Dusty - ...... no longer in the Locust Control, held down the job for several eventful months [District Livestock Officer, Isiolo] during which, by his energy, panache and a cavalier attitude to the letter of the regulations, he doubled our stock sales.

Mini-Sitrep XXXI - Mike was born in Godstone, Surrey on 22 July 1917 to Eric and Muriel Cooper. He grew up with the Williams family when his parents went out to Kenya as settlers in the 1920s. After he left Abingdon School near Oxford he came out to join his mother in Kenya on their coffee farm near Nairobi. In 1938, at 21 he enlisted with the Kenya Regiment and was posted to the King's African Rifles. Mike met Margery Mackenzie in Kenya and they married in Nairobi's All Saints Cathedral on 26 August 1944. They lived on the Kapretwa coffee estate in Kitale where Mike was general manager. In 1957, he was knocked off his farm motorbike and subsequently lost a leg. This did not deter him and he swapped his motorbike for one with a sidecar. In 1974 he and Marge left Kenya and moved to Somerset West which became their new home. Marge died in 1998 and he continued to live life to the full, even travelling to Germany last year with his daughter Carol to visit his son David.

Pre-war volunteer to the Kenya Regiment (KR 569).