Page 93 - They Also Served

40
Francis Yeats-Brown 1905.
Francis Charles Claypon Yeats-Brown was born in Genoa in 1886, the son of the British consul. Educated at Harrow, he was commissioned from Sandhurst into the Indian Army, initially joining the 17th Cavalry before transferring to the Bengal Lancers, serving in Bareilly until 1914. Transferring to the RFC, he saw action in France and Mesopotamia. In 1915 his aircraft was damaged, landing behind enemy lines near Baghdad – he spent the following two years as a POW. This provided the inspiration for his first book, Caught by The Turks, which was published in 1919.
After repatriation, he resumed his flying duties with a temporary commission in the RAF and was awarded the DFC for his wartime services in 1919. Returning to the Indian Army, he served until 1924 before joining the staff of Spectator Magazine. His series of articles on the human cost of the clearance of London slums was highly praised, but he was best remembered for persuading T E Lawrence to contribute under the pseudonym ‘Aircraftman Shaw’. In 1930, Yeats-Brown wrote The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, detailing his time in the cantonment of Bareilly. The book was rejected by numerous publishers, but once released by the American Viking Press, was an immediate hit and won the prestigious James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the best biography of the year. It was also made into a highly successful Hollywood film starring Gary Cooper, which was nominated for seven Academy Awards. Although the production was originally shot in India, the celluloid film degraded in the hot sun, so many scenes were reshot in the hills surrounding Los Angeles, with Native Americans as extras.
In the 1930s, Yeats-Brown became involved in right-wing politics, being a member of both the January Club, founded by Sir Oswald Mosley, and the Right Club, founded by Archibald Ramsay, both alumni of Sandhurst. Praising both Hitler and Franco in newspaper articles, Yeats-Brown went as far as to say that conscription, deportations
87