Bwana Drum

London, W H Allen. 1964. 1st edition. Very god plus black cloth covers in a very good edge worn pictorial dust jacket. Internally fine with black and white ills. Uncommon title.

Dave Drummond, who has died aged 74, was awarded the George Medal for hunting down some 40 Mau Mau terrorists in Kenya in 1955; 30 years later the BBC made a film about him raising a family of orphaned cheetahs in the wild.

After being called up by the police reserve in 1952, Drummond was posted to Happy Valley, 7,000 ft up in the Aberdare mountains, where he was able to make use of the fluent Swahili and bushcraft he had learned as a boy from a Kikuyu hunter. He soon discovered how Africans were coerced into taking the terrorists' gruesome secret oaths, having started to make progress when an African grocer offered to become an informer.

On his first operation Drummond was taken to a terrorist hideout, where he hoped to track down a gang leader called Harun. At the time the hideout was unguarded because the sentry was being beaten on his bare backside. When the sentry returned and raised his gun, Drummond opened fire, hitting him in the legs, then threw himself to the ground as he heard something heavy land in the bushes nearby; it was a grenade which had become caught in a branch above his head.

Drummond advanced to one of the huts, where he encountered the gang leader. But as Drummond drew his gun, Harun struck him in the face and disappeared into the forest shouting: "Bloody swine! I know you, Bwana Drum!"