Tony Goddard (85) lives with his third wife, Margaret, and their dog, Zachary, in the town of Modbury.

His life was not always so peaceful.

Born in Bristol in 1939 his father was away during the war in Italy and afterwards joined the Colonial Service in Northern Rhodesia (which gained its independence and became Zambia in 1964).

He had a very distinguished career finishing up as Under Secretary of State for Training.

Tony, along with his brother and sister lived first in South Africa then were sent to school in England and in Tony and his brother's case went to Radley and then St Edmund Hall in Oxford.

Tony was to have become a barrister and passed one of the Bar exams at Gray's Inn.

His life took a turn and he decided to follow in his father's footsteps and join the Colonial Service as a District Officer.

Tony recalls: "We ended up with a whole Empire of countries that needed running, and the way they did it was to take young men like me, no girls of course, and pay them moderately well and drop them into a colony and expect them to run the place.

"It was all divided up into provinces.

"The Governor at the top was in charge of the administration and the provincial administration, it was called, came directly under him.

We ended up with a whole empire of countries that needed running and the way they did it was to take young men like me, no girls of course, and pay them moderately well and drop them into a colony and expect them to run the place.

It was all divided up into provinces.

"The governor at the top was in charge of the administration and the provincial administration, it was called, came directly under him.

"I appeared before the Prudential Commissioner and he said, well, there are two places on offer:

"There's this one and the other one is the Kunda Valley.

"So we tossed for it and I got the Kunda Valley. And that had a paramount chief of, I think it was five chiefs, about 24,000 people and a budget for around £20,000."

The District Officers were issued with a Land Rover and just told to get on with it.

Tony said: " It was indirect rule, we didn't do direct rule at all, so we let everybody go on as they were.

“So the Chiefs continued to be the Chiefs, funded by the British Empire, by us, by the government of course, and the people were taxed to pay for it."

Independence approached and there was serious trouble in a neighbouring district as Tony remembers: "It had quite a strange kind of church which was an amalgam of Christianity and some kind of rural tradition and they knew they'd have a very hard time once the African government took over.

"They decided they'd have one last bash and they did.

"They went on the warpath and they killed quite a few people. 

The trouble continued and Tony had to organise the burial of 30 or 40 bodies.

'My African Stories' was written by Tony Goddard.

To buy a copy e-mail [email protected]

There will be more from Tony's fascinating life next week.