GAMBIER-PARRY, Ernest.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Suakin, 1885. Being a Sketch of the Campaign of This Year by an Officer Who Was There. First edition, the witheringly marked up copy of Captain Charles Wemyss Muir, Bengal Staff Corps, who served during the campaign as aide-de-camp to Colonel John Hudson, commander of the Indian Contingent.Muir (1850-1920), whose ownership signature is on the front cover, was the son of of Sir William Muir, Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces from 1868. In 1885, he saw action at Hasheen, Tofrek, and Tamai, was mentioned in dispatches, and received the medal with clasp and the Khedive's Star. He made lieutenant-colonel in 1895.His dozens of annotations take exception with the book's accuracy and scope, and they possibly stem from a disdainful view of Gambier-Parry's service with the commissariat and transport staff rather than in the front lines. The claim that "each man was to be provided with a cartridge or two, the bullet of which had been cut into four pieces... to get over the danger of one camp firing into another" is dismissed with a curt "no" and a later note that "it is easier to take snap shots and hit a man in the dark night in this way" (p. 88). Chapter VIII, "The Zariba", draws comment on almost every page, as in the case of page 173: "He evidently was not there and got a very wrong impression from hearing of what went on." Where Gambier-Parry praises the expedition's "hard-working" war correspondents, Muir observes that they were "some real skunks, and what lies th

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