For Freedom and Danger - Paperback

by Marc Weitz (Author)

It's 1914, World War One, the African Front - A British officer leads a team of Kenyan soldiers on a dangerous mission into German East Africa to blow up a railway bridge. But when the plan falls apart, he must improvise in one of the most hostile fronts of the Great War.

While most people think of the horror of the trenches on the European Front, the African Front was like the Wild West, where rules were made up as you went along. British East Africa attracted rogues, iconoclasts, and adventurers; those who hated regulation and just wanted to win the war.

Lieutenant Parks was such a man. You'd think a young British barrister would like a regimented system. Parks joins the army to beat the Hun, but he doesn't fit in. He craves the independence and adventure of Africa. When the British army seeks volunteers to lead a covert mission into German East Africa, Lieutenant Parks leaps at the opportunity that his fellow officers see as foolhardy.

The British Army has a plan, but plans often fail in Africa. Using his cunning, he sneaks his team of local African Askari soldiers into enemy territory by sea aboard a local dhow. Once there, they encounter black mambas, disease, and worst of all, the German Army. Hiding out and using their local tribal connections, they need to plant explosives to destroy the railway bridge that links the supply chain from the coast at Dar es Salaam to Lake Tanganyika to stop the Germans from controlling this key region.

Parks has to find a way for his team to get the mission done, no matter what it takes. And at the same time, they must outsmart the brilliant German commander, Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, nicknamed the Lion of Africa. Can Lieutenant Parks survive the African wilderness and defeat the Germans on one of World War One's most inhospitable fronts?