Orders, Decorations and Medals

A rare Great War Egypt and Palestine operations C.B., C.M.G., Boer War ‘Edward VII’ D.S.O. group of twelve awarded to Major-General Sir Michael Bowman-Manifold, Royal Engineers, whose distinguished career spanned extensive service in the Sudan campaigns 1896-98 as Staff Officer Telegraphs and one of Kitchener’s R.E. “Band of Boys” - and having his horse shot from under at Firket - through to senior command in the Great War as a Director of Signals of both the Mediterranean and Egyptian Expeditionary Forces, which latter appointments included active service in Gallipoli and Palestine: other than the fact his private journals and letters of the Sudan period are extensively quoted in relevant histories, he published his own account of the campaigns in Egypt & Palestine 1914-18, in which he acknowledges the assistance given him by Lawrence of Arabia

The Most Honourable Order of The Bath, C.B. (Military) Companion’s neck badge, silver-gilt and enamel; The Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George, C.M.G. Companion’s neck badge, silver-gilt and enamel; Distinguished Service Order, E.VII.R., silver-gilt and enamel; Queen’s Sudan 1896-98 (Lieut. M. G. E. Manifold, R.E.); Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Transvaal (Capt. M. G. E. Bowman-Manifold, D.S.O., R.E.); 1914 star, with clasp (Major M. G. E. Bowman-Manifold, D.S.O., R.E.); British War and Victory Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf (Brig. Gen. M. G. E. Bowman-Manifold); Turkish Order of Osmanieh, 4th class breast badge, silver, silver-gilt and enamel; Turkish Order of Medjidie, 4th class breast badge, silver, silver-gilt and enamel; French Legion of Honour, Officer’s breast badge, gold and enamel; Khedive’s Sudan 1896-1908, 5 clasps, Firket, Hafir, Sudan 1897, The Atbara, Khartoum (Lieut. M. G. E. Manifold, R.E., Dongola 1896) original mounting as worn, enamel work chipped in places, severely so on the Osmanieh badge, otherwise generally very fine (12) £8000-10000

C.B. London Gazette 4 June 1917:
'For valuable services rendered in connection with Military operations in the Field’.

C.M.G. London Gazette 11 April 1918:
'For distinguished services in the field in connection with Military operations culminating in the capture of Jerusalem.’

D.S.O. London Gazette 27 September 1901:
‘For services during the recent operations in South Africa’.

Michael Graham Egerton Bowman-Manifold was born in June 1871, the son of a Surgeon-General, and was commissioned in the Royal Engineers in February 1891.

The Dongola Expedition 1896

Advanced to Lieutenant in February 1894, he commenced a lengthy span of service in Egypt and the Sudan, on attachment to the Egyptian Army, in November 1895, and served as Staff Officer of Telegraphs in the Dongola Expedition of 1896, when, as one of eight R.E. subalterns present at the commencement of operations, he became one of “Kitchener’s Band of Boys” - indeed his subsequent services are the subject of frequent mention in Colonel E. W. C. Sandes’ famous history of these R.E. operations:

‘The story of how a few subalterns of the Royal Engineers carried a railway and telegraph up the Nile towards Dongola in 1896 is a record of many dangers and hardships and most strenuous endeavour ... They had youth, courage and endurance, and to these they added unswerving devotion to their work and unstinted admiration of their leader, Kitchener, both as a soldier and an engineer ... Manifold played a lone hand in Telegraphs. Buoyed up by enthusiasm, and untrammelled by red tape, the “band of Boys” accomplished, time after time, the seemingly impossible.’

One of Manifold’s first actions was to rapidly extend the telegraph to Akasha, which place was taken in March 1896, an exercise that henceforth included suitable collaboration with the R.E’s railway construction parties, a point noted by Winston Churchill in his classic, The River War:

‘As the railway had been made, the telegraph-wire had, of course, followed it. Every consignment of rails and sleepers had been accompanied by its proportion of telegraph-poles, insulators, and wire. Another subaltern of Engineers, Lieutenant Manifold, who managed this part of the military operations against the Arabs, had also laid a line from Merawi to Abu Hamed, so that immediate correspondence was effected round the entire circle of rail and river.’

Yet if normal engineer duties were the order of the day, Kitchener ensured his eight-strong R.E. “Band of Boys” reverted to a military role in the case of operational forays, acting as gallopers to Brigade Commanders, forays that became known to them as “weekends at the front”. And in Bowman-Manifold’s case, his first weekender proved to be the storming and capture of Firket on 7 June, an action which he later recorded for posterity’s sake, and one in which his horse was shot from under him:

‘The long, snaky column of troops crawled along until 4.30 a.m., when we got on to a plain about three-quarters of a mile wide. Firkey Mountain, a very scarped rock, was on our left, and the Nile on our right ... I had plenty of hard riding, some of it very difficult. At first we moved along very quietly. Then a horse neighed and I heard Hunter say, “That’s given the show away,” but apparently it did not alarm the outposts for another ten minutes elasped before we were fired on ... Men and horsemen were running about, waving flags and firing. The rattle of fire from both sides was deafening, and soon our men began to get hit ... Houses in the village were soon ablaze, and the Egyptians kept advancing continuously ... All along the river was a thick grove of palm-trees with houses under them, and here very heavy fighting took place. My horse was hit at about 250 yards range. A party of horsemen attempted to charge out from behind the houses, but never reached more than 50 yards ... I started back at 5 p.m. with Stevenson and Polwhele and rode into Akasha early next morning. There I got 30 camels and began my return journey to Firket at 2 p.m., laying the telegraph line, and having halted by the river at night, pushed into the Sirdar’s camp on June 9th.’

By early July, Bowman-Manifold was able to write in his journal:

‘I have a complete set of telephones from station to station all along the railway between Wadi Halfa and Akasha, 87 miles, eight stations. They work beautifully, and all the telegraphs are also in good working order. The great anxiety now is cholera. To-day, there is a case at Wadi Halfa. It is pretty warm here - 118 degrees in my tent.’

While in September - Kitchener being ‘ever mindful of his chosen “Band of Brothers” ’ - He found himself acting as a galloper in the action at Hafir, although on this occasion he remained unscathed, most of the fighting being carried out by our artillery and gunboats. He was, nonetheless, mentioned in despatches (London Gazette 3 November 1896 refers) and awarded the 4th class Order of Medjidie, his remarkable accomplishments being described at length by Sandes - anxious exchanges with Kitchener were commonplace, so too temperatures upto 130 degrees, the whole compounded by a shortage of qualified engineers and suitable equipment. Colonel Sandes concludes:

‘The total length of the telegraph lines erected along the Nile during 1896 was 630 miles. Manifold had to travel far and fast to supervise the work of his partially trained men. Indeed, between March 1896 and his departure on leave in January 1897, he covered more than 5,000 miles by land and water. His trials were many and varied; but, in the end, he had the satisfaction of knowing that, through his wanderings in the wilderness, he had succeeded in providing an efficient line of telegraphic communication in the reconquered province of Dongola.’

The Atbara and Omdurman

Back from his leave, Bowman-Manifold extended the telegraph yet further, hot on the heels of General Hunter’s push to Abu Hamed in August 1897, ‘unwinding through the wilderness a slender wire on which the very existence of the force might depend’. And although not actually present in the fighting on that occasion, he was once more back in action as a galloper at the Atbara in April 1898, in MacDonald’s 2nd Infantry Brigade, having journeyed there as a member of Kitchener’s mobile desert mess, among his fellow officers being ex-Jameson raider, Frank Rhodes, and Lord Cecil - ‘Not a man had more than one blanket ... I have a little bush with two sticks and a piece of canvas to give shade’. And of the battle proper, Bowman-Manifold wrote:

‘A bugle sounded the advance and the whole line moved to within 400 yards, rifles firing, bands playing, men shouting, a fearful fusilade. The enemy opened a brisk fire; shots whizzed everywhere; men were hit everywhere. In ten minutes we were right up to the zariba. For about two minutes the opposing forces were five yards apart, blazing at each other; then our men rushed the fence, got inside and slew all who remained near it. The scene was almost indescribable: the ground like a sieve, with holes and trenches everywhere, not in any regular order, but all full of men and animals ... Personally I never drew sword or revolver, although I kept a wary eye on the wounded. At 8.30 I bade farewell to old “Mac” and went in search of the Sirdar [Kitchener]. The carnage, through which I had to ride back, was terrible. Pits full of hobbled donkeys, alive, dead and wounded; camels knocked inside out; dead and wounded men with burning garments; dead and wounded women, often naked, and shattered by shot and shell. I found the Sirdar, who went to each British regiment in turn to speak a few words and got a tremendous ovation ... I had been told to be ready to return quickly to Fort Atbara with his telegrams. Meanwhile, I went back again over our line of advance and on my return to the Sirdar found Mahmud dressed in a beautiful jibba, looking very sullen and guarded by Sudanese with fixed bayonets ... ’

Having been given Kitchener’s telegrams, one of them for Lord Cromer, Bowman-Manifold had to make all haste to Fort Atbara, 32 miles distant, and was greeted in triumph on relating the fate of Mahmud - ‘The Jalin ran alongside my horse, leaping and shouting ... The din was indescribable. Every man fired his rifle into the air and my horse became almost unmanageable ... I have worked right through the knees of my breeches, and my boots are giving way at the stitiching.’

Notwithstanding his worn breeches and boots, he immediately set out for Suakin to arrange for a new telegraph line from that port to Berber, thence to Tokar to inspect progress on another stretch of line, and thence, on Kitchener’s orders that June, to Fort Atabara to extend the line to Metemma; so, too, to provide an additional wire from Abu Hamed to the Fort, projects that were ‘attended by remarkable success’. Colonel Sandes continues:

‘Never before had messages flashed along more than 230 miles of bare wire in contact with the ground. The Field Telegraph kept the Sirdar in communication with Cairo and every post along the Nile, and in close touch with his railways and river transport. It was thus a most important factor in the organization which enabled him to ensure victory on the field of battle.’

And so indeed to the Sirdar’s crowning victory at Omdurman, where once more Bowman-Manifold took to the field as a galloper, on this occasion attached to the Staff of the Egyptian Division, in which capacity he carried vital messages between Generals Hunter and Wauchope, and the Sirdar himself. Having again been mentioned in despatches (London Gazette 24 May 1898 refers), he now added the 4th class Order of Osmanieh to his accolades.

Boer War D.S.O. and Senior Command in Gallipoli and Palestine 1915-18
Next actively employed in the Boer War, when he served as a Staff Officer to the Director of Railways, Bowman-Manifold added a further “mention” to his accolades (London Gazette 10 September 1901 refers), in addition to the D.S.O., which insignia he received from the King in October of the same year, together with advancement to Captain.

A Major by the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, he proceeded to France in the same month, and remained there until being embarked for the Dardanelles in early 1915, and was awarded another “mention” (London Gazette 19 October 1914 refers). Subsequently appointed Director of Army Signals in the Mediterranean Expeditonary Force that March, he was employed in the Gallipoli operations from April to December of the same year, was given the Brevets of Lieutenant-Colonel, and Colonel, and won two more “mentions” (London Gazettes 5 August and 20 September 1915 refer).

And in a similar capacity in the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, he went on to witness further active service in the Egypt and Palestine operations, latterly in the rank of Brigadier-General, services for which he won four more “mentions” (London Gazettes 13 July and 25 September 1916, 6 July 1917 and 7 October 1918 refer), the Officer’s grade of the French Legion of Honour, the C.B. and C.M.G., and, ultimately, in 1919, for valuable services in Egypt, the K.B.E. (London Gazette of 9 June of that year refers). He was also appointed an A.D.C. to the King.

Post-war, Bowman-Manifold attended the Staff College, Camberley, where he lectured on the campaigns that had been fought in Egypt, Sinai and Western Desert, Palestine, Syria and Cilicia 1914-18, as a result of which he published An Outline of the Egyptian and Palestine Campaigns 1914-18 (Institution of the Royal Engineers, 1929 - an original edition included), and in which he acknowledged assistance given him by Lawrence of Arabia.

Placed on the Retired List as a Major-General in 1924, he was appointed Commandant, R.E. in 1938 and died in March 1940.