TALES FROM THE KING'S AFRICAN RIFLES by Nunneley, John

London 2000, Cassell, reprint of 1998 ed, hard bound w/dj, 6x9, viii, 213 pages, VG/VG cond., several illustrations & maps, glossary, bibliog. ----------------------------In 1942 a nineteen year old John Nunneley found himself reporting for duty to his new company commander. He announced himself to a naked man squatting in a collapsible canvas bath sluicing himself down with an old canned fruit tin. Politely climbing to his feet the Major welcomed him with a wet handshake and an invitation to help himself from the whisky bottle on the table. Thus John Nunneley's life with the King's African Rifles began in true colonial style. But it was a life that was almost to end fighting the elite `White Tigers' of the Imperial Japanese Army in Burma's Kabaw Valley, the notorious `Valley of Death'.-----------------------This is the story of one young man's odyssey through war, from soldiering in Africa in an exotic regiment to the often terrifying business of fighting a skilled and determined enemy in the hostile and disease ridden terrain of the Burmese jungle. It's a story that begins in the bandit country of Abyssinia, on Kenya's Northern Frontier and in lone outposts set in rock and sand in Somaliland. That suddenly descends into the hell of fighting a desperate but still deadly Japanese Army retreating through jungle almost impossible to live in, let alone fight in. But this is also the human story of the bond of loyalty between the young Lieutenant from England and the man engaged as his personal servant, 16 year old Tomasi Kitinya, son of Liech, a Luo tribesman from the shores of Lake Victoria. With an ending that will leave the reader both shocked and moved, it is the story of this relationship that brings something very special to what is already a remarkable account of war.