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
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