In May 1942, former Private A. K. (G2722) turned up on crutches outside the North Kavirondo district commissioner's office. Having lost his right leg serving with the Second (EA) Pioneer battalion earlier in the war, he rejected the simple peg leg offered by the Kenyan medical authorities and refused to budge until they gave him a more advanced mechanical leg and what the district commissioner termed a “great deal of money” as compensation for his sacrifice. The former askari (African soldier) was so convincing that he influenced two other similarly disabled ex-servicemen to refuse to be fitted for their peg legs. Kenya's director of medical services (DMS), however, dismissed Private A. K. summarily: “this man is a subversive type and a bad influence and quite undeserving of any sympathy from the [district commissioner] or other civil authorities.” Yet the disabled veteran's insubordination was hardly unprecedented. Three years later, Lance Corporal P. K. (KML 14589), who lost a leg to a land mine in the Middle East, similarly refused even to try on a peg leg and rejected appeals to take part in the government rehabilitation program with what the commander of the surgical division of the No. 1 (East Africa) General Hospital termed “mule-like stupidity.”

From a broad historical perspective, the plight of Private A. K. and Lance Corporal P. K. was sadly typical of most men who suffered permanent physical or mental impairment as a result of military service. While governments often invest heavily in the means of waging war, most considered impaired former soldiers expendable and disposable. Even the best-intentioned states usually lacked the resources and political will to fulfill promises they made to the men who risked their lives in their service.

This was even true in the twentieth century. Indeed, Western governments considered the hundreds of thousands of Europeans and Americans who were disabled during the First World War potential subversives and kept them under close surveillance.