I am a big fan of the conflict in Africa during The Great War. When we think of WWI, we usually only visualize the grinding trench warfare of the European theatre and forget that there was fighting taking place on other continents. This book, by the great historian of the British military experience, Byron Farwell, takes us to the colonial empires in Africa where a different kind of war was fought.

Farwell graduated from Ohio State University and the University of Chicago (M.A., 1968). He served in World War II as a captain of engineers attached to the Mediterranean Allied Air Force in the British Eighth Army area and later also saw combat in the Korean War. He separated from the military after seven years of active duty.

As a civilian, he became director of public relations and director of administration for Chrysler International from 1959 to 1971. He also served three terms as mayor of Hillsboro, Virginia (1977-81).

He published articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, American Heritage, Harper’s, Horizon, Smithsonian Magazine as well as serving as a contributing editor to Military History, World War II, and Collier’s Encyclopedia. Farwell also published biographies of Stonewall Jackson, Henry M. Stanley, and Sir Richard Francis Burton.

He was a fellow of the MacDowell Colony and a member of both the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Society of Literature. From the publisher.

He is more well known for his titles Queen Victoria’s Little Wars, Mr Kipling’s Army, and The Great Boer War, this book is another great piece of historical writing that is very easy to read.

Published in 1989 the scholarship has become a little outdated, with many new publications based on the war based on German source material. This in no way diminishes the book which is well researched with detailed referencing.

Farwell is my favourite historian on “Colonial” British military history, and this book might be his best. Farwell does not write dry, dull history but tells a tale that keeps you wanting to read just one more chapter before putting the book down.

I read this book in one sitting because I just couldn’t put it down – one of the few advantages of being “retired”. The book is very reminiscent of “Out of Africa”,”Young Indiana Jones”, “African Queen”, , and the like. I remember the hunt for the Konigsberg from an old “Boys annual” and the 1976 movie “Shout at the Devil, in which the German cruiser was bottled up on the Rufiji River with its engine in need of repairs. Thousands of native labourers hauled the engine to a machine shop in Dar-es-Salaam and then back again.

A great read I thoroughly recommend.