Customer Reviews

King's African Rifles

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This is an excellently researched and well compiled history of the King's African Rifles. The author has been most diligent in including the detail of the history of the various battalions - and the other associated units from the region. For the most part, however, the reminiscences of former officers have been dredged to produce only the principal facts of the subject, and few of the personal views. Additionally, few of the British soldiers and even fewer of the African soldiers appear to have been consulted, which is a terrible pity, as I know that many had vivid personal accounts to be told, and which are now probably lost. From personal knowledge, a number of the years from WWII onwards would have benefitted tremendously from such consultation - in 1996 I met an mzee from the Pare area southeast of Moshi who told me some of the tales from his days in Burma. Sadly, most of those men are now gone. It must be accepted that there will always be this sort of limitation on any Regimental history; they tend to be written by the most senior of figures involved, and are usually very glossy where glory is concerned, opaque where less honourable deeds and attitudes in their particular circles are concerned. A much larger and better-annotated photographic account must also surely have been available. Nevertheless, I wholeheartedly recommend this account to anyone interested in the history of East Africa as one which can be largely trusted, while contemporary revisionism in the region is increasingly distorting the truth of those years.