Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A Mau Mau Operations and Cypriot Emergency campaign pair awarded to Mr P. R. Hewitt, Inspector of Police, Colonial Police Service, the author of Kenyan Cowboy, a vivid account of his experiences during the Mau Mau Uprising: to be sold with two carefully curated photograph albums chronicling the recipient’s periods of service in the Kenyan and Cypriot Emergencies of the fifties

Africa General Service 1902-56, 1 clasp, Kenya (I.P. P. R. Hewitt.) minor official correction; General Service 1918-62, 1 clasp, Cyprus (Inspr. P. R. Hewitt.) together with the recipient’s related miniature awards, both pairs mounted as worn, very fine (2) £800-£1,200

Peter Ronald Hewitt was born in Windsor, Berkshire in 1928 and spent his formative years in Reading. Aged eighteen, following an MoD engineering apprenticeship, he was conscripted and served for eight years in the Fleet Air Arm.

Kenya - Mau Mau Emergency
Upon release from the Royal Navy Hewitt entered the Colonial Police Service, a career change that took him first to Kenya in the autumn of 1953 just as the Mau Mau Emergency was escalating. Within 24 hours of his arrival in Nairobi, he had been sworn in at the Colony Police Headquarters, issued with his .38 Webley revolver and 12 rounds of ammunition and was journeying out for basic training at Gilgil in the heart of the Great Rift Valley with a diverse cast of characters:
‘By early afternoon when we had been collected from our respective hotels with bulging kit-bags of uniform and personal luggage we numbered about twenty. And what a multifarious bunch of recruit sub-inspectors of police we were too. Ex-R.A.F. flying officers, bank clerks, unresolved public school boys, ex-Palestinian Police, retired Indian army officers and inevitably, ex sailors. The Kenya police (during the years 1953-1960 at least) can surely have had no parallels as regards being designated a ‘motley’ force. Though, alas, the only designation it appeared to have earned itself in the press while I awaited confirmation of my appointment in murky fog-bound London was that of ‘millionaire coppers’ or, more amusingly still, ‘Kenya Cowboys’. (Kenya Cowboy - A Police Officer’s Account of the Mau Mau Emergency by Peter Hewitt)

After six gruelling weeks at Gilgil, Hewitt then emerged as a newly qualified sub-inspector of police and sent to a forest post in the Lower Rift Valley Province:
‘So, there I was - an uncertain sub-inspector of police in charge of a forest post - with one sergeant and fifteen reserve constables, about one hundred and fifty square miles of Africa to look after and a score of farmsteads to maintain law and order on... I was to spend seventeen months of my tour of duty in Kenya on forest posts. Hermann’s Post was the first of three. I learnt a tremendous amount about not only terrorism and the African askari but also about settlers and farming. The life was unglamorous and tiring. It demanded physical fitness and an even temper. It was a routine that did not displease me particularly and only occasionally did I ever see senior officer. My activity was dictated by whim and fancy, premonition and hunch. At times it was unbearably frustrating, Mau Mau everywhere, their tracks followed for miles, their hideouts located, the mutilated bodies of their victims carried to an ambulance, but few positive contacts. The life was abstemious and frugal. One had to be roused from heavy sleep at a witching hour after midnight to lay an ambush on some farm that had been raided.’ (ibid)

But as as the insurgency escalated with increasing assassinations and farm raids so also did the violent contacts between Mau Mau and police. Hewitt’s diary entry for Tuesday, 28 December 1954 - ecclesiastically shown as ‘Innocent’s Day’ starts with:
‘From about 1730 hours today until nightfall I was engaged in a running battle (literally) with some forty or more Mau Mau. I had only six askari with me all of whom I adjudged as having behaved in a most meritorious manner. It was just before 1700 hours that I learned of the burning of a settler’s house some five miles away.’

The entry refers to the burning of the Carnelly Farm and the consequent jungle pursuit of the perpetrating Mau Mau gang into the Cezoroni Gorge. Shortly after this dramatic episode, Hewitt received a letter of appreciation from the local residents for his efforts.

Having narrowly avoided assassination by a previously trusted Kikuyu house boy, Hewitt, by now Post Commander at Ol Magogo, found himself in an increasingly bitter struggle against the Mau Mau. Styling themselves as the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, the recruits of this rebel faction had by now been so indoctrinated into a barbaric orgy of bloodletting that as far as the security forces were concerned they were to be regarded as psychotic gangsters:
‘They would be hunted down as wild criminals and had, moreover, as far as the angry settlers were concerned, forfeited any rights to those rules embodied in the Geneva Convention. The benign and benevolent image of the British Crown was, perforce, about to be sullied.’ (ibid)

Such was the level of violence (mostly perpetrated against loyal Africans) that Hewitt’s remarkable personal account describes his difficulties in making the distinction between legal slaughter and excusable homicide. Later in the book he recounts the exploitation of Mau Mau traitors in hastening the turning of the tide and his own part in the capture of the self-styled “Field Marshall” Kaniu - one of the three top leaders of Mau Mau - in the Naivasha papyrus swamp during Operation Bullrush - a photo of Hewitt emerging from the swamp with his Mau Mau capture appeared shortly afterwards in the British press.

Cyprus Emergency, Nyasaland and Papua New Guinea
Hewitt was posted for 4 months (February 1956 to May 1956) to the Colony Police H.Q. at Nairobi but the security forces had all but purged the Mau Mau pestilence from Kenya by the end of 1956 and he was transferred to Cyprus (November 1956 to September 1959) as Police Inspector amidst another reign of terror, bloodshed, hatred and distrust. His arrival coincided with one of Nicosia’s worst gun attacks - the fatal shooting of two police officers and the wounding of a third - on Ledra Street (Murder Mile). Hewitt later commented that there was only one place for any weapons carried by security forces in Ledra Street - in the hand.

Succeeding as O.C. of No. 5 Unit in the Mobile Reserve (the militant section of the Cyprus Police), based at Ktima, Paphos, he was constantly in demand by military units during cordon and search operations. Hewitt also undertook many stealth operations, January - February 1957, in the familiar role of hunting out terrorists from their forest hideouts, only the Eoka (Cypriot terrorists) were superior in arms and much better trained than any Mau Mau encountered in Kenya. These stealth groups were composed of 3 or 4 persons only, carrying very little equipment, and expected to live out for anything up to 14 days, charting movement, observing, locating and if possible killing, Eoka.

With yet another emergency being declared in one of Britain’s overseas territories, Hewitt was re-appointed and set sail from Cyprus for Nyasaland on 17 September 1959. His police career then concluded with a nine-year spell in the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary. Returning to England in 1972 he took up an appointment with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, where a succession of postings took him to diplomatic missions in Sierra Leone, East Berlin, Guyana and Lisbon before he finally settled with his wife back in London.

Sold with the following:

(i) Photograph Albums (2), both remarkable historical archives documenting the recipient’s life and work during two colonial emergency periods, each with caringly annotated photographs augmented by passages of longer commentary and newspaper cuttings.
Album 1: Kenya 1953-56 including: arrival in Kenya 1 December 1953, Police Training School, 1st posting to Hermann’s Forest Post, 2nd posting to Ol Magogo (Post Commander November 1954 to April 1955), many images of the recipient and colleagues undertaking patrol work, victims of terrorism, Tracker Combat Teams, Operation Bullrush - 30 December 1955 to 30 January 1956, Colony Police HQ Operations - 1956.
Album 2: Cyprus 1956-59: Ledra Street shootings 1956, ambushes, personalities, cordon and search operations with army, captured terrorists, mobile reserve, stealth ops, Larnaca, etc etc, embarkation for Nyasaland.

(ii) The recipient’s original, typed, soft bound manuscript copy of Kenya Cowboy - A police officer’s account of the Mau Mau Emergency.

(iii) A folder containing documents described as being ‘of unique historical significance’ relating to a letter mailed to Police Headquarters in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea on 6 April 1968. The letter was partially destroyed by fire when the aircraft in which it was being carried crashed and caught fire at London Heathrow Airport on 8 April 1968.

(iv) A quantity of police buttons, badges and insignia including: Kenya Police shoulder title; Cyprus Police - 25 buttons and 2 badges; Nyasaland Police - 2 metal badges 2 cloth badges and 14 buttons; Papua New Guinea - 2 shoulder epaulettes each with 3 stars, a metal and enamel badge and a button, 2 metal and enamel cap badges, 2 metal cap badges, 1 spare shoulder badge and 6 spare stars; Fleet Air Arm - 10 buttons.

(v) H.M. Armed Forces Veteran pin badge, metal and enamel in Toye, Kenning and Spencer Ltd. box.