Kenya's first four-star General and former Armed Forces Chief of Staff, the late General Jackson Mulinge, joined the army by fluke.
In his hay day, the General was honest about the circumstances that led to him joining the World War II (WWII) troops dubbed King's African Rifles in 1942 as an 18-year-old.
General Mulinge once revealed, in a past interview with the Daily Nation, that he was never interested in joining the army.
He went on to describe how he was grabbed by a recruiter one afternoon while hawking a chicken in Machakos town to raise money to buy a pair of shorts.
"Nobody bothered to explain what was going on. All we knew was that Britain, our employer, was fighting her enemies," he narrated.
The General would later rise through the ranks from a Warrant Officer Class One in 1956 and was commissioned as an officer in 1961.
Mulinge's star continued to shine becoming a Major General in 1971 and a General, seven years later.
General Mulinge served alongside freedom fighters such as former politician, Bildad Kagia, who returned home from the WWII to agitate for Kenya's independence.
"We were led to believe Europeans were superior. But we (who served in the war) had evidence that the European is just like us. He was killed in the war, we saw him working in every job we did.
"It was the courage we got from the war which made us go into the struggle," Bildad Kaggia, one of the Kenyan heroes would later divulge during a Reuters interview.
[caption caption="General Jackson Mulinge"]
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