Although my tour of duty in East Africa was to end about eighteen months before Kenya became independent, the “Africanization” of the Kings African rifles was well under way. African officers were given more responsibility and en-couraged to exercise the leadership which would be demanded of them when we left. A number of them were most promising, but we came to realize that their methods would sometimes be very different from ours, as would be their scruples. One of our most successful officers was discovered to have achieved excellent results in a peace-keeping operation near the Uganda border by tough methods which, had we known of them, would have resulted in his immediate court-martial.
I began to realize, too, that African officers would become politicians as well as soldiers. This was dramatically illustrated when a senior African officer from Uganda visiting Nanyuki said that he planned to take over the Ugandan Army by a coup - and therefore, in effect, the country - and was I inter¬ested in becoming his Chief-of-Staff! I could, he added, name my price. I tactfully declined and have reason to be particu¬larly glad that I did so because the coup failed and this par¬ticular officer is, so far as I know, still chained up in prison.
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