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Auction: 1005 - Orders, Decorations, Campaign Medals & Militaria
Lot: 18

The Unique 1955 Mau Mau Emergency Counter-Terrorist D.C.M. Group of Three to Sergeant Major J.A. ´Jacky´ Miller, Kenya Regiment, Attached Special Branch Kenya Police; Using Boot Polish to Disguise Himself As a Native Kikuyu, He Successfully Infiltrated, Ran, and Destroyed An Influential Mau Mau Committee and Gang a) Distinguished Conduct Medal, E.II.R., 1st ´Br: Omn:´ type (KR. 4072 A/W.O. Cl. 2. J.A. Miller. Kenya. R.) b) Africa General Service 1902-56, E.II.R., one clasp Kenya, M.I.D. Oakleaf (K.R. 4072 W.O.Cl. 2, J.A. Miller, Kenya Regt.), M.I.D. Oakleaf loose as issued, regiment partially officially corrected c) Colonial Police Medal for Meritorious Service, E.II.R., 2nd ´Dei Gratia´ type (John A. Miller, Act. Ch. Insp. Kenya Police.), generally nearly extremely fine, with Royal Mint cases of issue for first and last medals; together with the related miniature awards and a contemporary copy of ´Extracts from Citations of those attending the Investiture held at Government House, Nairobi on Saturday, 17.3.1956´ (3) Estimate £ 14,000-18,000 D.C.M. London Gazette 19.7.1955 K.R. 4072 Warrant Officer Class 2 (Acting) John Austin Miller, The Kenya Regiment ´In recognition of gallant and distinguished services in Kenya during the period 21.10.1954-20.4.1955´. The Recommendation states: ´By the beginning of February it had been discovered that a large Mau Mau organisation existed on certain farms in the Thika Settled Area. It was decided to establish a mock gang in the area with a view to obtaining the enemy´s secrets and breaking up his organisation. The execution of this plan was left for the most part to Miller. During the period 1 February- 21 March Miller, disguised as a terrorist, attended, with his mock gang, a number of meetings of the top Mau Mau Committee. He also managed to eliminate some active terrorists, including one well-known leader. In addition, he was responsible for the recovery of two precision weapons. On 21 March he again attended a meeting with all the senior Mau Mau office holders in the course of which he successfully directed a police patrol onto the scene so that all fifteen Mau Mau members were killed or arrested. For the whole period Miller showed immense courage combined with careful planning and resource. One slip at any moment would have resulted not only in the failure of the scheme but obviously in the death of Miller and his party which was always very weak in numbers. In addition the danger of directing a Police party onto a meeting in which he was taking part should not be underestimated. It is felt that Miller´s conduct was of the highest order throughout, and rivals in cold-courage anything achieved by the Security Forces during the Emergency. These incidents, moreover, crown a highly successful career as an F.I.O. and are by no means the first occasions on which his courage has been noted.´ C.P.M. for Meritorious Service London Gazette 1.1.1964 John Austin Miller, Acting Chief Inspector, Kenya Police Force 4702 Sergeant Major John Austin ´Jacky´ Miller, D.C.M., C.P.M. born in England, he went to study agriculture in Kenya , 1950; a state of emergency was declared in Kenya by the Governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, early October 1952, following the murder of Africans loyal to the government by members of the Kikuyu tribe; this was the start of the Mau Mau rebellion and the subsequent gorilla warfare and terrorist activities that followed; Miller enlisted in the Kenya Regiment to carry out his National Service; in 1953 Frank Kitson (later General Sir Frank Kitson) and Ian Field (later Lieutenant-Colonel), both serving Army officers, were seconded to the Kenya Police Special Branch; both, in different geographical sectors, were heavily involved in setting up an intelligence network for counter-terrorist operations against the Mau Mau; this was very much an under cover unit, that although worked with the more regular armed forces, due to the nature of its work picked the occasions and tended to work off its own back; in early 1954 Miller joined with Kitson´s, then small, operational team as a F.I.A. (Field Intelligence Assistant), ´At last I had received a reasonable number of new F.I.A.s, due to the disbandment of Rayforce, which had put on the market all the Kenya Regiment men previously on loan to the police..... He was followed by Sergeant Jacky Miller, who had been in command of the police station at Kanjiria in Gatundu. He was slightly unusual in that he had not lived all his life in Kenya but had arrived five years before at the age of sixteen. He was small and had fair hair and vast blue eyes with long lashes. At the time he looked no more than seventeen and he always spoke as though he had left school the day before and couldn´t quite decide what all the grown-ups were doing. He seemed so innocent that no one ever suspected that he could harbour an unkind thought, even against the Mau Mau. Unlike Cottar and Faul, Jacky Miller got on splendidly with the missionaries and indeed everyone else. It would never have occurred to me, had I met him just once or twice, that he would have been the least bit of use in the job. Luckily I had met often in my first four months and discovered that underneath there was a relentless man who would not allow anything to get between him and his purpose. I sent Miller to Thika to look after the southern half of the District where the population were primarily Kikuyu from Kiambu District´ (Gangs and Counter-gangs, Frank Kitson, M.B.E., M.C., refers); in the formulative days of Kitson´s organisation the F.I.A.s role was to build up a network of informers and accumulate as much information about the structure of the Mau Mau and the make up and movements of their gangs as possible; it appears Miller was quickly in to his stride, ´On my return.... Bill Henning [D.M.I.O. for Thika] told me [Frank Kitson] how the centre of gravity had swung back to Thika District. Next day I went there to get a first hand account of events from Jacky Miller. There had evidently been some pretty brisk engagements during the past week and the day before my visit a gang had sacked the Thika Club and killed the barman. Miller had himself been ambushed twice while trying to keep a gang under observation until troops arrived, but each time he escaped unhurt. Some time later I heard more about Miller´s exploits from an eye-witness who had seen him rescue a wounded police constable under fire. When Jacky found him, the policeman had one bullet hole in him. By the time Jacky got him back under cover he was dead, having been holed twice more´ (Ibid). Pseudo-Gangs Frank Kitson and Eric Holyoak (Sergeant-Major, Kenya Regiment, and Kitson´s ´Go-To´ Man) based at their interrogation centre at Kamiti devised what was to prove a very successful, if very dangerous, method of infiltration into the Mau Mau regime; without official sanctioning Kitson started to create a ´pseudo-gang´; initially it was made up of 2-3 loyal Africans, who would attempt to infiltrate Mau Mau gangs in their natural habitat; it was met with success but the amount of information gained was limited; the potential for the idea was there for all to see, however, in order to fully maximise upon this method it was decided that a European operative needed to be present; the obvious dangers of this were apparent - how would a white man unable to speak Kikuyu pass as a Mau Mau terrorist in close confines; this was mused on, but as more Mau Mau prisoners were bought to Kamiti, so the idea developed; it was decided to use ´turned´ Mau Mau terrorists as part of the Pseudo-Gangs; this in itself was fraught with danger, as apart from gut instinct upon Kitson and Holyoak´s behalf, they had no idea whether the pacified terrorist would act out his part or betray the ´gang´ to certain death on the first opportunity that he got; Holyoak carried out the initial mission posing as a senior Mau Mau, this in itself got past the problem of being unable to speak Kikuyu as the Mau Mau were very hierarchical and on that basis only a another senior Mau Mau could talk directly to him, this enabled his ´turned´ Mau Mau to do the talking for him while he stayed at the edge of the meeting; this, however, did not get past the physical problems; as General Erskine found out on an official visit to Kamiti, Kitson had an answer for this as well, ´Before the General left Kamiti he walked round the huts and looked at some of the equipment used to disguise the team. He saw the home-made guns and simis, the ragged overcoats and the strings of beads which many of the Mau Mau wore as part of their uniform. He had a few words with some of the ex-terrorists who were being trained for work in teams, and he talked to Eric about the relative merits of burnt cork or boot black for darkening the skin of Europeans who wanted to look like Africans´ (Ibid); in May 1954 the method was started to be used on a wider scale, with F.I.A.s filling Holyoak´s role in their respective areas, ´May was a very important month for my organization. Not only did it see the pseudo gang technique reach its final form as described, but our other methods started to pay off as well. This was particularly true in Thika where our ideas progressed the fastest, because the team of Henning, Miller and Mordaunt had been working together for longer than the Kiambu team and because the two resident gangs in the district gave the F.I.A.s better opportunities for gaining experience. It was just as well that our ideas started paying off in Thika because the gangs there had been doing a lot of damage. The northern gang alone had killed about sixty loyalists and Security Force members in the first four months of the year..... At this time Bill Henning and his men were having more and more successes. In the evening, after General Erkine´s visit, Jacky Miller took out a military patrol and captured a minor gang leader with ten of his gang. Three days later Henning´s men organized a contact between a gang of fifteen and some soldiers from Thika and the next day they brought about a further contact with a bigger gang. A week later Miller and police patrol killed four terrorists and captured another out of a gang of nine, and two days later he killed five more´; the success was not without loss - by June 1954 three of the pseudo-gang members had been captured and mutilated; it was possible to discern which gang was responsible for the mutilation, as each developed it´s own ´style´; whilst Miller was carrying out good work in one part of Kitson´s jurisdiction, so another problem often emerged elsewhere; in July 1954 it was the rampage of Mwangi Toto and his gang; on the 17th July, ´the labourers on a coffee farm were sitting quietly in their huts round the glowing remains of their cooking fires. Across a shallow valley Mwangi Toto and his gang were wriggling through the bush to take up a good position for attack. A moment or two later the peaceful scene round the labour lines dissolved into a whirlpool of horror. Mwangi´s men charged shouting at the top of their voices. Several blew whistles and a bugle blared.... the wretched labourers, whose only fault was that they were working for a European, ran out of their huts into the maize screaming with terror. The gang, frenzied by the thought of blood, slashed around with their simis and fired their guns. One old man, slower than the rest, was caught and hamstrung. He fell at the feet of his pursuers, covering his face with his arms to protect it from the slicing swords, but a mouse in a mechanical mincing machine would have had a better chance of survival. One terrorist hacked off a foot, and another sliced off his testicles to use later in an oathing ceremony. A third gouged out his eyes with a staple and put them in his pocket for the same purpose. When they had finished most of the gang came by to cut and stab the twitching corpse. Then they licked the blood off their simis and moved off into the night, having first set fire to all the huts they could see´ (Ibid); whilst Kitson was attempting to deal with Mwangi continued success was taking place in Thika during the summer months; by the end of July 1954 both the northern and southern gangs in Thika had been destroyed, ´throughout this time Henning´s main helper was Jacky Miller whose good work was officially recognized when he was made a Sergeant Major. The only other F.I.A. in my organization with that distinction was Eric Holyoak´ Cracking the Committee By September 1954 Kitson´s organization had grown to comprise of six officers, thirteen European Warrant Officers and Sergeants and about two hundred loyal Africans and ex-terrorists, this did not include the network of informers that had been built up; a significant number of the organization were used in a large scale operation that successfully infiltrated and destroyed the ´Kahawa Kenya Parliament´ (the committees representing Nyeri, Fort Hall, Embu, Meru and the Rift Valley and a major source of funding and ammunition for the Mau Mau terrorists); Kitson describes the following events that led to Miller being awarded the only D.C.M. for the Mau Mau Emergency: ´During the course of our activities we had obtained a lot of information about Thika which we passed to Jacky Miller, who was in charge there whilst Bush was engaged at Karure. One of the things we discovered was that there had been an offshoot of the Kahawa Parliament near Ruiru. Miller decided to exploit this information in order to destroy a particularly elusive gang. His plan is of interest in that it shows what immense trouble we often had to take in order to get one good contact. The first thing to be done was to meet the committee about which we had been told. One night Jacky went out with his team and met one of its former members. He soon learnt that the committee had ceased to function some weeks previously. During the next ten days he made several visits to them pretending to be a gang. Gradually he put fresh heart into them until they were finally operating again as before, except that Miller´s team were the affiliated Strong Arm group. The next step was to contact the real gang and Miller sent out from his committee a message to say that as they were not local men they must not collect money from the people of his area. He also told the passive wing members not to supply them. At the same time he was careful to send friendly messages suggesting that if they got in touch with his committee a plan of mutual aid could probably be worked out. Soon the strange gang had sent representatives to negotiate. Miller did not attend all the meetings of the committee which he had resuscitated. There was no need for him to do so. Even when he did attend he would have worked through one of his team, who would act as leader, while Jacky himself hung on the edge of the group as sentry or scout. Day by day he told me about the most recent developments. The big decision would be when to act. Throughout the scheme I was in a constant state of worry about Miller. It had been bad enough when he was only visiting his own committee but once members of the outside gang took to attending I was doubly anxious about his personal safety. Consequently whenever he said that he would be meeting a few members of the gang that night I would urge him to spring the trap and be satisfied with the leader and one or two others. Jacky was determined to get the lot. Finally the chance arrived and he heard that the whole gang were due to arrive one night. Even Jacky could think of no reason for further delay. I should have liked to have been in on the kill but the risks were bad enough without my being there as an additional liability. Soon after dark, Miller and his team, which included one other F.I.A. called Andrew Hitch, went off to the meeting, which was being held in a hut. A police patrol commanded by an inspector, whom the F.I.A.s trusted implicitly, followed up and got into position a few hundred yards away. Soon after our patrol arrived the gang appeared. There was a terrific crowd inside the hut. When everyone was present the proceedings started..... Acting on a pre-arranged signal they closed on the hut and burst in. Most of the inmates were unarmed, as this was supposed to be a friendly meeting, so the police were able to do their business with rifle butts. Jacky and his men were indistinguishable from the rest and got their share of the bruises. Next day I went down to inspect the bag. Two had been killed and there were fifteen prisoners. It was certainly one of the most successful operations I had ever known and no praise is too high for Miller and his team who executed the plan....... After three weeks it was apparent that the operation as a whole had been a staggering success. We had completely knocked out the Mau Mau organisation in Kahawa, destroyed two of their gangs, destroyed a further gang in Thika, and made some useful arrests in Nairobi..... in all we caught or killed over 100 gangsters or senior committee members. Using little more than our own F.I.A.s and their teams, we had dealt the Mau Mau a terrific blow. Quite apart from the committee members we had probably accounted for more actual gang members and weapons than any of the large military operations in the past six months.´ Miller´s tour ended in 1955, and he stayed in the country by joining the Kenya Police. He rose to the rank of Chief Inspector.

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