Justifiably the British are accused of brutality in 1950s Kenya. But why aren't the Mau Mau butchers also in the dock?
Darkness had fallen in the remote and beautiful Rift Valley, north of Nairobi, and the white farmer was in his pyjamas ready for bed.
But first he stepped outside his isolated house for his customary evening stroll in the garden with his pregnant wife, before checking the shutters on the windows and doors in case of intruders.
That was when the Mau Mau raiders struck; 30 of them, wielding their sharp pangas or machetes.
Thirty-eight-year-old Roger Ruck and his wife Esmee, a doctor who ran a dispensary for Africans, died in the vicious onslaught, their bodies slashed to ribbons by the mob and left on the veranda.
The same fate was meted out to one of the family’s African servants, who ran out to help them. But the horrific massacre didn’t stop there. The raiders rampaged through the house, looting its contents, then stormed upstairs.
Behind a locked bedroom door was the Rucks’ son, Michael, aged six. We will never know if he was still asleep or if the noise had woken him, in which case he must have lain in terror as the intruders sought him out.
They broke down the door, knives flashed — and in an instant the boy was dead.
Kenya’s rebels — today hailed as freedom fighters against a repressive colonial British administration — had claimed four more victims in their fight for independence....
Read entire article at Daily Mail (UK)
But first he stepped outside his isolated house for his customary evening stroll in the garden with his pregnant wife, before checking the shutters on the windows and doors in case of intruders.
That was when the Mau Mau raiders struck; 30 of them, wielding their sharp pangas or machetes.
Thirty-eight-year-old Roger Ruck and his wife Esmee, a doctor who ran a dispensary for Africans, died in the vicious onslaught, their bodies slashed to ribbons by the mob and left on the veranda.
The same fate was meted out to one of the family’s African servants, who ran out to help them. But the horrific massacre didn’t stop there. The raiders rampaged through the house, looting its contents, then stormed upstairs.
Behind a locked bedroom door was the Rucks’ son, Michael, aged six. We will never know if he was still asleep or if the noise had woken him, in which case he must have lain in terror as the intruders sought him out.
They broke down the door, knives flashed — and in an instant the boy was dead.
Kenya’s rebels — today hailed as freedom fighters against a repressive colonial British administration — had claimed four more victims in their fight for independence....