Page 168 - Arabian Studies (V)

158 Arabian Studies V

the Indian Staff Corps in 1893. He was on the Tirah and Malakand
Expeditions of 1897-8. He was Deputy Assistant Adjutant-General
of the Southern Army in India from 1908 until 1912. He went to
France in 1914 with the Garwhal Rifles and remained there until
1915 when he returned to India as chief staff officer at Lahore.
From 1917 he was in Mesopotamia as a Brigadier-General on the
staff until his appointment to command the Khyber Brigade in
1921. This was followed by commands at Lucknow and Bombay
before he went to Aden where frontier troubles were continuing.
He retired in 1929 and died in 1955.
1928 (April) to 1931 (January)
SYMES, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir (George) Stewart
Bom in 1882, the son of an army officer, he was educated at
Malvern and Sandhurst. He was commissioned in the Hampshire
Regiment in 1900 and saw service in South Africa, the Aden
Hinterland and Somaliland. He fought in the Blue Nile campaign
of 1908. He was closely associated with Sir Reginald Wingate
whom he served Firstly as A.D.C., then as Assistant Director of
Intelligence and Finally as Private Secretary. He moved with
Wingate from Khartoum to Cairo in January 1917 and was
generally believed to exercise very considerable influence over the
High Commissioner. He acted as Wingate’s principal link with the
Arab Bureau. After Wingate’s dismissal he was employed in the
Egyptian Ministry of the Interior until 1920 when he became
Governor of thie Northern District of Palestine. In 1925 he succee­
ded Sir Gilbert Clayton as Chief Secretary for Palestine where he
remained until going to Aden. He was knighted in 1928. His period
of office was marked by almost continual border troubles and the
increasing use of the R.A.F. for internal policing. He initiated a
more active policy of bringing social welfare to the Protectorate
and was also responsible for the first attempt at Federation when
the tribal chiefs met under the chairmanship of the Sultan of Lahej.
Subsequently Symes became Governor of Tanganyika and then in
1933 Governor General of the Sudan. He was rather abruptly
removed in October 1940 and it was generally believed that this was
caused by his trying to prevent the country from becoming involved
in war with Italian-occupied Ethiopia. He was an extremely hard­
working, rather aloof man, and his Tour of Duty (1946) has some
quite entertaining but not very important information about his
period in Aden. He died in December 1962.
1931 (January) to 1940
REILLY, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Bernard Rawdon
Born in 1882, the son of an Indian Army OfFicer, he was educated