Word: rucks
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Murderland. Two brave British policemen volunteered to deliver the letters. They were Special Branch Superintendent Ian Henderson, 27, and his strapping blond assistant, 32-year-old Bernard Ruck. Henderson is a slim, nut-brown Scot who grew up with Kikuyu children on his father's coffee farm. He speaks Swahili, Meru, Kamba, Kikuyu, French and Afrikaans. Day after day, following China's directions, Henderson and Ruck drove into the forest, unarmed and alone. The forest had eyes, and one captured Mau Mau reported a snatch of dialogue between two Mau Mau sentinels...
Meeting of the Elders. Henderson and Ruck left China's letters in hollow trees or in cleft sticks planted in forest clearings. Once they took China with them, his curly head protruding from the turret of an armored car. Another time, Henderson, scouting on his own, hid behind a thick-fronted banana tree and watched a Mau Mau oath-taking ceremony in which the new members were forced to eat human eyeballs gouged from still-living victims. The rite included other barbaric practices in sadism and sodomy...
...fell to Henderson and Ruck to meet the Mau Mau chiefs and escort them, under safe conduct, to talks with Major General George Heyman, the British chief of staff. The two policemen drove their jeeps deep into murderland. One big parley was ruined by sheer heavyhandedness. Major General Heyman arrived, but as the army communiqué put it, "the Mau Mau representatives came within a few hundred yards but something frightened them off." The "something" was 1,800 British and African infantrymen, poured into the area to protect the British brass...
Silence in the Rain. Henderson and Ruck persisted, and their patience paid off. To Karatina barracks one day last month came "General" Kareba, with an offer to join China and help to end the war. Later to Nyeri stockade, riding in Henderson's jeep, came two representatives of scarfaced "Field Marshal" Russia, alias Dedan Kimathi, and four more from Mt. Kenya. The British released General Kareba to go back with Kimathi's men as a token of British good faith...
...Shall Never Surrender." Orr did not know it, but his action was the death knell of Operation China. The news hit British headquarters like a tropical thunderstorm : there were conferences and ultimatums, but the only hope that remained lay with Policemen Henderson and Ruck. At week's end, the pair made one last brave attempt to make Operation China work. Heavily armed, but heavier still with bitter disappointment, they drove into a forest rendezvous. It was April 10, the deadline set for Mau Mau surrender; Kareba had promised to return with many chiefs who wanted to give up. Henderson...