Page 72 - They Also Served

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Gerard Leachman 1900.
Gerard Evelyn Leachman was born in Petersfield, Hampshire, on 27th July 1880. He entered Sandhurst in 1898 and was commissioned into the Royal Sussex Regiment in 1900, almost immediately joining his regiment in action in the Boer War. After a spell in India and a transfer to the Indian Army, he was appointed a political officer in Mesopotamia (now Iraq).
With his dark looks, fluent Arabic, and
skill as a rider of both horse and camel,
he was able to pass himself off as a
Bedouin and travel freely around the Middle East. Even when not ‘under cover’, he introduced himself as a member of the Royal Geographical Society while secretly acting as an agent of the government. His success in low-level diplomacy did much to pacify the fractious tribes of the region. In 1909 he led an expedition south into the Arabian Peninsula, becoming involved in a fierce battle between warring tribes on the way. Using the expedition as a source of information, his report on the local tribes resulted in the award of the MacGregor Medal. The medal, originally for Indian Army personnel engaged in valuable military reconnaissance, is still awarded today by the Indian Armed Forces. In 1912 he led a second expedition, meeting Ibn Sa’ūd in his home city of Hasa, the first Briton to be received there by the future first monarch of Saudi Arabia.
On the outbreak of war, Leachman’s skills were much in demand as a commander of mobile forces. During the disastrous Siege of Kut in 1915, General Townshend ordered Leachman to lead the cavalry to safety – these became the only British troops to escape the fall of the city to the Turks. For the remainder of the war, he led irregular forces harrying the Ottoman garrisons and, towards the end of 1918, an armoured column in mopping-up operations. After the war, he remained as a political officer in Mesopotamia, using his local knowledge to broker deals to quell minor uprisings, and, when this did not work, called on the RAF to bomb recalcitrant tribesmen. On 12th
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