But the battle to remove the underlying causes, social and economic, of the anti-white hate that created Mau Mau, will go on for long years. There, too, a 'hopeful beginning has been made. Princess Margaret's visit marks not just the end of a long nightmare, but the beginning of a new era of multiracial integration—and of fairer shares for the African—in lovely Kenya.
PICTURE POST, October 22,1956.
If the Malayan and Korean campaigns had drawn most attention during the early part of the 1950s, the British Army had had much to do elsewhere. In Kenya the Man Mau gangs, recruited from the Kikuyu tribe, had taken to the dense rain forests from Which they made sorties to attack Europeans and Africans. The Kikuyu were land hungry. Their discontent was used to further the aspirations of urban Africans for political independence. Over eight years, 1952-60, British battalions, batteries and engineer squadrons, supported by small but intensely-worked Communications and administrative teams, broke the movement in alliance with a devoted police and civil government organization, many of them Africans or Asian settlers. Only when this had been done was the cause of Kenyan independence advanced.
HISTORY OF THE BRITISH ARMY
Ed. Brigadier Peter Young and Lt.-Col. J. P. Lawford.
Ch .32 AFTER THE WAR, by Brig. Anthony H. Farrar-Hockley, DCO, MBE, MC. Arthur Barker, 1970
—You're right. There's no such thing as innocence, says Karl.
— Absolutely. It's as abstract as "justice" and "virtue"—or, for that matter, "morality".
— Right. There's certainly no justice!
— And jar too much morality! — They laugh.
— I didn't realize you had blue eyes, says Karl, astonished.
— They're only blue in some lights. Look, I'll turn my head. See?
— They're still blue.
— What about this? Green? Brown?
— Blue.
Karl has reached his majority. He's twenty one. Signed on for another seven years' stint in the Mob. There's no life like it!
— You're just telling me that, says his friend anxiously. How about now?
— Well, I suppose you could say they looked a bit greenish, says Karl kindly.
— It's envy, old chap, at your lovely big bovine brown ones.
— Give us a kiss.
Twenty one and the world his oyster. Cyprus, Aden Singapore. Wherever the British Army's needed. Karl is a sergeant already. And he could do the officer exam soon. He's used to commanding, by now. Twice decorated? No sweat!
— Where?
— Don't make me laugh.
KARL WAS TWENTY-ONE. His mother was forty five. His father was forty seven. They lived in Hendon, Middlesex, in a semi-detached house which Karl's father, who had never been out of work in his life, had begun to buy just before the war. His father had been doing indispensable war work and so had not had to serve in the Army (he was a boiler engineer). His father had thoughtfully changed his name to Gower in 1939, partly because it sounded too German, partly because, you never knew, if the Germans won, it sounded too Jewish. Not, of course, that it was a Jewish name. Karl's dad denied any such suggestion vehemently. It was an old Austrian name, resembling a name attached to one of the most ancient noble houses in Vienna. That's what Karl's grandfather had said, anyway. Karl had been called after his granddad. Karl's father's name was English—Arnold.
Karl had been in the Army since he had joined up as a boy-entrant in 1954. He had seen a lot of service since then. But for the past two years he'd been out in Kenya, clearing up the Mau Mau business, which seemed to drag on forever. Off duty, it was a smashing life. The worst of the terrorism was over and it wasn't nearly so dangerous as it had been. Karl had an Indian girl-friend in Nairobi and he got there as often as he could to fuck the shit out of her. She was a hot little bitch though he had a sneaking suspicion she'd given him his last dose of crabs. You could never tell with crabs, mind you, so he gave her the benefit of the doubt. What a muff! What tits! It gave you a hard on just thinking about them. Lovely!
The jeep pulled up at the gates of the compound. Another day's work was beginning. Karl was part of the special Intelligence team working closely with the Kenya Police in this area, where there was still a bit of Mau Mau mischief. Privately, Karl thought it would go on forever. They didn't have a hope in hell of governing themselves. He looked at the inmates behind the barbed wire. It made you smile to think about it. Offering it, that was different, if you had to keep them under control. Of course you can have independence—in two million bloody years! Ho, ho, ho!
He scratched his crotch with his swagger stick and grinned to himself as his driver presented their pass. The jeep bumped its way over the uneven mud track into the compound.
The Kikuyu prisoners stood, or sat, or leaned around, looking with dull eyes at the jeep as it pulled up outside the main Intelligence hut. Some distance away, squatting on the ground, were about a hundred natives listening to Colonel Wibberley giving them their usual brainwashing (or what would be a brainwashing if they had any brains to wash, thought Karl. He knew bloody well that you released the buggers as decontaminated only to get half of them back sooner or later with blood on their bloody hands). Oh, what a horrible lot they were, in their reach-me-down flannel shorts, their tattered shirts, their old tweed jackets, their bare scabby feet, some of them with silly grins all over their ugly mugs. He saluted Private Peterson who was on guard outside the hut as usual. He already felt like an officer.
"Morning, sarge," said Peterson as he passed. Bastard!
Corporal Anderson, all red and sweaty as usual, was on duty at the desk when Karl entered. Anderson always looked as if he'd just been caught in the act of pulling his plonker—shifty, seedy.
"You are an unwholesome little sod, Corporal Anderson," said Karl by way of greeting. Corporal Anderson tittered. "What's new, then? Blimey, couldn't you get a stronger bulb, I can't see for looking."
"I'll put a chit in, sarge."
"And hurry up about it. Is old Lailu ready to talk yet?"
"I haven't been in there this morning, sarge. The lieutenant..."
"What about the bleeding lieutenant?"
"He's away, sarge. That's all."
"Bloody good fucking thing, too, little shit-faced prick, little upper-class turd," mumbled Karl to himself as he went through the papers on his desk. Same problem as yesterday. Find out what Lailu knew about the attack on the Kuanda farm a week ago. Lailu had been in the raid, all right, because he'd been recognized. And he'd used to work at the farm. He claimed to have been in his own village, but that was a lie. Who could prove it? And he'd been in the camp more than once. He was a known Mau Mau. And he was a killer. Or knew who the killers were, which was the same thing.
"I'll have a word with him, I think," said Karl, sipping the tea the corporal brought him. "I'll have to get unpleasant today if he don't open his fucking mouth. And I'll have him all to my fucking self, won't I, corp?"
"Yes, sarge," said Corp, his thick lips writhing, his hot, shifty eyes seething, as if Karl had caught him out at some really nasty form of self-abuse.
"Ugh, you are horrible" said Karl, automatically.
"Yes, sarge."
Karl snorted with laughter. "Go and tell them to take our little black brother into the special room, will you?"
"Yes, sarge." Corporal Anderson went through the door into the back of the hut. Karl heard him talking to the guards. A bit later Anderson came back.
"He's ready, sarge."
"Thank you, corporal," said Karl in his crisp, decisive voice. He put his cigarettes and matches in the top pocket of his shirt, picked up his swagger stick and crossed the mud floor to the inner door. "Oh," he said, hesitating before entering, "if our good lieu tenant should come calling, let me know would you, corporal?"
"Yes, sarge. I get you."
"And don't pick your nose while I'm gone, will you, corporal?"
"No, sarge."
Karl thought about that little Indian bint in Nairobi. He'd give
a lot to be taking her knickers down at this moment, of getting her legs open and fucking the arse off of her. But duty called.
He whistled as he walked along the short, dark passage to the special room. It was bleeding hot in here, worse than a bloody native hut. It stank of fucking Kikuyu.
He gave the guard at the door of the special room his officer's salute, with the swagger stick touching the peak of his well-set cap.
He went into the special room and turned on the light.
Lailu sat on the bench, his bony knees sticking up at a peculiar angle, his eyes wide and white. There was a lot of sweat in his thin moustache.
"Hello, Mr. Lailu," said Karl with his cold grin, "how are you feeling this fine summer morning? A bit warm? Sorry we can't open a window for you, but you can see for yourself, there isn't one. That's probably against fire regulations. You could complain about that. Do you want to complain to me, Mr. Lailu?"
Lailu shook his black head.
"Because you've got your rights, you know. Lots and lots of rights. You've heard the lectures? Yes, of course you have, more than once, because you've been here more than once, haven't you, Mr. Lailu?"
Lailu made no response at all to this. Karl went up to him and stood very close, looking down on him. Lailu didn't look back. Karl grabbed the man's ear and twisted it so that Lailu's lips came together tightly. "Because I remember my trade-mark, you see, Mr. Lailu. That little scar, that's not a tribal scar, is it, Mr. Lailu? That little scar isn't a Mau Mau scar, is it? That is a Sergeant Gower scar, eh?"
"Yes, boss," said Lailu. "Yes, boss."
"Good."
Karl stepped back and leaned against the door of the special room. "We're going to keep everything informal, Mr. Lailu. You know your rights, don't you? "
"Yes, boss."
"Good."
Karl grinned down on Lailu again. "You were at the Kuanda farm last week, weren't you?"
"No, boss."
"Yes you were!" Karl began to breathe quickly, the swagger stick held firmly in his two hands. "Weren't you?"
"No, boss. Lailu not Mau Mau, boss. Lailu good boy, boss."
"Yes, a good little liar." The swagger stick left Karl's right hand almost without him thinking about it. It struck Lailu on the top of his head. Lailu whimpered. "Now I won't do that again, Lailu, because that's not the way I work, is it?"
"Don't know, boss."
"Is it?"
"No, boss."
"Good." Karl took out his packet of Players and selected one. He put the cigarette between his lips and he put the packet carefully back into his pocket. He took out his matches and he lit the cigarette so that it was burning just right. He put the matches back in his pocket and neatly he buttoned the pocket. He drew a deep puff on the cigarette. "Smoke, Lailu?"
Lailu trembled all over. "No, boss. Please."
"Shit, Lailu? You look as if you feel like one. Use the pot over there. Get them manky pants down, Lailu."
"Please, boss."
Karl moved quickly. It was always best to move quickly. He grabbed the top of the Kikuyu's shorts and ripped them down to his knees, exposing the shriveled, scarred genitals.
"Oh, I have been here before, haven't I, Lailu?"
— That's better, says Karl.
— You're insatiable, says his friend admiringly. I've got to admit it, for all your faults.
— What's the time? Karl asks.—My watch has stopped.
— It must be coming up for morning, says his friend.
What Would You Do? (16)
You and your sister have been captured by your enemies. They are brutal enemies.
They want information from you concerning your friends. They say they will make you responsible for your sister's safety. If you tell them all they wish to know she will go free. If you do not they will humiliate, terrorize and torture her in every way they know.
You are aware that should they catch your friends they will do the same thing to at least some of them, perhaps all of them.
Whom will you betray?
17
So Long Son Lon: 1968:
Babies
Quite apart from the enormous present importance of South Vietnam and our actions there, I have often reflected—as one who was tempted to become a professional historian—that the story of Vietnam, of South-East Asia, and of American policy there forms an extraordinarily broad case history involving almost all the major problems that have affected the world as a whole in the past 25 years. For the strands of the Vietnam history include the characteristics of French colonial control compared to colonial control elsewhere, the end of the colonial period, the inter-relation and competition of nationalism and Communism, our relation to the Soviet Union and Communist China and their relationships with each other, our relation to the European colonial power -France—and at least since 1954—the relation of Vietnam to the wider question of national independence and self-determination in South-East Asia and indeed throughout Asia...
... So all over South-East Asia there is today a sense of confidence—to which Drew Middleton again testified from his trip. Time has been bought, and used. But that confidence is not solid or secure for the future. It would surely be disrupted if we were, in President Johnson's words, to permit a Communist takeover in South Vietnam either through withdrawal or "under the cloak of a meaningless agreement". If, on the contrary, we proceed on our present course—with measured military actions and with every possible non-military measure, and searching always for an avenue to peace—the prospects for a peaceful and secure South-East Asia now appear brighter than they have been at any time since the nations of the area were established on an independent basis.
THE PATH TO VIETNAM, by William P. Bundy.
An address given before the National Student Association convention held at the University of Maryland, August 15,1967 United States Information Service, American Embassy, London, August 1967 "We were all psyched up, and as a result when we got there the shooting started, almost as a chain reaction. The majority of us had expected to meet VC combat troops, but this did not turn out to be so... After they got in the village, I guess you could say that the men were out of control."
G. I. Dennis. Conti.
"They just kept walking towards us... You could hear the little girl saying, 'No, no...' All of a sudden, the GIs opened up and cut them down."
Ron Haeberle, reporter.
"It's just that they didn't know what they were supposed to do; killing them seemed like a good idea, so they did it. The old lady who fought so hard was probably a VC. Maybe it was just her daughter."
Jay Roberts, reporter.
MY LAI 4: A REPORT ON THE MASSACRE AND ITS AFTERMATH.
Seymour M. Hersh, Harper's Magazine May 1970.
Mr. Daniel Ellsberg will surrender tomorrow in Boston where he lives. He was charged on Friday with being unlawfully in possession of secret documents, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Since he was named on June 16, by a former reporter of the 'New York Times', as the man who provided the paper with its copy of a Pentagon report, Mr. Ellsberg and his wife have been in hiding. The Pentagon is about to hand over its Vietnam study to Congress for confidential perusal. On Saturday the Justice Department sought to convince the Court that indiscriminate publication of further documents from the study would endanger troops in South Vietnam and prejudice the procedures for obtaining the release of prisoners.
THE GUARDIANS, June 28,1971.
— You're not slow, are you? says Karl's friend.—And to think I was worried. Now I think I'll get some sleep.
— Not yet, says Karl.
— Yes, now. I'm not feeling too well, as it happens.
— You are looking a bit grey. Karl inspects the black man's flesh. Compared with his own skin, it is quite pale.
Karl is twenty-two and it's his last few months in the Army. The past five months have been spent in Vietnam. Although he's seen only one VC in that time, he's tired and tense and fearful. He jokes a lot, like his bu
ddies. There is heat, sticky sweat, jungle, mud, flies, poverty, death, but no Viet Cong. And this is a place reputedly thick with them.
— I'll be all right when I've rested, says Karl's friend. You've worn me out, that's all.
Karl reaches out the index finger of his right hand and traces his nail over his friend's lips.—You can't be that tired.
Twenty-two and weary. A diet of little more than cold C-rations for weeks at a stretch. No change of clothing. Crashing around in the jungle. For nothing, It wasn't like the John Wayne movies. Or maybe it was. The shit and the heat—and then the action coming fast and hard. The victory. The tough captain proving he was right to drive the men so hard, after all. The bowed heads as they honored dead buddies. Not many could stop the tears... But so jar all they had was the shit and the heat.
Karl's friend opens his lips. Karl hasn't noticed before that his friend's teeth are rather stained.
— Just let me rest a little.
KARL WAS TWENTY-TWO. His mother was forty-five. His father was forty-four. His father managed a hardware store in Phoenix, Arizona. His mother was a housewife.
Karl was on a big mission at last. He felt that if he survived the mission then it would all be over and he could look forward to going home, back to his job as his father's assistant. It was all he wanted.
He sat shoulder to shoulder with his buddies in the shivering chopper as it flew them to the combat area. He tried to read the tattered X-Men comic book he had brought along, but it was hard to concentrate. Nobody, among the other members of his platoon, was talking much.
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