“Right between the eyes!” shouts one of the guys.
“Why don’t you stick close to me, Collins,” Major Stroud says. “It’ll probably save your life.”
I smile, but only to myself.
The week after we’ve mastered the saddle, we take it again, now adding a climb directly onto Mount Mawenzi. “Altitude sickness and dehydration will start to thin out the group on this ascent,” Major Stroud says. “If you’re among the ones who don’t make it, you’ll see us when we come back down.”
From the saddle to Mount Mawenzi lies 1,500 feet of volcanic ash, scree, and snow—zero greenery at all. I take a step forward and sink back three, my feet and ankles now covered in slushy filth. I track Major Stroud’s fast progress in spite of his age and his limp. I stay as close to him as I can—keeping my focus on this goal takes my mind off the pain of the climb—and I sip water from my canteen every time I see him take a drink.
The dozen of us who make it struggle for air in short breaths at the top. After a full morning’s work to arrive there, we barely stop to admire the panorama of Mount Kibo in the sun. “The air up here is cleaner than anything you’ve ever breathed,” Major Stroud tells us as he turns back down. “Air this pure will exhaust your system—take it easy going down.”
The following week we climb again, this time for the rim of the Kibo crater, known as Gilman’s Point. I curse my pack—only forty pounds, but without enough oxygen, it feels like two hundred. I keep my eyes on the ground in front of me to focus my mind on something—and suddenly a landscape of ice cliffs seems to rise up out of nowhere. It’s gorgeously sharp, a transparent shade of blue. “When people tell you they’ve climbed Kilimanjaro, they’re usually referring to Gilman’s Point,” Major Stroud shouts through puffs of air, “but to really climb to the very top—the peak of Mount Kibo—you’ve got to work all around the rim of the crater and make the high point on the north rim. That’s Kaiser Wilhelm Spitze.”
“We’ll climb it next week?” one of my comrades asks.
“I will,” says Major Stroud. “But very few of you will get there with me.”
Indeed, the next week, we start up Kaiser Wilhelm Spitze—German for “Emperor Wilhelm Peak.” “Porters would be good right now,” huffs one of the guys behind me, and already I’m sure that leaving my pack behind and carrying a few snacks and two canteens was definitely the right decision.
We take only three steps at a time, then pause for air. As I work to catch my breath, the snowflakes on the ground sparkle like rainbow jewels for as far as I can see. Gazing at the higher peaks still in the distance, I see the snow as thick as clumps of white frosting on the sides of a massive cake.
{Humberto Vela, Jr.}
Dawn breaks over Kaiser Wilhelm Spitze, Uhuru Peak, the highest point in Africa—19,341 feet.
Every time I look behind me, the group has thinned out and shrunk. Festus remains, but now he’s slowed down significantly. “Fatigue is a bear,” growls Major Stroud—even he is visibly suffering. After eight hours of climbing with no break, we finally near the top. I look out over the dangerous edge of the mountain and I am amazed by what I see: it’s a trampoline of clouds beneath us, as if we were at full altitude in an airplane. A parachute could be a lot of fun right now.
There are only six of us present as we make the final summit. My only letdown is to see that Festus isn’t among us.
{Humberto Vela, Jr.}
Summiting calls for a celebration.
Major Stroud, taking a celebratory tone for the first time since I’ve met him, urges us to view the inside of the crater: it’s fantastic, with giant glaciers that stand like gleaming islands of ice. Then as a group, we approach the famous wooden sign, its letters carved and filled in with yellow paint:
CONGRATULATIONS
YOU ARE NOW AT KAISER WILHELM SPITZE
THE HIGHEST POINT IN AFRICA
19,341 FT
There’s a rumble of victory among us, hoots and full, labored breaths to take in what we’ve just accomplished. The view that lies before us is all sky and open space. It’s overwhelming in its simplicity.
Every sound we make creates a conscious transaction among our bodies, the ground, and the air. It’s here, in nature, that we are completely unified with all of life. What more could anyone want than this view? More than accomplishment, it’s a deep sense of peace and sheer, absolute freedom. It’s the peak of existence, like standing on the roof of the world. I turn to Major Stroud. “Now that we’ve made it, we get to sign our names in the book, right?”
“Yes, Kent, you do.”
I turn for the tin box at the foot of the CONGRATULATIONS sign.
“After you climb this once more.”
I stop in my tracks.
“Are you surprised, Kent?”
“No, sir.”
“Good. Do that, and your name will exist here for eternity. All right, gentlemen,” he calls, “let’s make our descent.”
In a group, we start back down the mountain. My tracks crunch and pack down the snow. We have three days of rest before Major Stroud summons us for our second climb to the top of Kibo. This time it is easier. We are fitter, acclimatized, and know what to expect. And Festus also makes it to the top.
Finally Major Stroud allows me to sign the book. Kaiser Wilhelm Spitze now knows my name.
Now I am ready for Sandhurst.
{Kent family archives}
As a young Lieutenant catching up on my paperwork at GHQ Malta, 1964.
Chapter 4
The British Army
1959
Sandhurst is an education in many ways.
My father sees me off from the Nairobi airport the day I fly to the Royal Air Force base in Lyneham, two hours west of London. When I finally arrive at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in Surrey, my cautious naïveté isn’t due only to the fact that at age seventeen, I’m one of the younger cadets to enroll in recent years, but also because my rather untamed upbringing in Africa clearly has been quite apart from the much more aristocratically polished backgrounds from whence my classmates come. One afternoon following our second week of basic training, we’re all assembled in a sitting room, waiting to be interviewed to determine whether we’ll be accepted into our regiment after graduating from the Royal Military Academy. A jittery group of boys next to me try to control their nerves by comparing each other’s wardrobes. “Kent!” one whispers. “Who makes your shirts?”
I turn to him. “Sorry, what’s that?”
“Your dress shirts,” he says. “Who designs them?”
I shrug.
“Well have a look!”
“We’re about to be called in to interview.”
“Go on, we’ll tell them you went to the loo.”
I look around and excuse myself into the men’s room, and, now curious, wrestle off my shirt to have a look at the tag inside the collar. Inconspicuously, I slip back into the sitting room.
“Well, Kent? Who makes your shirts?”
I lean across confidently. “Van Heusen,” I whisper.
The group of them meet eyes with each other and burst into uncontrollable laughter.
Puzzled, I ask, “Who makes yours?”
“Turnbull and Asser—only the finest shirtmakers on Jermyn Street in London!” one says.
“Same!” says another. “Although I suppose Van Heusen would suit a Jomo from Kenya!”
A Jomo.
I stare hard ahead, completely incensed. Tears threaten to sting my eyes. I’d shown up the first day wearing a suit that hung too large on my thin frame—“From the finest men’s shop in Nairobi,” my father had convinced me—only to find that my peers all had theirs custom-made by the high street tailors in London. I’d packed my beloved African bow and arrow with the intent to hang them over my bed in the barracks, but I quickly realized it would only elicit more ridicule. I gather straightaway that if I want to blend in at Sandhurst, I’ll have to evolve my style—fast.
I also need to adapt
to the academy’s hierarchy of power and respect. From the first moment I arrived, the sergeant major told the lot of us on the square, “From now on, I’ll call you sir and you’ll call me sir, but there will be one difference because you’ll mean it and I won’t! Quick march!”
We start marching and don’t stop for two years, except to learn military history, current events, weaponry, trench work, map work, assault courses, battle training, and a general academic curriculum akin to a university degree, as well as mastering such chores as polishing boots and brass belts to a radiance I’d never known possible and making the bed with so many fractions of an inch of sheet showing above the top blanket.
Intimidation is part of the training, and for the first time in my life, I’m thoroughly petrified of authority. One day, while we’re standing at attention, the sergeant major puts his head up against mine and shouts, “Mr. Kent! Did you shave this morning?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Did you put a blade in your razor this morning?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Well, you look like a ruddy hedgehog!” he shouts into my face. “Go back to the barracks, and shave again!”
I work hard, both to blend in with my fellow cadets and to stand out to our sergeants. By the end of the first year, I’m named polo captain (fortunately, my two-goal polo handicap earned me quite a stronger reputation among my cohorts than my wardrobe did), and by the end of the second year, my social life is so bustling that I nearly get myself kicked out for racing my Austin-Healey—the sports car I bought with my ongoing elephant hair profits—back to the academy after a late-night party with some debutantes in London and my roommate, Patrick Grayson.
I’m extremely privileged that the only disciplinary action I face for my foolishness is twenty-four hours in solitary confinement. I’m still allowed to graduate as a senior cadet, and I’d had no clue that such a bold folly actually could increase my standing as I entered the army itself—nor was I aware that I’d been racing Sir Gregor McGregor of McGregor Bart, an army officer whom most of the senior officers have little time for—especially Brigadier Cecil Blacker.
Because of this, Brigadier Blacker takes a strong interest in me and quietly begins to carve out the path for me to join one of the most prestigious regiments of the British Army. For years he commanded the 5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, or the “Skins”—a fine regiment, professional and prominent, sometimes led by military members of the royal family and said to be the nursery for future generals. (Today the Colonel in Chief of the regiment is His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.) What I particularly like about the Skins is their uniforms: khaki jackets and sharp green trousers. These colors appeal to the Kenya boy in me and show the regiment’s historically valorous reputation.
As part of our cavalry training for the Skins, we take three specialized courses to come out as troop commanders, each in charge of three tanks. The first course is in tank driving and maintenance, and the second is in learning the very essential signals used to communicate while driving tanks. Given the months I’d spent the year before with my motorbike as my close companion, I relish learning to drive and maintain tanks, changing their engines, and removing damaged tracks to put on new ones. The third course, in gunnery, comes smoothly enough to me, as I have good hand-eye coordination—usually. We take this course on Lulworth Cove in Dorset, where they teach us to shoot out over the sea to prevent us from actually shooting anyone with our Centurion 105-millimeter tank guns. Some mornings, there’s a group of us, including HRH Prince Michael of Kent, who turn up at seven o’clock, bleary-eyed and hiding our good trousers under our jumpsuits after a very late dinner in London with some beautiful young debutantes. “Young sir!” calls out our commander. “At present you’re aimed at a freighter that’s passing through the English Channel! You’re meant to be aimed at the rusting tank hulk in the foreground which is your target!”
“Gosh,” I mutter to Prince Michael, who’s shooting at the post next to me. “Did you see what I did? I think that was me who was aiming at the freighter.”
{Kent family archives}
My first car, an MG J2, at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.
“Your barrel looked high to me,” he ribs back.
What surprises me, though, is my knack for logistics. My fellow officers loath trekking out in the foggy, damp darkness—“It’s four o’clock in the bloody morning!” they moan—but alone with my torch as my only light on the training ground, I examine my map and plan my route to the slightest detail. We have just sixty minutes to reach our commander dead on time, every time, and I vow that if I have to drag my tank there, I’ll make it. I log my tank’s performance, accounting for any delay that the weather or varying terrains could cause, and build in time for wrong turns and mechanical issues.
By the time they deploy us to Aden in the Middle East, I’m bolstered by my growing reputation for a strong logistics record and my attention to detail. My mother has always said that I’m impossible to satisfy until I’ve done a job to the best of my ability, always setting myself a very high bar over which to jump.
Our first station proves to be quite a means to cut our teeth. Aden was once a British territory, the capital and chief port of what was then South Yemen situated on the Gulf of Aden near the southern entrance to the Red Sea. Aden is ghastly, I write to my parents. Bare, arid, and hot as hell. South Yemen is in the midst of insurgency against the British—bombs drop, villagers scurry in chaos, and our job is to keep it all from getting too much out of hand. News arrives not a second too soon that after a six-month deployment there, we’ll ship off to Bahrain.
Bahrain is an archipelago-state in the Persian Gulf between the Qatar Peninsula and Saudi Arabia. It too is uncomfortably hot and humid, a depressing flat landscape with nothing but a narrow coastal strip to bring any appeal.
Bahrain is an absolute monarchy ruled by the Khalifa family but bound by treaty to Britain. Oil brings in 80 percent of its wealth, and our job is to protect the regional supply. Every morning we leave our living quarters in the capital city, Manama, and drive two and a half miles to the port of Juffair to board the ship that holds our tanks. Then we sail out and patrol the region, occasionally running drills with the tanks in case we’re forced into rapid action.
The assignment itself isn’t terribly taxing, but my chronic seasickness makes the days never-ending. When we get the chance to transfer posts, I volunteer, vowing not to complain if I land somewhere flat, hot, and sandy—so long as it doesn’t rock.
Hot and sandy, and dangerous as well. Significant quantities of oil and natural gas have been discovered in Oman, and several rebels are hiding out as snipers in the Jebel Akhdar mountain range in the northern desert. We go there to flush them out and force their surrender, and for the duration of the mission we’re largely out of contact with headquarters, receiving our food and ammunition exclusively by airdrop.
It’s here, in the presence of such real and imminent danger, that I find comfort in the land’s beauty in moments of calm. Oman’s interior is mostly rocky hills and desert, but there is a strip of coast that is fresh and green, with trees and explosive tropical flowers and sugarcane plantations. This country is another world from Africa, and in the silence of nature, I find profound peace.
Then suddenly, I’m summoned back to Aden to the presence of Lieutenant Colonel Henry Woods, my commanding officer. “Geoffrey,” he says, “our regiment has been posted to Libya, and therefore it’s up to us to supply the next aide-de-camp to the general officer commanding British troops in Libya and the Middle East, General Frost, whose headquarters is in Malta.”
“Yes, Colonel?”
“I’ve decided to nominate you. Granted, you are not really senior enough for the job, as it should go to a captain—and frankly, I don’t think you’re up to it—but I’m nominating you all the same.”
“Thank you indeed, Colonel . . . but if you think I’m not up to it, then why are you sending me?”
�
�Because, Geoffrey, you are a good polo player, and General Frost lives for the game. Plus, your attention to detail is tireless, and you’re unwaveringly loyal.”
“Thank you, Colonel.”
“The job also calls for someone easygoing who takes himself seriously when the moment calls for it . . . and the bottom line is, you are good at logistics. General Frost is an absolute perfectionist.”
{Kent family archives}
Lieutenant Geoffrey Kent (second from left) as Aide-de-Camp to Major-General John Frost.
“I’ll bear that in mind, Colonel.”
“The one final piece of advice I’ll give you,” Colonel Woods says, “is that General Frost is a fine man—one of the most dedicated servicemen Britain has ever seen—and he is as pleasant to be around as he is brave. But don’t make a single mistake, Kent. We’re counting on you.”
Every soldier knows the reputation of General John Frost, whom Prime Minister Winston Churchill had publicly praised in 1942 after Frost had led a very daring raid during the war to capture the radar equipment at the German-controlled Bruneval radio station in northeastern France. The general’s bravest feat, however, was in 1944 when he led the assault on the bridge at Arnhem. Colonel Woods didn’t mention this to me—he didn’t need to; it’s legend enough—but during that battle, General Frost had both of his legs severely wounded and was taken a prisoner of war.
As soon as I meet him in Malta, the image comes together: General Frost’s congeniality is as inspiring as his brilliance. “One thing you’ll learn about me, Geoffrey,” he says, “is that I’m a stickler for detail, and need you to be too.”
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