General Frank Kitson’s Posthumous Autobiography

Arrived a few days ago: General Sir Frank Kitson’s memoir titled Intelligent Warfare

"I did think just a little bit more like a terrorist than some of our commanders".
- General Frank Kitson (1926-2024).

General Frank Kitson's memoir was published in December 2024, eleven months after his passing at aged 97.

Back in 1977 Kitson wrote his military autobiography Bunch of Five, but it contained nothing about his service in Northern Ireland which was an extremely sensitive subject at that time.

Most will presume that he addresses it in this work which he wanted published only after his death. They will wonder if he covers the formation and activation of the notorious Military Reaction Force (MRF), a British Army counterinsurgency unit or "counter-gang" of which he was almost certainly the brains behind.

The precursor to the Special Reconnaissance Unit (SRU), the Force Research Unit (FRU) and 14 Intelligence Company, the purpose of the MRF was to take the fight to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the strongholds of the Republican community.

It meant that Kitson, according to Paddy Devlin of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, “probably did more than any other individual to sour relations between the Catholic community and the security forces”.

But while Kitson was later in his lifetime subjected to lawsuits from families from the Republican community for his role in the loss of innocent life, researchers have yet to find evidence of the MRF commencing its shooting until after then Brigadier Kitson left Northern Ireland in April 1972 to take up a post at Warminster.

Even the shooting of the innocent Conway brothers on April 15^th, 1972, for long erroneously attributed to the MRF, had in fact been committed by a three-man team from The Kings Own Scottish Borderers regiment led by Captain Julian “Tony” Ball.

Nonetheless, Kitson whom General Sir Mike Jackson opined “very much set the tone for the operational style in Belfast”, remains culpable to many Republicans who view him as the spiritus rector of the enduring covert policies of British Army intelligence which had a devastating impact on the Roman Catholic community.

I will most definitely be writing a review of the book.

Ranks of Frank Kitson:

1946 - 2nd Lieutenant
1948 - Lieutenant
1953 - Captain
1960 - Major
1964 - Lieutenant Colonel
1969 - Colonel
1970 - Brigadier
1976 - Major General
1980 - Lieutenant General
1982 - General

An essay of mine on Kitson:

Frank Kitson - A Soldier’s Legacy

. Blog

. Academia dot Edu

See also:

Britain’s Acronyms Of Terror – General Frank Kitson And The MRF, SRU And FRU – An Sionnach Fionn

© Adeyinka Makinde (2025).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

The Arba Lijoch Armenian Children of Ethiopia

Group photograph of the Arba Lijoch Children. Photo credit: Haigaz Boyajian, royal photographer of Ethiopia.

Arba Lijoch (meaning "40 children" in Amharic) were a group of 40 Armenian orphans who had escaped the fate of millions of Armenians who were systematically killed and deported by Ottoman Turks.

Crown Prince Ras Tafari, later Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, encountered them while visiting the Armenian monastery in Jerusalem. He was so impressed by their abilities as a marching band that he obtained permission from the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem to adopt and take them to Ethiopia.

They arrived in Addis Ababa in 1924, and Selassie oversaw their continued education.

Led by Kevork Nalbandian, Arba Lijoch became the Royal Imperial Brass Band. Nalbandian went on to compose the music for "Ethiopia Hoy", the Imperial National Anthem from 1930 to 1974.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2025).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Aftermath of an assassination attempt on Kwame Nkrumah on January 2nd, 1964

Photograph of President Nkrumah of Ghana pressing down the shoulders of Police Constable Seph Nicholas Kwame Ametewee who unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate him on January 2nd, 1964. Photo credit: Ian Russell.

Nkrumah faced several assassination attempts starting in the the early 1960s and it created a dilemma on how to preserve his rule.

"On 1 August 1962, after a lull in a series of bomb explosions that rocked Accra during the last few months of 1961, an assassination attempt was made on Nkrumah. Returning from Tenkodogo in the bordering republic of Burkina Faso (then Upper Volta), the president stopped at the northern village of Kulungugu where he narrowly escaped death in a hand-grenade attack. Several people were killed. One of these was Superintendent Kosi, a bodyguard. Fifty-seven others, including the president’s ADC, Captain Buckman, were injured. Nkrumah himself received minor shrapnel wounds in the back.

Six weeks later, on 18 September, a Ga army warrant officer, Sergeant-Major Edward Tetteh, who was in charge of the Burma Camp ammunition depot and was suspected of providing grenades for the Kulungugu plot, jumped, or was pushed, to his death from a fourth-floor window whilst under interrogation at police HQ. His alleged complicity threw suspicion on the army but no further evidence emerged after his fall.

A further spate of five bombings against Nkrumah occurred between September 1962 and January 1963; however, none of them came near to success. In these attacks, more than a dozen people were killed and over 400 hurt. However, the identity of those responsible was never discovered. The immediate consequences of these events was a tightening up of security measures throughout the country far exceeding those following the 1966 coup. The government’s restrictions were taken one step further on 23 September 1962 when, following simultaneous bomb blasts in Accra and Tema, a state of emergency was declared. The army was given widespread emergency powers, conducting house-to-house searches for weapons, ammunition and explosives and manning a blockade of the capital until 1964. Over 500 persons were imprisoned under the terms of the 1958 Preventive Detention Act; and in January 1963, public meetings were banned.

Despite the clampdown, these measures failed to prevent another serious assault on the president, this time not from an anonymous figure in a public place but from a policeman in the grounds of Flagstaff House. On 2 January 1964, an armed constable with four years service, Seth Ametewee, fired several close-range rifle rounds at Nkrumah before being overpowered by his police colleagues. Yet another unfortunate bodyguard was killed; this time it was the head of a special police guard, Assistant Superintendent Salifo Dagarti. Nkrumah’s only injury was a bite on the cheek received whilst wrestling his would-be killer to the ground.

There is some evidence to suggest that Ametewee, who was hanged in 1965 for the murder of Dagarti, was in the pay of senior police officers who had him specially posted to Flagstaff House with promises of £2,000 and further education overseas if he did the job. At about the same time, news leaked to the press revealed another unsuccessful plot, on this occasion involving the officer in charge of the police band. The bandleader’s plan apparently involved shooting Nkrumah with revolvers when he came over to congratulate the musicians on their performance.

Whatever the truth about the Kulungugu and Flagstaff assassination attempts, the events convinced Nkrumah that both the army and the police harboured potential, if not actual, sources of opposition. The resulting purge of the police command, together with the reassignment of security responsibilities to National Security Service agencies, reflected one of the central dilemmas of Nkrumah’s personal rule: how to protect the regime whilst simultaneously preventing the security forces from gaining too much power."

- "The Military and Politics in Nkrumah's Ghana" by Simon Baynham. Published by Westview Press (Boulder and London) in 1988.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2025)

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.