Orders, Decorations and Medals

The highly impressive and rare Great War Palestine operations D.S.O. group of fourteen awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel H. D. Pearson, Royal Engineers, who won a brace of “mentions” for the Boxer Rebellion, signed on behalf of Great Britain the treaty concluding the work of the Anglo-Liberian Boundary Commission in 1903, and afterwards embarked on a long and distinguished career as a Director of Surveys in the Sudan: but it was for his services as a Liaison Officer to the Arab Forces at Jeddah in 1916-17, which post had earlier been occupied by Lawrence of Arabia, that he was awarded his D.S.O. and the 2nd class insignia of the Order of El Nahda, a rare distinction indeed for a British Officer

Distinguished Service Order, G.V.R., silver-gilt and enamel; India General Service 1895-1902, 2 clasps, Punjab Frontier 1897-98, Tirah 1897-98 (Lieut., R.E.); China 1900, 1 clasp, Relief of Pekin (Lieutt., Bl. Sappers & Miners); 1914-15 Star (Major, R.E.); British War and Victory Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf (Lt. Col.); U.S.A., Military Order of the Dragon, the reverse engraved, ‘Capt. Hugh D. Pearson, Royal Engineers, No. 680’; Khedive’s Sudan 1910-21, 1 clasp, Sudan 1912, unnamed as issued; Turkish Order of Osmanieh, 4th class breast badge, silver, silver-gilt and enamels, this chipped in places; Order of the Star of Ethiopia, 2nd class set of insignia of local manufacture, comprising neck badge and breast star, silver-gilt; Egyptian Order of the Nile, 3rd class neck badge, silver, silver-gilt and enamel; Hedjaz, Order of El Nahda, 2nd class set of insignia, comprising neck badge and breast star, silver, silver-gilt and enamel, the enamel work on the Turkish piece chipped in places, lacquered, otherwise generally good very fine (14) £20,000-25,000

D.S.O. London Gazette 1 January 1918.

Hugh Drummond Pearson was born in Kensington, London in February 1917 and was educated at St. Paul’s School, from which he passed direct into Woolwich. Commissioned into the Royal Engineers as a 2nd Lieutenant in July 1892, he proceeded to India in 1894, was advanced to Lieutenant in the following year and witnessed active service in the Tirah and Punjab Frontier operations of 1897-98.

In July 1900, he was attached to No. 4 Company, Bengal Sappers & Miners, and embarked for China, where he was present at the relief of Pekin following a difficult journey in a convoy of 14 junks on the Peiho, and subjection to occasional sniping. And in September, he participated in the punitive expedition to Pa-ta-Chu, where he and his men destroyed the arsenal before returning to Pekin. His Company was subsequently employed in improving communications and accommodation about the Legation Quarter, Pearson himself leading a section employed in driving a tunnel through the Great Wall of the Tartar City, which on completion was 50 feet high and 70 feet wide at its base. Afterwards he was detached to the Temple of Heaven to construct winter quarters for the garrison and, in January 1901, with a team of 70 sappers, laid three and a half miles of branch line from Fengtai to Likachao, work that was hindered by the extreme cold, snow and blizzards. In May, Pearson was appointed Orderly Officer to Brigadier-General Spratt Bowring, R.E., and remained behind in Peking to assist in the completion of the new defences. He was twice mentioned in despatches (London Gazette 14 May 1901 and 13 December 1901).

Appointed to the Local Rank of Captain in December 1902, Pearson was the senior British representative on the Anglo-Liberian Boundary Commission set up in the following year, a physically punishing role that took him through thick bush country in Sierra Leone and, on one occasion, a 30 mile stretch of ‘impenetrable forest from Bariwalla to the river Mannah, where the sky was invisible owing to the dense overhead growth’. His work complete, Pearson was just about fit enough to sign, on behalf of Great Britain, the treaty at Mano Solija that July, and was ‘carried on board a steamer with little hope of reaching England alive.’

Having made a good recovery back home, Pearson joined the Egyptian Army and proceeded to Khartoum, where he was appointed Assistant Director of Surveys to Colonel the Hon. Milo Talbot, whom he soon afterwards succeeded as Director. It was in this latter capacity that Pearson truly excelled himself, being ‘untiring in his efforts to promote the welfare of the Sudan and its people’, in a region where he had ‘great influence amongst the sedentary and nomad tribes in whose countries he so successfully laboured for upwards of fifteen years.’ Highlights of this period included his part in delimiting the boundary between the Belgian Congo and the Sudan in 1910, following the reversion of the Lado Enclave to the Sudan Government on the death of King Leopold of the Belgians in the previous year, for which he was ‘offered a Belgian decoration which regulations prohibited him from accepting’, and his hard work in triangulating in Kordofan, where in less than three months in 1911 he fixed upwards of 100 places over an area of 20,000 square miles. He was awarded the 4th class of the Turkish Order of Osmanieh (London Gazette 22 December 1911).

Inevitably, however, Pearson’s agenda was rarely free of the threat of seeing action and, as a recently promoted Major, he participated in the expedition against the Adonga Anuak and Beir tribes in the south-east Sudan, under Major Leveson, D.S.O., in 1912. Casualties amounted to two British officers, three Native officers and 42 rank and file killed, before the conclusion of hostilities on the Abyssinian border, and just 13 British officers, seconded to the Egyptian Army, qualified for the subsequent issuance of “Sudan 1912’” clasp. Pearson also added to his laurels by taking the opportunity of surveying the Sobat and Pibor rivers, an account of which work was published in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society.

In the following year he was responsible for mounting an expedition to explore the unknown waterways of the Bahr el Ghazal and Bahr el Arab rivers, in addition to despatching Captain Kelly, R.E., to carry out further survey work along the Sudan-Abyssinian border, while in 1914 he was principally occupied with the building of the great dam at Makwar and the high-level canal in Gezira.

During the Great War Pearson was employed on a variety of special duties, firstly in connection with the defences of Sudan itself, and also, as an Intelligence Officer, in dealing with plans for the reconquest of Darfur, while in January 1916 he proceeded in charge of a survey expedition to Lake Tsana in Abyssinia - a chapter in his life well described in his subsequent publication Letters from Abyssinia (copy included). He was mentioned in despatches (London Gazette 25 October 1916) and was awarded the 3rd class of the Egyptian Order of the Nile (London Gazette 7 December 1917).

On his return from the Lake Tsana project, Pearson was sent to Jeddah as a Liaison Officer with the Arab Forces, which post had earlier been occupied by Lawrence of Arabia, and was rewarded by King Hussein with the 2nd class of the Order of El Nahda, a rare distinction indeed for a British Officer; and during the course of 1917, Pearson became the recipient of another unusual honour, namely that of the 2nd class of the Order of the Star of Ethiopia, for his services in conveying the Empress to the Regent at Adis Ababa. Later in that year he participated in the organisation of a training camp at Ismailia, in conjunction with the French, following which he was ordered to join the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in Palestine, where for short periods he was onetime Governor of both Jaffa and Jerusalem.

In early 1918, having been awarded the D.S.O. and again been mentioned in despatches (London Gazette 17 September 1917), Pearson was appointed C.R.E. of the Desert Mounted Corps and was involved in the planning of the final offensive against the Turks, not least in providing training for assorted bridge and railway demoltion squads. He subsequently served through the battle of Megiddo, the advance on Damascus, the occupation of Riyaq and Tripoli, and the advance on Aleppo, and was given the Brevet of Lieutenant-Colonel and won another “mention” (London Gazette 7 October 1918). Then in 1919, for his work in keeping open over 500 miles of indifferent roads and tracks inside Arabia, he won his fourth and final “mention” of the War (London Gazette 24 March 1919).

Returning to his duties as Director of Surveys in the Sudan, from late 1921 Pearson was employed as the British Representative on the Anglo-French Commission for the delimitation of the frontier between Sudan and the Wada area of French Equatorial Africa. But, as noted by his R.E. obituarist, he continued to work throughout the rainy season in Darfur, which ‘no doubt undermined his strong constitution, and he fell victim to blackwater fever within a few weeks of the completion of this last strenuous task’, in December 1922. He had been Director of Surveys ‘for nearly 20 years, and a glance at the map will show he had the most strenuous task of all, the mapping of desert, forest, marsh and a maze of varying uncertain waterways, in addition to more detailed work connected with land settlement and the like. He was a great hunter and a fine athlete ... At Headquarters he was the life and soul of Khartoum society, the friend of all and the hero of many ... England and the Royal Corps may well be proud of Hugh Pearson and the type he represented.’

Nor was he forgotten: ‘Over the border, on the far shore of the little lake at Umm Dafog, is a plot of ground that is forever England, “The Grave of Colonel Pearson”, Chairman of the Boundary Commission, which was permanently ceded to Britain by France. Over this six feet of English earth, a small Union Jack used to fly, and English visitors were invited by the French Administrator to open the gate of the zereeba which surrounded it and proceed with him onto their own soil’ (Sudan Republic, by K. D. D. Henderson, refers).