F. H. Cooper Khaki Crusaders. With the South African Artillery in Egypt and Palestine. (1919)

Publisher's pictorial card covers. 92pp + 7 illustrations in text and fold out air-photograph (captured from Germans) as frontispiece. This copy is in fine unread condition.

From the author's foreword: 'This little collection of sketches was written at irregular intervals during the Palestine campaign, and sent back to South Africa to interest rather than instruct the people at home. Fortune favoured the manuscripts at a time when far more valuable documents were being lost every week, and only one of the series was torpedoed en route.'

'Herein will be found no succession of lurid battle pictures; for our lives were not always spent in daily conflict with the infidel. But shot and shell and forced march were blended with periods of utter stagnation in soaking rain and oppressive heat, brightened at long intervals by briefs spells of leave to Egypt or Jerusalem. In such proportion have I attempted to portray our life in the Egyptian Expeditionary Force.'

From page 13: 'South Africans come as something of a novelty to the British Tommy. In the first place our colour has proved a great disappointment; a dark mahogany tint was apparently hoped of us. Then, again, they were most surprised to find we spoke English. They seemed to expect some language called "African." So we are really almost tempted to converse loudly in Cape Dutch, and to pose as creatures of a far wilder and woollier type than nature and South Africa have made us.'

A rare document of daily South African military life during WWI.