Mow Them Down

Kenya Crown Colony, ablaze with Mau Mau revolt, is the northernmost bastion of Britain's East African Empire. Should Suez fall to Egyptian nationalism (see below}, the huge British base at Mackinnon Road, 225 miles southeast of Nairobi, supported by its jet airfields, would almost certainly become the key to British strategy in the western Indian Ocean.

Last week, scenting danger to Suez, British Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton flew to Nairobi to see for himself how seriously the Mau Mau terror has jeopardized Kenya's security. He stalked through the ruins of Lari village, where the Mau Mau massacred 300-odd sleeping Kikuyu (TIME, April 6), and later reconnoitered Mau Mau strongholds from a light spotter plane. "We are being outmaneuvered and outflanked," a British officer told him.

"The Mau Mau are stronger, and more skillfully led than at any time since the emergency began." To contain the Mau Mau, who have be gun to mount attacks in company strength, the British have been forced to deploy 5,500 British infantrymen (many of them from the Suez Canal Zone) and 4,000 African Riflemen, at a cost of $700,000 a month. Thousands of Kikuyu are in jail, tens of thousands in hiding, yet Mau Mau gangs terrorize the countryside within sight of Nairobi.

The main Mau Mau forces are concentrated in two guerrilla armies, lurking in the forested highlands : one under "General Russia," a scar-faced ex-schoolteacher whose real name is Dedam Kimathi (TIME, Feb. 23); the other under "General China," an elusive desperado who dominates Mt. Kenya. One Mau Mau band, 150 strong and heavily armed, last week at tacked the trading center of Kanderudu, repulsed a British patrol and seized its transport. The soldiers called for air support, and counterattacked. Result: 40 Mau Mau were killed (ten by an African trooper who kept firing his Bren gun even after one of his fingers had been shot away); the rest broke and fled.

"We like them to attack in large numbers because then we can mow them down," said Major General William Hinde, director of military operations in Kenya. With Lyttelton's approval, he ordered 10,000 Kikuyu Home Guardsmen, recruited to defend their homes, to be armed with shotguns. Yet as Lyttelton plainly saw, stamping out the Mau Mau would require more than shotguns. The problem, as in Malaya, is to assure the majority of natives of the government's concern for their welfare, and to protect them against the Mau Mau. Snapped General Sir Cameron Nicholson: "We need a great sense of urgency at all levels. I have not found it."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.