Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

An enigmatic and intriguing ‘Palestine Balloonatic’ M.C. group of ten awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel O. H. Warne, Manchester Regiment, who was previously attached to both the Royal Flying Corps/ Royal Air Force and the Egyptian Army/ Sudan Defence Force, and was one of the few men who were actually on active service at the start of both World Wars

Military Cross, G.V.R., reverse privately engraved ‘Capt. O. H. Warne’; British War and Victory Medals, with M.I.D. oak leaves (Capt. O. H. Warne.); India General Service 1908-35, 1 clasp, Burma 1931-32 (Major O. H. Warne. M.C., Manch. R.); 1939-45 Star; Africa Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45; Egypt, Kingdom, Order of the Nile, Fourth Class breast badge, by Lattes, Cairo, silver, gilt, and enamel, reverse privately engraved ‘O.H.W.’ above maker’s name; Khedive’s Sudan 1910-22, 2nd type, 1 clasp, Darfur 1916, privately engraved (Capt. O. H. Warne.) mounted court style as worn, generally very fine and better (10) £4,000-£5,000

Provenance: Christie’s, 2000

M.C. London Gazette 3 June 1919: Captain Osmund Hornby Warne, Manch. R. attd. 21st Balloon Co., 4th Bty., Egyptian Army.

Egyptian Order of the Nile , Fourth Class London Gazette 21 September 1923.

Osmund Hornby Warne was born in Walton, Liverpool, on 14 January 1891, the only son of the Reverend Alfred Thomas Warne, and was educated at Keble College, Oxford. He had joined the Oxford University Officers Training Corps, and after initial military training was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the 3rd (Special Reserve) Battalion, South Staffordshire Regiment in January 1912.

On 28 April 1914 Warne sailed from Liverpool bound for Takoradi, apparently to take up a post with the paramilitary police force of the Gold Coast. The passenger list of the S.S. Dakar described both Lieutenants Warne and Watt as Assistant District Commer [Commander], which is normally a police rank. All the other Lieutenants on board were listed either as colonial administrators or as soldiers.

‘Serving August 4 1914’: Seizing Togoland from the Germans

In 1914 the bulk of Imperial Germany’s overseas possessions were located in various parts of Africa. German Togoland was a narrow but long sliver of territory (slightly larger than Ireland) sandwiched between the British Gold Coast and French Dahomey. It was not easy to defend, so the authorities in Berlin relied on an inter-governmental agreement which stated that in the event of a war in Europe, the European colonies in West and Central Africa would be granted neutral status. However, Germany used Togoland as the site for a powerful Funkstation (wireless transceiving relay station) which was specially built to handle all radio messages between the Fatherland, its African colonies and Imperial German Navy vessels, coaling facilities and merchantmen in the South Atlantic and Latin America. The Togoland Funkstation began full-scale operations in July 1914. British Naval Intelligence became aware of it immediately, understood the significance of the threat that it posed to British commerce and maritime supremacy, and requested that it be destroyed as soon as possible.

On 29 July the acting governor of the Gold Coast received instructions from London to prepare for war. The Gold Coast Regiment (1,600 infantry, pioneers and a mountain battery) was mobilised and several hundred police were embodied. Warne was on Active Service as soon as hostilities between the German and British Empires began on 4 August. The next day, German undersea cables were cut between Monrovia and Tenerife, and this made the Togoland Funkstation a vital and irreplaceable German strategic asset. It handled an average of fourteen Top Secret telegrams a day. On 6 August the British Cabinet refused a German request to recognise colonies in Africa as neutral territory. The Gold Coast governor, on his own authority, sent a surrender demand to his German opposite number, but the Germans had deployed 700 Polizeitruppen and 300 Territorials to defend Togoland. A British force of troops and armed police crossed the Togoland frontier on 7 August.

The Germans fought several sharp delaying actions. On 26 August they destroyed the Funkstation and surrendered Togoland, ending a campaign which cost the British 83 casualties, including the first British officer to be killed in the World War (a Lieutenant of 1st Battalion Royal Scots). According to his Medal Index Card Warne did not receive one of the 1914-15 Stars which were awarded for the Togoland Campaign. As a very recent arrival, he may have not yet been officially posted by the colonial administration to a unit considered as being ‘on the strength’ and his card is annotated ‘Ineligible for 1914-15 Star’.

Attached Egyptian Army: Darfur 1916
A year after the end of the Togoland Campaign, Warne was posted on attachment to the Egyptian Army from 29 December 1915. The Egyptian Army, which was composed of Egyptian and Sudanese troops led by Egyptian junior officers and a strong presence of seconded British regular officers and N.C.O.s, was tasked with ensuring the defence and internal security of both Egypt and the Sudan. The Sirdar (Commander-in-Chief) of the Egyptian Army was Sir Reginald Wingate, a highly experienced soldier and intelligence chief who was also Governor-General of the Sudan.

The Germans had begun a strategy of encouraging uprisings in the colonial possessions of the allies as a form of asymmetric warfare designed to weaken and disperse Allied military forces. After Turkey entered the war by joining the Central Powers, the two countries worked together to incite Jihadist revolts amongst the Muslim peoples of North Africa, supplying advisors, munitions and money wherever there was a chance of success. Their main objective was to disrupt British control of the eastern Mediterranean and the Suez Canal route to India and the Pacific. In 1915 they succeeded in persuading the Senussi tribesmen of eastern Libya to invade Egypt from the west. The Senussi were in close touch with the Sultan of Darfur, a largely autonomous region (roughly the size of France) which was nominally the western province of the Sudan. Modern arms and ammunition were sent to Darfur, and the Turks encouraged the Darfuri Sultan to strike eastwards, towards Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.

General Wingate had a good idea of what the Sultan of Darfur intended to do, and began to make preparations of his own. From the summer of 1915 the caravan routes between Darfur and the Senussi lands were closely watched, local Darfuri tribesmen who held grievances against the Sultan were provided with arms and British officers were sent to scout out, evaluate and survey routes that could be used to attack El Fasher, the Sultan’s main centre of power. These officers developed logistics and intelligence plans to support an advance of 250 miles across an arid and hostile desert. Only a handful of British officers were available, so Warne was most likely heavily involved in much of this work. After his formal attachment in December 1915, he held the local rank of Major (Bimbashi).

By February 1916 the Senussi attack along the coastal region of western Egypt had been defeated, and General Wingate thought it a good time to end the threat from Darfur by means of a pre-emptive strike. He pulled together a scratch force of 2,000 men from the Egyptian Army, and the Western Frontier Force invaded Darfur on 16 March 1916. In many respects it was a reprise of Wingate and Kitchener’s 1898 campaign against the Khalifa, but on a much smaller scale and supported by four small R.F.C. aircraft rather than small river gunboats. After overcoming immense difficulties in securing enough water, the force advanced in an ‘elastic square formation’ to close with the Sultan’s army, which was guarding El Fasher. On 22 May 1916, as Wingate’s Western Frontier Force approached El Fasher, the Sultan unleashed about 4,000 armed tribesmen. They charged repeatedly, with reckless bravery, in true Battle of Omdurman style, and they were shot down in swathes in the same old style. Warne’s entitlement to the clasp ‘Darfur 1916’ is not confirmed, his Medal Index Card being annotated ‘Sultan’s Sudan 1910 Medal on page 4 of List as Capt. N. Staffs. R. Medal only.’

The Sultan fled, El Fasher was occupied and Sir Reginald Wingate ordered most of his force back from the western frontier. Warne’s reward for his accomplishments in the Sudan was unusual and probably meant a lot to him. As of July 1916 he was transferred from the Special Reserve into the Manchester Regiment, as a Captain, still attached to the Egyptian Army. This was ‘just a transfer’, but in fact it completely transformed Warne’s military prospects, and was likely made on the personal recommendation of Sir Reginald Wingate, who had been an Honorary Colonel of the Manchester Regiment since 1914. Sir Reginald had made his considerable reputation as a result of meticulous (and miraculous) intelligence gathering and staff work. In keeping with his naturally secretive personality, General Wingate preferred to be the man-working-behind-the-scenes; his doors were always well closed. Although this was kept secret at the time, following Wingate’s resounding success in Darfur he was appointed as the chief architect of British support for the Arab Revolt against the Turks in the Hejaz.

The Arab Revolt began in Mecca in June 1916, but quickly turned into a stalemate as the Turkish troops doggedly defended their forts and barracks. Wingate immediately sent two guns from an Egyptian Army artillery battery, together with several trusted and discreet officers who could act as military advisors, across the Red Sea from Port Sudan. After three weeks of stubborn resistance the Turks were battered into submission on 9 July and Mecca was liberated. The Egyptian artillery also enabled the capture of the nearby city of Taif on 22 September 1916.

Attached Egyptian Army: East of Suez
Warne’s attachment to the Egyptian Army, still with the local rank of Major, continued for the remainder of the war, and until the end of 1924. The Egyptian Army had fought alongside Imperial troops to repulse the invasions of northern Egypt by the Turks and the Senussi in 1915-16. In particular, No. 5 Egyptian Artillery Battery was considered to have performed well when protecting the Central Sector of the Suez Canal against a Turkish attack in February 1915. Egyptian artillery batteries with seconded British personnel were always an important component of the Suez Canal defences.

In August 1916, a strong force of German, Austrian and Turkish troops, aircraft and large-calibre heavy artillery crossed the harsh, waterless desert of northern Sinai and attempted to bombard the Allied ships using the Canal. This was a grave strategic threat, which had to be met with all available military resources – the Hashemite Arabs would get no more of Wingate’s artillery in the near term. The British were able to defeat the invaders at Romani and a brilliant, fluid and mobile offensive campaign led by the ANZACs pushed them back across the Egyptian frontier by early 1917. However, further British attacks on the Turk defence lines at Gaza were ignominious failures, and both sides dug-in for six months of stalemated trench warfare between Gaza on the coast and Beersheba in the hills.

During much of this time, Warne was serving with 3rd Battalion Egyptian Army, followed by No. 4 Egyptian Artillery Battery. His experience in Darfur had shown him how troops could cross great tracts of desert and still be fit to fight. In the northern sector, the British built a railway and water pipeline along the coast of Sinai to support its army in front of Gaza, and the Royal Navy could also help keep troops supplied. Importantly, the eastern flank of the Gaza-Beersheba trench line was completely open; and the Egyptian Army had to ensure that the Turks could not launch flanking attacks through the Negev desert and the central wastelands of Sinai to reach the central and southern sectors of the Suez Canal defence lines. This mission was made slightly easier when T. E. Lawrence and his Arab tribesmen captured the Red Sea port of Aqaba in July 1917, but Aqaba had to be defended against any Turkish counterattack.

Warne was directly affected when the British government, having spent the first half of the war on the defensive in Egypt, had a change of mindset and committed to take the offensive against the Central Powers in Palestine and capture Jerusalem as ‘a Christmas present for the British people’. Warne risked spending the rest of the war far from any fighting, because, when Britain declared war on Turkey in 1914, solemn official pledges and promises had been made to the Khedive and all the leading Egyptian politicians that the Egyptian Army would be used only to defend its homelands. Crucially, Egypt would not be required to send units of its army beyond the borders of Egypt and Sudan to assist the Imperial war effort in Palestine.

Warne’s secondment could have been terminated and he could have been found a post in the Manchester Regiment, but this would mean that all of his valuable military experience to-date of fighting in arduous, arid environments would be squandered. The two Battles of Gaza were proof that simply re-applying the tactics of the Gallipoli Campaign and the European war would only end in failure, and that more subtle skills, as taught and exemplified by Sir Reginald Wingate, were prerequisites if Britain was to defeat the Turks in Palestine. The solution was to keep Warne on secondment to the Egyptian Army, but re-second him back to a British unit, specifically 21st Balloon Company, Palestine Brigade, Royal Flying Corps.

21st Balloon Company had arrived in Palestine in July 1917, and Warne joined them from 1st September. They operated several sections of tethered kite balloons. Their principal task was spotting for the British artillery, but for an experienced ‘Observing Officer’ like Warne they were ideal. The balloons routinely ascended to between 3,000 and 5,000 feet. Under good weather conditions, the basket of a balloon provided a reasonably stable platform from which to search out and detect enemy activity far into hostile territory, scout out routes which might be suitable for attack and re-supply, report accurately everything that was happening on the battlefield, select the best places to penetrate enemy lines and accurately locate and identify ‘targets of opportunity’.

It was however dangerous work. The balloons were easy targets, which were frequently attacked by German aircraft, and which the Turkish artillery fired on by direct line of sight. Several balloons were shot down and observers were killed when their parachutes were damaged or failed to open. Erratic winds and sudden adverse weather posed further risks. No wonder the officers of 21st Company described themselves as ‘balloonatics’.

Warne’s efforts were appreciated by his chiefs – in 1918 he was Mentioned in Despatches and at the end of the Levant campaign he received a well-deserved Military Cross.

Services between the World Wars
From 1919 onwards, several mutinies of Egyptian soldiers and junior officers occurred, as waves of anti-British nationalist unrest swept across Egypt and the Sudan. These were dealt with, and plans were developed to split the army into separate Egyptian and Sudanese components. The basic concept was to remove all Egyptian officials, junior army officers and conscripted Egyptian peasants from the Sudan and to replace them with a new Sudanese administration, supported by an all-volunteer regular army officered by the British and leaders of the main local Arab and Nubian tribes. In 1923 Warne was awarded the Order of the Nile in recognition of his services in preparing for the future. In 1924 Sir Lee Stack, Sir Reginald Wingate’s successor as Sirdar of the Egyptian Army, was assassinated by Egyptian students. In response, it was announced that the separation plan would be put into effect.

All Egyptian officers and men were repatriated to their places of origin, and those Sudanese battalions deemed to be unreliable were disbanded. On 1 January 1925, one hundred and forty British officers, including Warne, were transferred out of the Egyptian Army and told to create a new army, the Sudan Defence Force. A military academy was established in Omdurman to train local officers, almost all of them Muslims, who would, over time, replace some of the seconded Britons.

Warne was now in his mid-thirties and, after he had served for over a year attached to the new and very successful Sudan Defence Force, it was deemed to be high time that he gained experience of regimental duties within the British army. After a period of leave, in April 1926 he sailed from Liverpool to Rangoon to join 2nd Battalion The Manchester Regiment, which was on garrison duty in Burma. On 4 February 1929 Warne was promoted to Major. Later that year, the Manchesters moved to Secunderabad, close to Hyderabad in India. Back in Burma, in December 1930 a rebellion broke out and rapidly spread across many regions. More troops were needed to restore British control, so Warne and his battalion were redeployed to Burma in June 1931. They patrolled the towns and villages of their operational area until the rebellion collapsed in early 1932, when they returned to Secunderabad. The Manchesters left India and moved to Khartoum in October 1932. Soon after his return to the Sudan, Major Warne resigned on 25 January 1933. He spent the next three years in Morocco.

Circumstantial evidence suggests that Warne was supported by Government during his lengthy sojourn in Morocco. He is recorded on passenger lists in late 1933, 1934, and 1935, as travelling from Southampton to Tangier, always in First Class, which suggests a pattern of returning from his annual home leave. Many of Britain’s diplomats, intelligence and defence chiefs were keenly interested in Morocco, given its proximity to the entrance to the Mediterranean and to Britain’s vital and highly strategic naval base at Gibraltar.

Morocco was a complicated place in the mid-1930s. Spain had an ancient claim to its north coastal region and the French had established a protectorate over Morocco. The country was partitioned into zones belonging to Spain and a zone controlled by France, plus an entirely separate International Zone around Tangier. A significant portion of the French and Spanish armies of Africa were based in Morocco, and their commanders were acutely aware that both of their domestic governments were being steadily destabilised by the Depression and the growing struggle between Popular Front movements and Fascists.

The area around Tangier in effect had extraterritorial status, as an International Zone established and jointly administered by the major European trading nations. The governance of Tangier International Zone resembled that of the International Settlement of Shanghai, and like Shanghai it had acquired a well-deserved reputation for attracting people who enjoyed living on the edge: adventurers, non-conformists and those who sought sexual freedom and an open lifestyle. It teemed with spies, diplomats, foreign agents, Jewish and White Russian refugees, Nazi, Fascist and Communist thugs and assassins, the wealthy and the penniless.

Warne wrote a book entitled “Present Day Morocco”, which was first published in 1937. It enjoyed significant success; it was reprinted several times and translated into German and French. The French edition had a preface written by Marshal Juin, a famous French general who fought in both World Wars and who spent much of his military career in Morocco. Clearly Warne had built up a network of friends and contacts in quite exalted circles during his time in Morocco. His personal photographs indicate that he also took an interest in Portugal, the first Iberian nation to become a right-wing dictatorship. He spent time in Madeira, an important harbour for the maritime trade between Europe and the Cape of Good Hope.

On returning to England, Warne also returned to serve with the R.A.F., initially as Assistant Adjutant of No. 2 Bomber Group at R.A.F. Cottesmore and then as a Major (Retired) in the Air Ministry’s Directorate of Organisation. No doubt he would have been kept very busy meeting the staffing requirements of rearmament and the restructuring and modernisation of the R.A.F. to prepare for war with Nazi Germany.

Second World War: Further service in Africa
The 1939 Register records Major Warne as single, living in a small hotel/boarding house in Holborn, and serving with the Air Ministry on secondment from the Regular Army Reserve of Officers. He continued to serve in the Air Ministry until the Fall of France. The Army List of July 1940 shows that Warne was once again part of the army. By October 1940 he was noted as ‘Specially Employed’, perhaps in connection with Franco’s occupation of Tangier in June 1940 and his annexation of the city and abolition of its international institutions in November 1940.

Just prior to Operation Torch, the British and American landings in French North Africa, Warne was raised to the local rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, effective 1 September 1942. Once again, his exact role has not yet been traced, but we know from the absence of clasps on his Africa Star that he was not serving either at Allied Headquarters or with either 1st or 8th Army. The likelihood is that Warne was in Morocco, handling his network of French senior officers, making sure that those who had supported Vichy could do no more harm and putting further pressure on Franco to back off from Tangier (and Gibraltar). In May 1944 Franco expelled all Nazi military officers and diplomats from Tangier. Warne reverted to his substantive rank of Major, and was released from further service at the end of the war.

At that time, Warne was in his mid-fifties and some personal re-invention was in order. Building on the learnings from writing his 1937 book about Morocco and still as observant and practical as ever, Warne became a successful author of published travel guides. His Morocco Travel Guide appeared soon after the war, Portugal was published in 1956, followed by Your Guides to Sardinia (1965) and to Turkey (1968). He died in Devon in the spring of 1976.

Sold with two original photographs of officers and men of 21 Balloon Company R.A.F., including Warne (the only officer wearing the Manchester Regiment cap badge) and several photographic postcards of a kite balloon, naval guns captured from the Turks &c.

Clasp for ‘Darfur 1916’ is not confirmed on his Medal Index Card which states ‘Medal only’. MID’s are not confirmed in the London Gazette