The Meinertzhagen Mystery – The Life and Legend of a Colossal Fraud

Review of an expose by Brian Garfield, Potomac Books, Washington, DC 2007.

In this exhaustively researched tome, author Garfield provides evidence that Richard Meinertzhagen, Kenyan colonial official, hunter, East African WWI intelligence chief, soldier, Zionist, spy, ornithologist, diarist and well connected British gentlemen, was a fraud. Indeed faced with the documentation and discussion, readers will probably conclude that Meinertzhagen (MINE-ert-ZAHG’n) faked many escapades for which he became famous. However, he did so successfully; he was even Ian Flemming’s model for agent 007, James Bond. The reality is that Meinertzhagen was a scoundrel, a man who ensured that he wrote his own press and who freely borrowed the accomplishments of others. Even so, he was also an engaging and entertaining companion (he often provided shock value in either words or purported deeds). He counted many distinguished and high placed personalities who were fellow members of Britain’s ruling aristocracy as friends and acquaintances.

Let’s look back at the record. Meinertzhagen’s embellishments began in Kenya. As a colonial official and a military officer, he claimed responsibilities – being in charge of this or that fort, for example, that never existed - or heroic accomplishments that were anything but heroic. His early reputation as a fearless warrior arose from a 1905 massacre of Nandi leaders, including the Laibon. Meinertzhagen recounted that in the midst of a round of peace talks, the Kenyans treacherously attached their interlocutors, especially Meinertzhagen. In turn the colonial officers responded and killed 23 of the Nandis. This account was supported by other Europeans present. However, careful investigation by Garfield indicated that Meinertzhagen’s story covered up the brutal massacre of the Nandi delegation by maxim guns as they arrived at the appointed site - even before they sat down to talk.

As East African theater intelligence chief during World War I, Meinertzhagen constantly took credit for operations not his own. He earned some legitimate credit for forcefully criticizing the inept British generalship, especially at Tanga, but there again he claimed to have exchanged pistol fire personally with German General von Lettow-Vorbeck – an event that never happened. Later on an undercover operation, he claimed to have murdered a German officer and eaten the dead man’s still warm dinner. Time and again in his diaries – that were substantially re-written by himself in later years – Meinertzhagen makes himself look good. (Meinertzhagen’s Kenya Diary: 1902-1906 was republished in 1983.) Author Garfield shows that there is never corroborating evidence in any official documents or others’ accounts of the same time periods.

Meinertzhagen’s greatest (fictitious) accomplishment occurred later in the war. When attached in a relatively junior position to General Allenby’s force in Palestine, Meinertzhagen took sole credit for the daring drop of a haversack filled with false documents for the Turks to find. The documents were intended to (and probably did ) mislead the enemy as to the true intentions of the British forces. While some sort of ruse like this apparently did occur, it was planned and executed by others – not Meinertzhagen; yet he claimed and received credit for the exploit for years.

Although other events were more sensational – including the death of his wife under mysterious circumstances and a missed opportunity to assassinate Hitler – Meinertzhagen, who was an accomplished ornithologist, went to great lengths to steal bird specimens from museums and to falsify accounts of their range in his own scholarly articles. The upshot is that he individually undermined much of the legitimate ornithology of the early 20th century.

Why did he do all this? Of course, no one knows. Apparently he was driven to polish his image so as to gain fame and respect. Nonetheless, Meinertzhagen gradually fell out of favor. Winston Churchill disowned him early on, but the cocoon of privilege protected Meinertzhagen through out his life and he was never really called to answer for the extent of his fabrications and frauds. At the end he was just deemed to be an odd eccentric.

The unraveling of the fictions took years. In sorting through them, author Garfield proved to be as tenacious in debunking them as Meinertzhagen had been in creating them. Consequently, the book is an interesting study showing that while history ought to be based on corroborated empirical data, it often isn’t.

Book Review - A Farm Called Kishinev

Following is a review of A Farm Called Kishinev by Majorie Oludhe Macgoye. It was published by East African Educational Publishers, Nairobi, 2005.

Although presented in novel form, this book carefully recounts the efforts around the turn of the last century of the Zionist movement and the Imperial British government to create a Jewish settlement in what is today Kenya. The area in question was Uasin Gishu, the region surrounding Eldoret. At the time when the suggestion was under consideration, the Uasin Gishu plateau was deemed to be empty of African inhabitants and thus available for European settlement.

Arthur Marjore Macgoye, a muzungu who married into Kenya, did a superb job of research. She presents the facts, machinations and considerations - sometimes in excruciating detail - of those pushing or considering an East African option to Palestine. A commission was sent to the area, but despite its luke-warm endorsement, African was not chosen. Palestine remained the priority. As history shows there was no massive movement of European Jewry to Kenya.

From there the novel elaborates beyond the facts. Some Jews jumped a Zionist endorsement and immigrated. Their lives – arrival in Mombasa, travel to Londiani by rail, onward by ox cart, staking out a farm, becoming farmers, relations with nearby Nandi tribesmen and Boer farmers, the growth of Eldoret, and the internal challenges of remaining Jewish in a predominantly non-Jewish society – are the gist of the story. The trials and tribulations are recounted through the eyes of Benjamin, grandson of Isaac, the initial pioneer. By Benjamin’s time, Jewish families had truly become part of Kenya. This assimilation provides the opportunity for commentary on contemporary Kenyan society.

However, there is more. A second part of the book is a manuscript purportedly written by Isaac just before his death in 1943 and then finished by Benjamin that conjectures what Uasin Gishu would have been like if a Jewish homeland had been established in the region in 1898. The conjectures are an interesting bit of speculation.

A Farm Called Kishinev required dodged concentration because the narrative wandered around. Many details of the intricacies of Jewish culture escaped me, but I thought the Kenyan aspects to be accurate. This novel will appeal to those interested in Kenya’s history and in particular the role that the Jewish community played or might have played in Kenya’s development.