Letters from Ceylon, Egypt, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia

Manchester, Reddish and London: Taylor, Garnett, Evans & Co., 1917.
First Edition.

21cm x 14cm. 68 pages. Lettered saddle-stapled self-wrappers.

Unrecorded WWI memorial publication comprising a selection of letters written home by Henry Francis Coghlan Horsfall (1883-1916), known to his family as Frank. This collection of letters begins from 1906 in Ceylon, where he was running tea plantations. From 1905 he was in the Ceylon Mounted Rifles under the command of his uncle, Colonel Evelyn Gordon Reeves. When war broke out in 1914 he volunteered, embarking for Egypt with the Ceylon Contingent. Biographical sources note that he spent the first nine months “drilling Australians” in Cairo. Some of the letters in this collection record his impressions of the ANZACs. The final letter is dated 2 April 1916. On April 18th Horsfall was mortally wounded in Mesopotamia while serving as a Lieutenant with the 6th (Service) Battalion, Loyal North Lancashire Regiment. He died on April 22nd aboard the hospital ship Coromandel aged 32. Published in 1917, the year after his death, this rare and unrecorded memorial booklet offers poignant first-hand testimony from a tea planter turned soldier, documenting the Ceylon Contingent, the Australians in Egypt, Gallipoli, and the Mesopotamian Campaign. Unrecorded in OCLC.

Staples rusted, the wrappers detached and with some marginal chips to the top edge of the lower panel, not affecting the text.. Fair Condition.

AU$600.00

1 in stock