
The battle-hardened troops of 3KAR and their British officers were back in Africa. They did not know what to expect from the Kenya Regiment soldiers. Unwarranted assumptions were easily made. The sons of settlers were assumed to be overly privileged, difficult to discipline, idle, African-hating louts. Reports from Bn HQ indicated that as soon as the new arrivals were familiar with the territory, the services of the European Kenya Regiment sergeants would no longer be necessary.
Meanwhile, the British army was in a quandary. In Malaya, African Warrant Officer Platoon Commanders (WOPC), who in British regiments would have been commissioned officers, were now to be under command of Kenya Regiment sergeants.
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At one time there had been a rank in some KAR battalions equal to 2nd Lieutenant. But the Effendi rank had been discontinued. Now another problem arose. If the WOPCs were commissioned, they would suffer a reduction in pay, as warrant officers enjoy higher rates of pay than junior commissioned officers. Furthermore, promotion to commissioned rank would affect the whole of the KAR and other African forces throughout the British colonies in Africa. So, the Kenya Regiment Sergeants had to be commissioned. However, the cost of the officers mess bills, including standard charges, would exceed the pay we would earn as junior officers, and we decided to decline the promotion. Finally a solution was determined. The mandatory contributions to the Regimental Band Fund, the Regimental Silver Fund and other regimental funds were waived and we were commissioned.
While we understood the jungle-experienced troops were damn good, so were we. We thought we might also be required to stiffen morale, as 3KAR, being a Kenya battalion, was to be in action against Kenya Africans. Our new company commanders had served as company 2ICs in Malaya. They were experienced in jungle warfare, and in the handling of African soldiers. Like the CO, they regarded us with a jaundiced eye. They were embarrassed by our rank of sergeant, but were prepared to put up with us for a short time during which the capable WOPCs would become familiar with the area in which they were to operate.
We began to hunt down terrorists without being seen or heard. Mau Mau casualties rose without loss to our patrols, and our officers gained a new-found and solid respect for our abilities.
Even prior to promotion to officer rank, I had been accepted by my men, who followed my leadership without question. Perhaps the mantle of command fell too easily on the shoulders of the sons of colonialists, and was accepted too easily by African soldiers. I was most fortunate and privileged to serve with 3KAR, the finest jungle fighters anywhere.
When the Kenya Regiment personnel who had been serving with 4KAR were transferred to 3KAR, I was posted to 'C' Company, commanded by Major Roy Stockwell. He had served with the Bn for several years and had a wealth of yarns to relate.
One of Roy Stockwell's stories about the Bn operating against communist terrorists in the Malayan jungle, is worth repeating. ‘To arrive in terrorist country, a long, tiring struggle through dense jungle was necessary. This took up to a week, and a patrol had to be provisioned by air drops, ‘announcing’ to the enemy that a patrol was entering the area, and they would quietly withdraw. It was then decided to try parachuting patrols into bandit controlled areas, thereby ensuring that the patrols would be fresh and fully provisioned when they were most likely to contact terrorist gangs.
‘The idea was explained to the WOPC. "You will be dropped from 700 feet into a clearing with supplies for the first few days. This will mean that you will not have to slog through the jungle for a week to get to the bandit inhabited area." The briefing officer smiled encouragingly at the squad, who had listened to the new idea intently. "Any questions?" he asked. An African WOPC rose to his feet and asked, "Sir, would it not be better if we were to be dropped from a lower altitude, say 400 feet?" "Ah!" said the briefing officer. "You are worried about the enemy seeing you during the drop. But the height from which you will be dropped is determined by the time it takes parachutes to open. If you were to be dropped from 400 feet, the parachutes would not have time to open.
"Oh, you didn't say we are to drop by parachute," said the WOPC.
[Ed: Use of the above article was approved by Len’s widow Kaye, now McKenzie and living in Florida]
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WILLIAM RUSSELL (RUSTY) MILLAR
[22nd May 1935 - 17th December 2014]
[Debra Millar]
Rusty passed away at home in Diablo Grande, California on 17th December 2014 at the age of 79 with his wife, Debra (née Neuenschwander) by his side.
Rusty was born in Kisumu, to William Cowan and Jeannette May Millar. Schooled briefly in Scotland, he was raised primarily in Kenya and attended the Duke of York School.
At the age of 18, Rusty joined the Kenya Regiment [KR4456], serving for two years. He trained in Salisbury, Rhodesia, and grew up very quickly during the Mau Mau Emergency and the many patrols in the forests of Mount Kenya.
Rusty later attended Egerton Agricultural College and served as a District Officer in Thomson’s Falls. He became somewhat infamous when he drove his Saab off the road and onto a railway line, emerging unscathed, then to rally on-lookers together to move his car before the next train came along!
Rusty met his first wife, Belinda, in Sotik, Kenya, marrying in 1960. They moved to their own farm near Kitale, in 1963, building their house and farm buildings with home-made bricks. He was overjoyed at the birth of his three children, Gordy, Stuart, and Kathleen, and these were some of his happiest years. Rusty loved farming and treated those who worked for him with respect.
When Kenya gained independence, and his farm was taken over, he insisted that some of the land be apportioned for his workers to own. After independence, he bought a hill farm in Scotland in 1975, returning to Kenya to build a home at the coast in Kilifi in 1982.
He worked for the British Overseas Development Authority, the Kenya Agricultural Development Company, and managed large-scale private farm estates. After his wife was killed in a tragic car accident, Rusty took off-beat jobs such as buying Somali cattle and camels in the badlands of Northern Kenya and ferrying them to Yemen. Later, Rusty helped on his son’s farm, planting and harvesting wheat and barley.
In his youth, Rusty was a gifted Rugby player, known as a speedy right wing, who could run like the wind. Hindered only by poor eyesight, he stopped many a match as players searched for his contact lenses. He was the youngest player on Kenya’s rugby team during the matches with Oxford and Cambridge. Rusty later took up polo and passed on a love for the game to his children and grandchildren. He enjoyed sailing on his beloved ‘Laughing Dove’, and deep-sea fishing off Kilifi.
Rusty met his wife, Debra in the Gilgil Club and they married in 1992 under two thorn trees on the slopes of the Menengai Crater. Their work took them to Uganda, Eritrea, and Mozambique, before returning to Kenya in 1999.
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They moved to Diablo Grande, California in 2007 where Rusty enjoyed golf and cheering on many a golfer as they hit off the sixth tee. Although disbursed around the globe, Rusty remained a central figure in a close-knit and loving family. He loved his children and grandchildren dearly and followed their accomplishments with great pride.
Rusty loved music, danced like he meant it, and always departed with a heart-felt ‘God Bless’.
*****
ROBERT ARTHUR CAUKWELL [KR4372/5667]
28 November 1928 – 10 February 2015
[Bill Jackson KR3817/5672]
‘Kenya needs sixteen keen and fit young men who are fond of an open air life. They are wanted for jobs that will take them all over the Colony, and will give them chances to see the mountains, lakes, deserts and bush country of East Africa and see the big game that lives in these areas.’
This notice in the East African Standard in February 1949 was a turning point in Robert’s career. Born in Bognor Regis in England he was a boarder at a grammar school in the Cotswolds towards the end of WW11, followed by National Service in Palestine and Libya. After demob he joined his elder brother John as a teacher at a Prep school in Nairobi, and struggled to impart the elements of Latin grammar to his class.
He made his escape after reading the East African Standard and being one of the lucky sixteen ‘keen and fit young men’. They joined the government department Survey of Kenya with the job title Survey Cadet. After preliminary training in the basics of land surveying they spent their early years on safari in the Northern Frontier District.
When a State of Emergency was declared in 1952, the security forces were handicapped by a lack of up-to-date maps, so in April 1953, a Mapping Unit was formed in the Kenya Regiment. Its task was to provide information to be added to outline maps which had been compiled from RAF aerial photography. In short, travel over every road and track, locate every village, and obtain place names, and in the case of European farms, record the owner’s name.
Robert was one of Survey of Kenya’s staff to join the Unit. Supplied with a Sten gun, two hand grenades, aerial photographs, and outline maps our first operational area was Isiolo, which had not seen any Mau Mau activity. Then to Nyeri Station, and the less peaceful area of Chehe and Ragati forests. Comfortable tented accommodation at Karatina with 23KAR. As a keen climber, Robert was delighted to get so close to Mount Kenya, but had a disconcerting habit of looking at the mountain peak while driving round hairpin bends.
We were both released from the Regiment on completion of the mapping task in 1954, and after overseas leave returned to our posts with Survey of Kenya. Robert was a very active member of the Mountain Club of Kenya (MCK), and in January 1955 made the first ascent of the west face of Mount Kenya.
Later that year he was a member of the MCK expedition to Nepal attempting to climb Himalchuli, height 25,806 feet. A severe challenge, and unsuccessful with the tragic death of Arthur Firmin, the noted Nairobi photographer.
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[LEFT: ROB ON THE HIMALCHULI EXPEDITION]
He resigned from Survey of Kenya in 1968 after nineteen years service, taking up a post as Lecturer in Land Surveying at Nairobi University, retiring in 1988 when he and his wife Margarette returned to England, making their home in Brockenhurst. [Ed: Margarette & Robert were married in 1963; Bill was the best-man]
A friend for 65 years, living up to the definition - ‘Half the joy of a friend is that he is a person to whom you can, from time to time, boast about trivial things.’ His boast to me was his name on the honours board at Kingham Hill School - ‘Best individual gymnast 1944, aged 16.’ So perhaps that’s how he became a mountaineer.
The last ten years of his life was spent in a Nursing Home at Milford on Sea, suffering from that cruel disease, Parkinson’s. He has gazed into the distance from mountain tops, and towards the end he shuffled along with his Zimmer to sit on a bench and stare at the Needles lighthouse. I’m sure he was studying the cliffs of Alum Bay, figuring out the best route to the top. I said Kwa heri to him two days before he died.
‘Mountains possess a power of taking a man by the hand, whatever his religion or calling, whatever his beliefs, whatever his sins or sorrows, and of leading him upwards to immeasurable happiness.’
*****
THE PRIZE
[Leslie Brown]
We found it first from the sea. We had gone round the point of an evening, past the undercut coral cliffs where the striped crabs scuttled away into wave-cut crannies and hollows, and where a new vista opened into the creek. To one side we could see the house called The Cairn, on the other that named by some wag Bilge Water. There should have been another house in between; but it was invisible. So we waded through shallow pools to a sandy bay whence a neglected path climbed a red dune cliff, burrowed by pied kingfishers. At the top we found the house.
Forlorn and neglected it looked too. No one had been near it for more than a year, and the grass was long all round. We trod carefully and it was no surprise to find a harmless snake coiled in the recess under the back stairs. We climbed onto the back veranda and looked in. The walls were stained, bats squeaked, and a heavy thumping tread on the ceiling betokened the presence of a barn owl, that ubiquitous dweller in abandoned buildings the world over. It was clear that no one lived here, no one was looking after it, and that in a year or two it would become uninhabitable.
Round at the front we took note of the view out through gaps beneath old trees, bent and crew- cut en brosse by the monsoon winds. Someone had cleared beneath them long ago, but the tropical weeds were again thigh deep. From the parapet of the front veranda we looked on a vignette of turquoise sea over sand, marbled and striped with the darker patches of weed. The breeze blew in through the gap, the sun shone, but thus late in the afternoon we were in shade. 38
We imagined ourselves sitting there, sipping cool drinks. The barn owl clumped out to the corner of the roof and stood there watching. Perhaps it had a premonition that we had come to disturb the peace it and its mate had enjoyed for years in the space between the ceiling and the roof. For there and then we decided that if we could find out who owned the place we would make a bargain with him.
We returned via the steep sand cliff to the bay. The technicolour seascape spread before us, with the tide running into the creek and throwing up whitecaps over coral bars. Off shore a green- capped island marked the outer reef where breakers curled in white foam over filling pools. A few gulls and terns cruised about, looking for fish, and over the creek a fish eagle soared. At the time we said nothing much, and privately sought disadvantages in the situation to allay any possible disappointment. But we could see that it was a wonderful place, and had made up our minds to have it if we could. The site was unbeatable, at the junction of the creek and the open bay, with two sandy coves, coral reefs, and all the multitudinous joys of the Kenya coast ready to hand. In Barbara's mind the determination was stronger than in mine.
"If we can get it," she said, "let's call it ‘Zawadi’ - the Prize."
It was not difficult to find out who owned it, for everyone knows everyone at Watamu, or at least about them, in the manner of a small English village. In half an hour's inquiry we had the name and address of the owner, and of the person who was looking after the place in his absence. Him we sought, in his dwelling farther along the beach; he was about to leave Kenya for good, but we caught him in time.
It appeared that the house was not finished. There was no gas, no internal plumbing, and there was argument about who owed how much to whom. None of our business, we said, but all the same that worst of all bogeys, money, began to loom large. But it still beckoned us, and we could not resist another peek next morning. Charles, then six, who had grasped what was in the wind, found many advantages we had missed. Driftwood could be stored in the space under the back stairs, and seashells lined up on the plinth that ran round the house.
Oh, well, we thought, let's get Stan to have a look at it and see what he says.
Stan is our old friend who has a house along the beach, and who does most of the odd building jobs about here, while his wife Judy finds holiday homes for those who need them. Stan came along and poked round.
"Shouldn't cost too much," he said in his laconic way. "Bit of bat-proofing. Wash the walls. Gas stove. Bit of piping. That's all." It did not sound too bad. The money bogey receded, and from that moment, like a marlin which has toyed with the bait before making his final rush, I too was hooked.
I wrote at once, from a lonely hotel room in Dar es Salaam, where the possible delights of happy holidays at Watamu seemed even keener and more desirable. Arrangements were not too difficult. The owner would not sell, he said, as he regarded himself as a temporary exile from Kenya, and hoped to live there someday. But if I would make the house habitable from my own resources he would, for a small annual sum, let it to me for a period of years. By then I would have bought if I could, for my mind was made up. But as it happened the arrangement was perfect for both of us. We had an assured holiday home at the coast, where we could relax, and a small boy could grow up in the sun and wind. The owner had the knowledge that the sad abandoned house would be cleaned and spruced, and kept in good order till he should need it, while if he wanted to sell I had first option to buy. It seemed, and is, ideal.
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Malindi, our nearest town, is a very poor shopping centre, so almost everything had to be bought in Nairobi or Mombasa and carried to Watamu in an ancient but stalwart Landrover coming up to her first hundred thousand miles. She has carried me to the highlands of Ethiopia, and to the Kalahari and the Cape, and I wear her like an old familiar coat. But I cannot deny that when heavy laden she is not the most comfortable or restful vehicle to drive. Mercifully, I can take a few days off when I like. So we packed all the second-class cutlery, the glasses we did not want at home, the worn sheets, and some curtains made up of remnants, and beat it to Watamu through the Tsavo Park.
We dumped the stuff, stayed at ‘Seafarers’ for a couple of nights, and went back home for another load. Stan had already got hold of an admirable character called Baya to look after the place. He had cleaned it up, cut the grass and bush, and made a visible difference. After some argument we got the keys, and saw the inside properly for the first time. Our one fear, that it would be hot inside at midday, proved groundless. It was small, modern, adequate, and a breeze blew through. We thought out what needed to be done, and determined to make the final onslaught at Christmas.
August at Watamu is rough and breezy, but December is calm and warm. Shopping in Mombasa for what we needed was tiring work, but we did it, and in four journeys carried everything in the jam- packed Landrover. Sweating, we carried the heavy stuff up the back stairs, and stowed it within. Stan fixed the geyser and the stove. Soon after Christmas all was ready, and we celebrated New Year in our new domain.
Zawadi stands at the point where Mida Creek pours through the reef to the sea. Directly in front of the house a gap in the bush gives access to one of our bays, rough in August, but perfect in December, fifty yards of clean sand with shady caves under coral heads, everybody's idea of a private cove. To the right another gap leads to the sandy bay whence we had climbed to the house. Between the two is a ridge of coral, ending in razor-edged wave-cut fangs and turrets of coral like a castle in fairyland, where-on a fish eagle often perches of an evening, though he disdains the fish skins we put out for him and prefers to catch his own.
A low reef runs out southwards into Mida Creek, creating tide rips when the sea washes out over it, but enclosing quiet pools at low tide. Flanking the inner bay are jagged coral cliffs, undercut and pierced through and through by the sea, but off which we could obviously dive at high tide if we made a concrete path to protect our feet. A little way up the creek are more carved remnants of coral reefs, with pools and holes wherein lurk coloured fish, sea anemones, and other creatures of the reef. Wherever there is coral the flattish striped crabs abound.
They scuttle away as one approaches, hide in holes or round corners, and reappear after one has passed, from within labyrinthine tunnels. The coral is cut into fantastic shapes by the wave action, and is knife-sharp. One can well imagine how a shipwrecked mariner could be cut to pieces on it just as he thought he was safe on land. But we have learned to avoid stubbing toes on it, and Mercurochrome copes with occasional minor cuts.
At the back of the house are about six acres of heavy coastal bush. At first this seemed impenetrable, but once I had thrust through the outer screen I found there were big trees and shady open spaces beneath. I have made a maze of paths connecting these open places, and can now sit, at midday, when it is hot outside, in the cool and watch birds and beasts. I even have a seat or two.
In such bush it is impossible without a path to move silently enough to have any chance of seeing the skulking birds, brownbuls, bush robins and others, that live in it. But rubbering quietly along on the soft sand, or sitting under a tree, one can watch these shy creatures at ease. The brownbuls like to use the open sandy parts of my paths for anting - that curious habit whereby the birds place ants beneath their feathers with every appearance of ecstatic enjoyment. Sometimes a nightjar flits
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silently along in front of me before flicking aside to merge, like a dying spark, into the dead leaves of the forest floor; or I come upon a brilliant blue and black kingfisher, of a sort that belies its name by being entirely insectivorous. Turacos, puffback shrikes, and the ever singing Zanzibar sombre greenbul frequent the treetops, as do large, fiery red squirrels and troops of Sykes monkeys.
Of all our birds none delight us more than the tinker birds and bush robins - the tinker birds because they gladly adopt a dead log put up in a tree for them, and dig a nest hole in it. In the evening we go from hole to hole, seeing who is at home. Nothing shows at the entrance, but a finger gingerly inserted is smartly bitten, and a stick is seized and worried as a terrier shakes a rat. The tinker bird is diminutive, scarcely four inches long; but its bite would not disgrace a parrot, it has an incredibly loud call for its size, and plenty of spirit.
You will hear it said, often, that there are no good singers in the tropical bush. This is untrue, and no bird better refutes it than our eastern bearded scrub robin. By day unseen, at dusk when we pad along the paths we hear a flood of sweet melody coming from some thicket, in such an unbroken stream that one wonders how the music-maker breathes. The bird is not shy; like a nightingale it just skulks in cover and sings unseen. Rarely, it relents. One evening I was seated in a clearing when the robin flitted out and perched on a stub ten feet from me. Ecstatic, quivering, he poured out his melody for a full three minutes without cease, his wings and tail spread to expose the white spots and rufous rump to rivals. Then he flitted away into the thicket again, where we heard him singing on into the dusk.
Mida Creek, more than a mile across, runs several miles inland from our point. Fringed with mangroves and mud, the lower channel is clear and deep, studded with coral heads. At low tide extensive sandbanks are exposed in the upper reaches. The waters are rich in fish, barracuda, mullet, and tafi, or sea bream, while when one stands in the bows of a boat and gazes down into the limpid water one sometimes sees the flitting brown shadow of a two-foot ray. There are said to be sharks in the deep water of the mouth; but no one is ever attacked.
One goes up the creek on the flood and comes out again with the ebb. That way one can stop the outboard and drift along the mangroves at certain places where herons and egrets congregate at high tide. There are huge goliath herons, six feet tall, the largest of all the world's herons; grey herons, migrants from colder climates; great white, yellow-billed, and little egrets, distinguishable in their white plumage by size and shape of bill, and colour of bill and feet. Now and again a dove-grey heron, a blue or grey phase of the little egret appears, to fox all but the expert observer. These graceful birds are accustomed to boats coming to gaze at them, and pay little attention if one does not go too close.
Ospreys, fish eagles, and woolly-necked storks are regular inhabitants of the creek, but it is not on their account that it is famous. It is a gathering ground in spring for the European waders that winter along the coast, some in the bright colours of their breeding dress. Like waders everywhere, they feed on the exposed sandbanks at low tide, and with the flood are forced to retreat to the remaining patches of terra firma - if shifting sandbanks can be so called. There they congregate in thousands, waiting for the ebb.
Commonest are curlew sandpipers and Mongolian sand plovers, but most obvious are the whimbrels that pass over our point at night tittering as they do, on their way north in May to Britain. Among them a few curlews tower over all else. There are great sand plovers and grey plovers, ringed plovers, sanderlings, green marsh, and common sandpipers. If one is lucky there are little flocks of Terek sandpipers with red legs and upturned awl-like bills, or crab plovers, strange birds that breed in burrows along the Somali coast and lay white eggs, unlike those of any other plover.
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Pied like an avocet, with a dagger-shaped black bill, they are scarcely recognisable as plovers till they fly, when their rapid regular wing-beats proclaim their kinship to the rest of the throng.
With the plovers are the terns, great and small, from the huge gull-like Caspian tern with tomato-red bill to the white-fronted little tern, the same that breeds in Britain. In between are gull-billed, lesser- crested, and swift terns, with a few lesser black-backed gulls. All are forced, with the rising tide, onto a few acres of sand, where the little terns fish for tiny creatures and fry in the slowly seeping puddles of the tide's advance. At high springs all is covered, but if you judge it aright you can walk up to this throng of shorebirds and watch them at leisure for an hour before the ebb allows them to disperse again. They see native fishermen daily, and none molests them, so they are not shy.
In the middle of Mida Creek, where it runs out past our point, is Big Three Reef, so called because it is the haunt of three enormous grouper or rock cod, each perhaps four to five hundred pounds in weight, bigger than a man, with gaping cavernous mouths. They are quite tame and with an aqualung you may go down and sit among them as they contemplate the passing throng of other colourful fish. Someday, one of them will casually engulf a visitor; but they have not hurt anyone yet.
Big Three Reef is not extensive, but it is a little gem, unlike any other reef hereabout. It is all that remains of a coral bar that once closed the mouth of the creek, and has been ripped to pieces by the tides. The sea has sucked and gnawed at it till it is as full of hollows and caverns as a sponge. These multifarious hollows, each washed by a slightly different current, make for innumerable habitats colonised by an almost incredible variety of colourful creatures. Hardly one square inch is precisely like another.
In the middle there is a big pool, connected by a tunnel to the creek above. Water wells into the pool all the time, and you can stand on the coral above it and see hundreds of different species of fish, crustacea, anemones, sponges, living coral, molluscs, and other creatures, all growing and living higgledy-piggledy in a kaleidoscope of colour, yet forming an infinitely satisfying whole.
The pool in mid-reef is full of fish. Picking one's way over the coral fangs one slips gently into it and hangs poised, be-goggled and be-snorkled to watch the fish, almost as one of themselves. There are big green parrot fish that bite lumps off the coral with bony beaks, grind it up, and eject it as coral sand. There are angel fish, surgeon fish, long-spined pied Moorish idols, spotted snappers, all bright, all different, each one filling a different niche and performing a different function in the depths of the pool. There is even an electric blue, pennant-like fish that continually flips his tail, perhaps as a signal, plain as a barber's pole, to others that he will groom them.
Beautiful as they are, some of these fish are better avoided. The yellow and blue surgeon fish hide behind their dorsal fins a knife-sharp spine like a scalpel. There are stone fish, marvellously contrived to look like a bit of rough rock, and capable of inflicting a very dangerous sting. Worst of all is one of the most beautiful, the scorpion fish, like a great gaudy underwater butterfly with long membranous fins gently waving. A family of them lives under a ledge in the pools of our bay. The fins wave gently, the fish is not aggressive, but if you were to seize it you would pay dearly, perhaps die, for each ray of the fins can inject a powerful poison. So we do not molest the scorpion fish nor they us. As with venomous snakes, one hears of very few accidents.
The fish of these pools are very conservative in habit. One can find the same individuals in the same place every day. Still more fixed in their ways are the giant anemones, a foot across and more, that root in some of the sandy hollows among the rocks. They may have been there scores, perhaps even hundreds of years, for there is nothing to make them die. Flesh-coloured outside, their folded inner surface bears a multitude of short tentacles, multi-coloured and often tipped with white. Each is host
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to a whole community of creatures found nowhere else. Under the flesh-coloured outer folds are little pink crabs, while above the tentacles crawls a transparent prawn two inches long, made almost invisible by white spots that simulate those on the tentacles themselves. Black and white damsel fish move in and out of the shelter of the anemone's disc, and best of all, there are sometimes yellow-headed clown anemone fish that on the approach of danger snuggle into the deadly folds as you or I get under a quilt. All these associates presumably live on the scraps of the anemone's food.
The tide rips round Big Three Reef are fierce, and woe betide you if, swimming along the upper edge, you are carried beneath the overhang. The foolhardy, I suppose, can swim through the tunnel into the central pool, but I do not care to try it myself. I have swum across the channel to the reef, accompanied by a boat in the best Channel swimmer style. I was carried three hundred yards out to sea, despite my flippers, before I got into slack water and could retrieve the lost ground. Then I swam round the upper edge of the reef and misguidedly went down the tide rip on the far side. I found myself whizzing over coral heads in very little water, subconsciously drawing in my stomach like the prisoner in the tale of 'The Pit and the Pendulum'. Flippers or not I could not stem the tide, even when I turned to swim into it, but I slowed myself enough to pick my way down deeper channels while I had time to marvel at the underwater world as I went.
Had I gone on with the tide I would eventually have been taken to the outer reef a couple of miles off shore. People who fall out of boats in the creek have landed up there. From it rises a green- capped island, called Whale Island though it is not like a whale, nor do whales come here. Yet it seems a good enough name, somehow, and it is a good place to go to at low spring tides.
At such times the island stands on a plinth of coral pocked with clear pools, each lined with brown algae and harbouring octopuses, gobies and other little fish, as well as bright-red hairy hermit crabs living in the empty shells of conchs and large whelks. Under deeper ledges spotted snappers and spiny lobsters hide from spear fishermen. One may find a purple crayfish with long, white, whip- like feelers, a strange and beautiful creature. Sea slugs and sea hares, marvels of camouflage, crawl among the weed. And a positive multitude of striped crabs scuttles always before one, running through the pools and hiding behind coral fangs. They are difficult to photograph unawares, for if driven towards one by an accomplice they simply break out of the beat to one side, like a wary tiger. They are eaten, certainly by gulls, and perhaps by ospreys, for one finds their remains among the rocks on the summit of the island.
We do not usually visit the island at neap tides, for it is then ringed by crashing surf. But I once went there at such a time for, from our beach, we had spied a cloud of white birds - terns it seemed - flying above it. They could only be breeding in the green top, and they had not been there the previous year so, despite the monsoon, it had to be investigated.
Charles and I went out in a boat. In the channel along which the dhows sail through the reef and up the creek, the waves were so big that we completely disappeared from Barbara's view as she watched from the point. But at length we anchored in the lee of the island and Charles stayed where he was while I, heart in mouth, chose my moment between roaring waves to skip round the base of the rock to a point where I could climb up. Twice I had to hang on to coral knobs while the surf sucked round my feet and thighs; but then I made it and was soon up among the birds.
They were roseate terns, about fifteen hundred pairs, and all or almost all had just laid eggs, when the neap tides and the rough sea had for a week made the island almost inaccessible. By the next spring tides they would be well on the way to hatching. Was it just chance, or did they by some instinct pick the best moment they could, guided by the eternal rhythm of the sea?
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Roseate terns are lovely but strange birds. Among other places, they breed on a little rocky island in the Firth of Forth; a sandy island off the West Coast of England; a tropical islet near Lamu, to the north of us; and now here, on this sea-girt rock, fit haunt for man-of-war or tropic birds. There are many other places, apparently just as good, where they do not breed. They lay one egg, as opposed to the two or three of most terns. Yet they seem to manage to survive well enough. They are just different from their nearest relatives, arctic and common terns.
Flotsam and jetsam is a perennial source of fascination. On our beach we find coconuts, doum palm nuts brought down the Sabaki River in flood from the Tsavo bushveld, broad leguminous beans, big as a crown piece, from some unknown creeper; goose barnacles hanging on floating bottles, the basis of one of the strangest of all sea fables, of where the barnacle goose goes in summer and how it is hatched. And of course, bits of very valuable wood, planks and spars of boats that we can put to good use. With them we make steps down to the beach, or seats in our forest. But our best bit of flotsam was the canoe. Barbara found it, cast up, half full of sand, in the next bay. At once it struck her that it would make a splendid seat on our point, to which the good Baya had recently cut a path. How to get it there did not concern her. That was my job.
I do not know if you have ever tried to shift a water-logged twenty feet dugout canoe single-handed two hundred yards and more through the surf among coral fangs. Once it is well afloat it is not too bad. The job was to push it away from the shore at spring tides and through the breaking water; for it was too heavy to manoeuvre at low tide. Twice it knocked me over, once bidding fair to crush me between itself and the knife-sharp coral tines. But I pushed it off again and at last paddled it round into the quieter waters of our bay. There I beached it, and Baya and I, grunting, pulled it out of reach of the waves.
To establish it on our point we had two choices: either to carry it over the sharp broken coral where a fall would certainly mean bad cuts if nothing worse, or to drag it down the narrow tortuous path through the bush. I was for the former, for I thought it too long for the path; Baya thought otherwise, and he was right. He recruited three other willing types and, shouting, shoving, pulling, exhorting, and singing snatches of Swahili shanties, punctuated by curses at the driver ants that bit our toes, we worked it down the path. At bends we sometimes had to back and fill a dozen times before the obstinate object, like a huge ship in a little canal, finally agreed to go round. Once we shoved and pulled it through an orifice in the bush itself. But we got it there, turned it over, and dug in the bows and stem so that its centre lies flush with the sand.
Wiping our brows and congratulating each other, we stood back. On the bows, faintly tarred, was the name Chua. So it is now called Chua Point. We sit there on the canoe in the evening, smoking and talking, watching the sun on the waves, or the steely light of sunset reflected in the quieter waters of the creek behind us. Flights of waders or terns pass over, and they do not see us because we are hidden against the bush. Pied kingfishers hover in search of sprats, and once a fish eagle pursued an osprey close to us, and forced it to drop its catch into the raging sea, where it could not recover its prize.
We sit there and we know that ‘Zawadi’, though it is not ours and we shall one day, all too soon, have to give it back to its rightful owner, will always in a way be our prize. There Charles will have learned to swim underwater and become a jolly waterman. He cannot ever lose the golden hours he spends there. As for ‘Zawadi’, it was near death, and it was we who found it and imbued it with happy life. It will always be a part of ourselves.
[Blackwood's Magazine : Number 1834 : August 1968]
*****
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JOSEPH PAUL ESNOUF [KR6137]
[4th January 1938 – 5th August 2014]
[Daughter Charmaine]
My dad passed away on the 5th August 2014 from a heart attack - he was in hospital at the time but it still came as a shock to all of us. I wanted to let you know of his passing because he always spoke highly of you and so looked forward to receiving his SITREP. He told me many stories about Kenya over the years and the SITREPS he received were always well read, passed onto friends and filed away carefully in the study. He was always very appreciative of the work you did.
I thought you may like to read what was said about him at his funeral which took place at St Joseph's Catholic Church in Durban on the 8th August. I have included the eulogy below and will send you the picture we included on the funeral leaflet. He hated a fuss and liked simple things: we laid him to rest in his favourite pair of shorts and yellow check shirt - his coffin was a plain pine box with rope handles, just as he requested.
Eulogy read out by Allan Touche:
From Maurice, Paul’s brother: I thought that I would be drinking a beer or two with you again but it is not to be; you left too soon. We were four but now are three, you were first and I was next so you never know - don't wander too far - and when I come hold out your hand and show me the way again.
You were always a mischievous teaser and full of fun. You were the one who put jam on the toilet seat and hung a snow white shirt in the outside loo to spook those who visited in the dark. It was you who put kippers on the exhaust and cans under our honeymoon car. We have been together for almost 75 years. I will miss you my brother, until next time.
From Yvonne, Paul’s sister: My brother was the youngest army cadet when he joined the Kenya Regiment. He would later fight in the Mau Mau emergency, an experience he didn’t like to talk about. But what we do know is that when he was told he would be representing the Regiment in a boxing match, he knocked out his much larger opponent in the first round, earning him the nick- name ‘KO Essie’ [Ed: Obviously went to St. Mary’s.]. Nobody tangled with him after that. He was always very protective of his family and kept a watchful eye over his sisters.
From Louise, Paul’s sister: You were the oldest and I the youngest, but we were the closest. I used to stick my tongue out at you at the dinner table until you leant over one evening and caught it in your fingers. The only thing quicker than your reflexes was your quick wit and sense of humour. Now you have left to be with Mum and Dad where we will all be together one day. I will always love and miss you.
A few words from Paul’s children Etienne, Charmaine and Paul: Everybody thinks their dad is pretty special, but ours really was. Our dad started out as our dad and then became our mom as well.
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Never a big disciplinarian, he still managed to teach us right from wrong because of the way he lived his life. A hard worker, he made many sacrifices so that his children could succeed – he always wanted the best for us. He loved us no matter what mistakes we made and he always believed in us even when we had lost confidence in ourselves.
We have our faith and our sense of humour thanks to him: we needed both in order to survive his practical jokes over the years. One of us had to wear a cap to school for three terms until Dad’s attempt at a haircut grew out.
Dad, these are just a few of the best things we learned from you:
Help other people, not because you want anything in return but because it’s the right thing to do. You aren’t always handed everything you want in life, but hard work will take you a long way. Save and plan for your old age, it will be here before you know it. A second class ride is always better than a first class walk. Always be polite, but don’t let anyone take advantage of you. Family is always there for family. Always finish what you start. If you are going to do something, do it properly. A real man will allow his little girl to put pink curlers in his hair.
Dad we are going to miss you and our lives won’t be the same. But we will feel you near us whenever we see a Loerie, when the Sharks [Natal] beat Western Province, when we go fishing, or whenever a car with a Renault engine wins the formula one grand prix.
*****
TUSKER : THE STORY BEHIND THE NAME
[Article submitted by Brian Jeffries]
Officially brewed in 1929, Tusker lager is the most popular beer in Kenya and the largest selling beer in East Africa. Kenya loves it, Africa loves it and so does the rest of the world. Its well-known emblem, the elephant, has become a symbol of great pride and a representation of that divine African taste and flavor.
But with all great triumphs lies an underlying tragedy. Herein lies the tragic tale of how an elephant gave Tusker its name.
It was in the early 1900’s when the construction of the railway, infamously known as the ‘lunatic line’, had come to a much anticipated end. Its construction had brought much misery and had cost the crown millions and millions of pounds.
In effect, the British government sought to find a way to recover from its losses by encouraging settlers to come and invest in the country. The settlers were lured by promises of large tracts of land, favourable climatic conditions, exhilarating safaris and many more ‘untold’ African treasures.
Among the many settlers who made the decision to come and establish a new life in Kenya, were brothers Charles and George Hurst. They were experienced brewers, gold prospectors and farmers. The brothers set up a brewery in 1922 and formally registered their company as ‘Kenya Breweries’ on December 8th of the same year.
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In the beginning, their operation was relatively small scale and hands-on. They used small copper vessels for brewing and all the beer was bottled by hand .The very first batch of ten cases was delivered to the Stanley hotel, then the most prestigious hotel in Nairobi, having hosted queens, government officials, presidents and many other dignitaries.
A year after the two brothers founded Kenya Breweries, George’s fate took a rather tragic turn when they went on a catastrophic hunting trip from which he never returned. Hunting and especially big game hunting was a popular sport in those days. George was known to be an avid hunter and an adventurous one at that. One record states that several months before he met his death he had been mauled by a lion and was lucky enough to have escaped alive.
However, on that fateful day in 1923, luck was not on his side; George was trampled on and killed by a rogue male elephant. Large male elephants which are indigenous to East Africa were commonly known as Tuskers. In memory of the death of his brother, Charles decided to name their very first lager, ‘Tusker’.
Branding and advertising began as early as 1924, though Tusker Lager was officially brewed in 1929. Tusker was an instant success in the market and by 1935, Kenya Breweries bought out Tanganyika Breweries and the following year changed their name to East African Breweries Limited. In 1938, the brewery won its first brewing prize in an international competition.
One account says that George was merely attempting to take a photo of the tusker and had not intended to kill it. Regardless of his intentions, the story of his death still remains a tragic and gruesome one.
To this day, Tusker remains the best selling beer in Kenya with a 30% market share and is sold in different parts of the World. From table covers, to t-shirts, from beer mugs to key holders, Tusker merchandise can be found in restaurants, pubs, shops and supermarkets all around the country. [Tusker Lager Image courtesy Tim Bishop/Diageo]
In memory of George Hurst (1923) Tusker , ”Bia yangu, Nchi yangu!” ”My beer, My country” (1929 – 2014)
*****
JACK SHERBURN
[18th August 1924 – 17th July 2014]
Jack Sherburn, who has died aged 89, was an RAF pilot who was awarded the DFC for gallant and distinguished service during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya.
An experienced fighter pilot and flying instructor, Sherburn volunteered for service in Kenya in 1954. The RAF had converted a number of Harvard training aircraft to carry a ·303 Browning
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machine gun and racks for 20lb fragmentation bombs to provide support for the British ground forces and Kenya Police who were tackling the insurgency.
The Harvards had become surplus to RAF requirements, and eight were formed into No 1340 Flight, operating initially from RAF Eastleigh in Nairobi. A psychological factor, which had probably not even been considered in selecting the Harvard for this role, was the high- pitched scream of the propeller, which was found to be useful in frightening and dispersing the insurgents, obviating the necessity for an actual attack. [ABOVE: HARVARDS AT MARRIAN’S FORWARD AIRFIELD]
Sherburn flew many air strikes in the forested areas of the Aberdares and the Mount Kenya region from a forward airstrip at Mweiga; the strip was at an altitude of 6,500ft and had a 400yard dirt runway.
Distances to the target areas were so short that a Harvard could arrive within minutes of being alerted by the Kenya reconnaissance patrols. Some attacks were carried out at night, when it was possible to locate the Mau Mau by their campfires.
Sherburn was in constant action for many months and was one of only a very few RAF officers to be awarded the DFC for operations in Kenya.
Jack Sherburn [LEFT] was born at Howden, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, and educated at the local school. He rose to be a flight sergeant in the Air Training Corps before joining the RAF at the end of 1942. He trained as a pilot in South Africa before flying transport aircraft with No 78 Squadron in the Middle East.
In 1947, he returned to Britain and joined No 65 Squadron, flying the de Havilland Hornet, the RAF's fastest piston-engined fighter, an aircraft that remained his favourite among the many types he flew.
After attending the Central Flying School he was a flying instructor on the Meteor before volunteering for service in Kenya.
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In October 1955, Sherburn converted to the Canberra jet bomber and flew with No 18 Squadron.
Two years later he served as an experimental test pilot at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, testing many different types - he made 30 flights in the Avro 707, an experimental aircraft designed to support the Vulcan bomber development programme. After converting to the Valiant V-bomber and serving as a simulator instructor, he left the RAF in 1962 as a flight lieutenant and joined Short Brothers in Belfast as a production test pilot.
The company had two major aircraft programmes in progress: the large freighter aircraft, the Belfast, for the RAF: and the smaller, versatile and commercially successful Skyvan. In addition to his test flying duties, which included the first flight of the Belfast aircraft now on display at the RAF Museum, Cosford, Sherburn demonstrated the Skyvan in many countries throughout the world. In 1970, his flying career ended due to a medical condition. He had flown more than 70 types of aircraft and had 8,000 flying hours in his log book.
He continued with Shorts in management roles in Belfast and Kent, and was also involved as a ground controller with the early unmanned air vehicle (UAV) technology with the Jindivik target drone at Llanbedr in Wales and at Woomera in Australia.
He retired in 1979 and after a brief spell as an instructor at the Hamble College of Air Training he concentrated on his other passion, cars, in particular his Aston Martin DB2.
Jack Sherburn married, in 1957, Thelma Luscombe, a WRAF officer; she survives him with their two sons. [The Telegraph August 14, 2014]
*****
RONALD WILLIAM (BILL) RYAN [KR2910]
[Dennis Leete, Thady Ryan and son Rob Ryan]
[Ed: In the following letter from Dennis Leete, almost as an aside, mention is made of a Scouting award to Bill Ryan. Hoping to establish that Bill had been in the Kenya Regiment, I set about further research, and the story of the hitherto ‘relatively unknown’ award unfolds.]
Dennis to Editor. One day, I will send you a poem, written by Bill Ryan’s sister Cynthia Kofsky, called ‘The Man from Mokogodo’, a story about an Nderobo, who lived there, killed a love rival, was imprisoned by the police, and sentenced to death for an offence that he regarded as an honourable act.
The Ryan family had settled in Rumuruti in the early part of the last Century, and your folks must have known them. Bill became a well known professional hunter and a colleague of Tony Dyer in the 1940's and 50's.
My uncle, Cecil Birdsey, was the policeman in Rumuruti in the 1920's, and was boarding with the Ryans. One afternoon, fifteen-year old Bill [born in Cradock, Eastern Cape 13th July 1908] took him hunting for the pot and they ran into a lioness (with cubs) which they wounded. On the follow- up she charged, knocked Cecil down and was savaging his upraised arm. Bill recovered the rifle
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beside them, and killed the lioness from 10ft away, thus saving Cecil’s life. For this act he was awarded the Boys Scouts Medal for Gallantry. Tony actually records the story in his book about hunters.
Cynthia died at Fairseat Foundation about ten years ago, when Jane was the manager there, and left us a photocopy of her short collection of very good poems.
Cecil died of Blackwater in 1933, on his gold claim in Western Uganda, just before I was born; and so I carry his name, as well.
**
Ed. to Dennis: Re: Cynthia's poem, always happy to have sight of anything of historical interest, especially with m-S in mind. Mum & Dad knew Bill Ryan well; obviously met him more often when they farmed in Laikipia on the Pesi River. Bill [LEFT] would also have been friends with Alick Roberts and his son Boyce who farmed outside Nanyuki on the T/F road. Before the war, Dad, Boyce and others, captured cheetah for export to India. Mum mentions their hunts, and misfortunes in her Book of Life.
If Bill was in the Regiment, his Boy Scouts Medal for Bravery will make an interesting and perhaps unique inclusion in my proposed booklet – ‘Awards to men who served with the Kenya Regiment’. Appears Ray Nightingale and I kicked off this research independently around 1990. Through KRAENA, both efforts now combined on my data base with input from many medal collectors around the globe, but I still haven't 'put it to bed!
**
Dennis: There were five Ryans in the Regiment, of whom I knew two. But I see from the long roll that there was a Ronald William Ryan [KR2910], which may have fitted Bill. From that number he could have volunteered about 1938. We could ask his son Rob.
**
Ed. to Dennis and Thady Ryan: According to KR records, Ronald William Ryan [KR2910) was born in Craddock 13th July 1908; attested into the Regiment 27th December 1941; commissioned 31st March 1941; was posted to Middle East Forces and served with the Ethiopian Irregulars. Maurice Randall [KR630] and Aubrey Aggett [KR222], both farmers from the Nanyuki area, served with the Irregulars, as did J.F. Millard, OBE whose book 'Never a Dull Moment' I recently read, courtesy Ian Parker [KR4617]. So, Ronald William Ryan could well be the Bill Ryan we are talking about.
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** Thady: I know his son Rob well and see him quite often, also knew Bill many years ago. He is, indeed, the R.W. Ryan you mention. By a strange co-incidence, however, we are vaguely related by marriage - my wife, Lavinia - daughter of Bunny Allen - is a cousin of his, as her uncle Bar Allen was married to Bill's sister, Cynthia. As for Ryans in the Regiment, our family provided six - my father [Christopher Anthony KR267], my brother Terry [KR4290], myself [KR6314], my cousin Jim [KR268] and two of his sons, Pip [KR6959] and Mark [KR7362].
**
Rob Ryan: Dad's main injury was caused by having his elbow shot off by Charles Bayer in the twenties when a rhino charged them. He was mauled by a leopard when he was hunting with Ker & Downey after the war. You can probably get more details from the EA Standard archives if needed.
I append extracts from my book 'Marula' which covers the incident, based on Dad's tapes. He says it was a Cecil Birdsey, but he recorded the tapes when he was in his seventies in Malindi, so that may not be correct. I have always believed that he was presented with his medal by the Governor but that also might be wrong. There is a chapter about him in Tony Dyer's ‘Men for all Seasons’ that might have more. I am away from home at the moment so can't check.
***
“Have you two boys been fighting?”
"When I was fifteen I went out shooting with the local policeman who was called Cecil Birdsey. We went out early, in the mule cart, just to shoot anything we could. It was on Easter Weekend and we went in the Police buckboard. We saw some rhino spoor which went down into a little gully, and we followed it. So we put in some solids, to cope with the rhino. When we got to the middle of the thick bush I heard a funny noise that sounded like 'ayeeow' and I said "What's that?". And Cecil said "I don't know".
And I heard it again but we didn’t know what it was.
In another two or three steps, up jumped a lioness from right under our feet and started to run away. We shot at her and both hit her. She turned and charged. Cecil stepped back and tripped, so she switched from me and went for Cecil and got him.
I thought I must do something, so I ran up. She was sitting on Cecil but I had to be careful because with solids they could have gone right through her and into him. So I shot her from close up so that that wouldn’t happen, and she fell off him. Then she turned round in a circle and came back at me, so I shot her again. She started to run away, I shot her again, and she fell over.
Cecil was on the ground. “Get up,” I said “come on get up.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s dead. She’s dead.”
I tore up my shirt and dressed his wounds. He had been bitten in several places, including on his bum.
He walked up and down and said “Bloody lions, by God I’m going to declare war on them.”
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“Why did she do it?”
We looked at her. She was full of milk, so we looked in the bush where she came out of and found four little cubs. We put them in the wagon, skinned the lion, and drove home. Cecil was kneeling on the floor and leaning on the seat because he couldn’t sit down.
When we got home - Birdsey was about twenty two, six feet, and weighed about a hundred and eighty pounds and I was fifteen and probably weighed a hundred pounds - my father looked at Cecil, who was covered with bandages and blood, and then he looked at me, with no shirt and he said ‘Have you two boys been fighting?’
"One thing I should tell you from my Turbo days. I lived in the bachelor's Mess, and one day I got back from work, fed up, tired, and dirty, and was greeted by cheers and everyone saying 'Have a drink, have a drink', which I didn't do in those days. Well, something that had happened when I was fifteen or so had caught up with me.
[LEFT: BILL’S SILVER CROSS] [Ed: The ribbon is purple. Note incorrect spelling of Birdsey]
They all said "Have a look at the paper!" when I asked them what was going on. It was headlines in the paper that Bill Ryan had been awarded the Silver Cross for saving a policeman's life two years before. It wasn’t his life I was saving. If I hadn’t shot her she would have bitten me. I had to go down to Nairobi to Government House and be presented with a Silver Cross."
**
Ed: Following on from a suggestion from my medal- collector friend Anthony Allen [s3513] I contacted the editor of Look & Learn, Laurence Heyworth, who in 2007, published the following article, which with a photo of Kenya scouts, first appeared in ‘Children's Newspaper’ on August 16, 1924.
***
LONE SCOUT, THE LION AND HOW THEY COME CREEPING UP
What Life is Like Eighty Miles from a Railway - A talk at the Jamboree Camp
The Boy Scouts from Kenya who came to Wembley for the Great Jamboree are very proud of their 15-year old lion hunter, Ronald William Ryan, of Marooba Vale Farm. A Children’s Newspaper representative had a chat with him.
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Kenya is a vast area in British East Africa and there are about 100 Scouts and Cubs within its wide borders. The nine Scouts over here will stay for six weeks if they can stand the climate, for, said Bill Ryan, "when the sun shines here there's not much of it, and when it rains it only spits, and messes up camp, and you never know whether the sun's come to stay or not. Now in Kenya we get real sunshine, months of it on end; and real rain, months of that. You know where you arc,"
[ABOVE: SEVEN OF THE NINE KENYA SCOUTS WHO ATTENDED THE JAMBOREE (BILL RYAN ON THE RIGHT WITH HAND ON HIS HIP?) - photo from the Scouting Association Archives, courtesy Claire Woodforde]
An Open Air Sportsman. For a lion killer, Lone Scout Ryan does not look very formidable. He is neither tall nor particularly hefty, but sun-tanned and wiry, as befits an open-air sportsman. He lives on his father's farm, fifteen miles from the village of Rumuruti, and 50 miles north-west of Mount Kenya, which raises its great peak to a height 17,000 feet. His father used to be a schoolmaster in South Africa, but came to Kenya when Bill was eleven. And Bill has been a farmer since.
Marooba Vale is a cattle and dairy farm of 5,000 acres, with 300 head of livestock to look after. Bill acts as manager, and with the help of fifteen native boys in the dry seasons and 25 in the wet season, he attends to the dosing, inoculation, branding, and general well-being of the animals, while his father runs a cheese factory.
The Lions Run Off. Now lions are a great nuisance to him in his work. "They live in the thick thorn bush and scrub which surrounds the level plain," he said. "At night, we have to put our cattle into a boma of densely-packed thorn bushes, to keep them out of the reach of predators. Even so, although in Kenya you can trap, poison, or shoot lion, you are never done with their mischief.
"Once a mule of ours was killed and eaten by six of them, so I went out with a Winchester repeater, and suddenly came upon one in the bush at ten yards range. I had a shot at him, and got him right through the heart. But a shot in the heart is never immediately fatal to a lion, so off he dashed, but 53
not before five of his friends had come out to see what was wrong. They had a look at me for a second or more and then ran off.
I followed the track of the wounded beast for a mile and a half and found him at last, lying dead. And good riddance he was, too.
All Kinds of Animals. "We are usually too busy on the farm to go shooting lions for sport. But when we have a little time to spare, it is worth doing, because you can get from six to ten pounds each for their skins. We sell them to Abyssinians for head-dresses. But there is plenty of other game about in my country - leopard, cheetah, cerval, civet-cat, swamp-cat, lynx, rhino, hippo, elephant, warthog, hartebeeste, wildbeeste, oryx, eland, Thompson's gazelle, and all sorts of lively neighbours.
"So, although there are only the three of us, we are not lonely."
Scout Ryan's farm is 80 miles from the nearest railway, and a long way from the Scout headquarters at Nairobi. That is why he is called Lone Scout Ryan.
**
Ed: I then contacted The Scout Association in London and Ms Claire Woodforde, Research and Archives Assistant responded: “I have now had a chance to examine our records and have found some information relating to Bill Ryan which I hope will be of interest. I am attaching a copy of the citation and his award record and a photo of the Kenya Scouts at the Jamboree.”
‘Rescuing a friend from a wounded lioness.’
*****
RORY (BILL) WILLIAMS [KR7430]
David McConnell [KR6966] advised John Pembridge [KR7429] that Bill died at the Nanyuki Cottage Hospital on 19th February 2015. He had been in an old people’s home in Mombasa but had such bad infections in his legs, that he was sent up here to a more healthy climate, and a hospital too. We visited him a few times during his short time at NCH. Bill was born 18th October 1943 in Liverpool.
John Pembridge: Just in case you have not already been notified. Bill Williams was on the same course as me, Alan Price [KR7428], Al Gledhill [KR7437] and your brother Rob [KR7427]. He was also an Eldoret makora, his father being an accountant in Eldoret. I say his father but in fact he was, I believe, the son of a Polish airman (fighter pilot?) killed in the war leaving his mother (a Welsh girl) pregnant, one of many such cases in the war.
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Bill was also involved with Alick Roberts [KR7450], Muff Rundgren [KR7451], Paul Vernon [KR7464] and myself in our drunken thunder flash and smoke bomb raid on Southoun Secretarial College, which resulted in us all being arrested by the Military Police. Alick and I had already been arrested when the MP's brought Bill in and much to our amusement he flatly refused to answer any questions without a lawyer being present which as you can imagine got the arresting officer really hot under the collar! There was some very choice language flying around.
I have memories of getting into trouble at Lessos club with him as kids where we had been pushing the girls into the dam off the jetty. The adults were all having a good party in the clubhouse so we were not popular when four or five sopping wet girls went to complain about Williams and Pembridge shoving them off the jetty at about 8 o'clock at night. I think we both got a good hiding!
After finishing at KRTC, Bill [LEFT] together with his parents left Kenya and went back to Wales but within a year he was back, having got a job in tea with African Highlands in Kericho. He was still there when Gill and I left Kenya for South Africa in 1973, and anecdotal evidence from his time there proved he was absolutely lethal in a car.
I can relate many incidents but amongst the many a couple stand out as being amusing.
On one occasion while driving down the Jolly Farmer hill on his way to Nakuru in his white VW beetle he noticed a wheel overtake him, hit the barrier and jump about 20 feet in the air and disappear into the forest, he turned to his passenger saying some bloody fool has lost a wheel whereupon his right rear break drum hit the road!
On another occasion after the VW had been retired, he had been partying at the Tea Hotel when he left late at night for home in his blue Peugeot 403. He had earlier got a crate of Tusker in for the weekend which was on the back seat which proved to be his saviour as a drain had been dug across the road near the police station and filled in leaving a large hump which he hit at speed resulting in the car being turned on its side and coming to rest across the entrance to the police station. When he extricated himself from the smashed up car through the opposite door he was confronted by the police and accused of being drunk but was able to talk his way out of it by pointing out that there were 25 broken bottles of Tusker in the car and he was soaked in beer and obviously a bit groggy from the accident.
There was a third incident who some in Kenya may remember also on the Jolly Farmer hill when Ray Moody [KR6929] and I had arranged with him to pick up three girls from Nakuru and bring them up to Eldoret to a party. I was already in Eldoret but there had obviously been some misunderstanding between Ray and Bill, and as Bill was coming up the Jolly Farmer hill with the girls on board he saw Ray on his way down and without so much as a look to see whether anybody was coming did a U turn which resulted in a car coming down the hill driven by Chris Currie- Thomas ploughing into them, an accident where everybody was very lucky that there were no injuries.
In 1964, six bachelors - Ray Moody, Toby Royston [KR6595], Mike Owen [KR7317], John Pembridge from Sotik, and Bill Williams and Hamish Irving-Bell [KR7360] from Kericho decided to hold a party. Unfortunately, Hamish was deported about a week before the party after an altercation with Odinga Odinga's body guards at the Tea Hotel. Fortunately Ray and I had left the
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hotel pub shortly before Odinga's arrival, but Bill had to be locked in the gents by the manager of the hotel to stop him getting involved. Twenty-four hours later, Bill and I duly saw Hamish off at the airport from the waving platform above the exit.
Hamish owned a pet goat which he asked Ray to take over and look after and as you can see from the picture it probably drank Hamish's fair share of the beer. Any glass left unattended was immediately drunk and cigarette stompies eaten; it eventually flaked out on the lawn [LEFT]. I note in the same picture that all the empties are Tusker but the Allsops White Cap in the baby food box, are untouched!
In the same photo, is KR4444 Des Bristow's landrover with a cow hide tied behind it; we had been doing some skin-racing on the lawn - a crazy occupation, seeing how long one can stay upright on the skin holding onto the reins attached to the tail gate.
We invited people from all over to the party so we had not just Sotik and Kericho but from Eldoret and Nakuru as well. It was held at Ray Moody's house on Magura where he worked at the time for the Wattle Company. Early arrivals started on the Friday and late departures were on the Monday with the final departure being Bill who then left the road near the Kaplong Hospital turn off and was picked up by the police and taken to the Sotik police station from where he managed to get a message through to us. Ray did some skilful negotiating and managed to get him released without charges being pressed.
Sometime in the mid seventies Bill left African Highlands and started his own building Company and I believe one of his first jobs was all the interior work of the new Jomo Kenyatta airport terminal. I don't know at what stage he moved down to the coast.
Those were the days my friend!
*****
JOHN HENRY PATTERSON - THE LION-KILLER WHO BECAME AN ISRAELI HERO
[Kevin Connolly – BBC]
The ashes of a swashbuckling hero of the British Empire are to be reburied in Israel after a service attended by the country's prime minister. John Henry Patterson was a soldier, big-game hunter and writer, whose exploits inspired three Hollywood movies.
The man who was to become a hero to the British and to the Israelis was neither British nor Jewish. Like many servants of the crown in the days of Empire he was an Irishman born in County Longford in (10.11.1867) to a Protestant father and Catholic mother. Ireland was then part of the United Kingdom and military service was a popular option for many young Irishmen - partly from a
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want of other opportunities and partly from a sense of adventure. In Patterson's case we can assume it was the sense of adventure. By 1898, he'd been commissioned to oversee the construction of a railway bridge over a ravine at Tsavo, Kenya, but found work was being held up by two man-eating lions which were terrorising the huge camps housing the Indian and African labourers.
It's hard to be sure, but the two lions between them may have killed more than 100 people in all. Patterson wasn't an expert on lions, although he'd shot tigers on military service in India, but to protect his workers and get his bridge finished he resolved to kill the predators.
Man-eating behaviour isn't common among lions - it's possible that the two killers at Tsavo had the taste for human flesh from the careless disposal of human remains over the years. Over a three- week period Patterson killed both the predators. His workers, who'd been growing fractious, presented him with an inscribed drinking cup to salute his extraordinary nerve. It remained one of his most treasured possessions. Patterson told the whole story in his best-selling book ‘The Man- Eaters of Tsavo’.
The book has inspired no fewer than three Hollywood movies - Bwana Devil (1952), the Killers of Kilimanjaro (1959) and The Ghost and the Darkness (1996). The American hunter Remington, played by Michael Douglas, who appears in The Ghost and The Darkness is a pure invention - in real-life our Irish hero did it all himself. The lions to some extent are the stars of the story and they were exceptional creatures. These animals measured 9ft (2.7m) from the nose to the tip of the tail, and after they'd been shot each of them required a team of eight men to carry them back to the camp.
The stuffed carcases [BELOW] are in the Field Museum in Chicago but the taxidermist's art has apparently somewhat diminished their impact... according to legend the original skins had been used as rugs and so when it was decided to stuff and mount them they came out slightly smaller than they had originally been. Male Tsavo lions don't have manes - an evolutionary quirk attributed to the fierce heat in the region.
Nothing ordinary ever seemed to happen to Patterson. Bwana Devil is generally cited as the first full-colour 3-D movie made in English and so is a Hollywood milestone in itself. When you see those old black and white photographs of movie audiences thrilling to the 3-D experience in their cardboard spectacles with blue and red plastic lenses, there's a good chance they're watching Patterson in action. The film also deserves to be remembered for a slogan designed to reassure audiences that the coming of startling 3-D realism didn't mean the end of old-fashioned romance. "Bwana Devil", it said. "A Lion in Your Lap; A Lover in Your Arms!"
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[LEFT: TSAVO MAN-EATERS - CARR HARTLEY [KR215], HIS LIONS ‘FANNY’ & ‘BRUTUS’ AND A CARRIAGE USED IN MAKING THE FILM ‘THE PERMANENT WAY’ (1961)]
A few years after the events at Tsavo, Patterson was involved in a scandal that made him the talk of big- game hunting high society in Africa. On safari, a fellow British soldier, Audley Blyth, died of gunshot wounds in his tent, as ugly rumours swirled that Patterson had been rather too close to Mrs Blyth, also a part of the expedition. At one point it's believed that Patterson threatened to sue Winston Churchill for slander as the incident became the talk of fashionable London dinner tables. Ernest Hemingway was intrigued enough to fictionalise the story in ‘The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber’ - and true to form it was eventually turned in to yet another movie ‘The Macomber Affair (1947)’.
Big-game hunting is no longer fashionable, of course, but it's worth remembering that hunters tended to see themselves not as despoilers of the natural environment of Africa but as experts in it. Patterson shot an eland in 1906 and had the head mounted. He thought it had some unusual characteristics and when it was eventually seen by a member of faculty at the British Museum in London it turned out to be a sort of unique sub-species that to this day bears Patterson's name - Taurotragus Oryx Pattersonianius.
[LEFT: LT COL JOHN HENRY PATTERSON DSO], There was nothing honorary about Lt Col Patterson's military rank. He served with distinction in the Essex Imperial Yeomanry during the Boer War in South Africa, winning the Distinguished Service Order, and when he was recalled to the colours during World War One he was almost 50 years old.
It was during the Middle East campaign that he found himself in command of the Zion Mule Corps, a group of Jewish volunteers eager to serve the international cause and to advance their own cause of creating a Jewish state at the same time. Patterson became a passionate supporter of Zionism and the ranks of the detachment he commanded included influential heroes of the cause, including Ze'ev Jabotinsky and Joseph Trumpeldor. [Ed: Later he commanded 38 Bn Royal Fusiliers, better known as the Jewish Legion.]
Patterson took his Jewish volunteers to war around the dangerous beaches of Gallipoli in what history remembers as a doomed British effort to attack the German Empire through the territory of its ally, the Turkish Empire. It's often said that Patterson thus became the first commander to lead Jewish forces on to the field of battle for two millennia making him an important figure in the history of Zionism.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told me that his older brother, Yonathan, was named in honour of John Henry Patterson, who had come to know their father when he lived in New York campaigning for the Zionist cause in the mid-1940s.
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The family still has an engraved goblet given to Yonathan by Patterson to celebrate his birth. Yonathan went on to become an Israeli national hero who died leading the extraordinary raid on Entebbe in Uganda in 1976, in which commandos from Israel's Special Forces rescued hostages who were being held at an airport by members of the German Baader-Meinhof gang and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Prime Minister Netanyahu told us he regarded Patterson as godfather to the Israeli Army as well as the godfather to his brother and says it's right that Israel should honour him. He's expected to attend the re-internment of Patterson's ashes in Avihayil Cemetery on Thursday 4th December 2014
*****
LARS KORSCHEN
[27th November 1953 to 14th July 2014]
Lars Korschen was an hotelier who created a discreet paradise on the island of Lamu for celebrities and Kenyan leaders.
Lars Korschen, who has died aged 60, owned the Peponi Hotel, a small but fashionable establishment on the exotic Indian Ocean island of Lamu just off the coast of Kenya which had been founded by his Danish father, Aage, in 1967.
The Korschens - Aage and his German-born wife Wera - had been farmers in the Aberdare Mountains. But when the political situation in Kenya became problematic in the mid-1960s, Aage decided it was time for the family to return to Europe. On the voyage up the coast from Mombasa, however, he changed his mind. Instead of continuing to a continent in which he had never lived, he decided that the family would settle on Lamu and preserve their African roots.
They bought a house, previously owned by a Nestlé heir, at the village of Shella, a few miles from Lamu town, and established the Peponi Inn (Swahili for ‘Paradise’), initially as a private guesthouse where friends of the family could come and relax, swim, fish and sail among the islands of the Lamu archipelago. Menus were strict and uncompromising – Lar’s mother Wera making little allowance for the difference in temperature between her farm in the highlands and the tropical coast. Even though transport was confined, on land to donkeys, and on sea to dhows, the hotel’s reputation spread by word of mouth and soon became well-established.
In 1976, however, Aage died unexpectedly. Lars, by then a strikingly handsome and charming young man, was summoned back by his mother from London, where he had been studying at St. Martin’s School of Art. For the next few years, while Wera continued to run the hotel, Lars and his brother Nils set to work organising fishing safaris. When it became known that celebrities such as Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall had been seen on these safaris, Peponi became a favoured haunt of the jeunesse dorée from Nairobi, hoping to spot famous visitors.
On one occasion Yehudi Menuhin agreed to play for his fellow guests after dinner, and when, at a poignant moment in a Bach partita, a violin string broke, Lars immediately replaced it with a piece of fishing tackle, and the performance continued.
By the middle of the 1980s, Lars, who would probably never have chosen a career as a hotelier, found himself in charge of an establishment which was beginning to be spoken of as one the great hotels of the world. Life at Peponi was relaxed and unpretentious – ‘No news, no shoes’ - as the actress Kim Cattrall put it.
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The composer Hans Werner Henze, who spent many winter months at Peponi, told Lars that the place had inspired him to write his 9th Symphony; it was also the place he chose in which to write his autobiography. Henze once likened his morning stroll along the Shella beach to what a walk on the Promenade des Anglais at Nice must have been like in the days before the First World War.
To maintain the hotel’s special atmosphere, Lars Korschen encouraged male guests to turn up at dinner in a shirt and local kikoi (an elegant garment comparable to a sarong and made from finest Kenyan cotton fabric). He refused to allow the installation of telephones or televisions in the rooms, but he was by no means hostile to change. He persuaded his nephew Ray to leave a highly successful restaurant business in Copenhagen to work at Peponi, where he completely rebuilt and modernised the kitchens. By the time he had finished, Peponi was being spoken of as having one of the best restaurants in Kenya.
As the hotel expanded, Korschen displayed an unerring artist’s eye for designing new additions, all of which displayed his respect for Swahili culture.
Peponi’s reputation rested partly on privacy and discretion. On one occasion, hearing that a planeload of paparazzi was on its way to plague a well-known guest, Korschen calmly redirected the visitors to another part of the coast, as inaccessible as it was inhospitable. They returned to Nairobi with empty cameras.
He took a similarly strong line with the bodyguards with whom prominent Kenyan politicians find it necessary to surround themselves. During the 2013 presidential election campaign, both leading candidates made Peponi their headquarters for a few days. Korschen banned the brandishing of Kalashnikovs in the public rooms, and (to general amazement) he was obeyed. He was less successful with the notice which, beautifully carved in the local wood, he had hung in the bar. It read ‘No mobiles’.
In recent years, when terrorist outrages, including kidnappings planned over the border in Somalia were having a detrimental effect on Kenyan tourism, Korschen’s calm organisation of the necessary security measures meant that the Shella community, both the hotel and the private houses which had by then become a significant part of village life, was relatively unaffected. The result was that he was able to avoid laying-off a single member of staff.
Lars Korschen was born on November 27 1953 on his family’s farm in the Aberdares and educated first in Nairobi and then in England, at Rossall, a co-educational school in Lancashire.
Finally he took a degree at St Martin’s School of Art, while sharing a flat in London with Ben Cross, the actor who would become known for his portrayal of the British Olympic athlete Harold Abrahams in ‘Chariots of Fire’ (1981).
[ABOVE: LARS, HIS WIFE CAROL AND ONE OF THEIR DAUGHTERS]
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Tall, elegant and unfailingly courteous, Korschen was loved and trusted by the local population of Lamu. Year after year at the island’s New Year dhow race, it was Korschen who fired the starting gun, refereed the inevitable squabbles and gave away the prizes. He also gave art classes at the local school and, with Prince Ernst of Hanover helped fund a full-sized football pitch for the village of Shella .
His funeral was attended by the entire village, and much of the population of Lamu and Manda, the vast majority of them Muslims. One of the elders of the community said that of all the important decisions he had had to make, at least half were made only after discussion with Korschen, standing in the hotel’s cramped bar or sitting on the old Portuguese cannon mounted on the hotel terrace.
Lars Korschen, who had been suffering from emphysema, is survived by his wife, Carol, whom he married in 1990, and their two daughters. [Telegraph 8th August 2014]
*****
THOMAS WILLIAM LETHAM [KR3976]
[31st August 1929-8th February 2014]
Tom was born in the UK in 1929 and travelled to Kenya with his parents in late 1930 where his father was employed at The Old Stanley Hotel (later to become the New Stanley Hotel). One of his earliest memories was riding around in a rickshaw.
In 1937/38 the family moved to Beira in Portuguese East Africa and he attended school at St George’s College, Salisbury, and Umtali High School before returning in the late 1940s to the Prince of Wales in Nairobi. By this time, his father was managing The Norfolk Hotel in Nairobi, now under the Block’s management. He left in 1947 to study hotel management in Switzerland at the Ecole Hotelier in Lausanne and after completing the course moved to The Grosvenor House in London for six months before returning to Kenya in late 1950 where he prepared Block Hotels in 1951.
He joined the Kenya Regiment on 12th June 1951 and enjoyed the training camps and week day evening meetings. The early event of 1952 was the visit of HRH Princess Elizabeth, just a few days before she became Queen. She opened the new Kenya Regiment HQ on Ngong Road on 2nd February and the photo of her inspecting the Guard of Honour, in which Tom was the right marker, appeared in many magazines and surprisingly enough, forty years later, Val was at an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London depicting the Queen’s travels and spotted the picture now enlarged and mounted on a hardboard backing. She drew it to the attention of one of the organisers and was delighted when he said he would let her have it after the exhibition closed. It is now reframed and hanging in their home. [Ed: Still looking for a good copy of the photo for m-S.]
It was on a visit to Arusha in northern Tanganyika that he met Val who was working at the New Arusha Hotel. There followed many visits between Nairobi and Arusha over the next year or so before they married in All Saints Cathedral in Nairobi in November 1952. Just after the Emergency started, instead of finding himself working at the Norfolk Hotel, he was deployed on Emergency Service for the next three years. On release they moved to the Mawingo Hotel (now the Mount Kenya Safari Club) with their one year old daughter, Debbie. It was still a troubled area and he got used to staff being taken away for questioning or detention.
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They returned to Nairobi in 1957 and for the next ten years he worked between The Norfolk and New Stanley and enjoyed golf at The Royal Nairobi Golf Club. With the addition of Patrick and James in 1963 and 1965, their family was complete.
Changes in the hotel world developed with the interest of Hilton International who were keen to take over the new hotel being built on a prime site in the centre of Nairobi. This was accomplished and Tom was appointed their first General Manager in 1968. After an indoctrination course in Montreal he returned for the opening in 1969. He was then involved with the construction of Taita Hills and Salt Lick Lodges in Tsavo National Park which proved popular with both tourists and local visitors.
Transfers were always an option with Hilton International and in 1975 the family found themselves en route to the UK where Tom was to take over as General Manager of the Stratford upon Avon Hilton. The family all adapted to life in the UK – the boys at Wycliffe College School in Gloucestershire and Debbie embarking on her legal training.
Tom joined the Kenya Regiment Association and enjoyed the visits to Winchester and the London dinners and lunches which were a good chance to meet up with old rafikis. It was at the Memorial Service for Ray Nightingale in the Chapel at Sir John Moore Barracks, Winchester, that Val noticed that the Regiment was not included among the many church kneelers and brought it to the attention of the then Chairman, Brian Williamson. Knowing her interests in embroidery he promptly suggested she design one and it was decided that cushions for the foyer chairs would be acceptable. With the help of Jean Crosher and Babs Hutchinson these were completed and are on view in the Chapel.
[LEFT: TOM, VAL AND GRANDSON TOM]
In 1983, it was on the move again as Stratford Hilton was sold and Tom changed careers joining the Wellington Hospital in St John’s Wood as non-medical director for the next eleven years. They then retired to Weybridge enjoying golf and as a volunteer at Brooklands Motor Museum. Tom was also an official on the 2002 Census, and together with Val they invigilated examinations at Kingston University and Esher College. They moved to Goudhurst, Kent in 2007 where again he became involved in the British Legion and was Chairman of the Cranbrook Probus Society in 2012.
Sadly, he suffered an aortic aneurysm in late January, followed by pneumonia and he died on 8th February 2014.
At his wish, he was cremated at a private family service and his ashes are buried in St. Mary’s churchyard, Lamberhurst, overlooking the golf course.
*****
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THE STORY OF A GROUP OF FARMERS AND THE BUILDING OF A CREAMERY
[Kenya Dairy Farmer (KDF) - November 1961]
Captain Louis Sykes stands outside the creamery at Thomson’s Falls which he helped build nearly thirty years ago. In publishing this picture and the full story, we salute not only Louis Sykes, but all the men like him - the builders of Kenya
"Thirty two years ago, we decided in Thomson's Falls, that if we could not build our own Creamery, we would do without one rather than join K.C.C. But events defeated us, and now I know that what happened was the best for all concerned, and most of all, it was best for Kenya."
So says Captain Louis Sykes, the Grand Old Man of Thomson's Falls and much of what he relates of those long ago happenings, is just as applicable today. "Private enterprise" he says, "is all very fine when the market is good, and prices are high. When the bad times come, as they always do, then everyone needs the protection of hanging together."
When KDF began to write the story of the Thomson’s Falls Creamery, we were warned that no story could be told without the help of one of Kenya's oldest settlers. Captain Sykes is a spry eighty-year-old, who looks back with zest at the battles he has fought, not all of them war-time ones.
A soldier-settler, Louis Sykes was allocated his farm in 1920. There was nothing on it, he recalls, except game, nothing and nobody except, his family, who lived in a tent until they could build a more permanent dwelling. Not only was the land bare of cultivation, it was without human habitation, for this was Masailand until the 1911 treaty between the British and the Masai.
The Early Days
Here another old settler takes up the tale. George Aggett [LEFT] is a big, quiet, powerful man who speaks three tribal languages in addition to Swahili, and has been described as one of the very few men in Kenya who are genuine experts on the Masai. He was a lad in South Africa early in the century when his uncle visited Narok, and was invited to bring up more settler farmers, with their livestock.
He brought, among a score of others, young Aggett's parents, but they were not allowed to farm the land for long. With the treaty, the Narok area became a protected reserve for the Masai, and they agreed to vacate the highlands around Thomson's Falls, and the land at Laikipia, where eventually, George Aggett laid claim to his exchanged farm.
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Looking back, both men are full of praise for the Department of Agriculture and its Director, Alex Holm, in those early and difficult years.
One experienced farmer, who had managed farms for Rhodes in Rhodesia, was convinced that farming in the Thomson's Falls area was impossible. Insisting that those that remained had no chance of success, he handed his farm back to Government in 1921, saying that he could never make it pay.
The First Suggestion
After a survey in 1923, the Department of Agriculture recommended that the farmers in the area should try mixed farming, with an emphasis on dairying for which it was felt the area was particularly suited. The report also advised that the farmers should seriously consider building their own creamery to cope with ever increasing supplies.
At the time, Thomson's Falls was 45 miles from the nearest railway, and so although during the twenties, many farmers made and marketed their own butter, it had a perilous journey to Gilgil and the railway. Donkeys and pack mules were used, and lions attacked them. Ox-wagons were tried, and elephants overturned them. It must have caused a great deal of relief when the branch line to Thomson's Falls was finally opened in 1929, and meanwhile, the farmers had been seriously considering the suggestion made by the Department of Agriculture that they should have their own creamery.
In other parts of Kenya, several other creameries had begun, all acting independently of each other. Lumbwa was the first, then Lord Delamere formed a syndicate at Naivasha and built the Kenya Co- operative Creamery Ltd. in 1925; and the Nanyuki farmers built their own creamery in 1928.
The Thomson's Falls farmers, 44 all told, met to consider the possibilities of a creamery and were wholeheartedly in favour of it. Captain Sykes had done a considerable amount of work on the project, and having in his youth served an engineering apprenticeship, he was one of the first people to realise the potentialities of the Falls for cheap electricity. Between them, they raised £2,000 and they estimated that another £7,000 would be needed to build and equip a creamery and leave them a working capital.
Everything seemed on their side. Sir Edward Grigg, the Governor ("Best Governor Kenya ever had, before or since", growls Captain Sykes.) was known to favour the idea, and they had the backing of Alex Holm, in their request for a loan from the Colonial Development Corporation.
The Opposition
But it was expecting too much that the creamery at Naivasha could either agree to, or ignore, a creamery likely to give them such competition. Delamere was already a sick man (it was only two years from his death) but he was a formidable opponent. He let it be known that he and his directors would support the new creamery only if it was prepared to amalgamate with the Naivasha Creamery, the "K.C.C." Ltd. Those responsible for good government saw a wider picture than the rebels at Thomson's Falls. They saw the dairy industry of Kenya, still in its infancy, split and weakened by internal competition. They explained that they felt that another independent creamery was just one too many.
The Thomson's Falls farmers were incensed. They had been doing a little research on their own, and they retorted that New Zealand had 500 creameries, and Denmark had 1,500, so that a fourth creamery in Kenya would hardly overcrowd it. But the ultimatum was given, and Louis Sykes and
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George Aggett still shake their heads at the memory. Join K.C.C. or there will be no creamery! Very well, said the farmers, there will be no creamery.
"We didn't want to throw in our lot with Delamere's crowd at Naivasha," explains Captain Sykes. "We couldn't afford it, d'you see. We considered that they were over-capitalised, anyway, and we just didn't want any part of it."
It is very easy now to say, as so many do, that those early settlers should have united over this, as over so many things. But it is often forgotten how fiercely individualistic the settlers were. Empire-building is a word that has fallen into disrepute, but without men like Aggett and Sykes, there would have been no Kenya, just as without Delamere there would have been no Kenya. But this does not mean that they were all cast in the same mould, by any means.
The Creamery is Built
A great deal happened within the next few years. George Aggett continued to make and sell ghee, for which he found a ready market among the Nairobi Indians. Captain Sykes went on making butter, and selling it very successfully, too. (At one Nairobi auction his butter sold at 10/50 a lb.). Sir Edward Grigg was succeeded by Sir Joseph Byrne, and Mr. Alex Holm retired.
Most important of all from the dairying point of view, was the amalgamation, in 1931, of the existing three creameries, at Lumbwa, Naivasha and Nanyuki, forming the nucleus of today's successful organisation.
Captain Sykes became a director (as a substitute) of the newly constituted Kenya Cooperative Creameries, and then, in 1932, came the offer, from K.C.C., to build a creamery at Thomson's Falls. "They'd won, d'you see," explains Captain Sykes, momentarily cast down by the memory of the lost battle.
But it was an honourable defeat. K.C.C. used most of Louis Sykes' original plans, and to this day, the building has not required any structural alterations.
The Thomson's Falls Creamery was opened by the Governor in March, 1934, for the manufacture of butter, and since that day it has never looked back. Young Bill Humphries, the present manager, regards his two oldest members with affectionate respect.
"It must have been a grand country," says someone, nostalgically, and Captain Sykes has a vigorous answer ready "It still is a grand country, and I'll be here for the rest of my life."
Up to the late nineteen-forties, some cream was arriving by this form of transport. [LEFT: LENNOX SMITH DRIVING HIS OX WAGGON FROM THE PESI TAKING CREAM TO KCC THOMSONS FALLS]
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ABOVE: OPENING OF K.C.C. Ltd, THOMSON’S FALLS - 1934
[Ed: This extract from the KDF was submitted by Dave Lichtenstein, who worked for the K.C.C.]
KENYA CO-OPERATIVE DAIRY PERSONNEL
This ‘truncated’ data base is compiled by Dave Lichtenstein, 12 Avian Crescent, Lane Cove, New South Wales 2066. Tel: 02-9127 1220.
Depot abbreviations: Eld-Eldoret; Kgo-Kiganjo; Kit-Kitale; Mki-Mariakani; Nbi-Nairobi; Nku-Nakuru; Nva-Naivasha; Nyk-Nanyuki; Mol-Molo; Stk-Sotik; T-Tanganyika; T/F-Thomson’s Falls; U-Uganda;
Admin. Abbreviations: CHMN-Chairman; DIR-Director; GM-General Manager; MD-Managing Director; MGR-Manager; SEC- Secretary; SM-Sales Manager
If you worked for the KCC and your name is not on this list, please contact Dave and supply him the following information: Surname; First names; which KCC(s) you worked at and dates; your current postal address, phone numbers and e-m address.
ADELINE, Derek [Nbi, T/F] BAXTER, Ann [Nbi] AGGETT, Hudson [Mol] BECCALONI, S. ALLEN, Anthony BEGG, Miss Sheila [Nku, Nva] ALLEN TURNER, H.J. [DIR] BESSANT, Brian [Eld] ALLINSON, Mike [Stk] BIGGS, Kim [Stk, Mol] ANDERSON, Lyn [Stk, U, T] BIRCH, Douglas [Nva, Kit] ANDERSON, Olfert [T/F] BLACKBURN, Jack [Mol] ARMSTRONG, Gordon [Stk] BLITHE, Cedric [Nku, T/F] ATKINSON, John [Stk, T/F, Kit, Nyk, BLOCK, Jack [DIR] Nku, Nbi] BLUNT, Harry [Nku] ATTRYDE, Stuart [Stk] BOSWORTH, Mike [Eld, Nku] BANNISTER, Peter BOWIE, Alec [Kit, Nku] BARKER, Richard [DIR] BRABINER, H [Nbi] BASTARD, S.S. [DIR] BRANS, Mrs. Jenny [Nbi] 66
BROADBENT, Mrs. Madeleine [Nva] FRASER, H.B [DIR] BROOKS, Chris [Eld, Nbi] FOERRUP, Ole [Eld, Nva, Nbi] BROWN, W.(Digger) [Nbi, Stk] GARROW FISHER, Miss F [Nbi] BUNTIN, Brian [Eld, Nbi, Nku, Mol] GASTER, Miss Roma [SM] BURT, R.A [Nva, Nbi] GATES, John [Nbi] BUTTERFIELD, Robin [Nbi] GAYLOR, Mrs. Mollie [Nbi] BYNG-HALL, John [MD] GEURTS, Wilhelm [Eld, T/F, Nbi] CARLIN, S [DIR] GIBSON, A.K [DIR] CHAPPELL, Vaughan [Nva] GIRDLESTONE, Mrs. Mollie [Nbi] CHATER, J.D [GM] GOODWIN, Mrs. N [Nku] CHATER, Dick [Mki] GORDON, R.D CHATFIELDS, John [Nva] GOW, Jock CHESHIRE, Bob [Nbi] GRAFTON, Dennis [DIR] CHRISTENSEN, Jens [Kit] GRAINGER, John CLEAVER, Len [U] GREATHEAD, Ken [Nyk, Eld] CLIFFORD, Murray [Nbi] GREATHEAD, Godfrey COLLIER, Eric [Stk] GREATHEAD, Guy COLLINGE, Mrs. Clare [Nbi] GREEN, A.M. CONNINGTON, Gerry [Nbi] GRESHAM, F.L [Nbi] COOK, H.F. GRIFFIN, Neville [Nva] COPE, Van [Nva] GROVES, Trevor [Nku, Kit] COSTELLO [Nku] GULLICK, Peter [Eld] COULSON, Mrs. Pam [Nbi] GUNTZENBACH, Hans [Nva] CRAKE, E.H. [DIR] HALL, Bill [Mol, Stk] CRONYN, Bernard [Nva] HAMLYN, Alex [Eld, Nbi] CUFFLIN, David [Nva] HANSEN, Vic [Nyk, Nva, Eld, T/F] CUMMINGS, Gwen [Eld] HANSEN, Chris [Nva] CURRY, H.D [Nbi] HARTLEY, D.E [MGR] DANDO, Ken HASTIE, Eric [Nbi] DAVIS, Guy [T/F] HASWELL, Miss [Nbi] DAVIES, Colin [Mol, Nbi] HAWKINS, Brian [Nbi, U] DAVISON, Mrs. A [Nbi] HAZELTON, W.H [MGR] DAWES, V [Nbi] HENLEY, John. DELAMERE, Lord HOLMES, Arthur [Nbi] DEMPSTER, D.H.M [CHM] HOUREAU; Sally [Nbi] DOIG, Mrs E.M [Nbi] HOUREAU, Max DOWLE, Dowlie [Nbi] HORNE, Ken [Stk] DOYLE, Aiden [Eld, Nku, Nbi, Nva] HOWARD, P.E.L [DIR] DRAFFAN, Robert [GM] HOWARD, Peter [Kit] DUNCAN, Douggie HUGHES, Brian [Nva, Stk] DURRANT, Michael [U] HUMPHRIES, Bill [T/F, Nva] DURGNAT, Gilbert [Nbi] HUMPHREYS, Miss Anne ELLIOT, Keith [T/F, Nyk] HUNTER, W.C [SEC] FAWCETT, Mrs. Carol [U] HUNTER, Geoffrey [SEC]. FENWICK, Bob [Stk] HUNTER, Alan [SEC]. FERNANDES, Charles [DIR] HUNTER, Mrs. Virginia [Nbi] FINDLAY, Peter [Nva. T/F, Eld] JACKMAN, H.R [DIR] FLETT, Bob [Stk, Nbi] JAMES, Mrs [Nbi] FOALE, Mrs. Anne [Nbi] JAMESON, Rupert [T/F, Kit, Eld] FORNO, Tony [Nva] JENKINS, Tom [Eld] FOSTER, John [Kit, Eld] JENNINGS, Di [Nbi] FRANK, Ron [Stk] JENSEN, T.F [MGR]
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JOHNSON, Ian [Stk, Nyk, Nbi] PAWLOSZEWSKA, Miss Wanda [Nbi] JOHNSON, Bill [Eld, Nbi] PEARCE, Mrs. Jane [Nva, Nbi] JONES, Richard [Nku, Nva, Nbi, T/F, Stk] PEDERSEN, Peter [Nyk, T/F, Nva, Nku] JOYCE, O.M [Nbi] PEDERSEN, Kaj [Nku, Nbi] KALKMAN, Jan [Nva, Eld] PEMBRIDGE, John [Stk] KELLY, David [Nku] PHILLIPS, Sid [Mol] KERSWELL, Mrs. F [Nbi] PHILLIPS, Charles [Nku] KING, Joe [Nbi] PINNEY, Wendy [Eld, Nva] KING, C.H. Mac [Nbi] PITT-KENNEDY, Dick [Nbi] KIRK, David [Eld] PITT-PLADDY, Allan [Mol, Eld, Nbi] KOUWENHOVEN, Wessel [Nva, Nku] POWELL, Jim [Mol, Nku, Kit] LAUGESEN, H [Nva, Eld] PRINGLE, James [Kit] LAWRENCE, George [Nbi] RAE, Mrs J.A [Nbi] LANGRIDGE, Miss Monica [Nva] RAMSDEN, John [DIR] LICHTENSTEIN, Dave [Stk, T/F] RATTER, Mrs. Olive [Nbi, U] LITTLEWOOD, Gerald [DIR] REID, A.G [Stk] LONG, Caswell [CHMN] ROBERTS, Donald [SEC] LUIES [Nku] ROBERTS, Dave [Kit, Nku] LUXFORD, C [DIR] ROBERTSON, David LYNCH, Johnny [Nbi] ROBSON, Alice [Nbi] MACADAM, Jack [Stk?, Mol] ROE, Mrs [Nbi] MACDOUGAL, J.A [SEC]. ROLLER, Peter [DIR] MACKINLAY, W.W [DIR] ROUT, Mrs [Nbi] MACMANUS, Mrs. R.E [Nbi] SAPIRO, Bob (Sappy) [Stk] MADRICK, Mrs [Nbi] SCHOFIELD, Harry [Mol] MADSEN, J.K [DIR] SCOTT, Dave [Nbi, Stk, Eld, Mol] MADSEN, I.S [Nva] SCUFFAM, Fred [Nku] MALAHER, Terry [T/F] SEARLE, D.R [Nbi] MASON, Don [Stk, Eld, Nva] SHAW, Tom [Nbi, Eld, Nku, Mol, Kit, Kgo] MALAN, Gerry [Nva] SLADE, Humphrey [DIR] MATHEWS, S.N [SEC] SLOGGIE [Nbi] MATHEWS, Miss Hazel SORENSON, Tom [Stk] MAUDE, Harry [Nyk] SMITH, Mrs [Eld] MAY, Stan [Nbi] SMITH, Harry [Nbi] MAYER, R.F [DIR] STEPHEN, Bob [Stk, Nbi] MCCABE, D.H. STEWART, Robert [Nku] MCCAULEY, Robert [Nbi, Eld] STOREY, H [DIR] MCCAWLEY, Jock [Nbi] SUMMERS, Tony [Nbi] MCCORMICK, Jimmy [Nku] SUMNER, A.W.E [Nbi] MCDONALD, Malcolm [Nva] SUTHERLAND MCDONOGH, J.E [DIR] SVENSEN, Len MCULLOUGH, Joy [Nbi, Eld?] SYMES, A.W. MCQUIRE, James [Kit, Nva] SYMONS, Jack [CHMN] MILLS, B.S [DIR] TAIT, Willie [Nva, Nbi] MOLLOY, Mrs. Pam [Nbi] TATE, Stewart [Nva] MOODY, Ray TAYLOR, F.G [DIR] MOUTON, J.N.S. TAYLOR, John [Eld, Kit] MUIRHEAD, Pinky [Mol] THATCHER, C.J. NEFDT, J.M [Nbi] TOMS, Mrs [Nbi] NIELSON, Jorgen [Nku, Stk] VAN HOOF, [Nva] PASCALL, Keith [Nbi] VELDE, Ype [Mol, Eld, Nku?] PATTEN, W.G [DIR] ?VILLIER, Alan [Eld]
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WALTER, Basil [Nbi] WISEMAN, Bob [Nbi] WATSON, W [Stk] WOODS, Mrs E [Nbi] WHITE, H.A.D [DIR] WRIGHT, Alec [Eld, DIR] WHITE, PeterWILSON, Richard [DIR] WRIGHT, Joe WINSTANLEY, Mrs [Nbi] WYATT, Clyde [Nbi] WINTER, Mrs Miette [Nbi] WYER, Mrs [Nbi] WISDOM, Mike [Stk, Nku]
*****
SASUMUA
[Venn Féy, MC KR393]
In 1956, construction of a large water reservoir commenced on the Sasumua Stream for the purpose of supplying water to Kenya's capital city some sixty miles away. The name of the city, Nairobi, is a Maasai name for 'swamp', which is all it was before the white man came.
In order to ensure sufficient intake for the reservoir, a small dam was built on the Chania and a tunnel constructed through the ridge to Sasumua to carry all Chania flood water to the reservoir. You can well imagine the stir that this caused in our farming district. It kept everyone happily arguing for a couple of years, and the legal profession came in for their share of the joy.
The Angling fraternity, ably led by Colonel Bob Sellon, appointed a committee to try and secure fishing rights. This proved to be no mean task, for the regulations of the City Council concerning reservoirs for city water clearly stated that no member of the public would be allowed within a hundred yards of the banks.
I am glad to state that reason prevailed over hide-bound bureaucracy and the Angling Association was formed. George Cole was our first President. I was appointed executive officer, so I had the interesting task of assisting Norman Martindale, a Government Fishery Officer, to plant the first thirty-thousand fry.
It was part of my duty to test-fish the Lake and report on growth rate, condition factor, food intake and so on. I had some marvellous fishing.
Those troutlets didn't take long to become trout. About six months later I was catching beautiful pounders that leapt like silver javelins into the light of the setting sun, and stripped off yards of line before coming in to the net. Jethro, our Kikuyu cook, filleted them and fried them in bread crumbs, and Beth made sauce tartare.
The firm, almost crisp texture of those pink trout fillets, and the sauce tartare, the basics of which were our home grown Nasturtium seeds, was good and tasty beyond description, and in retrospect I can still taste them, a fork full at a time dipped in that marvellous sauce.
At the end of a full year I was able to recommend that the Lake be opened to members and their guests. It is memorable.
Keith and Molly Hendry came across for the weekend and Keith and I took our limit of twelve fish each. They were all over two pounds. Bob Wilson from the SKD took a four-pounder, and someone or other lost his rod overboard. He must ha' been taking a wee dram!
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I never landed any fish over five pounds, but one day I took a five-pound brownie before breakfast and a five-pound rainbow in the evening.
We christened our boat SALLY FEY for the daughter we never had, and Christy, Martin, John and Andrew all came out at crack of dawn, or at sunset, and we had lots of exciting times together.
One day we were rowing slowly down the Church creek when Christy was taken by Leviathan. Wham!
It came to net after half an hour of tremendously exciting play during which Christy had most of the line from his reel wound round his feet.
One Sunday morning Christy and I were on the lake down by the main wall. I was fishing over a deep-plunging shore line, and I knew that there had been a forest of young cedars growing there and which had been cut down, leaving a lot of snuggle-toothed stumps on the bottom. I had on a homemade lure, black and white hen-hackle, in America called a bi-visual. This was a big job; five inches long. I let it sink, and then started retrieving very fast and I hooked into one of those old cedar stumps.
That's what I thought. Until the stump started moving and came up and leapt in a great splash of spray, and threw the hook. If I told you what I think it might have weighed, you would call me a liar.
One year we had unusually heavy rains; one of those years. The flood water from the Chania through the tunnel and the flood water down the Sasumua produced a vast quantity of overflow, far more than was ever anticipated by the engineers. We had a net across the overflow to prevent our fish escaping downstream. But we hadn't bargained for a flood like this.
The net went one way. A lot of fish went the same way as the net, down the Sasumua. It was a tremendous fall but I never saw a dead fish in the huge pool below. I went down there first with Rudi Schumacher and we caught some big trout.
I had an arrangement with the manager of the water treatment works that when I wanted to fish that big pool I'd contact him and ask for the green light. Sometimes they opened the main valve at the bottom of the lake to let out any accumulation of silt. When that valve was opened millions of gallons of water surged down the Sasumua, and it came in a liquid wall six-feet high.
One Sunday I phoned through and said I wanted to spend the day with my four small sons at the waterfall pool. I was given the green light. Christy and Martin and John and Andrew and I took our tackle and our lunch down to that great pool and with us we took Karema, a Kikuyu servant.
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The pool had a waterfall thundering into it, and a cave right under the waterfall. It was a wonderful place for kids and the trout that came out of it were stupendous. Around midday John and I went downstream to try our luck in some of the lower pools. Suddenly I noticed the colour of the water changing, and then the level began to rise rapidly and I realised what had happened - the sluice gates, the big main outlet valve at the bottom of the lake, had been opened.
I shouted to John, who was fishing below me, to hurry, and follow me up the hillside. We were caught on the wrong bank, but there was already no hope of re-crossing, by now the full force of water was tumbling and surging in an angry brown flood and the noise was almost deafening.
I had left Christy, Martin and Andrew at the cave with Karema; they wanted to swim. If they were caught in this they hadn't a hope; my mouth went dry with fear as we ran along the hillside towards the big pool.
When we got there the cave was completely inundated; no sign of life. At that moment I knew the soul agony of bereavement, when all of human life that you love and cherish most is, by a callous act of Fate, taken from you forever.
Then I spotted Karema on a ledge of rock above the turbulence. He was calmly seeing it out. At that moment John screamed, "Dad! There they are! Safe." And there they were waving joyously, for their relief was as great as ours, having been assailed by the terrible fear that Dad and John had been swept away.
We went down the following day to discover what might be left of clothing, rods and equipment in the cave. There was nothing. Downstream we recovered the butt end of a trout rod and a small cloth hat. The boys had been swimming when they first heard the deep rumble above, Martin and Andrew clambered on to the bank, just as the first great jet of dirty water spewed over the fall. Christy, still in the pool, was swept down but miraculously was pushed up on to a strand on the far side where, with the aid of a tree root, he clambered to safety.
There were those wonderful evenings when the sun gleamed gold on the face of the mountain before Niandarawa turned purple in the sunset, four thousand feet above.
On the lake, dusk cast its darkening mantle, and the splosh and ‘whurrup’ of rising trout all along the shores commenced and you were in a frenzy to connect with them before it was too late. That evening rise lasted about twenty minutes.
Afterwards, there was the Brown Trout Inn, almost on the shores of the lake where fishermen from all corners of Kenya and other parts of the world, foregathered over a noggin and told tall stories on the subject dearest to their hearts, whilst George Bateman presided with benign friendliness behind the bar counter, and his wife Beryl dispensed her culinary expertise.
It was a great, warm-hearted refuge.
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ASSOCIATION NEWS
KRA (QUEENSLAND) LUNCH: 22nd MARCH 2015
Alastair Napier Bax writes. We had a good turnout at the Caloundra Power Boat Club. I attach the names of attendees, many of which will piga kengere! John and Robin Channer co-hosted.
Blowers, Karin (née Drews); Bower, Denis & Anne; Brierley, John [KR7191]; Brierley, Richard; Channer, John [KR6341] & Robin (née Cecil); Collins, Norma (née Millar); Crowther, Betty; Davies, Graham & Glyn; Davies, Ruth (née Slingsby); Elgar, Pam; Evans, Roger [KR6553]; Gates, John [KR4086] & Ruth; Hamlyn, Alex [KR6868] & Liz (née Jensen); Keese, Lou [KR6010] & Catherine; Lindsay, Ian [KPA] & Joy (née Parker); Millar, Ian [KR4805] & Barbara (née Edmunds); Moore, Charles [KR4891] & Susan; Napier Bax, Alastair [KR4967] & Valerie (née Wheeler); Oxley, Tony & Anne; Pickering, Allen & Caroline; Ryan, Thady [KR6314] & Lavinia (née Allen); Salwegter, Hans & Anneka (née de Leeuw); Saunders, Jill (*Peter 4546); Shaw, Ginny (*Giles 4785 née Clifford-Gates); Stafford, Anne (née Fochs d749) Tate, Pat [KPR]; Thompson, Don [KR4429] & Sheila; Trench, Christopher; Westlake, Peter [KR4913] & Eleanor (née Thompson); Wollen, Giles [KR4004] & Liz (née Shaw)
For those planning a trip to Queensland, please try and include one of our lunches in your itinerary:
Sunday 19th July 2015- KRAQ Curry Lunch Oxley Golf Club (confirmed) Sunday 22nd November 2015- KRAQ Curry Lunch Oxley Golf Club (confirmed) Sunday 20th March 2016- KRAQ Curry Lunch Power Boat Club Caloundra (confirmed)
Lastly, we have a few KR lapel badges in stock at $AU40.00; no more are being made.
*****
GAUTENG
Keith Elliot [KR4289]
He was not at the POW so I did not know his name at all. However, he has led an interesting! After Salisbury, he was with KR Recces, then to the Buffs as a sgt, but was returned to RHQ after telling a very upper-class English major, to ‘combine sex with travel’; then to 3K.A.R.
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An engineer by trade, Barry worked in Persia until Khomeni kicked him out; then Jordan, various Gulf States, and virtually all over the world. Now retired, he lives in England for the summer months and the rest of the time in the Seychelles! Lucky beggar.
***
NEW ZEALAND
Arthur Schofield
At the end of his welcoming speech, Michael Innes Walker entertained us with a variety of very amusing jokes. Everyone appeared to enjoy the day and it was good to catch up with many friends.
L/R – Seated: VAL MCCABE (née STANLEY), JUNE ELLIOTT (née RICKARDS), CHRISTINE SCHOFIELD (née LEONARD), JOY JENSEN
STANDING:- JIMMY BRUCE KR4816], BRIAN MCCABE [KPR], MARION ELLIOTT (née WALKER], MARY HENRY (née NEWALL), DENTON EVANS [KR4043], JILL GRAF (née SCHWARTZEL), ARTHUR SCHOFIELD [KR4511], DON ELLIOTT [KPR], BRIAN ROPER [KR6712], IONE EVANS (née BORWICK), JOYCE HEIJBOER (née CAMPBELL), KEN ELLIOTT [CCF], MICHAEL INNES WALKER [KR4426], ROY GRAY, JACK RUBEN [KR3930]
*****
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THE KING’S ROYAL RIFLE CORPS ASSOCIATION REUNION (DEHLI DAY) LUNCH
Several former members of KRAENA who are now members of the KRRC Association attended the KRRC Association Reunion Lunch on Saturday 13th September 2014. The lunch was held in the Drill Hall at Davies Street, London, where many of our KRAENA lunches were held. Among those attending were Gerald Angel, John Boulle, Iain Morrison and Mac and Jannett Spence. This is an excellent event, so if you are a member of the KRRC Association please try and attend next year - details will be sent to you in April with your copy of the 2015 KRRC Journal (and m-S?).
L/R: JOHN BOULLE [KR6193], GERALD ANGEL [KR6066] AND IAIN MORRISON [KR6111].
*****
KENYA EMERGENCY, OCTOBER 1952 - DECEMBER 1963
[PALACE BARRACKS MEMORIAL GARDEN]
94 Officers and Men of the British Forces are listed as having lost their lives in Kenya - 1952-1956
RANK SURNAME FORENAMES REGT/UNIT BORN DIED
Pte Allen Anthony Frank Royal Berks 31.12.1934 07.11.1953 Rfn Atkins Sidney Donald Rifle Brigade 06.06.1928 23.12.1954 Sgt Atkinson James Keith RAF 12.01.1931 22.03.1954 Pte Badcock Peter Hugh Devons 07.07.1934 20.11.1953 L/Cpl Baker Kenneth James Rifle Brigade 07.10.1935 23.10.1955 Sgt Bartlett Stanley Albert GeorgeRAF 23.12.1925 19.02.1955 M/Eng Beesley William Joseph RAF 28.11.1920 22.03.1954 Pte Blackburn Derek KOYLI 22.01.1934 07.05.1955 L/Cpl Blazer Alan Benjamin REME 29.02.1932 15.09.1953 L/Cpl Blyth Francis James Royal Irish Fusiliers 24.02.1935 07.02.1955 LAC Bourton Gordon Thomas RAF 17.12.1933 03.03.1954 74
WO2 Bow Percy Royal Scots 31.01.1910 04.09.1953 LAC Bowdler Edward John RAF 28.11.1934 21.06.1954 Cpl Boyes Eric RMP 19.10.1929 12.07.1954 2Lt Brasington Christopher Charles Glosters 02.12.1935 12.03.1956 SAC Briggs Leonard RAF 23.04.1931 21.06.1954 Pte Cavenagh Thomas John RAMC 22.06.1928 04.01.1956 Pte Clifford Ivan Glosters 02.09.1935 22.09.1955 Cfn Collins James REME 20.10.1934 27.09.1955 Pte Croud Gordon Richard Buffs 24.09.1931 23.12.1954 L/Cpl Daniel John Francis Ronald Rifle Brigade 17.06.1934 05.05.1954 2Lt Evans Anthony Henry B Glosters 22.05.1936 11.03.1956 L/Cpl Farrow Michael John RASC 27.03.1932 24.12.1952 Pte Finch Maurice William Kings Scottish LI 05.09.1936 26.10.1956 A/Cpl Fisher Derrick John Scott RAF 21.03.1934 28.06.1954 Pte Fortley Raymond Leonard KSLI 09.09.1934 28.01.1956 Pte Foyle John Frederick Devons 24.12.1933 19.05.1953 Fus Galvin Andrew James Royal Irish Fusiliers 11.10.1934 30.06.1955 Fus Gayler Ronald Royal Inniskilling Fus 11.10.1934 13.11.1954 Lt Gibbs David Walter Kings Own Hussars 23.09.1929 17.06.1954 Lt Gilbert John Dethick Royal Inniskilling Fus 18.12.1928 06.10.1954 Sig Gough Griffith Charles Royal Signals 14.12.1934 03.10.1953 Pte Graham James Ross Black Watch 11.07.1933 01.01.1955 C/Tech Greedy Clifford John William RAF 04.04.1915 21.06.1954 L/Cpl Griffiths Trevor Royal Engineers 30.09.1921 02.03.1955 WO2 Grigg Robert Francis REME 30.11.1923 14.03.1954 WO2 Hamilton William Robert Sherwood Foresters 04.03.1914 09.12.1955 WO2 Hamilton- Paxon George RAPC 03.06.1910 29.11.1953 Cpl Hawkins Rex Gordon ACC 01.12.1933 21.09.1955 2Lt Hazell Maurice Andrew Glosters 28.08.1935 12.03.1956 Flt/Lt Hemy Wilfred Philip RAF 26.05.1920 21.06.1954 LAC Hills John Michael RAF 19.05.1935 21.06.1954 Pte Hogben Frank Henry Buffs 03.11.1934 07.11.1953 Sgt Hollands Norman Victor RAF 15.04.1934 19.02.1955 C/Sgt Horsewell Arthur William Buffs 01.03.1922 18.08.1953 Maj Hulland (QM) Albert Ronald Devons 30.03.1908 01.10.1956 F/O Hunt Alan Leonard RAF 06.11.1928 19.02.1955 Sgt Hunt Cyril Martin Queens Royal Regt 11.09.1923 03.05.1953 L/Cpl Johnson Charles Emerson ACC 23.06.1928 11.09.1953 Sgt Jones John Edward Northumberland Fus 16.12.1916 28.10.1954 Rfn Keen William Edward Rifle Brigade 16.07.1935 26.06.1955 F/O King Alexander RAF 04.03.1930 19.02.1955 Fus Knapper Trevor Northumberland Fus 23.05.1934 05.11.1954 Pte Lanchbury John Edward Glosters 27.12.1933 09.05.1955 L/Cpl Leaman Derek Victor Devons 29.01.1934 10.11.1953 S/Sgt Mackison William Murray RAEC 01.02.1931 16.05.1956 Dvr MacLachlan Dugald RASC 03.12.1933 14.11.1953 Maj Minshull-Ford Francis Charles Royal Welsh Fusiliers 20.06.1914 03.02.1954 Pte Mullan Alan Devons 26.07.1934 29.06.1953 Pte Mullineux Keith George Michael Glosters 23.01.1935 25.10.1955 Pte Newman Henry Charles D Devons 18.10.1932 08.06.1953 Pte Nicoll Alexander Campbell Black Watch 11.01.1932 08.09.1953
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Sgt North Alan William RAF 01.06.1928 19.02.1955 2Lt Nunn Christopher Brian R Warwickshire Regt 28.06.1933 08.01.1954 L/Cpl O’Flynn Peter Colin Devons 14.06.1934 02.01.1954 F/O Owen Malcolm William H RAF 24.02.1929 22.03.1954 Pte Page David Charles Devons 21.05.1934 14.07.1953 F/O Parry John Graham RAF 04.04.1934 19.02.1955 Sgt Perring Alfred Edwin REME 09.05.1931 21.09.1954 Sgt Pinn Lois John RAF 27.08.1928 14.08.1954 Flt/Lt Pullman Alfred Outram RAF 21.05.1916 06.02.1954 Cpl Quinney Thomas Frederick Middlesex Regiment 02.09.1932 17.10.1953 F/O Robinson Robert Joseph RAF 23.12.1931 22.03.1954 Pte Sarahs Roy Reginald James Devons 05.08.1931 11.02.1954 Flt/Lt Savage Denis Charles RAF 26.06.1921 19.01.1954 Pte Scott Terence RAVC 27.12.1930 24.07.1954 Flt/Sgt Shearman George Edward RAF 21.07.1909 11.09.1954 Cpl Short Robert Neill R Inniskilling Fus 13.11.1932 18.02.1954 A/Cpl Skillern Terence Herbert RAF 18.06.1934 30.06.1955 Lt/Col Smith Cuthbert Brooke KSLI 10.08.1915 18.07.1955 Fus Sobey Kenneth Northumberland Fus 20.11.1934 08.10.1953 Pte Stevens Herbert Stanley Devons 15.09.1932 17.07.1954 Flt/Sgt Thompson John RAF 27.02.1922 21.06.1954 Pte Traynor John Harkins Black Watch 13.01.1934 26.09.1953 Pte Tuffley Malcom Devons 28.10.1934 08.01.1954 Flt/Lt Waight Michael RAF 10.04.1927 22.03.1954 2Lt Warnes Anthony George Royal Engineers 16.03.1935 15.05.1954 L/Cpl Warrener Michael Arthur Buffs 12.02.1933 29.03.1954 Maj Wavell MC (The Earl) Archibald John Arthur Black Watch 11.05.1916 24.12.1953 Spr West Gordon Royal Engineers 27.11.1934 03.01.1954 Brig Western DSO Ernest Walter Davie Staff 02.02.1901 19.12.1952 WO2 Williams Ivor Lancashire Fusiliers 03.12.1915 13.07.1953 F/O Williams Ronald David M RAF 16.01.1931 21.06.1954 Pte Willoughby Derrick RAOC 29.11.1931 20.01.1954
Reproduced with the permission of Mr. Albert Owens, Curator, Palace Barracks Memorial Gardens.
*****
[Ed: Further to the list on page 13, we have been advised of the deaths of the following members. In ( ) the name of the member/source whence the information came:
Challoner, Andrew John [KR6863] 24/04/2015. Kenya (Iain Morrison) Hobson, John Barry (Yorkshire) [KR4638] 21/04/2015. Kent (Derek Pavely) Murphy, Herbert Alexander [KR6297] 15/05/2015. Howick (John Moore) Sparrow, Raymond John [KR4142] 18/04/2015. Johannesburg (Fi Cloete & Keith Elliot) Tate, Phyllis (née Douglas) widow of Alan James [KR3652]. 24/04/2015 Essex (Pam Molloy). Walsh, Nigel Murray [KR3836/5655] 13/04/2015. Oxford (Iain Morrison)
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