THREE YEARS OF WAR
IN EAST AFRICA
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
WILD LIFE
IN CANADA
With Illustrations from Photographs
by the Author
LONDON: JOHN MURRAY
Lukigura River.
Frontispiece
THREE YEARS OF WAR
IN EAST AFRICA
BY CAPT. ANGUS BUCHANAN, M.C.
WITH MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1920
| First Edition | July 1919 |
| Reprinted | January 1920 |
All Rights Reserved
Captain Buchanan has done me the honourof asking me to write a short preface to a workwhich seems to me at all events of peculiarinterest. To write a preface is a difficult task,unless one has some real raison d’être for thetask; yet I find it difficult to refuse, if onlyfor my intense admiration for the part playedby the battalion with which the author wasso long and honourably associated—the 25thRoyal Fusiliers.
The author’s qualifications to write thiswork are undoubted, not only from his stoutrecord as a soldier, but also through his previousexperience as a traveller, explorer, and studentof Natural History. When war broke outCaptain Buchanan was engaged on behalf ofthe Provincial Government of Saskatchewan,Canada, in investigating the country in thefar north, west of Hudson Bay, and studyingand collecting the rarer flora and fauna. Hehad been for nearly a year many hundreds ofmiles out of touch with any other white man.The first rumour of war did not reach himuntil the end of October, when he at oncestruck south to a Hudson Bay Fort, which hereached at Christmas. Without delay he leftto join up, and in but a month or two had[x]changed his habitat from almost the ArcticCircle to the Equator.
Readers will be able to follow the fortunes ofthat wonderful unit, the 25th Royal Fusiliers,through the campaign, and will perhaps gainthereby an insight into this strangest of allside-shows more true and illuminating thana more comprehensive work. There was littlethat this old Legion of Frontiersmen missed.Comparisons are odious; yet I think it maysafely be said that no other white unit tookso full a part in the diverse stages of thecampaign. They bor