Jungle Man

Remember a rip-snorting African adventure movie from a few years back called "Shout at the Devil"? It starred Lee Marvin and Roger Moore, and told the story of how the pair of them had to find and destroy a German gunboat that would hide in a shallow inlet in Tanganyika during World War I, then emer [...]
Visa längre beskrivning

Remember a rip-snorting African adventure movie from a few years back called "Shout at the Devil"? It starred Lee Marvin and Roger Moore, and told the story of how the pair of them had to find and destroy a German gunboat that would hide in a shallow inlet in Tanganyika during World War I, then emerge to blow one British ship after another to smithereens. The movie was based on Wilbur Smith's bestselling novel of the same name. Like most of Smith's books, it was a good, exciting read. You now hold in your hands the source for Smith's novel and for the movie the "real" story of how the Konigsberg came to be found and sunk. And the wild part is that it's an even more heroic and exciting story than Smith's fictionalization of it. This book is the true story of Major P.J. Pretorius. Pretorius began his career as an ivory hunter. When World War I reached East Africa, Pretorius served on the British side against the Germans. Early on, while operating almost a thousand miles behind enemy lines, he was spotted, chased, and wounded. His shin was literally shattered by a German bullet and he was finally captured. And, almost unbelievably given his condition, he soon escaped, enlisting native help to carry him while he tried to keep from going mad with pain. His porters carried the stricken soldier all the way to Malindi, in Nyasaland (now Malawi). Compare it to carrying a badly-wounded man in an open litter from Philadelphia to Detroit without ever once setting foot on a paved road or sidewalk. By the way, this was all prior to him being assigned the task of finding and destroying the Konigsberg. When the war was over, Pretorius went back to hunting. The government wanted the Addo district of South Africa cleared of a huge number of rogue elephants. Pretorius cleaned out most of them so efficiently that it was decided to create a reserve and let the remainder live out their lives there; today that reserve is the Addo Elephant Park. Just as you cheapen the word "great" by applying it to more than five or six racehorses in a century, so you cheapen the word "hero" by applying it to too many men. And yet, when you finish reading this book, I think you'll agree that "hero" is the best, and perhaps the only, definition of P.J. Pretorius.