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Pictures courtesy of Spink

CB s/g b/b;
Egypt, dates reverse (0) (Lieut. E. Burney. 1/R. Berks. R.);
QSA (3) Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal (Lt. Col: E. H. Burney, Rl. Berks. Rgt.);
KSA (2) (Lt: Col. E. H. Burney. Rl. Berks. Rgt.);
Khedive's Star 1882

CB London Gazette 27 September 1901.

MID London Gazette 10 September 1901.

Ernest Henry Burney was born at St Martin, Jersey on 17 August 1860, the son of Captain Charles Burney C.B., Royal Navy.

Commissioned 2nd Lieutenant into the 49th Foot in 22 January 1879, he was advanced Lieutenant on 8 April 1880 and was appointed Adjutant of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment 1884-87. This period saw Burney serve in Egypt from 23 July 1882-11 April 1883, including the Expedition of 1882 and the surrender of Kafr Dowar (Medal without clasp, Star). Made Captain on 10 December 1884 and Major on 2 November 1894, he was advanced Lieutenant-Colonel on 29 August 1900, Burney served in South Africa from 9 September 1900-30 October 1902. In this period he was appointed to the Command of the 2nd Battalion from 27 October 1900-11 October 1901 before being appointed to Command Section Lines of Communication January-May 1901, also Commanded a Mobile Column May-July 1901. He served in the operations in the Transvaal East of Pretoria October-November 1900, in the Transvaal November 1900-July 1901 and in the Cape Colony July-October 1901 and May 1902. By the conclusion of the Boer War, Burney had a C.B. to go with his 'mention', besides having his Medal presented by The King.



Burney was made Colonel in August 1904 (Retired), he had also served attached to the Army Ordnance Corps, 1888-93 and was Adjutant of the 4th (Militia) Battalion, Manchester Regiment 1893-98. Married in Jersey in 1890, Burney had issue of two children. The Colonel died at Nevilly, Paris on 16 June 1906 and was buried in Greenwich

Picture courtesy of Dominic Winter

Sudan (6309. Pte. A. Midwinter. 1/Gren: Gds:);
Khedive's Sudan (1) Khartoum (Pte. A. Midwinter. Gren. Gds.);
QSA (3) Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal (4818 Pte. A. Midwinter, 2nd Rl. Berks. Regt);
KSA (2) (4818 Pte A. Midwinter. Rl: Berks: Regt);
1914-15 Star (10441 Pte. A. Midwinter. R. Berks. R.);
British War and Victory Medals (10441 Pte. A. Midwinter. R.Berks. R.)

The catalogue states:

All clasps and awards confirmed.

Whilst serving as Private on the Western Front on 3 March 1915 Midwinter received a gunshot wound to the buttock he was transferred to Hospital Ship Nevasa the following day.

Picture courtesy of the London Medal Company

DSO GV;
OBE 1st/Mil, HM 1918;
QSA (3) Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal; (LIEUT. J.R. BASSETT. RL. BERKS. RGT.);
KSA (2) (LT. J.R. BASSETT. RL. BERK. RGT.);
British War Medal and Victory Medal with MID (LT.COL. J.R. BASSETT.);
Turkey - Ottoman Empire: Order of Osmanieh, 4th Class, Officer Grade, with Rosette on ribbon, silver and enamels;
France - 3rd Republic: Legion d’Honneur, 5th Class, Knight’s Grade, silver and enamels, with gilt centre;
Jordan - Hedjaz: Supreme Order of the Renaissance - Wisam al-Nahda, 1st type, 2nd Class Grand Officer Grade, neck badge and breast star, silver, gold and enamels, housed in an official presentation case;
Egypt - Kingdom of: Order of the Nile, 2nd Class Grand Office Grade, neck badge and breast star, silver, gilt and enamels, both pieces of insignia makers marked for Lattes, and housed in its fitted presentation case, this also by Lattes of Cairo.

John Retallack Bassett was born on 27th October 1878 in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, the son of Frederick Bassett and Elizabeth Phoebe Bull. Commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant into the Royal Berkshire Regiment, he went on to first see active service during the Boer War out in South Africa with the 2nd Battalion, being present on operations in the Cape Colony, the Orange Free State, and the Transvaal, and was out there when promoted to Lieutenant on 12th December 1900. Appointed Battalion Adjutant on 5th August 1903, this appointment came to an end on 5th August 1906, and he was then seconded from regimental duty on 15th December 1906 and posted to the Egyptian Army. Bassett was still on seconded duty when he was promoted to Captain on 2nd June 1909.

By the outbreak of the Great War, Bassett was a Major on the Staff with the Egyptian Army, and hence did not gain entitlement to the 1914-1915 Star. He was promoted to Major in the British Army on 1st September 1915, and with the situation in Sudan created by the ongoing Great War, was then involved in operations there, being awarded a Mention in Despatches ‘for gallant and distinguished services’ in the London Gazette for 25th October 1916, this being for intelligence work on the administrative side, and he was also gazetted as a Governor of a Province in the Sudan on 25th October 1916 where he became a trusted member of General Reginald Wingate's inner circle. He was also rated for pay purposes as a General Staff Officer 2nd Grade as of 2nd October 1916. It was almost certainly for his work as a Governor of a Province in the Sudan that Bassett was awarded the Egyptian Order of the Nile, 2nd Class Grand Officer Grade.

This position appears to have come to an end on 4th November 1916, and following this, he took up an important role as intelligence liaison officer with the French in the eastern Mediterranean, working closely with the British Eastern Mediterranean Special Intelligence Bureau. Bassett was then appointed an acting Lieutenant Colonel whilst in command of the 2nd Battalion of the Imperial Camel Corps from 23rd January to 12th March 1917 and seeing active service in the Sinai desert. During this period of command he is most noted for having led the Camel Corps into battle during the Raid on Bir El Hassana. The Raid on Bir el Hassana (Hasna) occurred in the Sinai Peninsula in February 1917. It was a minor action between an augmented battalion of the Imperial Camel Corps on the one side and a score of Turkish troops plus some armed Bedouin on the other. The raid was the third of three actions fought by British forces seeking to recapture the Sinai Peninsula.

At this time British ships on the Mediterranean coast and the Gulf of Aqaba guarded the coast road via El Arish, and the road from Ma'an via Nekhl to the Suez Canal. Ottoman forces continued to occupy the area on the central way across the Sinai south from el Kossaima towards the Suez Canal, including Bir el Hassana and Nekhl. General Archibald Murray, commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, ordered attacks against both Nekhl and Bir el Hassana, which lay 40 miles north of Nekhl, between the Gebel Helal and the Gebel Yelleg. Three columns of cavalry and camelry set out with the goal of all attacking on 18th February. One column set out from Serapeaum, and another from Suez on 13th February 1917 to converge on Nekl. Bassett, commanding 2nd Battalion, Imperial Camel Corps, together with the Hong Kong and Singapore (Mountain) Battery, marched from El Arish, via Magdhaba. This column reached Lahfan on the 16th, and on the 17th advanced from Magdhaba. At dawn the next morning they surrounded the Ottoman Army garrison at Bir el Hassana, which consisted of three officers and 19 other ranks, reinforced by armed Bedouin. The Ottoman troops surrendered, but the Bedouin fired on the British, shattering Lance Corporal McGregor's ankle. One of the Turks who surrendered was Nur Effendi, who had commanded the garrison at the unsuccessful British attack on Maghara on 15th October 1916. The troops searched Bir el Hassana and found 21 rifles, a few camels, and 2100 rounds of ammunition. After the surrender of Bir el Hassana, Bassett's force remained in position to capture any Ottoman force withdrawing back from Nekhl towards Bir el Hassana. On 19th February the Royal Flying Corps flew McGregor out with his leg in a box splint, while he sat in the observer's seat of a B.E.2c two-seater biplane. This was the first use of aeromedical evacuation by the British.

Bassett next appears in the London Gazette when appointed a Deputy Assistant Quartermaster General as of 8th April 1917. It was then that he got involved with Lawrence of Arabia and the operations in the Hedjaz Desert of the then Trans-Jordan, now the Kingdom of Jordan during the Arab Revolt.

“Without Colonels Cyril Wilson and John Bassett there would be no Arab Revolt. Without them there would be no call for Lowell Thomas to promote T.E. Lawrence as a hero, no iconic 1960s, film, and libraries around the world would have space for other subjects. Wilson and Bassett shored up the revolt when collapse was a serious threat. Their lost stories show that the Arab Revolt could not have had its success without their unsung interventions.” Philip Walker, Behind the Lawrence Legend: the Forgotten Few who Shaped the Arab Revolt, Oxford University Press, published 8 February 2018-quotation & Image.

“Bassett is one of the forty officers listed by T.E. Lawrence in the preface to Seven Pillars of Wisdom as being able to ‘tell a like tale’ to his. But Lawrence deliberately downplays the indispensable diplomatic and intelligence roles played by Wilson, Bassett and others in the Jeddah circle. Recognition of their essential roles would dilute the impact of the Lawrence-centred narrative.” – Philip Walker, Behind the Lawrence Legend.

Bassett was sent to join the British Military Mission in the Hejaz where he met King Hussein and his son Feisal to discuss military strategy. Bassett gained information on Ottoman railway lines from a network of local spies, which even included the number of spare rails stockpiled at each station.

Bassett was thrust into the high politics of the revolt almost immediately, deputising for Colonel Cyril Wilson, who was suffering from a life-threatening dysentery and evacuated for half a year to Cairo (he would later have to have a leg amputated). The British plans for the region had been leaked in the Sykes-Picot agreement, possibly direct from Lawrence to prince Feisal. His father, King Hussein, was so shaken by what looked like British skulduggery that he not only threatened to pull the plug on the entire revolt but also talked despairingly of suicide. Bassett had to cope with this and the diplomatic fallout of the Balfour Declaration being made public. The British sent Bassett and Commander Hogarth, former Director of the Arab Bureau, to mollify King Hussein aboard HMS Hardinge. General Wingate later expressed how much he valued Bassett’s key role in helping keep the revolt on an even keel: ‘From all Hogarth tells me you have “made good” with the King and are carrying on the Wilson tradition most successfully. Bassett stepped into the breach and brokered a number of vital meetings, sidestepping diplomatic snares before Hogarth’s arrival and helping steer Hussein back from the brink.

On 8th Feb 1918, he delivered what was to become known as ‘The Bassett Letter’ from London Foreign Office to King Hussein. The letter, written in Arabic, dismissed the publication of the Sykes-Picot Agreement as an attempt by the Ottoman Empire to derail the Arab Revolt by creating mistrust between the Arabs and the British. It was this lie that eventually led Lawrence himself to alienation, disillusionment and depression. Bassett later shaped General Allenby’s approach after King Hussein had resigned in writing on 28 July 1918. Although Bassett thought this a bluff, he urged Allenby to press Whitehall to openly back the King against Ibn Saud incursion into Kurma. The Cabinet agreed, and the policy averted crisis and brought back Hussein once more.

Having cracked the cipher of the Ottoman intelligence secret service, Bassett analysed accounts that provided insight into a complex network of agents, deserters, tribal sheiks, factions and bribes that mirrored British activity. The reality of a hidden intelligence war was far removed from the legend of the Bedouin tribes rising as one behind ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. Following Ottoman surrender, Bassett was sent to interrogate Fahkri Pasha, the obstinate commandant of the Turkish garrison at Medina who had continued to resist after the official armistice. He explained to Bassett that it had been beneath his dignity to surrender to a mere Captain (Herbert Garland who was attached to Emir Abdullah’s forces). Bassett’s intelligence background persuaded him that Fakhri was hiding something and seized his diary and accounts, concluding that Fakhri had been intending a belated alliance with Ibn Saud against Hussein.

For his ‘distinguished services in connection with Military Operations in Egypt and the Hedjaz, Bassett was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in the London Gazette for 4th September 1918, and was awarded another Mention in Despatches ‘for gallant and distinguished services’ in the London Gazette for 7th October 1918. He was further appointed a Croix de Chevalier of the French Legion d’Honneur in the London Gazette for 14th October 1918. Bassett was ultimately appointed an Officer of the Military Division of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the London Gazette for 3rd June 1919.

In a bizarre footnote, after the war in 1929, Bassett married Evelyn Mary Gillman Burgess, a widow, and thus became stepfather to Guy Burgess, the future Soviet spy and defector. Andrew Lownie’s ‘Stalin’s Englishmen’ provides an insight: “The man Eve Burgess marries is a rather interesting man called Jack Bassett, a retired Army officer who’d served with Lawrence of Arabia in the Arab Bureau. He was an intelligence officer – indeed he had one of the first copies of Seven Pillars of Wisdom – but he and Burgess did not get on very well. You can imagine Burgess feels that this man has come between him and his mum, and he calls him The Colonel. He does everything he can to irritate The Colonel – there’s nothing you can do that irritates The Colonel more than passing the port the wrong way.” To fellow scholars at Trinity College, Cambridge University, Guy always referred to his stepfather as a ‘professional gambler’. Although Bassett was a keen race-goer and lived near both Ascot and Newbury racecourses, it was likely that he funded Guy through the banking industry, into Eton and then one of the richest of Cambridge colleges, arguably sparking another of history’s great intelligence affairs, this time to Britain’s detriment.

Bassett was transferred to the Regular Army Reserve of Officers after the war, but ceased to belong to the reserve on attaining the age limit on 27th October 1933, retiring in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He died in 1961.

£19,750.

Picture courtesy of Noonan's

QSA (2) Cape Colony, Orange Free State (4838 Pte. W. Day, 2: R: Berks: Regt.);
KSA (2) (4838 Pte. W. Day. Rl: Berks: Regt.) number officially corrected;
Royal Humane Society, small bronze medal (successful) (J. Day. 2nd. Bttn: Berks: Regt, Sep. 16 1900.) with integral top bronze riband buckle

RHS Case no. 30,977: ‘On 16 September 1900, J. J. Le Roux, the son of a local burgher, by holding on to the tail of a horse, was carried out some 25 yards from the bank in a pond at Roodevval Spruit, Orange River Colony. Seeing his danger, Privates Jones and Day, both 2nd Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment, who were bathing near, at once swam out, and at great risk rescued him.’

Picture courtesy of Noonan's

MC GV, unnamed as issued;
QSA (3) Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal (5369 Pte. W. Tilbury. Rl: Berks: Regt.);
KSA (2) (5369 Serjt: W. Tilbury. Rl: Berks: Regt.);
1914-15 Star (16689 Sjt. W. Tilbury. R. Berks: R.);
BWM and VM with MID oak leaves (16689 W.O. Cl.1. W. Tilbury. R. Berks. R.);
Volunteer Force Long Service Medal (India & the Colonies), GV (Pte. W. H. Tilbury. Surma V.L.H. A.F.I.);
Belgium, Kingdom, Order of Leopold II, Chevalier’s breast badge, silver and enamel, with bronze AIR palm on riband

MC LG 1 January 1919.

MID LG 4 January 1917.

Belgian Order of Leopold II, Chevalier, with palms LG 5 April 1919.

William Harry Tilbury was born at Burchetts Green, Berkshire, on 5 November 1881 and attested for the Royal Berkshire Regiment aged 15 years and 6 months. He served with them in South Africa during the Boer War, and with the 5th Battalion during the Great War on the Western Front from 28 July 1915. Advanced Warrant Officer Class I, he was awarded the Military Cross; the following account appeared in the Berkshire Chronicle:

‘The Germans were making a rush for the guns which they had almost surrounded when the party I have spoken of together with the other Berkshire men and the Guards thwarted the desperate attempts which the Boches made to capture them... In regard to the saving of the guns I should like to say that splendid work was performed by our signalling officer, whose name I cannot remember, and Regimental Sergeant Major Tilbury.’

Subsequently commissioned Captain, post-War Tilbury served with the Assam Civil Service as an Extra Assistant Commissioner of Police, with the rank of Major, and whilst in India served with the Surma Volunteer Light Horse, Auxiliary Force India. He died of Malaria on 15 December 1932.

Picture courtesy of Noonan's

QSA (3) Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal (6879 Pte. G. F. Morton, 2nd Rl. Berks; Regt);
TFEM EdVII (394 Sgt. G. F. Morton 4/R. Berks: Regt);
Special Constabulary Long Service Medal, GVI 1st issue (George F. Morton.)

George Frederick Morton, a Plumber from Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire, was born around 1876. He attested for the Royal Berkshire Regiment at Reading, Berkshire, on 1 February 1900 and served during the Second Boer War in South Africa from 16 March 1900 to 4 November 1900, before his discharge at his own request on 19 January 1901.

He subsequently attested for the 4th Volunteer Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment, and in later life served as a Special Constable.