MIDDLE EAST; WORLD WAR I.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Memorial album of letters and photographs, recording the service of 2nd Lieutenant John Graham Wilkinson, 1/4th Battalion the Hampshire Regiment. An unpublished and otherwise untraced First World War album recording the experiences of an officer serving in India, Mesopotamia, and with Dunsterforce in Persia. It preserves his lively letters home and over 150 photographs taken on duty, the final letter written only days before he was killed in action at Resht.Most letters are addressed to his mother, Ada Eliza Wilkinson (née Machin), and the album opens with his formal portrait, signed by her on the verso. Beginning with his voyage to India in December 1914, he records life in Port Said, the Suez transit, and his posting to Quetta, where he lived comfortably but grew frustrated at being far from the fighting. Throughout 1915 he describes training, frontier camps, and the slow grind of the war, his early enthusiasm giving way to weariness and disillusion.In late 1916 he finally volunteered for active service in the Middle East, reaching Basra in October and soon taking part in mobile desert operations, railway protection, and frequent skirmishes with Turkish forces. His letters convey both the hardships and the relative freedom of campaigning compared with the Western Front. Wounded by a sniper in early 1917, he recuperated briefly in India before returning to the field.In December 1917 he joined Dunsterforce in Persia, reporting on the weakening Ottoman position. He was killed

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