Twelve big R.A.F. transports landed at Nairobi, capital of Kenya Colony, one night last week, and set down the ist Battalion (800 men) of Britain's Lancashire Fusiliers. From adjoining Tanganyika and Uganda hurried a battalion and two companies of the King's African Rifles. H.M.S. Kenya, an 8,000-ton cruiser, put a detachment of marines ashore at Mombasa, Kenya's only modern harbor.
This display of armed might was Britain's answer to the Mau Mau (rhymes with bow-wow), the African secret society that threatens to wipe out Kenya's 30,000 whites (TIME, Oct. 27). Part land hunger, part savage revolution against the domineering white man and the bewildering 20th century, the Mau Mau's blind fury could, if left unchecked, turn the Crown Colony of Kenya into another Malaya. Once pooh-poohed as mere "press exaggeration," the Mau Mau have already mutilated scores of whites and "loyal" blacks, with their favorite weapon, the panga—a long, machete-like knife.
Near Nyeri last week, a Kikuyu chief and two black policemen were hacked to pieces when they surprised a Mau Mau oath-taking ceremony. Only one top Kikuyu chief survives; he is being closely guarded. Police witnesses ("Traitors," according to the Mau Mau) have had both hands cut off or were tied in sacks and drowned. A British colonel and his wife were slashed about the neck and face as they lay in bed one night.
Jomo for Jesus. Reinforced with regular troops, Sir Evelyn Baring, Kenya's newly appointed governor, felt strong enough to hit back at the Mau Mau (the Lancashire Fusiliers, noting the Mau Mau habit of nailing headless cats to their victims' doors, christened the terrorists Meow-Meows). Armored cars roared out along the main highways, spotter planes swooped low over the Kiyuyu reserve. Covered by the Fusiliers, Kenya cops grabbed hundreds of suspected terrorists in Nairobi's native quarter, pounced on scores of others lurking in forest hideouts.