4th (Uganda) Battalion, The King’s African Rifles, man defensive positions on the River Tano, 1939...

Defensive positions on the River Tano, 1939. Photograph, World War Two, East Africa (1939-1945), 1939. Men of 4th (Uganda) Battalion, The King’s African Rifles, practice manning an entrenched position with their rifles and machine-gun during pre-war training in Kenya. On the outbreak of the war, despite suffering from many material weaknesses, Britain’s colonial forces in East Africa were able to draw upon lesson from the previous World War in the defence of the region. To this end units of the King’s African Rifles were mobilised and deployed in accordance with a pre-determined defensive plan. The troops pictured here were manning part of a reserve defensive line along the River Tano, to which the British forces would fall back in the event of the invasion of Kenya by Italian forces from Abyssinia (Ethiopia). From an album of 608 photographs compiled by Colin Campbell of the King’s African Rifles.