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MacGregor Medal
The MacGregor Medal (also referred to as the MacGregor Memorial Medal) is awarded for valuable military intelligence through reconnaissance, exploration, survey or other similar activities of national importance. Awardees have included Survey of India personnel, military attaches, consuls, political officers and Indian Army, Navy and Air Force personnel (including British officers before Independence). Post 1947 the medal has only been awarded to military personnel. A few medals have been awarded for escapes from enemy-occupied territory while some medals were awarded for successful operations inside enemy territory. Sometimes the awardee would be conferred the medal years after the journey had been made. Currently the domains incorporated are land, sea and air. Over the years the necessity and opportunities related to exploration have declined and this in turn has been coupled with a decline in recommendations. In this light the eligibility has been expanded to adventure activitie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United Service Institution Of India
United Service Institution of India (USI) is a national security and defence services think tank based in New Delhi, India. It describes its aim as the "furtherance of interest and knowledge in the art, science and literature of the defence services". USI operates centres for research in various areas of national security. The USI Journal, published quarterly since 1872, is the oldest defence journal in Asia. It also publishes a number of monographs based on research and study by its members. History The United Service Institution was established in 1870 by Major General Sir Charles MacGregor in Shimla. It was founded as a society in the ''furtherance of interest and knowledge in the art, science and literature of the Defence Services''. The institute was initially housed in the Old Town Hall, and later received temporary accommodation in the Indian Army Headquarters, which was also then based in Shimla. In 1908, the institute acquired its own premises near Combermere Post Off ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Younghusband
Lieutenant Colonel Sir Francis Edward Younghusband, (31 May 1863 – 31 July 1942) was a British Army officer, explorer, and spiritual writer. He is remembered for his travels in the Far East and Central Asia; especially the 1904 British expedition to Tibet, led by himself, and for his writings on Asia and foreign policy. Younghusband held positions including British commissioner to Tibet and President of the Royal Geographical Society. Early life Francis Younghusband was born in 1863 at Murree, British India (now Pakistan), to a British military family, being the brother of Major-General George Younghusband and the second son of Major-General John W. Younghusband and his wife Clara Jane Shaw. Clara's brother, Robert Shaw, was a noted explorer of Central Asia. His uncle Lieutenant-General Charles Younghusband CB FRS, was a British Army officer and meteorologist. As an infant, Francis was taken to live in England by his mother. When Clara returned to India in 1867 she le ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geoffrey Bruce (Indian Army Officer)
Major-general (United Kingdom), Major General John Geoffrey Bruce (4 December 1896 – 31 January 1972) was an officer in the British Indian Army, eventually becoming Deputy Chief of General Staff, who participated in the 1922 British Mount Everest expedition. Bruce, who had never before climbed a mountain, had been appointed as a transport officer, but chance led to him accompanying George Finch (chemist), George Finch on the only summit attempt that used supplemental oxygen. Together they set a new World altitude record (mountaineering), mountaineering world record height of , only below the summit of Mount Everest. Background and personal life Geoffrey Bruce, born on 4 December 1896, was a son of Colonel Sir Gerald Bruce. He attended Rugby School. Bruce married Marjorie Isabel Crump in 1932 and they had two daughters.Marjorie also had two older daughters by a previous marriage. In 1922 he was described by his mountaineering colleague George Finch (chemist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stewart Blacker
Lieutenant-Colonel Latham Valentine Stewart Blacker OBE (1 October 1887 – 19 April 1964) was a British Army officer and inventor of weapons; he invented the Blacker Bombard, from which was developed the Hedgehog anti-submarine spigot-mortar – and laid the basis of the PIAT anti-tank weapon. A descendant of Valentine Blacker (1778–1823), he was born in Cheshire to Major Latham Blacker of the Indian Army. He was educated at Cheltenham College and Bedford School, before going to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. After passing out from the college in 1907, he was commissioned into the Indian Army himself. He served in Afghanistan, Turkestan, and Russia, earning several mentions in dispatches. He served with the 69th Punjabis, Queen's Own Corps of Guides, and 57th Wilde's Rifles. He had learned to fly in 1911, receiving Certificate No. 121 from the Royal Aero Club, and at the start of the First World War he was attached to the Royal Flying Corps. He was shot down a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Keeling
Sir Edward Herbert Keeling, MC (1883 The ''Times'' obituary and other sources seem to have mistakenly assumed a birth year of 1888, which is when the birth of an Edward George Keeling was registered in Market Drayton. – 23 November 1954) was a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1935 to 1954. The younger son of the Reverend William Hulton Keeling, headmaster of Bradford Grammar School, he was educated at Bradford and University College, Oxford, graduating with a master's degree in jurisprudence. He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn. In 1902 he received employment in the Supply and Accounting Department of the Admiralty. His siblings include the social activist Dorothy Keeling and the Canadian communist writer Margaret Fairley. Keeling moved to be a member of the Harbour Commission in Burma, then a British colony. With the outbreak of the First World War, Keeling received a commission as an officer in the I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Noel (Indian Army Officer)
Lieutenant-Colonel Edward William Charles Noel (14 April 1886 – 10 December 1974) was a British officer, diplomat and spy. Relatives The grandson of Charles Noel, 2nd Earl of Gainsborough his father was the Earl's second son. He was the elder brother of Captain Noel an English mountaineer and filmmaker best known for his film of the 1924 British Mount Everest expedition alongside George Mallory and Andrew Irvine. He was educated at The Oratory School, Birmingham and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Commissioned initially in the Royal Garrison Artillery, he transferred to the Indian Army in 1908. He cycled from England to India twice, in 1909 and 1910. Political career In 1915, he was appointed Vice-Consul to Ahwaz in Persia and Consul for Kerman and Persian Baluchistan in 1929. He aided Peter Polovtsov, a tsarist general to escape from Russia in 1918. Then, while carrying despatches for Dunsterforce, Noel was held hostage by the Jangalis in 1919. He became a Companio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Morshead
Henry Treise Morshead (23 November 1882 – 17 May 1931) was an English surveyor, explorer and mountaineer. He is remembered for several achievements – with Frederick Bailey he explored the Tsangpo Gorge and finally confirmed that the Yarlung Tsangpo flows into the Brahmaputra River after cascading through Himalaya; also he was a member of the 1921 and 1922 British Mount Everest expeditions and in 1922 he climbed to a height of over . His death was due to murder and the circumstances remain mysterious. Early and personal life Born in 1882 and brought up at Hurlditch Court, near Tavistock near the Devon–Cornwall border, Henry Morshead was the eldest son of Reginald Morshead, a banker, and Ella Mary Morshead, née Sperling. He was educated at Winchester College where he did reasonably well and at a second attempt passed the exams to enter the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, to become an officer in the Royal Engineers in 1901. At the Chatham Royal School of Military En ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick Marshman Bailey
Frederick Marshman Bailey (3 February 1882, Lahore, British India – 17 April 1967, Stiffkey, Norfolk) was a British political officer and one of the last protagonists of ''The Great Game.'' His expeditions in Tibet and Assam Himalaya gave him many opportunities to pursue his hobbies of photography, butterfly collecting, and trophy hunting in the high Tibetan region. Over 2000 of his bird specimens were presented to the Natural History Museum, although his personal collection is now held in the American Museum of Natural History, New York.Anon. (1967) Obituary: Lt.-Col. F. M. Bailey, C. I. E. 1882-1967. The Geographical Journal 133: 427-428. His papers and extensive photograph collections are held in the British Library, London. Early life Born in Lahore, India on 3 February 1882, Bailey was the son of Lt Col Frederick Bailey of the Royal Engineers of the British Army, Head of the Indian Forestry Service, and his wife, Florence Agnes Marshman. The younger Bailey was usuall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gerard Leachman
Lieutenant-Colonel Gerard Evelyn Leachman, CIE, DSO (27 July 1880, Petersfield, Hampshire – 12 August 1920, Iraq) was an English soldier and intelligence officer who travelled extensively in Arabia. Career Leachman was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Royal Sussex Regiment on 20 January 1900, and the following month left with his battalion for service in South Africa during the Second Boer War. He served there until the end of the war, in June 1902, and left Cape Town in the SS ''Bavarian'' in August, returning to Southampton the following month. He later served in India, but spent most of his career as a political officer in Mesopotamia, where he was instrumental in pacifying warring tribes to bring stability to the new country. Leachman also made various expeditions further south into Arabia, where he contacted Ibn Sa'ud on behalf of the British government. He travelled as a naturalist of the Royal Geographical Society, but was in fact a British agent. With his dark ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Khan Bahadur Sher Jang
thumb.html" ;"title=" thumb"> thumb Khan Bahadur Sher Jang was a soldier-surveyor in the British Indian Army. He was born at Dhok Aziz near Chhab, a small village in Attock District, British India. His father, Aziz Khan belonged to the Khattak tribe. Service Khan Bahadur Sher Jang joined Coke's Rifles in 1887 and took part in the 1st and 2nd Miranzai Expeditions of 1890-91 and accompanied the Kurram Column in 1892-93. He joined the Survey of India as a Soldier-Surveyor in 1895. From 1895 to 1899 he served on the N.W.Frontier, taking part on the Waziristan Expedition of 1894-95, in the Tochi, Tirah and Mohmand Expeditions of 1897-98, and in Dir and Chitral in 1899, when he was granted the title of Khan Sahib. In 1901-02 he was attached to the Abyssinian Boundary Commission and was awarded the title of Khan Bahadur at the early age of 32. In 1903-04 he accompanied the Tibet Mission, being mentioned in dispatches, and in 1905-06 served under the Foreign Department in the Persian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harold Walker (British Army Officer)
Lieutenant-General Sir Harold Bridgwood Walker, (26 April 1862 – 5 November 1934) was a senior British Army commander who led Australian and New Zealand forces for much of the First World War. He was highly regarded by the men he commanded and was only replaced in 1918 when politics dictated that all divisions of the Australian Imperial Force should be commanded by Australians. Early life Walker was born on 26 April 1862 in Dilhorne, North Staffordshire, England. His father was James Harold Walker, an Anglican clergyman, and his mother was Mary Walker (''née'' Bridgwood). He was a descendant of George Walker. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and Jesus College, Cambridge. However, he did not graduate, having left before completing his degree. Military career Walker was commissioned into the British Army as a lieutenant in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry on 14 May 1884 and served on the Nile Expedition in 1884 and 1885. He was promoted to captain on 16 December 18 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eric John Eagles Swayne
Sir Eric John Eagles Swayne (14 May 1863 – 9 September 1929) was a British Army officer and colonial administrator. He served in British Somaliland, where he was appointed Commissioner, and as Governor of British Honduras, now Belize. Early years Swayne was born on 14 May 1863. His parents were George Carless Swayne, a classical scholar, curate and essayist, and Margaret Sarah Eagles, a poet. He was educated abroad and at St Edward's School, Oxford, before attending the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, as a Gentleman Cadet for a year. In 1882 he joined the Welsh Regiment, and later transferred to the Indian Staff Corps. Swayne served in the Burma Campaign (1885–1887), the African Campaign (1898), and in British Somaliland. British Somaliland The emir of Dervish Sultan Diiriye Guure was Sayid Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, known by the British at the time as the "Mad Mullah" since he would not accept colonial rule. In 1900, a part of the first British Somaliland expedit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
