The company commander, Major Gerald Selby Lewis Griffiths of the Durham Light Infantry, set up a base camp from which he directed operations – two platoons would sweep through the forest to flush out the rebels, while African members of the local Kikuyu Home Guard policed the forest boundary.
Then, in the early afternoon of 17 June, a patrol of ten men led by an African warrant officer moved out of the forest and into the surrounding farmland.
Two of the victims were sent to fetch food for the soldiers and made their escape while the remaining ten were escorted into the forest by the KAR patrol.
Early that afternoon, the captives – nine men and one child – were executed in a clearing near a small coffee farm at the forest edge.
At dawn, the soldiers broke camp, heading back to B Company's headquarters at Nyeri, leaving the body of their dead guide.
In a directive to all troops he stated: "I will not tolerate breaches of discipline leading to unfair treatment of anybody," and ordered that "every officer ... should stamp on at once any conduct which he would be ashamed to see used against his own people."
General Erskine then wrote to local chiefs, up to then allies, to reassure them that "investigations have satisfied me that whoever is to blame, it is not any of the persons killed."
[2] All of the soldiers involved in the Chuka patrols were placed under open arrest at Nairobi's Buller Camp, but Erskine decided not to prosecute them.
However, the 5th KAR soldiers giving evidence at the courts martial in November 1953 refused to speak frankly against Griffiths.
[2][9][10] In a letter to the War Office, in December 1953, now in the UK National Archives, Erskine wrote: "There is no doubt that in the early days, i.e. from Oct 1952 until last June there was a great deal of indiscriminate shooting by Army and Police.
He concluded that, whilst there may have been some irregularities in procedures by some units, the conduct of the British Army in Kenya "under difficult and arduous circumstances, showed that measure of restraint backed by good discipline which this country has traditionally expected".