Millrace Books — The Defending Officer’s Dog

The Defending Officer’s Dog

by Jack Cripps, illustrated by Rose Shawe–Taylor

A Royal Engineer abroad in the Second World War

cover	hardback
dimensions	170x120mm, 184 pp, 20 b&w drawings
price	£14.95 (list)	£13.50 (website)
ISBN	1 902173 21 X

A Second World War memoir with a difference. The Defending Officer’s Dog is set in East Africa, Ceylon and India. Jack Cripps, a young officer in the Royal Engineers, was sent to Kenya in 1942 to train African troops for Burma. The challenges of the job and his own adventurous nature led him into some extraordinary situations, from disarming a berserk askari to rickshaw–racing, from driving a truckload of volatile wet gelignite to bicycling around a crowded dance floor. The backgrounds are vividly drawn: the Kenyan landscape and wildlife, the Ogaden desert, coconut plantations in Ceylon and a bridging camp on the Ganges. But the first task the twenty year–old was faced with was building a camp at 6,500 feet in the cedar forests of Mount Kenya:

“This seemed just up my street. With the help of the Royal Engineers Pocket Book (1936), I got to work making out a formidable list of timber, nails, screws, doors, windows and corrugated iron that we would need for the first phase. On presenting the list at the CRE’s office, we were told unequivocally that none of these things was available. There were, however, plenty of trees and grass for thatch…”