T H E C O V E N A N T E R
“11. I give the following pecuniary looking appropriately alert and fearsome, to
legacies . . . to the Priest in charge of the the staircase which they would then mount,
said Roman Catholic Church of Saint to find drinks and dinner ready to be served
Agatha, Dawlish, aforesaid at the time of
as the light faded and darkness fell.
my death . . .”
The attraction of Treetops for guests and
Many other people, and charitable
game alike, lay in the fact that the large
organisations, connected with the Roman
clearing before it, either a shallow pool or
Catholic Church were also beneficiaries
a muddy wallow, according to season was a
of his Will. These bequests are but one
massive salt-lick of such great appeal to all
indication of his strong Catholic faith.
kinds of game that they would ignore the
In June 2001, which in the South of
intrusion of spotlights from the balcony
England for a family wedding, my wife and
and go about the business of getting
I visited as many of our family graves as
seriously salted to the great delight of the
we could. I had previously obtained from
guests on high.
the Cemeteries Manager of Portsmouth
Sated with salt, the animals would
disappear up the many game trails which
City Council the location of Major-
led down to the pool. The last elephant
General Laye’s grave in the Highland Road
to leave would put out the lights and the
Cemetery. He and his wife Anna Maria
guests would retire to be up in the tree. A
have a combined gravestone. We found
surreal and memorable experience for all
this in a reasonable condition, though
who shared it.
some of the lettering was missing or
By 1955 however, much had changed.
defaced. I arranged with a local stonemason
Mau Mau was at its height, Treetops had
for these letters, 286 in all, to be replaced
been torched and partially destroyed by
and I now have photographs of the restored
terrorists and the army was in the forest to
gravestone. root them out.
Lt.-Col. John G. Moncrieff For four weeks we had been involved
in an operation in the Aberdares, starting
Memories of Treetops
up in the moor lands above the forest
fringe and patrolling down hill each day,
Coverage of the Queens Golden Jubilee
‘bumping’ the occasional gang and, we
in last year’s celebrations included the
hoped, driving them down to a solid line
recollection that she and Prince Philip had
of ambushes set up along the lower forest
been on an African tour when her father
edge for the duration. In the path of our
died, and had spent the night before the
Company lay Treetops.
news of his death and her accession at
On the penultimate day of the op. our
Treetops Hotel in the forest above Nyeri
three platoons received orders at first light
in Kenya, before travelling back to Sagana
that we were to prepare a final sweep next
Lodge, her wedding gift from the people of
day from our positions to the forest edge
(and into the ambushes, we wondered?)
Kenya, where the news was broken to her
across a front of some 1500 yards, through
next morning.
an area including Treetops, in which a
Reading about all of this brought back
large gang of up to one hundred had been
a flood of memories of my own visit
reported (by whom, we wondered; we were
to Treetops, only a couple of years or
the only people there and we certainly
so later and in much more pedestrian
hadn’t seen any gangs of one hundred).
circumstances, during operations against
My neighbouring platoon commander
Mau Mau in the emergency in Kenya in the
and I bivouacked together that night to
middle fifties. prepare a plan of action for the morrow.
Treetops, sometimes more grandly known Three days previous one of my askaris had
as Treetops Hotel was run by the owners of been fatally wounded when he was gored
the Outspan Hotel in Nyeri, a nearby town. by a maddened rhino already suffering
It was a long, wide, single-story wooden agony from an ant-infested open wound
building with dining and bedrooms behind
on its belly (as we found when we shot
a long verandah, all built high up in a giant
it). The askaris, normally placid and
fig-tree, shored up at the ends on giant log
completely at ease in the bush were jumpy
piles, and with a wooden staircase leading
on edge. Our four-week advance down
up from the approach-path.
the mountains may have driven the gangs
On suitable evenings small parties
downhill; it had certainly pushed all the
of guests would be driven out from the
teeming wild life ahead of it, while the
Outspan Hotel, would alight and then
presence of the ambushes had prevented
walk, escorted by rifle-toting game wardens
the animals which instinctively turn away
from the sounds and smells of man, from
50
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