School of Musketry Khartoum

 

Two colonial photographs acquired via an auction house last year. Removed from their really cheap and nasty frames and now in acid free wallets. Too difficult to remove the photos from the dreadful backing that they are glued too.

Right hand photo is labelled Khartum 1921 and shows a group of Egyptian and British officers plus some civilians centred around British Governor-General of the Sudan/Sirdar of the Egyptian Army, Major-General Sir Lee Stack. Stack would be assassinated in November 1924. In the picture and labelled is Captain Walker Bey, Commandant of the School of Musketry. There appears to be two machine gun tripods obscured at each end of the group.

British officers on secondment to the Egyptian Army generally carried Ottoman ranks and nominals e.g Pasha, Bey, Bimbashi etc.

Left hand photo shows officers and men at the Egyptian Army School of Musketry in Khartoum in 1922. Sitting in the centre and poorly labelled :

Bimbashi Auten - Asst Chief (hard to read)

Kaimakam Walker Bey - Commandant

Bimbashi Auten is Captain Geoffrey William Auten. Originally commissioned into the Welsh Regiment, Auten was later attached to the Machine Gun Corps. He is in the Sacker/VMGCRA MGC database reference "SKR/DAT/IP/32033". Auten's Medal Index Card (MIC) gives the School of Musketry in Khartoum as his address.

Captain Walker is Robert Khonoma (Konoma is some texts) Beaumont Walker, who appears to have been at Sandhurst and to have served with the South Wales Borderers at Tsingtao and then Gallipoli before secondment to the Egyptian Army. His Medal Index Card references School of Musketry, Egyptian Army.

Promoted October 1906.

Military Cross awarded in May 1916.

He gets a mentions in Sir Ian Hamilton's despatch of May 1916.

His MIC mentions Darfur and Fasher clasps for the Sultans 1910 Sudan Medal but he doesn't appear in Wingates Despatch re the campaign.

Awarded The Order of the Nile in August 1917.

He would return to the South Wales Borderers in December 1922, missing the later assassination and mutiny.

Having retired from the Army in February 1934 and removed from any obligations to the Army in June 1937, Walker joined the Royal Air Force just before WW2. It's not clear what role he undertook but he was appointed a Squadron Leader in September 1942.

He appears in the credits on IMBD for a part in a BBC 1964 WW1 documentary episode So Sleep Easy in Your Beds. Presumably it is him speaking about the Tsingtao operation and the need to adopt Japanese jackets so as not be be mistaken for Germans. He is also on file in an IWM recording at about 9:30minutes in talking about Tsingtao.

I'm not finding anything about his time at the School of Musketry and the part played by members of the School in a mutiny that followed shortly after the assassination of Sir Lee Stack.

Three men (one linked to the School of Musketry) were executed and a fourth imprisioned with hard labour. Material in the Durham University Sudan Collection from Robert Baily mentions the botched execution of 3 officers on the 5th December 1924 as well as limited details of the mutiny. There does not appear to have been a trial of the executed men.

In August 1925, seven men would be hanged for the assassination of Sir Lee Stack following an investigation that apparently involved one of the first use of forensics.

January 1925 would see the setting up of the Sudan Defence Force and the separation of Sudan from Egyptian control. Rolls-Royce armoured cars from No 3 Armoured Car Company, Tank Corps would remain in Sudan following the unrest.

Major Walker appears to have died in 1972 and sadly there does not seem to be anything recorded regarding his time in the School of Musketry or much information about the school in general.

Notes

The London Gazette has a page re WW1 Despatches.

PDF : 1921 The Sudan in Evolution

Darfur Campaign 1916

Aerial Warfare Darfur 1916

Deserters and the Easter Rising

In the run up to the Easter Rising, the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) were busy with a number of absentees and deserters from the British Army, plus a few locals and "aliens". Possibly the strangest entry in the DMP record book in April 1916 is that of Mary O'Connor and her "Illegal possession of a teapot", while John O'Neill jumped the gun a bit with his threats to shoot 3 soldiers (Privates Massey, Burns and Beggs) of the 3rd Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles just before the Rising had begun.

Missing from this report but already in hand was the case of Herbert Pickering, a Fireman aboard "HMY Helga" operating out of Kingstown. Pickering had joined the Royal Navy whilst a deserter from the Royal Artillery, having enlisted in February 1914 under his real name Robert Aitken Herbert. He appears to have re-enlisted into the army as no 194563 after the matter was "resolved" (with no prison time) and would leave the army in 1919.

His name appears in the Sinn Fein Rebellion Handbook amongst the small number of Royal Navy men listed as wounded.

Other members of the Helga crew appear to have spent time in Mountjoy Prison but none appear to have been deserters.

Templemore/Youghal to Sudan to Spandau Prison

An ebay purchase with Sudan and Royal Armoured Corps referenced in the description but no owners name given to the poor condition scrapbook with lots of loose photos and a few negatives.

Sadly nothing re the Sudan Defence Force armoured cars I hoped for.

The subsequent research stumbled through a Khartoum birth, Latymer Upper School, Ireland 1901/1911 census records, Framlingham College, Oxford University, Sudan Railway Police, to the first British Governor of Spandau prison.

To be digitized and some conservation folders sourced.

The clue to unlocking the name of the owner came via the hard to read data on the reverse of one of the photos.

It turned out the badly formed surname was Quinlan with the owner being Khartoum born Derek Hugh John Quinlan. DHJ appears to have gone to Latymer Upper School, Framlingham College, the Royal Armoured Car towards the end of WW2, and then to Oxford University, becoming a colonial District Officer in places like Tanganyika.

Pictured beside him in Royal Air Force Uniform is his father Hugh Quinlan. Born in Sheffield in 1895, Hugh was in Ireland for the 1901 and 1911 census

1901 Census - Templeomore

1911 Census - Youghal

Hugh's father Andrew Quinlan was a Quartermaster Sgt in the Royal Artillery in Templemore until 1907, after which he became a Barrack Sergeant/Warden living in Youghal. The father died in October 1916.

Hugh and his brother appear in an item in the Skibbereen and West Carberry Eagle in September 1910 as pupils at the Youghal Endowed Grammar School

having been registered with the South Abbey School in Youghal in 1907

Hugh served in the Rifle Brigade (no 2664) and Labour Corps (no 345951) in WW1 

and then went to the Sudan as a clerk/accountant, taking up roles in the Railway and the Prisons. 

Another visit to Durham University is needed to look at his files :

Durham University Library, Archives and Special Collections: Sudan Archive : Hugh Quinlan

He left Sudan in 1940 and joined the Royal Air Force rising to the rank of Squadron Leader. His papers lodged with the Imperial War Museum have him in this rank :

Private Papers of Squadron Leader H Quinlan

Photograph albums belonging to Hugh sold earlier this year and reference his time as the first British Governor at Spandau Prison following WW2.

German Magazine re the Easter Rising

A new addition to the collection. A German magazine covering the Easter Rising in 1916. Removed the glass fronted picture frame; will digitize the pages and put the magazine in an acid free wallet. A minor tear that may need looking at.

The cover picture touches on previous work:

The man pictured is believed to be Dublin based photo-journalist T W Murphy

https://johnny-doyle.blogspot.com/2013/01/dublin-after-six-days-insurrection.html

The burnt out car (a French made De Dion-Bouton) in the picture belonged to the self styled O'Rahilly and was one of several cars recovered beside the General Post Office in Dublin after the Easter Rising.

https://johnny-doyle.blogspot.com/2017/12/judge-law-smith-and-his-chauffeur.html

The O'Rahilly's wife was contacted by the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) re the remains of the car.

https://letters1916.ie/item/141

Mythology has the remains of the car and other Easter Rising rubble being used in the creation of the stand at Croke Park Stadium now known as Hill 16, however the original work on the stand (a turf mound) was completed in 1915. It's not clear if Nancy O'Rahilly retrieved the car from the DMP.

Royal Collections Trust - Aud/Libau/Castro Easter 1916

Lurking in the UK Royal Collection are a number of Easter Rising related material :

Russian rifle butt retrieved from the Aud/Libau/Castro scuttled before the Easter Rising

Not digitised but listed is one of the German Imperial Navy flags carried on the Aud. The other flag was given to the Nazis in the 1930s by Admiral Lewis Bayly.

German made bayonet scabbard and frog retrieved from the Aud/Libau/Castro

Russian Mosin Nagant rifle retrieved from the Aud/Libau/Castro

Bayonet and Scabbard for the Russian Mosin Nagant rifle retrieved from the Aud/Libau/Castro

Na Fianna Eireann banner

1916 tri-colour from Limerick

The search mechanism for the Royal Collections Trust is not particularly good and I may not have found all the Easter Rising related items. If you find any more please leave a note in the comments.