Robert Ruark, Jr. (1915-1965) grew up as the product of an unhappy marriage and in straightened circumstances in Wilmington, NC.  Worse still, he was super-smart, so he had few school friends.[1]  Maybe this is what made him irascible all the rest of his life.  Something did.  He did have a beloved grandfather who took him hunting and fishing.  He tried office work, then went to sea on a merchant ship, then worked his way up the greasy pole of newspaper work, then went back to sea as a Navy officer during the Second World War, and then came back to Washington, DC, as a very readable newspaper and magazine[2] columnist.  In 1950, having shot examples of most of what the United States had to offer, he went to East Africa to go big-game hunting.  He stayed for a while, then came back later. 

Ruark’s visit coincided with the “Mau Mau Emergency” (1952-1956) in British-ruled Kenya.  In brief compass, in Kenya the usual grievances of the subject people were compounded by the presence of a white settler community in a part of the colony.[3]  The nationalist movement came to be centered in the Kikuyu tribe.  The rebels came to be called the “Mau Mau.” 

Out of Ruark’s African trips came his novel Something of Value (1955).  It is long, covers a long span of time, and is filled with all sorts of subordinate stories.  Still, there’s an “axial principle”[4] running through the book.  People from different cultures can co-exist so long as there is mutual respect between them.  Most of the British could not extend respect to the Africans or their culture.  There was a color-bar; there was racialized justice; most of all, there was a complete disdain for African values and social organization.  All the British did, in Ruark’s view, was to undermine traditional authority and beliefs.  This left young people, especially young men, adrift.  They caught onto all sorts of harmful ideas.  After that, hatred elicited hatred in a worsening spiral. 

The rebellion was as much a civil war among the Kikuyu as it was an independence struggle.  The British deployed the then-new techniques of counter-insurgency war: sweeps and mass detainments of suspects; enhanced interrogation, and small unit operations against the enemy; and concentration in new villages.  The British also made political concessions. 

The rebellion was very bloody, so it caught a lot of international attention.  The novel became a best seller.  MGM bought the rights to make a “ripped from the headlines” movie.

Richard Brooks both wrote the screen-play and directed.  Rock Hudson and Sidney Poitier played the childhood-friends who become opponents; Dana Winter plays Hudson’s wife; and a bunch of black actors got work. 

The portrayal of the fight against Mau Mau doesn’t center on British military operations (open and covert) against the rebels.  Instead, it follows the struggle waged by the white settlers.  Brooks, like Ruark, said what he thought should be said.  The movie doesn’t hide all the violence perpetrated in the movie by white settlers (called “the white Mau Mau” by one British officer), as well as by blacks.  The book and movie profit from being based on Ruark’s experience and views—however partial. 

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[1] Always was that way; always will be that way.  Just try not to end up in a bell tower with a rifle. 

[2] Especially for Field and Stream. 

[3] This made it a bit like French Algeria, albeit on a much smaller scale.  Same psychology was at work. 

[4] Like a laundry line on which one hangs all sorts of stuff.