Description
Physical description
badge
[brown, green and red]
Label
The badge. Worn on the upturned brim of the bush hat. The brown of the badge represents the askaris, who were led by the green of the European Kenyans, who in turn were trained and supported by the red of the Regular Army.
Unit history: no doubt prompted by the Italian conquest of Ethiopia / Abyssinia in 1936, Lord Stratheden, a Captain in the Coldstream Guards, was sent from the UK in that year to reorganize the local Kenya Defence Force and raise a TA-style officer and NCO-producing battalion from the white settler population of the Colony. The primary purpose of the new TA unit would be to provide a reserve of trained junior leaders for service with the King's African Rifles and other services that would be expanded or created in the event of war. The unit was formed at the end of March 1937 under the title of the Kenya Regiment (Territorial Force).
The Regiment began with just two companies, with a third being formed shortly after and a fourth formed in February 1939. A Uganda platoon was formed in June 1939. Recruiting was good and the unit had two annual camps, 1938 and 1939, before war was declared. The Regiment was called up on 28 August 1939 and parties of junior officers and NCOs were assigned to various KAR battalions, on average around forty men to each of the six battalions then in existence. By the end of October 1939 over 400 officers and men had been posted to the KAR, Supplies & Transport and other units.
The Regiment was in effect placed in suspended animation in mid 1941. The supply of recruits had been all but exhausted, the Regiment having trained around 75% of all available men. Some 3,500 men from Kenya and Uganda had passed through the Regiment, over 1,500 being commissioned into the KAR and Northern Rhodesian Regiments.
While it is strictly true to say that in WW2 the Regiment was only a leader-providing unit, it did provide personnel for three other units.
The first of these derived from a Reconnaissance Platoon formed in June 1939, consisting mainly of white hunters. The Platoon trained with 5KAR in the Northern Frontier District in August 1939 and assisted that Battalion in mobilization at the beginning of September. At some point around late September 1939 or shortly after, the Platoon returned to Nairobi and expanded, using mainly Kenya Regiment personnel, re-equipping as a reconnaissance squadron and becoming the East African Reconnaissance Squadron. (See NOTE below).
The sources are not clear about dates but at some stage the unit again expanded, becoming a regimental-sized unit as 1st (East Africa) Reconnaissance Regiment (Kenya Armoured Car Regiment), equipped with Marmon Herrington armoured cars from South Africa. The transition to a regiment must have been some time before the invasion of Italian East Africa because at the opening of that campaign in February 1941, RHQ and one squadron were assigned to East Africa Force HQ and one squadron each to 11th and 12th (African) Divisions. One squadron was prominent in the dash to Addis Ababa in late March 1941.
The Regiment became the 11th (East Africa) Divisional reconnaissance unit between 17th May 1943 and 15th June 1944 when the Division was in Ceylon. It is not clear whether the unit went to Burma, although it seems unlikely. Subsequent employment is not known.
[NOTE: the East Africa Reconnaissance Squadron formed from the Kenya Regiment's Recce. Platoon was probably the reconnaissance unit created at the direct behest of the GOC East Africa Force. The dates of creation fit and the GOC's Despatch covering this period states that at the time there was only one recce. unit in all of East Africa. However, by mid November 1942 a unit called 3rd. Armoured Recce Squadron appears on the War Office order of battle, which by June 1943 was to become 4th (EA) Armoured Car Regiment, assigned to 27th (EA) Independent Brigade Group in East Africa from November 1944. The origins of this unit are not known and it is possible that it is this unit, not the EARS, which originated as the GOC's unit.
The GOC's recce unit arose out of local deficiencies. Authority to form an armoured car squadron had been granted earlier but as no such vehicles, nor armoured plate for use in making local expedients, were available, the GOC decided to form instead a Reconnaissance Squadron. This was initially of a HQ and three Troops, each of two Sections, each Section self-contained and comprising two 'fighting cars'. These fighting cars were one-ton Ford trucks with Bren mountings at the rear and on the cab roof to give all-round fire. Each car was crewed with three men, with one Bren and two rifles. Popularly known as 'the Recces', this unit harassed the Italians when they crossed the northern Kenya border in June 1940.]
The second unit was the 1st (East Africa) Light Battery, the initial personnel for which were raised from the Kenya Regiment. Following a request for volunteers, 40 privates from the Regiment were transferred to the Battery when it was formed in October 1939, becoming part of the East African Artillery.
The third unit to employ Kenya Regiment personnel was the Kenya Independent Squadron. A number of volunteers for this unit were found at the Eldoret training camp in around June 1940. When the KIS was disbanded, many of the volunteers went on to serve with Kar battalions or one of the irregular units used in the Italian East Africa campaign. (see INS 483).
The Kenya Regiment was re-activated in 1950 and served in a similar leader-providing capacity but was also operational as a unit in the Mau-Mau period 1952 –56. The Regiment ceased to exist with Kenyan Independence in 1963.
History note
Bibliographical sources: THE CHARGING BUFFALO. A History of the Kenya Regiment 1937 –1963. Guy Campbell. Leo Cooper / Secker & Warburg, 1986.
A HISTORY OF THE KING'S AFRICAN RIFLES and East African Forces. Malcolm Page. Leo Cooper, 1998.
WO276/374, GOC's Despatch of 31 December 1939, para. 11.
WO33/1976: Index to order of battle, East Africa Command, 1942, p.3.
http://www.regiments.org/regiments/africaeast/regts/kar.htm