About Captain Riley Pitts (1937-1967): The first African-American officer to receive the U.S. Medal of Honor

U.S. Army Captain Riley Pitts (1937-1967) speaking to ABC News shortly before being killed in action.

U.S. Army Captain Riley Pitts was the first African-American officer to receive the Medal of Honor, the highest military decoration attainable to members of the United States Armed Forces.

The medal was presented posthumously by President Lyndon B. Johnson on December 10, 1968, for actions in Ap Dong, Republic of Vietnam.

Medal of Honor citation:

Distinguishing himself by exceptional heroism while serving as company commander during an airmobile assault. Immediately after his company landed in the area, several Viet Cong opened fire with automatic weapons. Despite the enemy fire, Capt. Pitts forcefully led an assault which overran the enemy positions. Shortly thereafter, Capt. Pitts was ordered to move his unit to the north to reinforce another company heavily engaged against a strong enemy force. As Capt. Pitts' company moved forward to engage the enemy, intense fire was received from 3 directions, including fire from 4 enemy bunkers, 2 of which were within 15 meters of Capt. Pitts' position. The severity of the incoming fire prevented Capt. Pitts from maneuvering his company. His rifle fire proving ineffective against the enemy due to the dense jungle foliage, he picked up an M-79 grenade launcher and began pinpointing the targets. Seizing a Chinese Communist grenade which had been taken from a captured Viet Cong's web gear, Capt. Pitts lobbed the grenade at a bunker to his front, but it hit the dense jungle foliage and rebounded. Without hesitation, Capt. Pitts threw himself on top of the grenade which, fortunately, failed to explode. Capt. Pitts then directed the repositioning of the company to permit friendly artillery to be fired. Upon completion of the artillery fire mission, Capt. Pitts again led his men toward the enemy positions, personally killing at least 1 more Viet Cong. The jungle growth still prevented effective fire to be placed on the enemy bunkers. Capt. Pitts, displaying complete disregard for his life and personal safety, quickly moved to a position which permitted him to place effective fire on the enemy. He maintained a continuous fire, pinpointing the enemy's fortified positions, while at the same time directing and urging his men forward, until he was mortally wounded. Capt. Pitts' conspicuous gallantry, extraordinary heroism, and intrepidity at the cost of his life, above and beyond the call of duty, are in the highest traditions of the U.S. Army and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the Armed Forces of his country.

Captain Pitts was in the news recently owing to recently discovered footage buried in the vaults of ABC TV.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2025).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

“Israel’s strategy is to kill civilians”: An Op-Ed for the Brattleboro Reformer newspaper of Vermont in 1997

“David Ben-Gurion”, a woodcut portrait by Mervin Jules (1912-1994).

The State of Israel has for long promoted the idea that its armed forces have rigorously pursued an ethical code when involved in military operations. Alongside the Zionist narrative of Israel being a democratic nation embedded in the midst of authoritarian states is that of a country in possession of the “world’s most moral army”. It is a narrative which has increasingly worn thin during the prolonged campaign against the Palestinian Gaza strip since 2023. Many are becoming apprised of the fact that the killing of civilians as a strategy of waging war is deeply ingrained in Israeli military doctrine. The following letter to the editor of a provincial American newspaper in 1997 sheds light on an ever present modus operandi which evolved into the “Dahiya doctrine”, applicable to the destruction of Lebanese population centres, and the “Mowing the grass” policy which was applied in Gaza. It is a policy which has now evolved into one with the goal of exterminating as much of the Palestinian population in Gaza in order to pave the way for their total removal in accordance with the longstanding aspirations of Political Zionism.

Editor of the Reformer:

In a recent letter to the editor, Bob Grossbaum blames the cycle of violence in the Middle East firmly on the Palestinians.

The picture he paints is of a plucky and beleaguered Israel constantly “living with border raids by terrorists, bombings … shootings … minings, etc.”  These raids are carried out by Arabs whose “mindset” is one of hostility to Israel’s “modern ways.”

That there is violence against Israel is true, of course and is well reported in the U.S. Not so well reported, however, is the vastly larger scale of violence that Israel delivers on its neighbors as part of a long-standing policy of intimidation and provocation.

Although it is not well advertised in the U.S., it has always been Israeli policy to deliberately target Palestinian civilians in Lebanon and beyond for political reasons. This policy is independent of, but hides behind, any terrorist attacks on Israel. But don’t take my word for it. Israeli policy is quite explicitly spelled out in the various writings and speeches of the policy makers themselves.

In his “Independence War Diary,” Israel’s first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion wrote in 1948 that Israel must “strike mercilessly, women and children included. Otherwise the action is inefficient. At the place of action there is no need to distinguish between guilty and innocent.”

The policy was confirmed as ongoing by General and Chief of Staff Mordechai Gur during Israel’s 1978 invasion of Lebanon. Gur said in an interview in al Hamishmar (May 10, 1978) that “For 30 years, from the War of Independence until today, we have been fighting against a population that lives in villages and cities.”

Veteran Israeli military analyst Ze’ev Schiff, writing in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz a few days later (May 15, 1978), was surprised at Gur’s frankness but didn’t dispute him: “In South Lebanon we struck the civilian population consciously, because they deserved it, … the importance of Gur’s remarks is that the Israeli army has always struck civilian populations purposely and consciously… even when Israeli settlements had not been struck.”

Prime Minister Moshe Sharett lamented Israel’s policy in his “Personal Diary,” published in 1979: “the long chain of false incidents and hostilities we have invented, and so many clashes we have provoked.” Sharett himself referred to Israeli policy as a “sacred policy”. Sharett also quoted another Prime Minister, Moshe Dayan, as saying the Israeli raids in Lebanon “make it possible for us to maintain a high level of tension among our population and in the army. Without these actions we would have ceased to be a combative people.” Sharett wrote that “the conclusion from Dayan’s words are clear: This state … must see the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to maintain its moral tension. Toward this end … it must adopt the method of provocation-and-revenge.”

The policy was again admitted by a high-level Israeli government official in 1981. On Aug. 16 in reply to a letter by Prime Minister Menachem Begin, former U.N. Ambassador and Foreign Minister Abba Eban wrote in the Jerusalem Post that “the picture that emerges (from Begin’s letter) is that of an Israel wantonly inflicting every possible measure of death on civilian populations in a mood reminiscent of regimes which neither Mr. Begin nor I would dare mention by name.” Eban supported the policy, though: “there was a rational prospect of the cessation of hostilities.”

In other words civilians would be deliberately bombed for political reasons. This is exactly what happened when Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, killing 20,000 people. Almost all of the dead, and their “afflicted” families were civilians. And again in 1988, Israeli policy was explained from the top. This time it was by Minister of Defense Yitzhak Rabin, who we remember now as the recently martyred man of peace. Rabin said in the Jerusalem Post on Sept. 8 that “We want to get rid of the illusion of some people in remote villages that they have liberated themselves,” adding that bombing these villages "will make it clear to them where they live and within which framework.” Would civilians be killed by these raids? Not accidentally according to Rabin: “more casualties … is precisely our aim.”

At this point, readers may be asking themselves why the Israeli policy is not mentioned much in this country. The reason is because Americans pay for it. Israel is totally dependent on U.S. aid, and what is Israeli policy is U.S. policy. Mr. Grossbaum may prefer to believe that Palestinians are the only ones carrying out terrorist attacks against civilians. However, Israeli prime ministers, defence ministers, generals, chiefs of staff, ambassadors, foreign ministers and military analysts would say this is not so. They would say that Israel conducts an on-going military campaign of intimidation aimed deliberately and consciously at civilians and independent of any terrorist attacks against Israel.

Given that the evidence supports them, I would agree.

Michael Fulton
Putney

© 1997, Michael Fulton and the Brattleboro Reformer/© 2025, Adeyinka Makinde (Preamble).

Source: The Brattleboro Reformer, Saturday, October 25^th, 1997.

A sketch of T.E. Lawrence who died 90 years ago today

Colonel T.E. Lawrence photographed in 1919 while serving as British Liaison Officer to Emir Faisal at the Versailles Peace Conference. Photo credit: Imperial War Museum.

Thomas Edward Lawrence, the famed British Army officer died on May 19th, 1935.

Lawrence was an intelligence officer who became enmeshed in the Arab revolt against the Ottoman empire. His memoir about his experiences during the Great War was published in 1926. It was titled Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The book formed the basis of David Lean’s epic movie Lawrence of Arabia, which was released in 1962.

Lawrence was a distant cousin of Major General Orde Wingate who as a Captain oversaw the quelling of the Arab Revolt in Palestine between 1936 and 1939.

Both men are noted for having innovated distinct forms of irregular warfare.

The photograph was taken in 1919 while serving as British Liaison Officer to Emir Feisal at the Versailles Peace Conference.

Army ranks (select):

. 1916 - Second Lieutenant
. 1916 - Captain (Temporary rank)
. 1917 - Major (Temporary rank)
. 1918 - Lieutenant Colonel (Temporary rank)
. 1918 - Colonel (Substantive rank)

Lawrence left the army in 1919.

He later served almost 13 years in the RAF and British Army as enlisted personnel.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2025).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

May 9th is 'Victory Day' in Russia

A replica T-34 tank at the Soviet War Memorial in Tiergarten, Berlin captured in August 2015. Photo credit: Adeyinka Makinde.

May 9th commemorates the USSR's defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.

The signing of the German Instrument of Surrender took place in the late evening of May 8th,1945 which was May 9th, Moscow Time.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2025).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

The T-34 Tank

Blueprint of the T-34 tank.

Produced by the U.S.S.R. during its "Great Patriotic War" (Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voyna) as World War 2 in referred to by Russians, the tank is viewed with a similar reverence and affection to that which Britons hold for the Spitfire plane.

The T-34 is, I think that it is safe to say, considered to be the best all-purpose tank of World War 2.

It had a powerful engine, was fast and extremely manoeuvrable. It was well equipped and highly defendable because the high calibre anti-tank weapons of the day could not penetrate its armour: they simply bounced off the tank!

In order to disable the T-34, the Germans needed to come in close and aim for slits or its engine compartment. Ground troops literally needed to be in a position to mount the tank and toss a grenade into the crew area. Alternatively, the other hope of stopping it was via the use of air power.

It was a tremendous piece of technology for its day and played a major role in the Red Army's defeat on the Eastern Front of the forces of Nazi Germany.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2025).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Lecture to Naval Warfare Course (NWC 9) at the Naval War Collge Nigeria

I had the honour and pleasure this morning to have delivered an online lecture on the Bonny amphibious operation to the participants on this year's Naval Warfare Course (NWC 9) at the Naval War College Nigeria.

The lecture was presented to 30 participants as part of the Module on Naval History. The participating officers are mainly from the Nigerian Navy but with a component from the Nigerian Army, Nigerian Air force and foreign allied navies, coming this year from Ghana, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo. They are generally middle cadre officers i.e. Lieutenant Commanders, Commanders and their equivalents in the other armed services.

My thanks go to Captain Timothy Etubus, the Sponsor Director of the lecture, and other staff at the college including Air Commodore Seun Oluwatayo who gave the closing remarks after I had concluded my lecture by fielding questions from the participants.

NB.

My article "The Bonny Landing: The anatomy of Black Africa’s firstamphibious operation, July to September 1967" was published in the August 2024 edition of The Mariner's Mirror, the international journal of the Society for Nautical Research.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2025).

Adeyinka Makinde is based in London, England.

Moise Tshombe and The Wild Geese

“Sad are the eyes, yet no tears…” Image of Moise Tshombe in the opening titles of "The Wild Geese" (1978). The opening sequence of "The Wild Geese" was designed by Maurice Bindman.

The name Moise Tshombe is one which is written in infamy.

It was Tshombe who led the resource-rich province of Katanga to secede from the Congo and whose gendarmes executed Congo’s charismatic Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba on Katangan soil. Both actions, accomplished at the behest of the old colonial power Belgium, have left Tshombe with the unfortunate legacy of being the archetypal colonial stooge. 

Photograph of Tshombe the former leader of the Katangan secession from Congo (1960-1963) and former Prime Minister of Congo (1964-1965) while he was being held in detention in Algeria following the hijacking of a plane on which he had been travelling while it was above the Mediterranean Sea. Credits: The original photograph of Tshombe in captivity appeared in the German news magazine Stern in 1969.

The turmoil which accompanied Tshombe’s period as a political figure was marked by the activities of white mercenaries who actively aided Tshombe’s bid for secession and who later revolted against the central government led by General Joseph Mobutu who dismissed Tshombe from his role as Congolese Prime Minister after the secession was revoked.

It was no surprise that elements of the Tshombe story and of mercenary behaviour were portrayed in the Hollywood movie The Wild Geese.

Released in 1978, the film includes scenes depicting the hijacking of an aeroplane carrying an African political leader, as well as one in which the mercenaries react to “betrayal”. Quite interestingly, the image of Tshombe in Algerian captivity appears for a number of seconds in the opening titles. His face appears sullen as his eyes gaze wistfully at the camera of his West German visitor. They speak of a man who although stoic is ill-at-ease and contemplative of his impending doom.

It is an image that serves well as a metaphor for the continuing state of his country.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2025).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Relic of Na Trioblóidí: Leaflet Warning To The Republican Population About SAS "Death Squads"

Image of leaflet via Press Association.

This is a leaflet issued in the mid-1970s by a group calling itself Citizens United For Border Security warning the Republican population of the presence of the British Army's special Forces regiment, the SAS (Special Air Service), along the border between British ruled Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

The SAS was deployed to Northern Ireland from 1968 to 2007, primarily, it is claimed, in a plainclothes, intelligence-gathering role, focusing on countering the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA).

The leaflet began to be distributed at the beginning of 1976.

In February 1976, John Biggs-Davison, a Conservative Party MP described it as a "preposterous document".

But British Prime Minister Harold Wilson acknowledged the presence of 'D' Squadron of the SAS in south County Armagh after 3 British soldiers were killed in November 1975 and 10 Protestant workers were massacred at Kingsmill in January 1976. These events were part of a backdrop of increasing sectarian violence in rural areas

The SAS kidnapped an IRA man named Sean McKenna in March 1976 in the Republic of Ireland border area, and the following month it killed an IRA Staff Captain named Peter Cleary. Then when an Irish forester named Seamus Ludlow was kidnapped and murdered at the beginning of May, the Irish the Garda (police) and the Irish Army set up a checkpoint on Flagstaff Road.

This would lead to the "Flagstaff Incident" of May 5/6,1976.

Two undercover SAS soldiers were apprehended at the checkpoint while on their way to relieve two other colleagues on border duty. This was followed by the arrest of a further four who had gone in search of the first two who were suspected of been victims of an IRA ambush.

The subsequent arrests of eight British soldiers led to a diplomatic incident.

In March 1977, the eight SAS men were tried and found guilty of possession of arms and ammunition without firearms licensing. The firearms were returned to the British government after forensic evidence determined that they had not been used in the commission of any crimes being investigated in the Republic.

There would be 54 further incursions into Irish territory by British forces in 1976 as they struggled to contain the activities of Republican guerrillas much of which was centred in South Armagh.

It came to be known as “Bandit Country”, a place rife with sniper activity, ambushes, kidnappings and assassinations carried out by both insurgents and security forces. Arraigned against the likes of McKenna and Cleary were formidable SAS men such as (the) Captain Julian “Tony” Ball who was among the first of several SAS contingents deployed to Northern Ireland in 1976 where he was stationed at Bessbrook base (BBK) in South Armagh.

No stranger to Northern Ireland where he was previously deployed with the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, Ball often liaised with Captain Robert Nairac, a Grenadier Guards officer who worked in intelligence and performed many undercover tasks. Nairac was abducted outside a pub at Dromintee in south Armagh in May 1977 and spirited across the border by republican sympathiser where he was tortured and killed.

Some Republicans remained convince that Nairac, like his friend Ball, was a member of the SAS, but this seems unlikely because the secretive SAS always “claim” their members in death, and Nairac's name is not written among the relevant rolls of fallen SAS soldiers.

© 2025 (Adeyinka Makinde).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

YouTube Censorship: My Upload of Abbas Musawi's Funeral Newsreel From 1992

YouTube is an incoherent as well as an extremely biased organisation.

Just over a week ago I uploaded a very brief newsreel about the funeral of Shiekh Abbas Musawi, an early leader of Hezbollah, the Lebanese political party which has a military wing.

I had discovered the reel late last year but uploaded it just before the delayed funeral in February of Musawi's successor Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah.

But when I noticed that the video did not materialise, I checked and discovered that YouTube had frozen the upload, claiming that it was suspected of infringing their policy on "violent organisations".

I did not appeal until a few days ago.

Their joke of an "appeal" does allow you to provide any written points, but I presume that a human intervenes at this point.

My appeal was allowed.

However, the appeal only allowed the newsreel to stay on my channel as a "private" upload, meaning that it could not be viewed by the public.

I appealed again.

This time, and again with I presume human intervention, YouTube decided to totally remove the newsreel and issue. a "warning". A warning is different from a "strike" which puts a channel at risk of being taken down if it gets up to 3 strikes.

You will note the arbitrariness of this decision.

1. If you appeal and we don't like the content we will impose a more severe "punishment".

2. Hassan Nasrallah's funeral was streamed live on numerous YouTube channels including those in the mainstream.

Was hours of such streaming "glorifying" Hezbollah?

3. I have previously uploaded funerals of the following:

. Bashir Gemayel, the assassinated Maronite Christian warlord
. Naval crew of the Israeli Naval Destroyer INS Eilat
. Memorial service in Israel for the crew of the INS Dakar

I set the INS Dakar video to Maurice Ravel's version of the "Kaddish" and the Eilat one to Barbra Streisand singing "Avinu Malkeinu".

Gemayel would qualify as having presided over a "terrorist" organisation. The military wing of the Kataeb Party (or Phalangist Party) committed several massacres and other forms of terrorism during the Lebanese Civil War.

Israel as a state has always had a terrorist doctrine which legitimises the objective of killing innocent civilians during military operations. Israel's "sacred terrorism" as an early prime minister named Moshe Sharett termed it, has been set out or acknowledged by a range of its political and military leaders beginning with David Ben Gurion who recorded in the Independence Diaries that "women and children" were legitimate targets and extending to the contemporary "Dahiya Doctrine" (Lebanon) and "Mowing the Lawn Doctrine" (Gaza), the latter of which has evolved into an outright policy of genocide.

Frankly, the case that the Israeli state is a terrorist one can be proven beyond a shadow of doubt.

But the designation of what is a terrorist entity is full of contradictions.

Hezbollah exists because of Israel's repeated invasions of Lebanon and the long-term Zionist objective of colonising south Lebanon up to the Litani River.

But the United States, at the urging of the Israel lobby in America and Canada, removed the designation of terrorist organisation from Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), which targeted American military, diplomatic and corporate personnel during the era of the Shah because it commits acts of terror against the Islamic government of Iran.

Anyway, the revelant newsreel is uploaded at my channel on the Rumble platform.

I will find time to write an email and a letter to YouTube HQ reflecting on what I have jotted down here. They are as loathsome as the arbiters of Facebook who ruled at the outset of the Russian intervention in Ukraine that posts which praised the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion in the context of the conflict would not be censured.

That just about says it all.

In the meantime, we should all contemplate how a one-minute newsreel about the funeral of Abbas Musawi in 1992 which would have been broadcast on mainstream news channels around the world can all of a sudden be considered as praising a "criminal organisation".

© Adeyinka Makinde (2025)

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Immediate Thoughts About The Confrontation Between Trump and Zelensky

Volodmyr Zelensky (left) and Donald Trump at the White House on Friday, February 28th, 2025.

I jotted down the following yesterday on a private social media page soon after watching the confrontation between U.S. President Donald Trump and his vice president on the one hand and Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky on the other:

No question that Trump and his vice president Vance were rough with Zelensky in front of the media.

They were "rude", "brusque" and "abrupt".

But Zelensky DESERVED it.

This corrupt and self-entitled weasel of a man has presided over the catastrophic loss of Ukrainian men on the battlefield, as well as the inevitable dismemberment of Ukraine because he WILLINGLY accepted the role of Ukraine as a proxy against Russia at the behest of the previous U.S. administration.

The United States PROVOKED this conflict through the long-term aim of expanding NATO to Russia's borders. The countdown to strife was escalated by the US-backed coup d'etat in February 2014 which overthrew the democratically elected president of Ukraine who was purportedly "pro-Russian" but who in fact was for Ukrainian neutrality.

This coup which used neoNazi and ultranationalist Ukrainian militias who brought to power a Russophobic Ukrainian nationalist regime whose subsequent policies ALIENATED and MARGINALISED the Russian-speaking Ukrainian population who took to arms in a bid to SECEDE from Ukraine.

The 2014 coup effectively kickstarted the Ukrainian civil war in which Russia only decided to intervene in a major way in 2022.

Zelensky has played a major part in PREVENTING peace and PROLONGING the war.

How so?

Zelensky was elected on a PEACE platform. The idea was that he would seek to follow the Minsk peace accords signed between the Ukrainian government and Russian-speaking secessionists of the Donbas.

The Minsk agreements were underwritten by the French and German governments but as Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel later admitted, the agreement including the "Steinmeier Formula" were never taken seriously and instead were looked on as devices through which the US-led NATO would buy time and build up the Ukrainian armed forces.

Zelensky did not insist on peace and has continued on this path for TWO reasons:

1. Fear for his life

2. Personal profit

When soon after his election Zelensky went to the parts of the Donbas occupied by the Ukrainian military and pleaded with troops to withdraw, he was met with resistance on the ground by so-called "veterans", a euphemism for ultranationalist troops. They told him to his face that they would not withdraw (captured on film) and later on his life was threatened by ultranationalists including Dmytro Yarosh.

Fast forward to April 2022 when Russia and Ukraine reached a provisional PEACE settlement after the Istanbul talks Boris Johnson, acting as an emissary for NATO, flew into Kiev to STIFLE the agreement which would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives subsequently lost in the battlefield.

Zelensky was again threatened by figures on the extreme political right in Ukraine and he passed a law FORBIDDING negotiations with Russia while Vladimir Putin was leader of Russia.

In the meantime Zelensky, whose political career was initially bankrolled by the corrupt oligarch Ihor Kolomoiski, has succeeded in increasing his personal wealth, a lot of which has come from taking a percentage of the money flowing in from the US, NATO and EU countries. 

In fact in January 2023 when ex-CIA director William Burns visited Kiev, he did so to request that Zelensky and others tone down the level of corruption.

He played his part in PROVOKING a Russian intervention by increasing the launching of attacks in the Donbas (confirmed by statistics provided by the OECD) and by declaring in January 2022 that Ukraine would join NATO. He has also played his part in prolonging a conflict in which close to a million Ukrainian military personnel have been killed.

The level of Ukrainian deaths far EXCEEDS those of Russia.

Trump and Vance KNOW this and they both know that Zelensky KNOWS this.

Yet, all Zelensky has continually done is to ask for more and more aid when in fact Ukraine does not have the capacity to mobilise, train and equip an army after Russia has succeeded in DESTROYING no less than THREE constituted Ukrainian armies since February 2022.

The war has been LOST for a longtime now.

Ukraine has absolutely no chance of winning. It has lost a generation of males and is forced to kidnap men off the streets to continue a losing struggle in which Russia has ESCALATION DOMINANCE.

So yes, Zelensky DESERVED the humiliating treatment meted out by Trump and Vance, although Trump needs to take RESPONSIBILITY for the US's role in Ukraine's destruction.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2025).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Nigerian Civil War 'Faction': A Review of Valentino Alily's books "The Supreme Undercover" and "Nightwings"

The Supreme Undercover by V. Alily. John Bull Publishing, 2022, 240 pages, illustrations. ISBN 979-8843073428.

Nightwings by V. Alily. John Bull Publishing, 2023, 233 pages, illustrations. ISBN 979-8399828275.

The genre of historical fiction received an inestimable boost in 1971 when the ex-Reuters journalist and sympathiser for the cause of Biafran secession, Frederick Forsyth, published his political thriller The Day of the Jackal. It set the standard for writing a story within the confines of an unchanged historical reality in which the survival of Charles de Gaulle from an assassin’s bullet was assured, as much as Robert Harris’ Fatherland did for the genre of alternative history which situated a murder mystery within an imagined victorious German Third Reich.

With an emphasis on the former genre Valentino Alily, a Nigerian-born author, merges both writing species to some degree in two novels set against the backdrop of the Nigerian Civil War. The Supreme Undercover and Nightwings respectively published in 2022 and 2023 are styled by the author as works of ‘faction’, that is “fiction woven around facts.” While the plot of The Supreme Undercover is centred on intrigues at Federal Nigeria’s Supreme Military Headquarters where a Biafran mole operates, the storyline of Nightwings revolves around the mercy flights orchestrated by a range of organisations to bring relief to the humanitarian catastrophe which developed within the shrinking polity of Biafra. Like its predecessor, the theme of espionage lies at its pith.

In The Supreme Undercover a host of fictitious characters interact at a distance from real civil war era personalities such as Colonel Benjamin Adekunle, the fierce Commander of the Third Infantry Division and Lieutenant Colonel Emeka Ojukwu, the former military governor of the Eastern region who became the head of state of the breakaway Republic of Biafra. The storyline revels in a series of hypothesised causes of setbacks suffered by the Federal side during the civil war, and rumours at Nigerian headquarters surrounding several characters such as the Arab-Nigerien ‘Lieutenant Colonel Ali Ahmadu Barah’ and ‘Brigadier Ibrahim Saliba Dabar’, a confidant of Major General Yakubu Gowon, the head of the Federal Military Government. It reaches a dramatic denouement featuring a series of escapes and assassinations on the eve of the surrender of Biafra.

The plot of Nightwings centres on a race for time by Biafran intelligence agents to discover sabotage in the midst of the relief flights to Uli airport from destinations including Sao Tome and Libreville. It is a task which reaches its climax in the throes of the crumbled dream of Biafra. Before this, the author provides with a good measure of forensic detail the work carried out by pilots, Holy Ghost Fathers and aid workers under the severe circumstances of encirclement, blockade and famine. Scenes are crafted to reflect the international dimension of the civil war and as with The Supreme Undercover the plot is soundly developed to fit in with the chronology of developing events on the battlefields.

While the plots for both works are fictional, Alily, who comes from an extended family who have served in the armed forces both of Nigeria and Biafra, strengthens his creativity as a storyteller with the deployment of a tremendous amount of default knowledge of military culture and the history of the war. Each book is provided with a glossary of terms, maps and a range of bibliographic resources.

The use of espionage as the central theme for a novel is of course a long-established one. But those which are centred on the Nigerian Civil War are not only few and far between, they have been written by non-Nigerians such as the Britons William Boyd and Jeremy Duns. Boyd’s Solo which was published in 2013 is actually an Ian Fleming estate-approved James Bond novel set in a fictional African country which is a thinly veiled reconstruction of Biafra, while Duns’ Free Agent, published four years earlier, provides the Nigerian Civil War as the backdrop of a Cold War era intrigue involving the intended defection of a diplomat at the Soviet embassy in Lagos where British Prime Minister Harold Wilson may be targeted for assassination during a state visit in March 1969.

The area of espionage and its role in the Nigerian Civil War has been under explored by Nigerian academics and journalists. But the reason for this may indeed be that there are no known feats of infiltration and counterintelligence performed by either side. One missed opportunity as recounted by P.J. Odu, a Nigerian naval officer who aligned himself to the Biafran state, was his regret in not leaving a spy at naval headquarters after most of the navy’s personnel of Igbo origin defected to Biafra. Some did choose to remain and served on the Federal side during the war. And if an effective mole had been in place his first task would have been to ensure that the landmark amphibious operation by the Nigerian Navy in Bonny in July 1967 which effectively paved the way of Biafra’s encirclement would have met with disaster.

Alily’s efforts provide a pathway towards popularising a genre which if developed among a pool of sufficiently talented and historically informed Nigerian writers, would not only serve as a reservoir of entertainment, but also as a tool of education. History, many Nigerians are ruefully aware, has for decades been a neglected part of the basic curriculum.

There could of course be pitfalls associated with the growth of this sort of literature. In Nigeria where the narratives and facts associated with the war are still vigorously and poisonously contested, the difference between fact and fiction can often be extremely blurred. Also, key facts that could serve as a point of unifying divergent views about the conduct of the war can often be left out. For instance, while Nightwings provides a compelling background of the dedication and willpower associated with effecting airlifts, it inevitably leaves out the fact that the war was prolonged by a “Keep Uli Open Campaign” by mercenaries on both sides of the conflict. The pact between highly paid foreign pilots on both sides ensured that the Federal air force did not knock out the landing strip.

That being said, Valentino Alily has produced two highly suspenseful and entertaining books, that reflect the dab hand of a creative writer and the ferocious attention to detail of a seasoned researcher.

They deserve the attention of a wide book reading audience.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2025).

 Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

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.