Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Three: Acting Lance-Corporal Alijabu Abdullah, King’s African Rifles

Africa General Service 1902-56, 2 clasps, East Africa 1913, East Africa 1914 (3577 Pte. Alijabu Abdulla, 4/K.A.R.); British War Medal 1914-20 (3577 Pte. Ali, 4/K.A.R.); King’s African Rifles L.S. & G.C., G.V.R., 1st issue (A.L. Cpl. Alijabu Abdullah, 4-K.A.R.) the last officially corrected in places, contact marks, edge bruising and polished, otherwise generally good fine (3) £300-350

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Richard Magor Collection of Medals Relating to India and Africa, and other Fine Awards.

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Both relatively scarce clasps, approximately 275 of each having been issued.

Magor states of the 1913 operations: ‘The force consisted of 190 rifles from the K.A.R. divided into three columns ... The plan was for No. 1 column to act as a stop whilst the others beat out the country. Communication was by helio. Initially surprise was achieved at the first village and some tribesmen were killed and stock captured.

On the second day of the expedition all three columns began driving through the hills, over an area of about 24 miles. As the land was intersected by deep gullies and the forest was heavy, the country was ideal for ambushes and defensive tactics and the Didinga soon overcame their initial surprise and fought back. Their tactics were to ambush from close quarters, and for arms each tribesman carried five to six spears. With these tactics by day, and with night attacks on the bomas containing the captured cattle, Captain Brooks’ force must have had a roughish time, particularly when it came to extracting his force ...’

So, too, one would imagine, the K.A.R. men employed in the 1914 operations, who were pitched against the lawless Turkana tribe, ‘by far the most troublesome and dangerous of all negroid races, their raids and atrocities’, and whose principle commodity was human beings for the slave trade. While their riflemen went into action stark naked, excepting a red leather bandolier, the more standard Turkana warrior employed different shock tactics, a rather nasty wrist knife being among his weapons, comprising ‘a circular band of iron of razor-like sharpness, a thin hollow scabbard of stout hide protected its owner from accidental injury.’