Last of the Wavells

In the forest north of Nairobi, a gang of Mau Mau terrorists struck at an African village, captured a Kikuyu tribesman known to be loyal to the British, and chopped off his head. Round their wrists the terrorists wore bangles of human skin, stripped from the flesh of earlier victims. Their commander in chief, scar-faced "General" Dedan Kimathi, had offered them $7 for every dead Kikuyu, $16.80 for every dead Briton.

Racing to catch the terrorists, a patrol of the famed Black Watch cornered 60 of them in a wood near the village of Thika. The Scots set fire to the wood, and in the glare of burning trees, their armored cars raked the area with heavy machine-gun fire. The Mau Mau fired back, and in the very first volley, brought down the patrol leader with a homemade rifle. A veteran of Burma, he bore a soldierly name: Major Archibald John Arthur Wavell, only son of the late Field Marshal Earl Wavell.

The Wavells have fought Britain's battles for almost a thousand years. Their ancestors served William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings; French members of the family were Crusaders in the same Middle East deserts where centuries later Field Marshal Wavell rode with Allenby. Wavell of Cyrenaica was the one-eyed professional soldier, author and poet who smashed the Italians in North Africa (1940) only to lose to Rommel, who commanded Singapore until it fell (1942), governed India as viceroy (1943-47). His fate had been to fight the early delaying actions when Britain was behind. Fighting for the Empire, he had lost an eye; his son had lost a hand in World War II. The son died last week unmarried and childless--the last of the Wavell line. The title, which the major was only the second to hold, is now extinct.

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