Many Parts: The Life and Travels of a Soldier, Engineer and Arbitrator in Africa and Beyond

by Desmond FitzGerald

Overview

This full and engaging memoir covers Desmond Fitzgerald's eventful life from his birth during the First World War to shortly before his death at the beginning of the next millennium. Some of his earliest memories are of his childhood in Africa and he maintained a lifelong fascination with the continent, despite interludes in Britain. He served with the Royal Engineers in the Second World War, travelling extensively in Africa and the Middle East, and subsequently returned to Africa, first as a soldier and then as an engineer, living and working in many different countries. This entertaining autobiography of civilian life in Africa is full of vivid portraits of the author's family and friends and a world and a time which has changed forever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845113063
Publisher:	Radcliffe Press, The
Publication date:	01/09/2007
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.77(w) x 8.74(h) x 1.07(d)

About the Author

Desmond John Otho FitzGerald was born in Nairobi on 1 February 1917 and died in Nairobi Hospital on 12 September 2002. After leaving school in England July 1935 he joined the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He went on to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and graduated with a BA in Civil Engineering in 1939. He served with the Royal Engineers throughout the Second World War, earning a DSO for bravery during a battle at Weiteran in Belgium. Desmond retired from the army in 1956 and became a partner in a firm of consulting engineers in Kenya. He worked on numerous civil engineering projects in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Lesotho and as far afield as Antigua. He became a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators in 1986 and worked as an arbitrator and expert witness until his death in 2002.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Foreword
• Part I: A Tale of Four Families
• Lineage
• My Immediate Family
• England and India
• My Schooling in England: 1925-1935
• Outside the Walls: 1925-1935
• Further Education: The RMA, SME and Cambridge
• Roots
• Part II: Away to the War
• Phoney War
• Dunkirk
• Leeds and Skegness
• Round Africa Convoy
• Middle East Posting
• War Time Tourism I - Sofaga
• War Time Posting II - The Holy Places
• Back to the Desert - Tripoli Here we Come
• Onward to Tunis with the Seventh Armoured Division
• Preparing for Italy
• ABCA and the Beveridge Plan
• Training for Europe and Overlord
• Part III: Kenya - Peacetime Soldiering
• Military Service in East Africa - 1945-1948
• Mobility
• Envoi
• Part IV - Kenya - My Second Career: 1955-1999
• Down to Earth
• My Years with Amcotts & Roughton: 1955-1964
• Family Life and DF & A: 1965-1976
• Desmond Fitzgerald & Associates: 1971-1976
• Amin's Uganda - The Twilight of the First East African Community
• Work - All in Kenya
• Nomad (Person) Roaming from Place to Place for Pasture (OED): 1976-1981
• Other Work for Roughton & Partners: 197-1979
• Life on Ol Olua Ridge and Kamnundu: 1979-1994
• Friends (Relations)
• A Temporary Change of Dwelling
• Out of Karen - Into Kamundu, Kiambu: 1987-1994
• Freelance Consultancy in Kenya:1982-1990
• The Last Lap: 1990-2000
• Can I go on Being british?
• Envoi