KENYA: My Buddy

During World War II, pug-nosed, Australian-born Stanley (“Davo”) Davidson and scar-faced Dedan Kimathi served together in Ethiopia as members of the King’s African Rifles. When the war was over, Davidson returned to bored peacefulness in Sydney. Kimathi, a onetime Kikuyu schoolteacher, went on to become the almost legendary “General Russia,” fiercest chieftain of Kenya’s bloodthirsty Mau Man terrorists.

Early last spring, hungry for sport and eager to renew old acquaintance, mustachioed Davo Davidson buckled on his two trusty .45s, polished up his long-idle automatic rifle, snipped for Africa and offered Kenya’s British authorities his services for the capture of his old buddy. His only condition: that he be allowed to go after Kimathi alone, without benefit of British troops or native police. The authorities accepted the offer and wished Davo luck.

For four months after that, the Australian prowled the jungles of Kenya night & day, picking his way alone through tangled underbrush, catching fitful respite in a sleeping bag from the cold of African nights, alert always for the animal and human enemies lurking in every shadow. Once he drew close enough to Kimathi to exchange messages on a forked stick left standing alone in a clearing, but the Mau Mau leader eluded him before he could draw closer.

One day last July Davo thought he had Kimathi cornered in a tent made of bamboo and skins in an Aberdare bamboo forest. Accepting help for once, he led a charge of African riflemen into the tent. A burst of submachine-gun fire caught him in the belly and the shoulder. Keeping on his feet only long enough to club his Mau Mau assailant (who was not Kimathi) to death, Davo fell to the ground. He was rushed from the jungle to a hospital in Nairobi.

Last week, fit again, Davo Davidson sent his old acquaintance a message via government radio: “Greetings, Kimathi. I want you to know I have now left the hospital. I am returning to the Aberdares to capture or kill you.”

To save his pursuer undue trouble, Kimathi politely replied (in a letter to a local newspaper in Nairobi): “I shall be away from Kenya in November and December visiting Uganda, the Sudan and Egypt. After that, I attend a Pan-African conference in Lusaka, Northern Rhodesia. (Signed) Kimathi, Marshal and Commander-in-Chief. Defense Council, Land Freedom Army.”