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Short-lived Triumph. Even as he spoke, the infection of mutiny was spreading. At Jinja, neighboring Uganda's second largest city located at the headwaters of the Nile some 50 miles east of the Kampala capital, two companies of the Uganda Rifles followed the example set by their former brothers-in-arms. They locked up their British officers and demanded a pay hike similar to that which the Tanganyikan troops had asked for. When Prime Minister Apollo Milton Obote sent his Internal Affairs Minister to negotiate, they arrested him as well. But Obote had learned from Nyerere's experience. He sent police to secure the Owen Falls dam and thus cut the main highway from Jinja to Kampala. Then, swallowing his pride, the man who had often ranted against "colonialists" and "imperialists" called for British aid. Within the hour, 450 troops from the Staffordshire Regiment and the Scots Guards were winging in from Kenya. As they took positions at the Entebbe airport and in the capital, Obote agreed to discuss the mutineers' demands, and order was restored.
In Kenya, Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta already had begun to fear that his Kenya Rifles might be the next to rebel. With so much of Kenya's British contingent on duty in Uganda, he asked London for additional troops. Immediately, the 700 Royal Marine Commandos of Britain's home-based strategic reserve were bundled onto Africa-bound planes. But before they arrived, Kenyatta's fears were realized. Mutinous troops of the Kenya Rifles stationed at Nakuru, in the heart of the Rift Valley 100 miles northwest of Nairobi, were up in arms. They seized the armory and locked their white officers and noncoms in the officers' mess. Their triumph was short-lived. In roared British Royal Horse Artillery in Ferret armored cars, and in a brief gun battle the rising was quelled, leaving one mutineer dead and one wounded. The rest were quickly thrown behind barbed wire.
Rocketing Rout. With the Uganda and Kenya rebellions quelled for the moment, only Tanganyika's Nyerere remained in any danger from his own army. That situation was rectified at week's end when, at Nyerere's request, the aircraft carrier H.M.S. Centaur in Dar es Salaam harbor went into action.
Figuring that they could frighten the mutineers into submission with lots of noise, the British cut loose with a predawn barrage of blank charges over Colito barracks. As the sleepy mutineers ducked for cover, helicopters fluttered off the flight deck and dropped 60 combat-ready Royal Marine Commandos onto the rebel base.
Led by Brigadier Patrick Sholto Douglas, the deposed commander of the Tanganyika Rifles, the commandos burst through the main gate and began hurling "Thunder Flashes"—noisy firecrackers used in training to simulate mass attack. Douglas shouted in Swahili for the 800 mutineers to surrender. When they refused, the commandos slammed a 3.5-in. bazooka rocket through the barracks, blasting out windows and peeling back most of the roof. Three Riflemen were killed and 20 wounded, while 400 were captured. The rest, many in pajamas or underwear, headed for the bush. Julius Nyerere was back in power however tentatively. But his country would never be the same again.