Lions Guard The Way is the second book in the Harrington-West War Chronicles series by Bridget Beresford and Richard Waygood. Sequel to Home By Christmas, it is also based during the Great War in East Africa.
Captain Andrew Harrington-West has been caught up in a gas attack in Flanders. Being advised not to return to the cold winter climate of northern Europe, he is posted to East Africa in 1915. He and some members of his regiment, the King’s Own Cavalry, enlist in the King’s East African Cavalry. Their main duty, a virtually impossible task, is to mount a guard over the Mombasa to Nairobi railway line — the main artery for Allied supplies running through British East Africa. The Germans, with their army of askaris are past-masters of guerrilla warfare. Their main objective is to ‘tip and run’. In other words to sabotage the track; steal any equipment they can, and hot-foot it back to their own territory, daring the British to follow them.
Andrew soon finds out that the Hun are not the only enemy that he has to face. The remoteness and the heat of the African bush take him and his men by surprise. They find themselves in danger of dying of dehydration and attacked by wild animals. Also plagued with spies, traitors, sleeping sickness and malaria, East Africa turns out to be a far less healthy place for the soldiers than the cold climate of northern France. Then the arrival of the beautiful Francine, Andrew’s unofficial fiancée, adds to the danger and sparks a reason for blackmail.
