Self-Expression in Kenya

No PICNIC ON MOUNT KENYA (239 pp.) --Felice Benuzz!--Dutton ($3.75).

The established adventures have their protocol, their professional techniques. Mountain climbers, big-game hunters and explorers nowadays set out only after supplying themselves with the most up-to-date maps, guides and gear. But the adventure of No Picnic on Mount Kenya was strictly amateur. It did not seek to prove any theories about man or the universe; it was merely a gesture of private spunk.

Felice Benuzzi, the onetime Italian colonial official who tells the story, was interned by the British in 1941 and sent to Nanyuki, Kenya. Like any other P.W., he hated internment: the demoralizing idleness, the inability to be alone. But his camp was overshadowed by 17,000-ft. Mount Kenya, "a massive, blue-black tooth of sheer rock." To some of the prisoners it became a symbol of freedom.

A veteran Alpinist, Benuzzi conceived the scheme of walking out of the poorly guarded camp, scaling Mount Kenya, and then--since there was little prospect of getting back to Italian-controlled areas--of blandly returning to captivity. His scheme had no practical end: it was simply Benuzzi's idea of self-expression.

Retreat from a Cow. With two other prisoners, Benuzzi showed endless patience in trading cigarettes for food staples, lifting equipment from the British warehouse, getting clothes sent to him from home. Finally, in January 1943, everything was ready.

Pretending to be a work party, the three men walked out of camp and made their way through the "human danger zone" (natives and British search parties) toward the base of the mountain. Loaded down with heavy rucksacks, unarmed except for crude ice axes, without a map, they then invaded the "animal danger zone" (lions, leopards) and began to follow a stream which they hoped had its source high on Mount Kenya.

The story of their blundering journey is told by Author Benuzzi with both vividness and restraint. The nervousness of fugitives untrained to the African bush, the encounters with an elephant and a rhinoceros, the hasty retreat from a beast which turned out to be a cow, are all skillfully exploited for suspense. But the real challenge began only as the three men pressed higher on Mount Kenya itself.

The Italian Flag. At the 14,000-ft. level, one of the climbers suffered a mild heart attack. There was no choice but to set up a base camp--though for an ascent of 17,000-ft. Batian Peak, the highest of the mountain's peaks, this was much too low. Nonetheless, Benuzzi and the sturdier of his two companions, taking a route that professional mountaineers had declared impassable, set out for Batian.

They failed, defeated by ice, huge cliffs and a blizzard. But they did get to the top of Lenana Peak, more than 16,000 ft. high. There they planted an Italian flag, which they had managed to conceal throughout their internment. Then came the grueling descent, with the sick man a burden and with an almost complete lack of food. Eighteen days after they walked out, they staggered back into the P.W. camp. A humane British commander limited punishment to seven days behind bars.

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