The Diaries of
Colonel Alexander Weston Jarvis

Colonel Weston Jarvis, C.M.G, M.V.O, T.D. Commanding Officer of the 21st Battalion the Imperial Yeomanry.  Adventurer, politician, soldier, socialite and later a Knight of the Realm.  A man from another century.

The Boer War was fought between irregular troops of a small nation and the professional army of a mighty Empire.  Though the Empire won the war the Boers proved to be worthy and skilful opponents.

Equally at home in the saddle and in high society, Alexander Weston Jarvis kept a diary that captured the mood and atmosphere of the time.  He takes the reader bivouacking under the African stars, riding long miles on patrol, skirmishing with a wily and elusive enemy; he shows the building of the blockhouse lines.  He visits a concentration camp and then in stark contrast tells of the luxury of dinner parties, nights in the mess and visits to the theatre with the famous., great and notorious.  He sampled the civilised delights of Pretoria, Johannesburg and Durban.  Milner, Cecil Rhodes, Baden-Powell, Rawlinson, Haig, Plumer, many military and aristocratic luminaries numbered among his friends ,but none were more influential than the King and Royal Family.  Alexander Weston Jarvis’ diary is a valuable and evocative record of the British Empire at its height of power and a forgotten war.

Despite his many interests and Royal and Society connections, Weston Jarvis remained at heart a soldier.  A little over a decade after the Boer War and his service with the 21st Imperial Yeomanry, he answered his nation’s call again. 

In August 1914, he was mobilised as the commanding officer of the 3rd County of London Yeomanry.  At first, the battalion was a Home Defence unit but soon it went out to Egypt.  From there Weston Jarvis and his Yeomen were sent to Gallipoli.  After that ill-fated and disastrous campaign, the battalion returned to Egypt. 

Never one to be overawed by rank, Weston Jarvis fell out with his brigadier and felt compelled to resign as battalion CO.  Returning to London, he began the search for a post on the Western Front.

As seen in A Boer War Sharpshooter and A Great War Sharpshooter, Colonel Weston Jarvis had spent his life fighting Britain’s wars and when war broke out in 1914 he was mobilised with the 3rd County of London Yeomanry. 

He and his men defended a cold, wet Norfolk coast against phantom invasions and then in 1915 they were shipped out to the heat of Egypt to wait to be called into action at Gallipoli.  They were transferred to Suvla Bay, Gallipoli in August 1915 and thrown into the Battle for Scimitar and W Hills.  From there they served in the trenches facing the Turks until casualties, sickness and the weather reduced their number so much that they had to be withdrawn.

In 1916, after falling out with his Brigadier, Weston Jarvis resigned his command and using his connections secured a posting on the Western Front in 1917.

This book, the second and final volume concerning Weston Jarvis’ Great War career covers his service as a staff officer with XIX Corps from 1917 to 1919.

Weston Jarvis’ diary, written almost every day, opens a window on the life of the staff officers in a British Corps on the Western Front in the last years of the war.  In this dairy there are concerts, dinner parties, horse shows and the odd Chateau, as well as shelling, air raids, the death of loved ones, headlong retreat and the startling advance to victory.  The Colonel would have preferred a combat command buat that the age of 61 in 1917 it was all he was allowed.