Operation Anvil (Mau Mau Uprising) Many Kikuyu were sympathetic to the Mau Mau cause and provided the insurgents with supplies. They also housed them, thereby facilitating attacks in the city and the neighboring Kiambu District. In June General George Erskine was dispatched to Kenya to assume control over British forces. He immediately began instituting reforms and organised a series of attacks against the Mau Mau. In January 1954 the British captured rebel leader Waruhiu Itote, who gave them critical information about Mau Mau deployments and strategy under interrogation. Two months later the colonial command structure was overhauled, increasing decision-making efficiency and granting Erskine greater influence
Mau Mau Uprising son—who, after confessing, joined screeners at Athi River Camp, later travelling throughout the Pipeline to assist in interrogations. Suspected informers and spies within a camp were treated in the time-honoured Mau Mau fashion: the preferred method of execution was strangulation then mutilation: "It was just like in the days before our detention", explained one Mau Mau member later. "We did not have our own jails to hold an informant in, so we would strangle him and then cut his tongue out." The end of 1955 also saw screeners being given a freer hand in interrogation, and harsher conditions than straightforward