THE “NIGERIA 1918” CAMPAIGN GROUP TO CAPTAIN C.D. PRIEST, 2ND BATTALION ROYAL DUBLIN FUSIL

THE REGIMENTALLY UNIQUE “NIGERIA 1918” AFRICA GENERAL SERVICE MEDAL AND FIRST WORLD WAR CAMPAIGN GROUP TO CAPTAIN C.D. PRIEST, 2ND BATTALION ROYAL DUBLIN FUSILIERS (ATTACHED NIGERIA REGIMENT AND 4TH WEST AFRICA SERVICE BRIGADE), WHO IN ADDITION TO SEEING SERVICE AGAINST THE EGBA TRIBE IN NIGERIA IN 1918, WAS ALSO ONE OF A SMALL NUMBER OF EUROPEAN OFFICERS AND NCO’S OF THE NIGERIA REGIMENT AND THE NIGERIA MEDICAL SERVICE TO SEE SERVICE IN FRENCH UPPER SENEGAL IN 1917, WHEN TROOPS FROM NIGERIA ASSISTED THE FRENCH IN RELIEVING THE BESIEGED CITY OF AGADES AND PUTTING DOWN A REVOLT BY TUAREG TRIBESMEN. Three: British War Medal (officially impressed, Captain) Victory Medal (naming erased, a replacement for a lost original medal) Africa General Service Medal, 1 clasp, Nigeria 1918, officially impressed (Captain, Royal Dublin Fusiliers). Mounted loose style for display, Generally Extremely Fine and the Africa General Service Medal with Nigeria 1918 clasp a unique award to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers.

Group accompanied by 6 pages of photocopied documents from Captain Priest’s Officers Service Papers file, along with photocopied extracts from the 1891 census, Army Lists and London Gazettes of the period, plus Medal Index Card (confirming entitlement to British War Medal, Victory Medal and Africa General Service Medal with Nigeria 1918 clasp, and also confirming not entitled to either the 1914 or 1914-15 Star), photocopied section of the medal roll for the “Nigeria 1918” clasp to the Africa General Service Medal relating to the medals awarded to British Army recipients who saw service with the 4th West Africa Brigade in Nigeria in 1918, and copied research re. the 1916-17 Tuareg rebellion in French Upper Senegal, which Captain Priest is confirmed as having taken part in the suppression of.

Born 15/9/1887, Cecil Damer Priest is recorded in the 1891 census as the 3 year old son of a general medical practitioner by the name of James Priest, living in Waltham Abbey, Essex. Priest was educated at Warden House, Deal, Kent, Haileybury College, King’s College London, and Zurich, Switzerland. He was first commissioned 2nd Lieutenant, 3rd Battalion The Essex Regiment (Essex Rifles, Militia), 16/4/1906 and promoted Lieutenant, 30/10/1908. Priest subsequently obtained a commission in the regular army, being appointed 2nd Lieutenant, 2nd Battalion Royal Fusiliers, 25/1/1911. The remainder of his military career, with the exception of a period spent on attachment to the Nigeria Regiment, was spent serving exclusively with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. He was promoted Lieutenant, 10/9/1913, and Captain, 1/10/1915. Priest saw service with the West Africa Frontier Force from 12/11/1913 to 20/1/1915, and from 29/5/1915 to 1920. He retired with a gratuity and was placed on the Regular Army Reserve of Officers (Royal Dublin Fusiliers), 1st March 1921 and retired form the Reserve of Officers 15/9/1937. Service papers note Priest as having been “A Company Commander of considerable experience with natives. A hard working, zealous officer, very popular with his contemporaries. Very keen naturalist, good shot.” After retirement, Priest became a noted ornithologist. He was the author of A Guide to the Birds of Southern Rhodesia and a Record of their Nesting Habits (1929), The Birds of Southern Rhodesia (1933), and Eggs of Birds Breeding in Southern Africa (1948), as well as a number of articles published in scientific and ornithological journals of the day. Priest’s service papers note that he was fluent in French, German, Spanish, Hausa and Fulani.

Service papers confirm that Priest was present during the Coronation of George V in 1911 and also took part in the subsequent Royal Progress, when officers and men from the 2nd Dublins were among the troops lining the streets of London as the newly crowned royal couple returned to Buckingham Palace after the coronation ceremony. Service papers also confirm that, in addition to being present at the 1911 Coronation, Priest also took part in Royal Levees attended by both King Edward VII and King George V.

In 1911 and 1912 there was widespread industrial unrest in Britain and the 2nd Dublins, then stationed at Aldershot, were among the troops deployed to various locations throughout the country to assist the police in maintaining law and order. Priests service papers confirm that he was present performing strike duty at Gravesend in February 1912 during the Great Eastern Railway workers strike. He is also confirmed as serving on Special Duty at the Chatham Naval Magazine in 1912, and that he was engaged in further strike duty at Tilbury Docks, Gravesend, in September 1912.

Following his arrival in Nigeria in 1913, Priest was initially posted to Kaduna, in northern Nigeria, on attachment to the Nigeria Regiment. He subsequently saw service in 1914 at Sokoto, as part of the garrison occupying the recently captured former German colony of Kamerun (the Cameroons), arriving after the fighting to capture the colony had ended and so not qualifying for a campaign star. After being invalided back to the UK with dysentery, from January to May 1915, Priest returned to West Africa, where he saw service at a variety of locations, including Bernin-Kebi, 1915-16, Sokoto, in the former German Cameroons, for a second time in 1916, Madawa, in French Upper Senegal, February – May 1917, and at various posts in northern Nigeria from May 1917 to May 1919, before returning to the UK in 1920.

The operations in French Haute (Upper) Upper Senegal in 1917. French Upper Senegal (present day Mali) shares a common border with northern Nigeria. During WW1 there was widespread unrest in the various French colonies in Africa. German and Turkish agents circulated widely throughout those various territories, covertly urging the muslim peoples in them to rise up in a holy war or jihad, and expel the French. There was also deep-rooted resistance to colonial rule in Frances African colonies, and in particular to the wartime imposition of military service. Initially, British involvement was passive, limited to supplying the French with guns and ammunition to assist them in putting down a series of insurrections in Chad. When, however, in December 1916, the French Sahara was invaded by Senusi tribesmen from the north, the French authorities requested active military assistance from the British authorities in Nigeria. By this stage in the war, the vast bulk of the Nigeria Regiment were on active service in East Africa. All that the governor of Nigeria, Frederick Lugard, had available, was a disorganised force, mainly comprised of soldiers unfit for service in East Africa, and three small detachments of the Nigeria Regiment garrisoning the towns of Sokoto, Maiduguri and Dikwa in the recently occupied former German Cameroons. While the French and British were discussing military co-operation, the islamic insurgency spread across the whole of French Sudan and the Sahara. Upper Senegal, just across the border from northern Nigeria, was the scene of a complex series of inter-related revolts and particularly heavy fighting. The Senusi, attacking from the north, pressed down on the French forts in the desert. Meanwhile, the Tuaregs of central and southern Upper Senegal, also rose in revolt, besieging the French garrison at Agades in central Upper Senegal and threatening French positions in and around Zinder in southern Upper Senegal. Fearing that the fighting might spill over the border into Nigeria, Lugard declared a state of emergency on 3rd January 1917, and when the French commandant at Zinder made an urgent request for assistance from Nigerian troops, Lugard agreed to provide them. Two British columns moved north into the French territory. One column left Kano in northern Nigeria under Colonel Coles, made up of two mounted infantry companies with two Maxim guns. This force arrived at Tassawa on 19th January. Another column under Captain Randall left Sokoto for Madawa. This force was made up of 65 infantrymen, 85 mounted troops and two Maxims. Since Priest was serving at Sokoto in January 1917, and his service papers confirm that the saw service during the operations in the French country (Haute Senegal), February – May 1917, he presumably formed part of the Sokoto column. Initially, the Nigerian troops from these two column relieved the besieged French garrisons in the towns of southern Upper Senegal near the Nigerian border, thus freeing these formerly besieged troops so that they could march to the relief of Agades. Subsequently, after being reinforced by additional troops from Nigeria, the Nigerian expeditionary force moved further north into the desert interior of Upper Senegal. The following account of the services of the Nigerian troops in Upper Senegal in 1917 is taken from Nigerias Colonial Government and the Islamic Insurgency in French West Africa, 1914-1918 by Jide Ousuntokun: The British colonial forces did a splendid job in the Sahara. They were mostly used in patrol work, especially between Gangara in the east through Tarkass to the north of Giddan and Al-Mokhtar in the west. They were also used to garrison important military outposts, such as Al Hassan and Guidambado. They took part in operations in the country north and east of Tawa and Madawa. The Nigerian troops remained on French soil until May 18th 1917, when they were withdrawn because the situation was by then under control, in the immediate neighbourhood of Nigeria at least. At total of 35 British officers and ncos took part in the 1917 Upper Senegal campaign, comprising 27 officers and ncos of the Nigeria Regiment and 5 officers and 3 sergeants of the West Africa Medical Staff. The total number of native Nigerian troops involved in the campaign, including those that formed part of the Kano and Sokoto columns along with the later reinforcements, totalled 425 other ranks, along with assorted native gun carriers and Maxim gun carriers. No campaign medal or clasp was awarded for the 1917 Upper Senegal operations, and medals awarded to British officers and ncos confirmed as having taken part are, given the small number involved, seldom encountered.

The Nigeria 1918 clasp was awarded for services against the Egba tribe in the vicinity of the Nigerian Government Railway (main line) from Abeokuta in the north to Lagos in the south, within the area bounded to the east by a line from Abeokuta through Ijebu-Ode to Lagos, and on the west by a line from Abeokuta to the Ilaro, thence through Igbessa to Lagos. The Egba Kingdom, part of Yorobaland, had not been included in the British administered Lagos Protectorate of 1893, the Egba kingdom retaining its independence. During July-August 1914, however, there was widespread unrest and rioting in the Egba kingdom, the rulers of which thereupon requested assistance from the British Government, whereupon the colonial administration then amalgamated the Protectorates of Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria, to form the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. At the same time the treaty recognising Egba independence was terminated and Egba was incorporated into the newly created Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. When the colonial administration began administering the Egba portion of Yorobaland indirectly, the various fiscal and administrative reforms, including direct taxation, were bitterly resented. There was also a considerable amount of graft on the part of the Native Administration responsible for administering Egba, which was exacerbated by the activities of the Ogboni Secret Society. In 1918, the British Resident in Egba threatened to call for troops to quell the unrest, whereupon the Egbas rebelled. An officer and 50 other ranks of the 4th Nigeria Regiment and a company of the 1st Nigeria Regiment were sent to restore order and protect the railway line, and this small force was subsequently reinforced by the 4th West African Brigade, along with 250 officers and men from the Ibadan Training Centre. General fighting occurred in June 1918, mostly in the form of sniping. The first significant action took place when a small force under Captain Walker attacked and took a rebel camp at Awba, ten miles south of Abeokuta, where a friendly Chief had been murdered. The scale of operations then expanded considerably, and were directed at encircling the insurgents by the converging drives of five columns, all directed on Iraw and Mawkawlawki on the Ogun River south of Awba. No. 1 Column (Captain Walker) from the north No. 2 Column (Captain Maxwell) from the centre No. 3 Column (Captain Norman, M.C.) from the south No. 4 Column (Captain Johns) from the east and No. 5 Column (Captain Evans) from Awba and Teppoma each of the columns comprising two companies. On 4th July the movement was successfully completed, most of the rebels guns were surrendered and the ringleaders taken into custody. An idea of the scale of the revolt can be gained from the fact that, between 11th and 23rd July, some 3,400 guns were surrendered at Lafenwa on the railway. Total casualties on the government side were: West African Field Force, 8 killed and 67 wounded police and others, 2 killed and 11 wounded along with 4 European civilians also wounded.

The various unbound medal rolls for the Nigeria 1918 clasp comprise 310 loose pages, and as such are much larger than would be usual for such a small campaign, many of the pages in the rolls listing individual claims or claims for small groups of officers and men. There were a large number of entitled personnel who could not be found after the rolls had been prepared, and a year or so later a list of “untraced men” running to some 63 pages was prepared. Considering that many of the men must have enlisted for service during WW1 only, and that the medal was only authorised six years after the end of the uprising, when the majority of the wartime recruits had been demobilised, this is hardly surprising. Eventually, approximately 1,000 clasps were awarded in total.

The roll for the British Army personnel who saw service with the 4th West Africa Brigade in Nigeria in 1918 lists a total of 85 British Army recipients (35 officers and 50 ncos), the recipients drawn from a wide variety of regiments. Captain Priest is the only member of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers listed on the roll, making his Nigeria 1918 clasp a unique award to the regiment (there are also a small number of additional British Army recipients listed in other sections of the medal roll for the Nigeria 1819 clasp, but a search through the roll indicates that none of these other men, officers or ncos, were from the Royal Dublin Fusiliers).

Captain Priests medal index card gives his home address initially as Douglas Mansions, 120 Cromwell Road, London and later as Ashhorton, 3 Prideaux Road, Eastbourne.The December 1924 Supplement to the Half Yearly Army List (War Services of Officers on Retired Pay) records Captain Priest as having seen service in Russia and with the Aden Field Force during WW1. This is incorrect.