Groups and Single Decorations for Gallantry

An enigmatic and intriguing ‘Palestine Balloonatic’ M.C. group of ten awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel O. H. Warne, Manchester Regiment, who was previously attached to both the Royal Flying Corps/ Royal Air Force and the Egyptian Army/ Sudan Defence Force, and was one of the few men who were actually on active service at the start of both World Wars

Military Cross, G.V.R., reverse privately engraved ‘Capt. O. H. Warne’; British War and Victory Medals, with M.I.D. oak leaves (Capt. O. H. Warne.); India General Service 1908-35, 1 clasp, Burma 1931-32 (Major O. H. Warne. M.C., Manch. R.); 1939-45 Star; Africa Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45; Egypt, Kingdom, Order of the Nile, Fourth Class breast badge, by Lattes, Cairo, silver, gilt, and enamel, reverse privately engraved ‘O.H.W.’ above maker’s name; Khedive’s Sudan 1910-22, 2nd type, 1 clasp, Darfur 1916, privately engraved (Capt. O. H. Warne.) mounted court style as worn, generally very fine and better (10) £4,000-£5,000

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Provenance: Christie’s, 2000

M.C. London Gazette 3 June 1919: Captain Osmund Hornby Warne, Manch. R. attd. 21st Balloon Co., 4th Bty., Egyptian Army.

Egyptian Order of the Nile , Fourth Class London Gazette 21 September 1923.

Osmund Hornby Warne was born in Walton, Liverpool, on 14 January 1891, the only son of the Reverend Alfred Thomas Warne, and was educated at Keble College, Oxford. He had joined the Oxford University Officers Training Corps, and after initial military training was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the 3rd (Special Reserve) Battalion, South Staffordshire Regiment in January 1912.

On 28 April 1914 Warne sailed from Liverpool bound for Takoradi, apparently to take up a post with the paramilitary police force of the Gold Coast. The passenger list of the S.S. Dakar described both Lieutenants Warne and Watt as Assistant District Commer [Commander], which is normally a police rank. All the other Lieutenants on board were listed either as colonial administrators or as soldiers.

‘Serving August 4 1914’: Seizing Togoland from the Germans

In 1914 the bulk of Imperial Germany’s overseas possessions were located in various parts of Africa. German Togoland was a narrow but long sliver of territory (slightly larger than Ireland) sandwiched between the British Gold Coast and French Dahomey. It was not easy to defend, so the authorities in Berlin relied on an inter-governmental agreement which stated that in the event of a war in Europe, the European colonies in West and Central Africa would be granted neutral status. However, Germany used Togoland as the site for a powerful Funkstation (wireless transceiving relay station) which was specially built to handle all radio messages between the Fatherland, its African colonies and Imperial German Navy vessels, coaling facilities and merchantmen in the South Atlantic and Latin America. The Togoland Funkstation began full-scale operations in July 1914. British Naval Intelligence became aware of it immediately, understood the significance of the threat that it posed to British commerce and maritime supremacy, and requested that it be destroyed as soon as possible.

On 29 July the acting governor of the Gold Coast received instructions from London to prepare for war. The Gold Coast Regiment (1,600 infantry, pioneers and a mountain battery) was mobilised and several hundred police were embodied. Warne was on Active Service as soon as hostilities between the German and British Empires began on 4 August. The next day, German undersea cables were cut between Monrovia and Tenerife, and this made the Togoland Funkstation a vital and irreplaceable German strategic asset. It handled an average of fourteen Top Secret telegrams a day. On 6 August the British Cabinet refused a German request to recognise colonies in Africa as neutral territory. The Gold Coast governor, on his own authority, sent a surrender demand to his German opposite number, but the Germans had deployed 700 Polizeitruppen and 300 Territorials to defend Togoland. A British force of troops and armed police crossed the Togoland frontier on 7 August.

The Germans fought several sharp delaying actions. On 26 August they destroyed the Funkstation and surrendered Togoland, ending a campaign which cost the British 83 casualties, including the first British officer to be killed in the World War (a Lieutenant of 1st Battalion Royal Scots). According to his Medal Index Card Warne did not receive one of the 1914-15 Stars which were awarded for the Togoland Campaign. As a very recent arrival, he may have not yet been officially posted by the colonial administration to a unit considered as being ‘on the strength’.

Attached Egyptian Army: Darfur 1916
A year after the end of the Togoland Campaign, Warne was posted on attachment to the Egyptian Army from 29 December 1915. The Egyptian Army, which was composed of Egyptian and Sudanese troops led by Egyptian junior officers and a strong presence of seconded British regular officers and N.C.O.s, was tasked with ensuring the defence and internal security of both Egypt and the Sudan. The Sirdar (Commander-in-Chief) of the Egyptian Army was Sir Reginald Wingate, a highly experienced soldier and intelligence chief who was also Governor-General of the Sudan.

The Germans had begun a strategy of encouraging uprisings in the colonial possessions of the allies as a form of asymmetric warfare designed to weaken and disperse Allied military forces. After Turkey entered the war by joining the Central Powers, the two countries worked together to incite Jihadist revolts amongst the Muslim peoples of North Africa, supplying advisors, munitions and money wherever there was a chance of success. Their main objective was to disrupt British control of the eastern Mediterranean and the Suez Canal route to India and the Pacific. In 1915 they succeeded in persuading the Senussi tribesmen of eastern Libya to invade Egypt from the west. The Senussi were in close touch with the Sultan of Darfur, a largely autonomous region (roughly the size of France) which was nominally the western province of the Sudan. Modern arms and ammunition were sent to Darfur, and the Turks encouraged the Darfuri Sultan to strike eastwards, towards Khartoum, the Sudanese capital.

General Wingate had a good idea of what the Sultan of Darfur intended to do, and began to make preparations of his own. From the summer of 1915 the caravan routes between Darfur and the Senussi lands were closely watched, local Darfuri tribesmen who held grievances against the Sultan were provided with arms and British officers were sent to scout out, evaluate and survey routes that could be used to attack El Fasher, the Sultan’s main centre of power. These officers developed logistics and intelligence plans to support an advance of 250 miles across an arid and hostile desert. Only a handful of British officers were available, so Warne was most likely heavily involved in much of this work. After his formal attachment in December 1915, he held the local rank of Major (Bimbashi).

By February 1916 the Senussi attack along the coastal...