For officers of this period, the army meant active service
throughout an ever expanding empire. Being able to ride and
shoot, and understand and map terrain, were essential attributes
when campaigning against the Ashanti, the Zulus, the Matabele,
the Dervishes and the Afghans. To a much greater extent than the
officers of other armies, the British officer developed the ability to
operate independently on detachment, displaying initiative of a
quite exceptional kind. Sometimes it was taken to extremes.
When Wolseley refused to allow a young Cyprus based engineer
officer, Herbert Horatio Kitchener, to accompany his
expeditionary force to Egypt in 1881, Kitchener took leave,
disguised himself as a Lebanese businessman (he had already
taught himself Arabic) and, travelling to Alexandria in advance of
the invasion, occupied himself sketching Egyptian defences. In
their own expansion into central Asia, the Russians kept
encountering young British officers on leave, disguised as
Turkmen or Kazakh tribesmen, while other British officers
delighted in impersonating Pathans on the North West frontier.
The sons and grandsons of these men would ride with TE
Lawrence across the Hejaz, or shoot up Rommelâs airfields with
the Long Range Desert Group and the SAS.