Memoirs of Jon Wainwright

Typescript memoirs, c1991.

Jon Wainwright (1916-1991) was educated at Marlborough, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, gaining a commission in the 27th Field Brigade of the Royal Artillery, [c1932]. In 1936 he was transferred to the Indian Army, and then to the Hampshire Regiment in India. His battalion was later ordered to Palestine, but he remained in Delhi with the 19th Lancers. He was stationed at the Staff College, Quetta, Baluchistan, [1942?], and then in Bengal and Bihar working with C.I.D. tracking down enemy infiltrators and speaking at student meetings. He then served as Deputy Adjutant General at GHQ, Delhi for several months before making a brief return to London.

He rejoined the 19th Lancers first in India, and then in Malaya, where he was appointed Military Assistant to General Sir Frank Messervy, Military Governor of Malaya, after the territory's reoccupation. He was later promoted to Lieut.-Colonel and made Assistant Military Secretary to General Messervy (then Army Commander of Northern Command in India). During this period he married Suzanne Marshall.

After Indian independence, he joined the 7th Indian Division, commanding a temporarily organised mobile brigade at the time of the India/Pakistan partition. He was then made Private Secretary to the Commander-in-Chief before moving to Kenya, where his wife had been residing, to take up farming. He studied at the Egerton College of Agriculture at Njoro, then moved to Sotik. After a year, he returned to Pakistan, working in West Punjab as Military Secretary to the Governor until the assassination of Liaqat Ali Khan, the country's Prime Minister.

Travelling back to Kenya, he took up farming again, then organised a small private cavalry section in 1953 to pursue local Mau Mau gangs. He was later summoned to co-ordinate the provincial administration [of] Police and Army in [Sotik?] district before applying for a permanent position in the Administration. He was posted to Embu district, where he continued to take action against the Mau Mau, then to Gatundu, [c1959?], and finally to Malindi, 1960, where he was involved with relieving those affected by the flooding of the Tana and Sabaki rivers and with the construction in 1962 of a road from Malindi to Tsavo National Park. After Kenyan independence in 1963, he left Government service, and bought a hotel with three associates, until he was offered the Colonial Office post of Administrator of Ascension Island.

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